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FOURTH EDITION
GIVE ME LIBERTY!
Eric Foner
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
PRAISE FOR ERIC FONER’S GIVE ME LIBERTY!
“The book is inviting to students . . . well-organized and easy to read . . . I love the way Dr. Foner writes! The textbook comes alive with his scholarship and teaching experience.” —Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College
“I find that Foner strikes the perfect balance between political, legal, social, and cultural history. . . . [Give Me Liberty!] includes the most current or most relevant scholarship.” —David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University
“Often, history textbooks can seem to be disjointed retellings of facts and concepts that remind one of an encyclopedia. [Foner’s] freedom theme ties the material together well, which isn’t always easy with this kind of broad textbook. I do think it’s effective in tying the social and political together.” —James Karmel, Harford Community College
“Foner’s textbook is superb. It is well informed, elegantly written, and offers a kind of narrative and interpretive coherence that is rare among textbooks.” —Jeffrey Adler, University of Florida
“The theme of freedom is very clearly and adeptly integrated. . . . Give Me Liberty! provides a good model for students on how to investigate and carry through a theme in their own writings.” —Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College, Dallas Community College District
“Give Me Liberty! offers a nice, comprehensive coverage of American history. I feel that equal weight is given to various topics. ‘Voices of Freedom’ is actually one of the major features of the book that prompted me to adopt the text. I am not aware of any other text on the market that has this superb feature. . . . [A] splendid approach.” —Jonathan A. Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College
“I’ve had a number of students in the last year comment on how easy the text is to use with the integrated focus questions and terms.” —Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College
“Give Me Liberty! is visually appealing in many different ways. The manner in which the illustrations, maps, and pedagogical components are incorporated . . . makes the text more accessible and much less intimidating.” —Kent McGaughy, Houston Community College–NW Campus
“I appreciate the book’s terrifically accessible writing as well as its clear statement of themes. It has a wonderfully seamless and authoritative quality to its writing. I plan to continue to offer it to my students for many years to come.” —Beverly Gage, Yale University
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
Fo u r t h E d i t i o n
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B W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y
N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N
E R I C F O N E R
Fo u r t h E d i t i o n
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G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
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Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008, 2005 by Eric Foner
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Fourth Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foner, Eric.
Give me liberty! : An American history / Eric Foner.—Fourth edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-393-92026-0 (hardcover)
1. United States—History. 2. United States—Politics and government. 3. Democracy—United States—
History. 4. Liberty—History. I. Title.
E178.F66 2014
973—dc23
ISBN: 978-0-393-92026-0 2013029664
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publications include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Reconstruction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent book is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History.
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A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
Contents
ix
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ... vii LIST OF MAPS, TABLES, AND FIGURES ... xxxiii DEDICATION ... xxxvii PREFACE ... xxxix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ... xlv
PA R T 1: A M E R ICA N COL ON I ES T O 17 6 3
1. A N E W W O R L D . . . 4 THE FIRST AMERICANS ... 6
The Settling of the Americas ... 6 ★ Indian Societies of the
Americas ... 8 ★ Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley ... 9 ★
Western Indians ... 10 ★ Indians of Eastern North America ... 10 ★ Native
American Religion ... 12 ★ Land and Property ... 12 ★ Gender
Relations ... 14 ★ European Views of the Indians ... 14
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM ... 15 Indian Freedom ... 15 ★ Christian Liberty ... 16 ★ Freedom and
Authority ... 17 ★ Liberty and Liberties ... 17
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE ... 18 Chinese and Portuguese Navigation ... 18 ★ Portugal and West
Africa ... 19 ★ Freedom and Slavery in Africa ... 20 ★ The Voyages of
Columbus ... 20
CONTACT ... 21 Columbus in the New World ... 21 ★ Exploration and Conquest ... 23 ★
The Demographic Disaster ... 24
THE SPANISH EMPIRE ... 24 Governing Spanish America ... 25 ★ Colonists in Spanish
America ... 25 ★ Colonists and Indians ... 26 ★ Justifications for
Conquest ... 27 ★ Spreading the Faith ... 28 ★ Piety and Profit ... 29 ★
Las Casas’s Complaint ... 29 ★ Reforming the Empire ... 30 ★ Exploring
North America ... 31 ★ Spanish Florida ... 33 ★ Spain in the
Southwest ... 33 ★ The Pueblo Revolt ... 34
THE FRENCH AND DUTCH EMPIRES ... 35 French Colonization ... 35
Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies
(1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19, 1681) ... 36
C O N T E N T S
x
Contents
New France and the Indians ... 38 ★ The Dutch Empire ... 41 ★ Dutch
Freedom ... 41 ★ Freedom in New Netherland ... 41 ★ The Dutch and
Religious Toleration ... 42 ★ Settling New Netherland ... 43 ★ New
Netherland and the Indians ... 44
REVIEW ... 47
2 . B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A , 16 0 7–16 6 0 . . . 4 8
ENGLAND AND THE NEW WORLD ... 50 Unifying the English Nation ... 50 ★ England and Ireland ... 50 ★ England
and North America ... 51 ★ Spreading Protestantism ... 52 ★ The Social
Crisis ... 52 ★ Masterless Men ... 53
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH ... 54 English Emigrants ... 54 ★ Indentured Servants ... 55 ★ Land and
Liberty ... 55 ★ Englishmen and Indians ... 56 ★ The Transformation of
Indian Life ... 57 ★ Changes in the Land ... 58
SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE ... 58 The Jamestown Colony ... 58 ★ From Company to Society ... 59 ★
Powhatan and Pocahontas ... 59 ★ The Uprising of 1622 ... 60 ★
A Tobacco Colony ... 61 ★ Women and the Family ... 62 ★
The Maryland Experiment ... 63 ★ Religion in Maryland ... 64
THE NEW ENGLAND WAY ... 64 The Rise of Puritanism ... 64 ★ Moral Liberty ... 65 ★ The Pilgrims at
Plymouth ... 66 ★ The Great Migration ... 67 ★ The Puritan Family ... 68 ★
Government and Society in Massachusetts ... 68 ★ Church and State in
Puritan Massachusetts ... 70
NEW ENGLANDERS DIVIDED ... 70 Roger Williams ... 71 ★ Rhode Island and Connecticut ... 71 ★ The Trials
of Anne Hutchinson ... 72 ★ Puritans and Indians ... 73
Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637),
and From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court
(July 3, 1645) ... 74
The Pequot War ... 76 ★ The New England Economy ... 77 ★
The Merchant Elite ... 78 ★ The Half-Way Covenant ... 78
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND FREEDOM ... 79 The Rights of Englishmen ... 79 ★ The English Civil War ... 80 ★
England’s Debate over Freedom ... 80 ★ English Liberty ... 81 ★
The Civil War and English America ... 82 ★ The Crisis in Maryland ... 82 ★
Cromwell and the Empire ... 83
REVIEW ... 85
Contents
xi
3 . C R E A T I N G A N G L O - A M E R I C A , 16 6 0 –17 5 0 . . . 8 6 GLOBAL COMPETITION AND THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND’S EMPIRE ... 88
The Mercantilist System ... 88 ★ The Conquest of New
Netherland ... 88 ★ New York and the Rights of Englishmen and
Englishwomen ... 90 ★ New York and the Indians ... 90 ★ The Charter
of Liberties ... 91 ★ The Founding of Carolina ... 91 ★ The Holy
Experiment ... 92 ★ Quaker Liberty ... 93 ★ Land in Pennsylvania ... 94
ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY ... 94 Englishmen and Africans ... 94 ★ Slavery in History ... 95 ★ Slavery in the
West Indies ... 95 ★ Slavery and the Law ... 97 ★ The Rise of Chesapeake
Slavery ... 98 ★ Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in Virginia ... 99 ★
The End of the Rebellion, and Its Consequences ... 100 ★ A Slave
Society ... 100 ★ Notions of Freedom ... 101
COLONIES IN CRISIS ... 101 The Glorious Revolution ... 102 ★ The Glorious Revolution in
America ... 103 ★ The Maryland Uprising ... 103 ★ Leisler’s
Rebellion ... 104 ★ Changes in New England ... 104 ★ The Prosecution
of Witches ... 105 ★ The Salem Witch Trials ... 105
THE GROWTH OF COLONIAL AMERICA ... 106 A Diverse Population ... 107 ★ Attracting Settlers ... 107 ★ The
German Migration ... 109 ★ Religious Diversity ... 110 ★ Indian Life in
Transition ... 111
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant to
Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769), and From Memorial against
Non-English Immigration (December 1727) ... 112
Regional Diversity ... 114 ★ The Consumer Revolution ... 115 ★ Colonial
Cities ... 115 ★ Colonial Artisans ... 116 ★ An Atlantic World ... 116
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES ... 118 The Colonial Elite ... 118 ★ Anglicization ... 119 ★ The South Carolina
Aristocracy ... 119 ★ Poverty in the Colonies ... 120 ★ The Middle
Ranks ... 121 ★ Women and the Household Economy ... 122 ★ North
America at Mid-Century ... 123
REVIEW ... 125
4 . S L A V E R Y, F R E E D O M , A N D T H E S T R U G G L E F O R E M P I R E T O 17 6 3 . . . 1 2 6
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE ... 128 Atlantic Trade ... 128 ★ Africa and the Slave Trade ... 130 ★ The Middle
Passage ... 130 ★ Chesapeake Slavery ... 132 ★ Freedom and Slavery in
the Chesapeake ... 133 ★ Indian Slavery in Early Carolina ... 133 ★ The
xii
Contents
Rice Kingdom ... 134 ★ The Georgia Experiment ... 134 ★ Slavery in
the North ... 135
SLAVE CULTURES AND SLAVE RESISTANCE ... 136 Becoming African-American ... 136 ★ African Religion in Colonial
America ... 136 ★ African-American Cultures ... 137 ★ Resistance to
Slavery ... 138 ★ The Crisis of 1739–1741 ... 139
AN EMPIRE OF FREEDOM ... 140 British Patriotism ... 140 ★ The British Constitution ... 140 ★ The
Language of Liberty ... 141 ★ Republican Liberty ... 141 ★ Liberal
Freedom ... 142
THE PUBLIC SPHERE ... 143 The Right to Vote ... 144 ★ Political Cultures ... 144 ★ Colonial
Government ... 145 ★ The Rise of the Assemblies ... 146 ★ Politics in
Public ... 146 ★ The Colonial Press ... 147 ★ Freedom of Expression
and Its Limits ... 148 ★ The Trial of Zenger ... 148 ★ The American
Enlightenment ... 149
THE GREAT AWAKENING ... 150 Religious Revivals ... 150 ★ The Preaching of Whitefield ... 151 ★
The Awakening’s Impact ... 151
IMPERIAL RIVALRIES ... 152 Spanish North America ... 152 ★ The Spanish in California ... 154 ★
The French Empire ... 155
BATTLE FOR THE CONTINENT ... 156 The Middle Ground ... 156 ★ The Seven Years’ War ... 157 ★ A World
Transformed ... 158 ★ Pontiac’s Rebellion ... 160 ★ The Proclamation Line
... 160 ★ Pennsylvania and the Indians ... 161
Voices of Freedom: From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763), and From
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus
Vassa, the African (1789) ... 162
Colonial Identities ... 164
REVIEW ... 166
PA R T 2 : A N E W N AT ION, 17 6 3 –18 4 0
5 . T H E A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N , 17 6 3 –17 8 3 . . . 17 0 THE CRISIS BEGINS ... 171
Consolidating the Empire ... 172 ★ Taxing the Colonies ... 173 ★ The
Stamp Act Crisis ... 173 ★ Taxation and Representation ... 174 ★ Liberty
and Resistance ... 175 ★ Politics in the Streets ... 176 ★ The
Regulators ... 176 ★ The Tenant Uprising ... 178
Contents
xiii
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION ... 178 The Townshend Crisis ... 178 ★ Homespun Virtue ... 179 ★ The Boston
Massacre ... 179 ★ Wilkes and Liberty ... 181 ★ The Tea Act ... 181 ★
The Intolerable Acts ... 181
THE COMING OF INDEPENDENCE ... 182 The Continental Congress ... 182 ★ The Continental Association ...
183 ★ The Sweets of Liberty ... 183 ★ The Outbreak of War ... 184 ★
Independence? ... 185 ★ Common Sense ... 186 ★ Paine’s Impact ... 187 ★
The Declaration of Independence ... 187
Voices of Freedom: From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), and
From Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of
the American Revolution (1775) ... 188
The Declaration and American Freedom ... 190 ★ An Asylum for
Mankind ... 191 ★ The Global Declaration of Independence ... 192
SECURING INDEPENDENCE ... 193 The Balance of Power ... 193 ★ Blacks in the Revolution ... 193 ★
The First Years of the War ... 194 ★ The Battle of Saratoga ... 195 ★
The War in the South ... 197 ★ Victory at Last ... 199
REVIEW ... 203
6 . T H E R E V O L U T I O N W I T H I N . . . 2 0 4 DEMOCRATIZING FREEDOM ... 206
The Dream of Equality ... 206 ★ Expanding the Political Nation ... 206 ★
The Revolution in Pennsylvania ... 207 ★ The New Constitutions ... 208 ★
The Right to Vote ... 209 ★ Democratizing Government ... 209
TOWARD RELIGIOUS TOLERATION ... 210 Catholic Americans ... 211 ★ The Founders and Religion ... 211 ★ Separating
Church and State ... 212 ★ Jefferson and Religious Liberty ... 213 ★
The Revolution and the Churches ... 214 ★ Christian Republicanism ... 215
DEFINING ECONOMIC FREEDOM ... 215 Toward Free Labor ... 215 ★ The Soul of a Republic ... 216 ★ The Politics
of Inflation ... 217 ★ The Debate over Free Trade ... 218
THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY ... 218 Colonial Loyalists ... 218 ★ Loyalists’ Plight ... 219 ★ The Indians’
Revolution ... 221 ★ White Freedom, Indian Freedom ... 222
SLAVERY AND THE REVOLUTION ... 223 The Language of Slavery and Freedom ... 223 ★ Obstacles to
Abolition ... 224 ★ The Cause of General Liberty ... 225 ★ Petitions
for Freedom ... 225 ★ British Emancipators ... 226 ★ Voluntary
Emancipations ... 228 ★ Abolition in the North ... 228 ★ Free Black
Communities ... 229
xiv
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From Abigail Adams to John Adams, Braintree,
Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From Petitions of Slaves to the
Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777) ... 230
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY ... 232 Revolutionary Women ... 232 ★ Gender and Politics ... 232 ★ Republican
Motherhood ... 234 ★ The Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 235
REVIEW ... 237
7. F O U N D I N G A N A T I O N , 17 8 3 –17 9 1 . . . 2 3 8 AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATION ... 240
The Articles of Confederation ... 240 ★ Congress and the
West ... 242 ★ Settlers and the West ... 242 ★ The Land
Ordinances ... 243 ★ The Confederation’s Weaknesses ... 245 ★ Shays’s
Rebellion ... 246 ★ Nationalists of the 1780s ... 246
A NEW CONSTITUTION ... 247 The Structure of Government ... 248 ★ The Limits of Democracy ... 249 ★
The Division and Separation of Powers ... 250 ★ The Debate over Slavery
... 251 ★ Slavery in the Constitution ... 251 ★ The Final
Document ... 253
THE RATIFICATION DEBATE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS ... 254
The Federalist ... 254 ★ “Extend the Sphere” ... 255 ★ The
Anti-Federalists ... 256 ★ The Bill of Rights ... 257
Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the American
Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787) ... 260
“WE THE PEOPLE” ... 263 National Identity ... 263 ★ Indians in the New Nation ... 263 ★ Blacks and
the Republic ... 266 ★ Jefferson, Slavery, and Race ... 268 ★ Principles of
Freedom ... 269
REVIEW ... 271
8 . S E C U R I N G T H E R E P U B L I C , 17 9 1–18 15 . . . 2 7 2 POLITICS IN AN AGE OF PASSION ... 273
Hamilton’s Program ... 274 ★ The Emergence of Opposition ... 274 ★
The Jefferson-Hamilton Bargain ... 275 ★ The Impact of the
French Revolution ... 276 ★ Political Parties ... 277 ★ The Whiskey
Rebellion ... 278 ★ The Republican Party ... 279 ★ An Expanding Political
Sphere ... 279 ★ The Democratic-Republican Societies ... 280 ★ The Rights
of Women ... 281 ★ Women and the Republic ... 281
Contents
xv
Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of
the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) ... 282
THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY ... 284 The Election of 1796 ... 284 ★ The “Reign of Witches” ... 285 ★
The Virginia and Kentucky Revolutions ... 286 ★ The “Revolution of
1800” ... 287 ★ Slavery and Politics ... 288 ★ The Haitian Revolution
... 288 ★ Gabriel’s Rebellion ... 289
JEFFERSON IN POWER ... 290 Judicial Review ... 291 ★ The Louisiana Purchase ... 292 ★ Lewis and
Clark ... 294 ★ Incorporating Louisiana ... 294 ★ The Barbary Wars ... 295 ★
The Embargo ... 296 ★ Madison and Pressure for War ... 297
THE “SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE” ... 297 The Indian Response ... 298 ★ Tecumseh’s Vision ... 298 ★ The War of
1812 ... 299 ★ The War’s Aftermath ... 302 ★ The End of the Federalist
Party ... 303
REVIEW ... 305
9 . T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N , 18 0 0 –18 4 0 . . . 3 0 6 A NEW ECONOMY ... 308
Roads and Steamboats ... 309 ★ The Erie Canal ... 309 ★ Railroads and
the Telegraph ... 311 ★ The Rise of the West ... 312 ★ The Cotton
Kingdom ... 315 ★ The Unfree Westward Movement ... 317
MARKET SOCIETY ... 318 Commercial Farmers ... 318 ★ The Growth of Cities ... 319 ★ The Factory
System ... 319 ★ The Industrial Worker ... 323 ★ The “Mill Girls” ... 323 ★
The Growth of Immigration ... 324 ★ Irish and German Newcomers ...
324 ★ The Rise of Nativism ... 326 ★ The Transformation of Law ... 327
THE FREE INDIVIDUAL ... 328 The West and Freedom ... 329 ★ The Transcendentalists ... 330 ★
Individualism ... 330
Voices of Freedom: From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”
(1837), and From “Factory Life as It Is, by an Operative” (1845) ... 332
The Second Great Awakening ... 334 ★ The Awakening’s Impact ... 335 ★
The Emergence of Mormonism ... 336
THE LIMITS OF PROSPERITY ... 337 Liberty and Prosperity ... 337 ★ Race and Opportunity ... 338 ★ The Cult
of Domesticity ... 339 ★ Women and Work ... 340 ★ The Early Labor
Movement ... 341 ★ The “Liberty of Living” ... 342
REVIEW ... 345
xvi
Contents
10 . D E M O C R A C Y I N A M E R I C A , 18 15 –18 4 0 . . . 3 4 6 THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY ... 348
Property and Democracy ... 348 ★ The Dorr War ... 348 ★ Tocqueville on
Democracy ... 349 ★ The Information Revolution ... 350 ★ The Limits of
Democracy ... 351 ★ A Racial Democracy ... 352 ★ Race and Class ... 353
NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS ... 353 The American System ... 353 ★ Banks and Money ... 355 ★ The Panic of ...
1819 ... 355 ★ The Politics of the Panic ... 356 ★ The Missouri Controversy
... 356 ★ The Slavery Question ... 358
NATION, SECTION, AND PARTY ... 359 The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence ... 359 ★
The Monroe Doctrine ... 360 ★ The Election of 1824 ... 361
Voices of Freedom: From President James Monroe, Annual Message
to Congress (1823), and From John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition on
Government” (ca. 1845) ... 362
The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams ... 364 ★ “Liberty Is
Power” ... 365 ★ Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party ... 365 ★
The Election of 1828 ... 366
THE AGE OF JACKSON ... 367 The Party System ... 367 ★ Democrats and Whigs ... 368 ★ Public and
Private Freedom ... 369 ★ Politics and Morality ... 370 ★ South Carolina
and Nullification ... 371 ★ Calhoun’s Political Theory ... 371 ★ The
Nullification Crisis ... 373 ★ Indian Removal ... 374 ★ The Supreme Court
and the Indians ... 374
THE BANK WAR AND AFTER ... 377 Biddle’s Bank ... 377 ★ The Pet Banks and the Economy ... 379 ★
The Panic of 1837 ... 380 ★ Van Buren in Office ... 380 ★ The Election
of 1840 ... 381 ★ His Accidency ... 382
REVIEW ... 384
PA R T 3 : SL AV E RY, F R E E DOM, A N D T H E
CR ISIS OF T H E U N ION, 18 4 0–18 7 7
11. T H E P E C U L I A R I N S T I T U T I O N . . . 3 8 8 THE OLD SOUTH ... 390
Cotton Is King ... 390 ★ The Second Middle Passage ... 391 ★ Slavery and
the Nation ... 391 ★ The Southern Economy ... 393 ★ Plain Folk of the Old
South ... 394 ★ The Planter Class ... 395 ★ The Paternalist Ethos ... 396 ★
Contents
xvii
The Code of Honor ... 396 ★ The Proslavery Argument ... 398 ★ Abolition
in the Americas ... 399 ★ Slavery and Liberty ... 400 ★ Slavery and
Civilization ... 400
LIFE UNDER SLAVERY ... 401 Slaves and the Law ... 401 ★ Conditions of Slave Life ... 402 ★ Free Blacks
in the Old South ... 403
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long
(1840), and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) ... 404
The Upper and Lower South ... 407 ★ Slave Labor ... 408 ★ Gang Labor and
Task Labor ... 408 ★ Slavery in the Cities ... 410 ★ Maintaining Order ... 410
SLAVE CULTURE ... 411 The Slave Family ... 412 ★ The Threat of Sale ... 412 ★ Gender Roles
among Slaves ... 413 ★ Slave Religion ... 413 ★ The Gospel of Freedom ...
414 ★ The Desire for Liberty ... 415
RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY ... 416 Forms of Resistance ... 416 ★ Fugitive Slaves ... 418 ★ The Amistad ... 419 ★
Slave Revolts ... 419 ★ Nat Turner’s Rebellion ... 420
REVIEW ... 423
12 . A N A G E O F R E F O R M , 18 2 0 –18 4 0 . . . 4 2 4 THE REFORM IMPULSE ... 425
Utopian Communities ... 426 ★ The Shakers ... 426 ★ Oneida ... 427 ★
Worldly Communities ... 428 ★ The Owenites ... 429 ★ Religion and
Reform ... 430 ★ The Temperance Movement ... 431 ★ Critics of
Reform ... 431 ★ Reformers and Freedom ... 432 ★ The Invention of the
Asylum ... 433 ★ The Common School ... 433
THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY ... 435 Colonization ... 435 ★ Blacks and Colonization ... 435 ★ Militant Abolitionism
... 436 ★ The Emergence of Garrison ... 437 ★ Spreading the Abolitionist
Message ... 437 ★ Slavery and Moral Suasion ... 439 ★ Abolitionists and the
Idea of Freedom ... 439 ★ A New Vision of America ... 440
BLACK AND WHITE ABOLITIONISM ... 441 Black Abolitionists ... 441 ★ Abolitionism and Race ... 442 ★ Slavery and
American Freedom ... 443 ★ Gentlemen of Property and Standing ... 443 ★
Slavery and Civil Liberties ... 445
THE ORIGINS OF FEMINISM ... 446 The Rise of the Public Woman ... 446 ★ Women and Free Speech ... 447 ★
Women’s Rights ... 448 ★ Feminism and Freedom ... 449
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The Liberator
(August 2, 1837), and From Frederick Douglass, Speech on July 5, 1852,
Rochester, New York ... 450
xviii
Contents
Women and Work ... 452 ★ The Slavery of Sex ... 453 ★ “Social
Freedom” ... 453 ★ The Abolitionist Schism ... 454
REVIEW ... 457
13 . A H O U S E D I V I D E D , 18 4 0 –18 6 1 . . . 4 5 8 FRUITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY ... 459
Continental Expansion ... 459 ★ The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and
California ... 460 ★ The Texas Revolt ... 460 ★ The Election of 1844 ...
463 ★ The Road to War ... 464 ★ The War and Its Critics ... 465 ★ Combat
in Mexico ... 466 ★ Race and Manifest Destiny ... 468 ★ Redefining Race
... 469 ★ Gold-Rush California ... 469 ★ California and the Boundaries of
Freedom ... 470 ★ The Other Gold Rush ... 471 ★ Opening Japan ... 471
A DOSE OF ARSENIC ... 473 The Wilmot Proviso ... 473 ★ The Free Soil Appeal ... 474 ★ Crisis and
Compromise ... 474 ★ The Great Debate ... 475 ★ The Fugitive Slave
Issue ... 475 ★ Douglas and Popular Sovereignty ... 477 ★ The Kansas-
Nebraska Act ... 478
THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ... 479 The Northern Economy ... 479 ★ The Rise and Fall of the
Know-Nothings ... 481 ★ The Free Labor Ideology ... 483 ★ Bleeding
Kansas and the Election of 1856 ... 484
THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN ... 485 The Dred Scott Decision ... 485 ★ The Decision’s Aftermath ... 486 ★
Lincoln and Slavery ... 486 ★ The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign ... 487 ★
John Brown at Harpers Ferry ... 489
Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) ... 490
The Rise of Southern Nationalism ... 492 ★ The Democratic Split ... 493 ★
The Nomination of Lincoln ... 494 ★ The Election of 1860 ... 494
THE IMPENDING CRISIS ... 495 The Secession Movement ... 495 ★ The Secession Crisis ... 496 ★ And the
War Came ... 497
REVIEW ... 501
14 . A N E W B I R T H O F F R E E D O M : T H E C I V I L W A R , 18 6 1–18 6 5 . . . 5 0 2
THE FIRST MODERN WAR ... 503 The Two Combatants ... 504 ★ The Technology of War ... 504 ★ The
Public and the War ... 506 ★ Mobilizing Resources ... 507 ★ Military
Contents
xix
Strategies ... 508 ★ The War Begins ... 509 ★ The War in the East,
1862 ... 509 ★ The War in the West ... 511
THE COMING OF EMANCIPATION ... 511 Slavery and the War ... 511 ★ The Unraveling of Slavery ... 513 ★
Steps toward Emancipation ... 513 ★ Lincoln’s Decision ... 514 ★
The Emancipation Proclamation ... 516 ★ Enlisting Black Troops ... 517 ★
The Black Soldier ... 518
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION ... 519 Liberty and Union ... 520 ★ Lincoln’s Vision ... 520 ★ From Union to
Nation ... 521 ★ The War and American Religion ... 522 ★ Liberty in
Wartime ... 523 ★ The North’s Transformation ... 524 ★ Government and
the Economy ... 524 ★ The War and Native Americans ... 525
Voices of Freedom: From Letter of Thomas F. Drayton (April 17, 1861),
and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore
(April 18, 1864) ... 526
A New Financial System ... 528 ★ Women and the War ... 528 ★
The Divided North ... 530
THE CONFEDERATE NATION ... 531 Leadership and Government ... 531 ★ The Inner Civil War ... 532 ★
Economic Problems ... 533 ★ Southern Unionists ... 534 ★ Women and the
Confederacy ... 535 ★ Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 535
TURNING POINTS ... 536 Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 536 ★ 1864 ... 537
REHEARSALS FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THE END OF THE WAR ... 539
The Sea Islands Experiment ... 539 ★ Wartime Reconstruction in the
West ... 540 ★ The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction ... 541 ★ Victory
at Last ... 541 ★ The War and the World ... 543 ★ The War in American
History ... 544
REVIEW ... 547
15 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ”: R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 18 6 5 –18 7 7 . . . 5 4 8
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM ... 550 Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom ... 550 ★ Families in Freedom ... 550 ★
Church and School ... 551 ★ Political Freedom ... 551 ★ Land, Labor, and
Freedom ... 552 ★ Masters without Slaves ... 553 ★ The Free Labor Vision
... 554 ★ The Freedmen’s Bureau ... 555 ★ The Failure of Land Reform
... 556 ★ Toward a New South ... 556 ★ The White Farmer ... 557 ★
The Urban South ... 558 ★ The Aftermath of Slavery ... 559
xx
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the
Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping
Contract (1866) ... 560
THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION ... 562 Andrew Johnson ... 562 ★ The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ...
563 ★ The Black Codes ... 563 ★ The Radical Republicans ... 564 ★ The
Origins of Civil Rights ... 565 ★ The Fourteenth Amendment ... 566 ★
The Reconstruction Act ... 566 ★ Impeachment and the Election of Grant
... 567 ★ The Fifteenth Amendment ... 568 ★ The “Great Constitutional
Revolution” ... 569 ★ Boundaries of Freedom ... 570 ★ The Rights of
Women ... 570 ★ Feminists and Radicals ... 571
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ... 572 “The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 572 ★ The Black Officeholder ... 573 ★
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 574 ★ Southern Republicans in Power
... 575 ★ The Quest for Prosperity ... 576
THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION ... 577 Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 577 ★ “A Reign of Terror” ... 577 ★ The
Liberal Republicans ... 579 ★ The North’s Retreat ... 580 ★ The Triumph of
the Redeemers ... 582 ★ The Disputed Election and Bargain of
1877 ... 582 ★ The End of Reconstruction ... 583
REVIEW ... 585
PA R T 4: T OWA R D A G L OBA L PR ESE NCE ,
18 7 0–19 2 0
16 . A M E R I C A’ S G I L D E D A G E , 18 7 0 –18 9 0 . . . 5 8 8 THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ... 589
The Industrial Economy ... 590 ★ Railroads and the National Market ...
591 ★ The Spirit of Innovation ... 592 ★ Competition and Consolidation
... 593 ★ The Rise of Andrew Carnegie ... 594 ★ The Triumph of John D.
Rockefeller ... 597 ★ Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age ... 598 ★
Sunshine and Shadow: Increasing Wealth and Poverty ... 599
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WEST ... 600 A Diverse Region ... 601 ★ Farming on the Middle Border ... 602 ★
Bonanza Farms ... 603 ★ The Cowboy and the Corporate West ... 604 ★
Conflict on the Mormon Frontier ... 605 ★ The Subjugation of the Plains
Indians ... 605
Voices of Freedom: From Ira Steward, “A Second Declaration of
Independence” (1879), and From Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth”
(1889) ... 606
Contents
xxi
“Let Me Be a Free Man” ... 608 ★ Remaking Indian Life ... 610 ★ The
Dawes Act ... 611 ★ Indian Citizenship ... 612 ★ The Ghost Dance and
Wounded Knee ... 613 ★ Settler Societies and Global Wests ... 614
POLITICS IN A GILDED AGE ... 615 The Corruption of Politics ... 615 ★ The Politics of Dead Center ... 616 ★
Government and the Economy ... 617 ★ Reform Legislation ... 618 ★
Political Conflict in the States ... 619
FREEDOM IN THE GILDED AGE ... 620 The Social Problem ... 620 ★ Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy ... 620 ★
Social Darwinism in America ... 621 ★ Liberty of Contract ... 622 ★ The
Courts and Freedom ... 623
LABOR AND THE REPUBLIC ... 624 “The Overwhelming Labor Question” ... 624 ★ The Knights of Labor and the
“Conditions Essential to Liberty” ... 625 ★ Middle-Class Reformers ... 626 ★
Progress and Poverty ... 627 ★ The Cooperative Commonwealth ... 627 ★
Bellamy’s Utopia ... 627 ★ Protestants and Moral Reform ... 628 ★ A Social
Gospel ... 629 ★ The Haymarket Affair ... 629 ★ Labor and Politics ... 631
REVIEW ... 633
17. F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D A B R O A D , 18 9 0 –19 0 0 . . . 6 3 4
THE POPULIST CHALLENGE ... 636 The Farmers’ Revolt ... 636 ★ The People’s Party ... 637 ★ The Populist
Platform ... 638 ★ The Populist Coalition ... 638 ★ The Government and
Labor ... 641 ★ Populism and Labor ... 642 ★ Bryan and Free Silver ... 642 ★
The Campaign of 1896 ... 643
THE SEGREGATED SOUTH ... 645 The Redeemers in Power ... 645 ★ The Failure of the New South
Dream ... 645 ★ Black Life in the South ... 646 ★ The Kansas
Exodus ... 647 ★ The Decline of Black Politics ... 648 ★ The Elimination
of Black Voting ... 648 ★ The Law of Segregation ... 649 ★ Segregation
and White Domination ... 650 ★ The Rise of Lynching ... 651 ★ Politics,
Religion, and Memory ... 652
REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES ... 653 The New Immigration and the New Nativism ... 654 ★ Chinese Exclusion
and Chinese Rights ... 654 ★ The Emergence of Booker T. Washington ...
656 ★ The Rise of the AFL ... 656 ★ The Women’s Era ... 657
BECOMING A WORLD POWER ... 659 The New Imperialism ... 659 ★ American Expansionism ... 660 ★ The Lure
of Empire ... 660 ★ The “Splendid Little War” ... 661 ★ Roosevelt at San
Juan Hill ... 662 ★ An American Empire ... 664 ★ The Philippine War ... 666
xxii
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885), and From
“Aguinaldo’s Case against the United States” (1899) ... 668
Citizens or Subjects? ... 670 ★ Drawing the Global Color Line ... 671 ★
“Republic or Empire?” ... 671
REVIEW ... 675
18 . T H E P R O G R E S S I V E E R A , 19 0 0 –19 16 . . . 6 7 6 AN URBAN AGE AND A CONSUMER SOCIETY ... 678
Farms and Cities ... 678 ★ The Muckrakers ... 680 ★ Immigration as a
Global Process ... 680 ★ The Immigrant Quest for Freedom ... 682 ★
Consumer Freedom ... 683 ★ The Working Woman ... 684 ★ The Rise
of Fordism ... 685 ★ The Promise of Abundance ... 686 ★ An American
Standard of Living ... 687
VARIETIES OF PROGRESSIVISM ... 688 Industrial Freedom ... 688 ★ The Socialist Presence ... 689 ★ The Gospel of
Debs ... 690 ★ AFL and IWW ... 691 ★ The New Immigrants on Strike ... 691
Voices of Freedom: From Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and
Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell, “A Workingman’s
Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) ... 692
Labor and Civil Liberties ... 695 ★ The New Feminism ... 695 ★ The Rise
of Personal Freedom ... 696 ★ The Birth-Control Movement ... 697 ★
Native American Progressivism ... 698
THE POLITICS OF PROGRESSIVISM ... 698 Effective Freedom ... 698 ★ State and Local Reforms ... 699 ★ Progressive
Democracy ... 700 ★ Government by Expert ... 701 ★ Jane Addams and
Hull House ... 701 ★ “Spearheads for Reform” ... 702 ★ The Campaign
for Woman Suffrage ... 703 ★ Maternalist Reform ... 704 ★ The Idea of
Economic Citizenship ... 705
THE PROGRESSIVE PRESIDENTS ... 705 Theodore Roosevelt ... 706 ★ Roosevelt and Economic Regulation ... 706 ★
John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature ... 707 ★ The Conservation
Movement ... 707 ★ Taft in Office ... 708 ★ The Election of 1912 ... 709 ★
New Freedom and New Nationalism ... 710 ★ Wilson’s First Term ... 710 ★
The Expanding Role of Government ... 711
REVIEW ... 713
19 . S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y : T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D W O R L D W A R I , 19 16 –19 2 0 . . . 7 14
AN ERA OF INTERVENTION ... 716 “I Took the Canal Zone” ... 717 ★ The Roosevelt Corollary ... 718 ★ Moral
Imperialism ... 719 ★ Wilson and Mexico ... 720
Contents
xxiii
AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR ... 721 Neutrality and Preparedness ... 722 ★ The Road to War ... 723 ★
The Fourteen Points ... 724
THE WAR AT HOME ... 726 The Progressives’ War ... 726 ★ The Wartime State ... 726 ★ The
Propaganda War ... 727 ★ “The Great Cause of Freedom” ... 728 ★
The Coming of Woman Suffrage ... 728 ★ Prohibition ... 730 ★ Liberty in
Wartime ... 731 ★ The Espionage Act ... 732 ★ Coercive Patriotism ... 733
WHO IS AN AMERICAN? ... 734 The “Race Problem” ... 734 ★ Americanization and Pluralism ... 734
Voices of Freedom: From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before
Sentencing under the Espionage Act (1918), and From W. E. B. Du Bois,
“Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis (1919) ... 736
The Anti-German Crusade ... 738 ★ Toward Immigration Restriction ... 739 ★
Groups Apart: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Asian-Americans ... 739 ★ The
Color Line ... 740 ★ Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race ... 741 ★ W. E. B. Du Bois
and the Revival of Black Protest ... 742 ★ Closing Ranks ... 743 ★ The Great
Migration and the “Promised Land” ... 743 ★ Racial Violence, North and
South ... 744 ★ The Rise of Garveyism ... 745
1919 ... 746 A Worldwide Upsurge ... 746 ★ Upheaval in America ... 746 ★ The Great
Steel Strike ... 747 ★ The Red Scare ... 748 ★ Wilson at Versailles ... 748 ★
The Wilsonian Moment ... 749 ★ The Seeds of Wars to Come ... 752 ★
The Treaty Debate ... 753
REVIEW ... 755
PA R T 5 : DE PR ESSION A N D WA RS,
19 2 0–19 5 3
2 0 . F R O M B U S I N E S S C U L T U R E T O G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N : T H E T W E N T I E S , 19 2 0 –19 3 2 . . . 7 5 8
THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA ... 760 A Decade of Prosperity ... 760 ★ A New Society ... 761 ★ The Limits of
Prosperity ... 762 ★ The Farmers’ Plight ... 763 ★ The Image of Business ...
764 ★ The Decline of Labor ... 765 ★ The Equal Rights Amendment ... 766 ★
Women’s Freedom ... 767
BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT ... 769 The Retreat from Progressivism ... 769 ★ The Republican Era ... 769 ★
Corruption in Government ... 770 ★ The Election of 1924 ... 770 ★
Economic Diplomacy ... 771
xxiv
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From André Siegfried, “The Gulf Between,”
Atlantic Monthly (March 1928), and From Majority Opinion, Justice
James C. McReynolds, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) ... 772
THE BIRTH OF CIVIL LIBERTIES ... 774 The “Free Mob” ... 775 ★ A “Clear and Present Danger” ... 776 ★
The Court and Civil Liberties ... 776
THE CULTURE WARS ... 777 The Fundamentalist Revolt ... 777 ★ The Scopes Trial ... 779 ★ The
Second Klan ... 780 ★ Closing the Golden Door ... 781 ★ Race and the Law
... 783 ★ Pluralism and Liberty ... 784 ★ Promoting Tolerance ... 785 ★
The Emergence of Harlem ... 786 ★ The Harlem Renaissance ... 787
THE GREAT DEPRESSION ... 788 The Election of 1928 ... 788 ★ The Coming of the Depression ... 789 ★
Americans and the Depression ... 791 ★ Resignation and Protest ... 792 ★
Hoover’s Response ... 792 ★ The Worsening Economic Outlook ... 794 ★
Freedom in the Modern World ... 795
REVIEW ... 797
2 1. T H E N E W D E A L , 19 3 2 –19 4 0 . . . 7 9 8 THE FIRST NEW DEAL ... 800
FDR and the Election of 1932 ... 800 ★ The Coming of the New
Deal ... 802 ★ The Banking Crisis ... 803 ★ The NRA ... 804 ★ Government
Jobs ... 805 ★ Public-Works Projects ... 806 ★ The New Deal and
Agriculture ... 807 ★ The New Deal and Housing ... 808 ★ The Court and
the New Deal ... 810
THE GRASSROOTS REVOLT ... 810 Labor’s Great Upheaval ... 810 ★ The Rise of the CIO ... 812 ★ Labor and
Politics ... 813 ★ Voices of Protest ... 814 ★ Religion on the Radio ... 815
THE SECOND NEW DEAL ... 815 The WPA and the Wagner Act ... 816 ★ The American Welfare State ...
817 ★ The Social Security System ... 818
A RECKONING WITH LIBERTY ... 818 FDR and the Idea of Freedom ... 819
Voices of Freedom: From Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat”
(1934), and From John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to
the Grapes of Wrath (1938) ... 820
The Election of 1936 ... 822 ★ The Court Fight ... 823 ★ The End of the
Second New Deal ... 824
THE LIMITS OF CHANGE ... 824 The New Deal and American Women ... 825 ★ The Southern Veto ... 826 ★
The Stigma of Welfare ... 827 ★ The Indian New Deal ... 827 ★ The New
Contents
xxv
Deal and Mexican-Americans ... 828 ★ Last Hired, First Fired ... 829 ★
A New Deal for Blacks ... 829 ★ Federal Discrimination ... 830
A NEW CONCEPTION OF AMERICA ... 831 The Heyday of American Communism ... 831 ★ Redefining the People ...
832 ★ Promoting Diversity ... 833 ★ Challenging the Color Line ... 834 ★
Labor and Civil Liberties ... 835 ★ The End of the New Deal ... 836 ★
The New Deal in American History ... 837
REVIEW ... 839
2 2 . F I G H T I N G F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : W O R L D W A R I I , 19 4 1–19 4 5 . . . 8 4 0
FIGHTING WORLD WAR II ... 842 Good Neighbors ... 842 ★ The Road to War ... 844 ★ Isolationism ... 844 ★
War in Europe ... 845 ★ Toward Intervention ... 846 ★ Pearl Harbor ... 847 ★
The War in the Pacific ... 848 ★ The War in Europe ... 849
THE HOME FRONT ... 852 Mobilizing for War ... 852 ★ Business and the War ... 853 ★ Labor in
Wartime ... 855 ★ Fighting for the Four Freedoms ... 855 ★ Freedom
from Want ... 856 ★ The Office of War Information ... 857 ★ The Fifth
Freedom ... 858 ★ Women at Work ... 859 ★ The Pull of Tradition ... 860
VISIONS OF POSTWAR FREEDOM ... 860 Toward an American Century ... 860 ★ “The Way of Life of Free Men” ...
861 ★ An Economic Bill of Rights ... 862 ★ The Road to Serfdom ... 863
THE AMERICAN DILEMMA ... 863 Patriotic Assimilation ... 864 ★ The Bracero Program ... 865 ★ Mexican-
American Rights ... 865 ★ Indians during the War ... 866 ★ Asian-
Americans in Wartime ... 866 ★ Japanese-American Internment ... 867 ★
Blacks and the War ... 869 ★ Blacks and Military Service ... 869 ★ Birth
of the Civil Rights Movement ... 870 ★ The Double-V ... 871 ★ What the
Negro Wants ... 871
Voices of Freedom: From Henry R. Luce, The American Century
(1941), and From Charles H. Wesley, “The Negro Has Always Wanted
the Four Freedoms,” in What the Negro Wants (1944) ... 872
An American Dilemma ... 874 ★ Black Internationalism ... 875
THE END OF THE WAR ... 876 “The Most Terrible Weapon” ... 876 ★ The Dawn of the Atomic Age ...
877 ★ The Nature of the War ... 878 ★ Planning the Postwar World ... 878 ★
Yalta and Bretton Woods ... 879 ★ The United Nations ... 880 ★ Peace, but
Not Harmony ... 880
REVIEW ... 883
xxvi
Contents
2 3 . T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D T H E C O L D W A R , 19 4 5 –19 5 3 . . . 8 8 4
ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR ... 886 The Two Powers ... 886 ★ The Roots of Containment ... 887 ★ The Iron
Curtain ... 887 ★ The Truman Doctrine ... 887 ★ The Marshall Plan ... 889 ★
The Reconstruction of Japan ... 890 ★ The Berlin Blockade and NATO ...
890 ★ The Growing Communist Challenge ... 891 ★ The Korean War ...
891 ★ Cold War Critics ... 895 ★ Imperialism and Decolonization ... 896
THE COLD WAR AND THE IDEA OF FREEDOM ... 896 The Cultural Cold War ... 897 ★ Freedom and Totalitarianism ... 897 ★
The Rise of Human Rights ... 898 ★ Ambiguities of Human Rights ... 899
THE TRUMAN PRESIDENCY ... 901 The Fair Deal ... 901 ★ The Postwar Strike Wave ... 901 ★ The Republican
Resurgence ... 902 ★ Postwar Civil Rights ... 902 ★ To Secure These
Rights ... 904 ★ The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts ... 904 ★ The 1948
Campaign ... 905
THE ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE ... 906 Loyalty and Disloyalty ... 907 ★ The Spy Trials ... 908 ★ McCarthy and
McCarthyism ... 909 ★ An Atmosphere of Fear ... 909 ★ The Uses of
Anticommunism ... 910 ★ Anticommunist Policies ... 911
Voices of Freedom: From Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew
(1955), and From Henry Steele Commager, “Who Is Loyal to America?”
in Harper’s (September 1947) ... 912
The Cold War and Organized Labor ... 914 ★ Cold War Civil Rights ... 914
REVIEW ... 917
PA R T 6 : W H AT K I N D OF N AT ION?
19 5 3–20 12
2 4 . A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y, 19 5 3 –19 6 0 . . . 9 2 2
THE GOLDEN AGE ... 924 A Changing Economy ... 924 ★ A Suburban Nation ... 925 ★ The Growth
of the West ... 926 ★ A Consumer Culture ... 927 ★ The TV World ... 928 ★
A New Ford ... 929 ★ Women at Work and at Home ... 931 ★
A Segregated Landscape ... 932 ★ Public Housing and Urban Renewal
... 933 ★ The Divided Society ... 933 ★ Religion and Anticommunism ...
934 ★ Selling Free Enterprise ... 935 ★ People’s Capitalism ... 936 ★
The Libertarian Conservatives ... 937 ★ The New Conservatism ... 937
Contents
xxvii
THE EISENHOWER ERA ... 938 Ike and Nixon ... 938 ★ The 1952 Campaign ... 939 ★ Modern
Republicanism ... 940 ★ The Social Contract ... 941 ★ Massive Retaliation
... 941 ★ Ike and the Russians ... 942 ★ The Emergence of the Third World
... 943 ★ The Cold War in the Third World ... 944 ★ Origins of the Vietnam
War ... 945 ★ Mass Society and Its Critics ... 946 ★ Rebels without a
Cause ... 947 ★ The Beats ... 948
THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT ... 949 Origins of the Movement ... 949
Voices of Freedom: From Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at
Montgomery, Alabama (December 5, 1955), and From The Southern
Manifesto (1956) ... 950
The Legal Assault on Segregation ... 952 ★ The Brown Case ... 953 ★
The Montgomery Bus Boycott ... 954 ★ The Daybreak of Freedom ... 955 ★
The Leadership of King ... 956 ★ Massive Resistance ... 956 ★ Eisenhower
and Civil Rights ... 957 ★ The World Views the United States ... 958
THE ELECTION OF 1960 ... 959 Kennedy and Nixon ... 959 ★ The End of the 1950s ... 960
REVIEW ... 963
2 5 . T H E S I X T I E S , 19 6 0 –19 6 8 . . . 9 6 4 THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION ... 966
The Rising Tide of Protest ... 966 ★ Birmingham ... 966 ★ The March on
Washington ... 968
THE KENNEDY YEARS ... 969 Kennedy and the World ... 969 ★ The Missile Crisis ... 970 ★ Kennedy and
Civil Rights ... 971
LYNDON JOHNSON’S PRESIDENCY ... 972 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... 972 ★ Freedom Summer ... 973 ★ The
1964 Election ... 974 ★ The Conservative Sixties ... 975 ★ The Voting
Rights Act ... 976 ★ Immigration Reform ... 976 ★ The Great Society ... 977 ★
The War on Poverty ... 977 ★ Freedom and Equality ... 978
THE CHANGING BLACK MOVEMENT ... 979 The Ghetto Uprisings ... 979 ★ Malcolm X ... 981 ★ The Rise of Black
Power ... 981
VIETNAM AND THE NEW LEFT ... 982 Old and New Lefts ... 982 ★ The Fading Consensus ... 983 ★ The Rise of the
SDS ... 984 ★ America and Vietnam ... 985 ★ Lyndon Johnson’s War ... 986
Voices of Freedom: From Young Americans for Freedom, The Sharon
Statement (September 1960), and From Tom Hayden and Others,
The Port Huron Statement (June 1962) ... 988
xxviii
Contents
The Antiwar Movement ... 990 ★ The Counterculture ... 991 ★
Personal Liberation and the Free Individual ... 992 ★ Faith and the
Counterculture ... 992
THE NEW MOVEMENTS AND THE RIGHTS REVOLUTION ... 994
The Feminine Mystique ... 994 ★ Women’s Liberation ... 995 ★ Personal
Freedom ... 996 ★ Gay Liberation ... 997 ★ Latino Activism ... 997 ★ Red
Power ... 998 ★ Silent Spring ... 998 ★ The New Environmentalism ... 999 ★
The Rights Revolution ... 1000 ★ Policing the States ... 1001 ★ The Right
to Privacy ... 1002
1968 ... 1002 A Year of Turmoil ... 1002 ★ The Global 1968 ... 1004 ★ Nixon’s
Comeback ... 1005 ★ The Legacy of the Sixties ... 1005
REVIEW ... 1007
2 6 . T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N S E R V A T I S M , 19 6 9 –19 8 8 . . . 10 0 8
PRESIDENT NIXON ... 1009 Nixon’s Domestic Policies ... 1010 ★ Nixon and Welfare ... 1010 ★
Nixon and Race ... 1011 ★ The Burger Court ... 1012 ★ The Court and
Affirmative Action ... 1013 ★ The Continuing Sexual Revolution ... 1013 ★
Nixon and Détente ... 1014
VIETNAM AND WATERGATE ... 1016 Nixon and Vietnam ... 1016 ★ The End of the Vietnam War ... 1017 ★
Watergate ... 1018 ★ Nixon’s Fall ... 1019
THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE ... 1020 The Decline of Manufacturing ... 1020 ★ Stagflation ... 1020 ★ The
Beleaguered Social Compact ... 1021 ★ Labor on the Defensive ... 1022 ★
Ford as President ... 1023 ★ The Carter Administration ... 1023 ★ Carter
and the Economic Crisis ... 1024 ★ The Emergence of Human Rights
Politics ... 1025 ★ The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan ... 1026
THE RISING TIDE OF CONSERVATISM ... 1028 The Religious Right ... 1028 ★ The Battle over the Equal Rights
Amendment ... 1029 ★ The Abortion Controversy ... 1030 ★ The Tax
Revolt ... 1031 ★ The Election of 1980 ... 1032
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION ... 1033 Reagan and American Freedom ... 1033
Voices of Freedom: From Redstockings Manifesto (1969), and From
Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (1980) ... 1034
Reaganomics ... 1036 ★ Reagan and Labor ... 1037 ★ The Problem of
Inequality ... 1037 ★ The Second Gilded Age ... 1038 ★ Conservatives
Contents
xxix
and Reagan ... 1039 ★ Reagan and the Cold War ... 1040 ★ The Iran-
Contra Affair ... 1042 ★ Reagan and Gorbachev ... 1042 ★ Reagan’s
Legacy ... 1042 ★ The Election of 1988 ... 1043
REVIEW ... 1045
2 7. G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T S , 19 8 9 – 2 0 0 0 . . . 10 4 6
THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD ... 1048 The Crisis of Communism ... 1048 ★ A New World Order? ... 1049 ★
The Gulf War ... 1050 ★ Visions of America’s Role ... 1051 ★ The Election
of Clinton ... 1051 ★ Clinton in Office ... 1052 ★ The “Freedom Revolution”
... 1053 ★ Clinton’s Political Strategy ... 1053 ★ Clinton and World Affairs
... 1055 ★ The Balkan Crisis ... 1055 ★ Human Rights ... 1056
A NEW ECONOMY? ... 1056 The Computer Revolution ... 1057 ★ The Stock Market Boom and Bust
... 1058 ★ The Enron Syndrome ... 1059 ★ Fruits of Deregulation ... 1060 ★
Rising Inequality ... 1060
Voices of Freedom: From Bill Clinton, Speech on Signing of NAFTA
(1993), and From Global Exchange, Seattle, Declaration for Global
Democracy (December 1999) ... 1062
CULTURE WARS ... 1064 The Newest Immigrants ... 1065 ★ The New Diversity ... 1067 ★ African-
Americans in the 1990s ... 1070 ★ The Role of the Courts ... 1071 ★ The
Spread of Imprisonment ... 1071 ★ The Burden of Imprisonment ... 1072 ★
The Continuing Rights Revolution ... 1073 ★ Native Americans in 2000
... 1073 ★ Multiculturalism ... 1074 ★ The Identity Debate ... 1074 ★
Cultural Conservatism ... 1075 ★ “Family Values” in Retreat ... 1076 ★
The Antigovernment Extreme ... 1077
IMPEACHMENT AND THE ELECTION OF 2000 ... 1078 The Impeachment of Clinton ... 1078 ★ The Disputed Election ... 1079 ★
The 2000 Result ... 1080 ★ A Challenged Democracy ... 1080
FREEDOM AND THE NEW CENTURY ... 1081 Exceptional America ... 1081 ★ Varieties of Freedom ... 1083
REVIEW ... 1085
2 8 . A N E W C E N T U R Y A N D N E W C R I S E S . . . 10 8 6 THE WAR ON TERRORISM ... 1088
Bush before September 11 ... 1088 ★ “They Hate Freedom” ... 1089 ★
The Bush Doctrine ... 1090 ★ The “Axis of Evil” ... 1091 ★ The National
Security Strategy ... 1091
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Contents
AN AMERICAN EMPIRE? ... 1092 Confronting Iraq ... 1092 ★ The Iraq War ... 1093
Voices of Freedom: From The National Security Strategy of the United
States (September 2002), and From President Barack Obama, Speech on
the Middle East (2011) ... 1094
Another Vietnam? ... 1096 ★ The World and the War ... 1096
THE AFTERMATH OF SEPTEMBER 11 AT HOME ... 1097
Security and Liberty ... 1097 ★ The Power of the President ... 1099 ★
The Torture Controversy ... 1100 ★ The Economy under Bush ... 1101
THE WINDS OF CHANGE ... 1102 The 2004 Election ... 1102 ★ Bush’s Second Term ... 1103 ★ Hurricane
Katrina ... 1103 ★ The New Orleans Disaster ... 1104 ★ The Immigration
Debate ... 1105 ★ Islam, America, and the “Clash of Civilizations”
... 1106 ★ The Constitution and Liberty ... 1107 ★ The Court and the
President ... 1108 ★ The Midterm Elections of 2006 ... 1110 ★
The Housing Bubble ... 1111 ★ The Great Recession ... 1112 ★
“A Conspiracy against the Public” ... 1113 ★ The Collapse of Market
Fundamentalism ... 1114 ★ Bush and the Crisis ... 1115
THE RISE OF OBAMA ... 1116 The 2008 Campaign ... 1117 ★ Obama’s First Inauguration ... 1118 ★
Obama in Office ... 1118
OBAMA’S FIRST TERM ... 1120 The Continuing Economic Crisis ... 1120 ★ Obama and the World ... 1121 ★
The Republican Resurgence ... 1122 ★ The Occupy Movement ... 1123 ★
The 2012 Campaign ... 1124
LEARNING FROM HISTORY ... 1126
REVIEW ... 1129
A P P E N D I X DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776)...A-2 ★ The Constitution of
the United States (1787)...A-5 ★ From George Washington’s Farewell
Address (1796)...A-16 ★ The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and
Resolutions (1848)...A-21 ★ From Frederick Douglass’s “What, to the
Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” Speech (1852)...A-24 ★ The Gettysburg
Address (1863)...A-27 ★ Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
(1865)...A-28 ★ The Populist Platform of 1892...A-29 ★ Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933)...A-32 ★ From The
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Program for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
(1963)...A-35 ★ Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981)...A-36 ★
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009)...A-39
TABLES AND FIGURES Presidential Elections...A-42 ★ Admission of States...A-50 ★ Population
of the United States...A-51 ★ Historical Statistics of the United States:
Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed as a Percentage
of the Labor Force, 1800–2010...A-52 ★ Immigration, by Origin...A-52 ★ Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013...A-53 ★ Union Membership as a
Percentage of Nonagricultural Employment, 1880–2012...A-53 ★ Voter
Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012...A-53 ★ Birthrate,
1820–2011...A-53
GLOSSARY ★ ... A-55
CREDITS ★ ... A-79
INDEX ★ ... A-85
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
xxxiii
M A P S CHAPTER 1 The First Americans...7 Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500...11 The Old World on the Eve of American Colonization,
ca. 1500...19 Voyages of Discovery...22 Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the
New World...32 The New World—New France and New Netherland,
ca. 1650...39
CHAPTER 2 English Settlement in the Chesapeake, ca. 1650...58 English Settlement in New England, ca. 1640...72
CHAPTER 3 Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and Early
Eighteenth Centuries...89 European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the
Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760...108
CHAPTER 4 Atlantic Trading Routes...129 The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World,
1460–1770...131 European Empires in North America, ca. 1750...153 Eastern North America after the Peace of Paris,
1763...159
CHAPTER 5 The Revolutionary War in the North, 1775–1781...196 The Revolutionary War in the South, 1775–1781...198 North America, 1783...201
CHAPTER 6 Loyalism in the American Revolution...220
CHAPTER 7 Western Lands, 1782–1802...241 Western Ordinances, 1784–1787...244 Ratification of the Constitution...262 Indian Tribes, 1790...264
CHAPTER 8 The Presidential Election of 1800...287 The Louisiana Purchase...293 The War of 1812...301
CHAPTER 9 The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals, 1840...310 The Market Revolution: Western Settlement,
1800–1820...313 Travel Times from New York City in 1800 and
1830...314
The Market Revolution: The Spread of Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840...316
Major Cities, 1840...320 Cotton Mills, 1820s...321
CHAPTER 10 The Missouri Compromise, 1820...357 The Americas, 1830...360 The Presidential Election of 1824...364 The Presidential Election of 1828...366 Indian Removals, 1830–1840...375 The Presidential Election of 1840...382
CHAPTER 11 Slave Population, 1860...392 Size of Slaveholdings, 1860...397 Distribution of Free Blacks, 1860...406 Major Crops of the South, 1860...409 Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic
World...417
CHAPTER 12 Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth
Century...428
CHAPTER 13 The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s...462 The Mexican War, 1846–1848...467 Gold-Rush California...470 Continental Expansion through 1853...472 The Compromise of 1850...476 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854...478 The Railroad Network, 1850s...480 The Presidential Election of 1856...485 The Presidential Election of 1860...494
CHAPTER 14 The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861...505 The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862...510 The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862...512 The Emancipation Proclamation...515 The Civil War, 1863...536 The Civil War, Late 1864–1865...542
CHAPTER 15 The Barrow Plantation...553 Sharecropping in the South, 1880...557 The Presidential Election of 1868...568 Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877...581 The Presidential Election of 1876...582
CHAPTER 16 The Railroad Network, 1880...592 U.S. Steel: A Vertically Integrated Corporation...596 Indian Reservations, ca. 1890...611 Political Stalemate, 1876–1892...617
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List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
CHAPTER 17 Populist Strength, 1892...640 The Presidential Election of 1896...644 The Spanish-American War: The Pacific...663 The Spanish-American War: The Caribbean...663 American Empire, 1898...665
CHAPTER 18 The World on the Move, World Migration
1815–1914...682 Socialist Towns and Cities, 1900–1920...690 The Presidential Election of 1912...710
CHAPTER 19 The Panama Canal Zone...717 The United States in the Caribbean,
1898–1941...718 Colonial Possessions, 1900...720 World War I: The Western Front...725 Prohibition, 1915: Counties and States That Banned
Liquor before the Eighteenth Amendment (Ratified 1919, Repealed 1933)...731
Europe in 1914...750 Europe in 1919...751
CHAPTER 20 The Presidential Election of 1928...790
CHAPTER 21 Columbia River Basin Project, 1949...801 The Presidential Election of 1932...802 The Tennessee Valley Authority...807 The Dust Bowl, 1935–1940...808
CHAPTER 22 World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945...849 World War II in Europe, 1942–1945...851 Wartime Army and Navy Bases and
Airfields...854 Japanese-American Internment, 1942–1945...868
CHAPTER 23 Cold War Europe, 1956...892 The Korean War, 1950–1953...894 The Presidential Election of 1948...905
CHAPTER 24 The Interstate Highway System...930 The Presidential Election of 1952...939 The Presidential Election of 1960...960
CHAPTER 25 The Presidential Election of 1964...974 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975...987 The Presidential Election of 1968...1004
CHAPTER 26 Center of Population, 1790–2010...1011 The Presidential Election of 1976...1023 The Presidential Election of 1980...1032 The United States in the Caribbean and Central
America, 1954–2004...1041
CHAPTER 27 Eastern Europe after the Cold War...1050 The Presidential Election of 1992...1052 Maps of Diversity, 2000...1066 The Presidential Election of 2000...1080
CHAPTER 28 U.S. Presence in the Middle East, 1947–2012...1098 Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip...1099 The Presidential Election of 2008...1117 The Presidential Election of 2012...1126
T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S CHAPTER 1 Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500...31 Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations:
The World, ca. 1500...31
CHAPTER 3 Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants to British
North American Colonies, 1700–1775...107
CHAPTER 4 Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of Total
Population of Original Thirteen Colonies, 1770...135
CHAPTER 7 Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population of
the United States, 1790...267
CHAPTER 9 Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western
States, 1800–1850...315 Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by Five-Year
Period...324 Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850...326
CHAPTER 11 Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population...393 Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850...394 Table 11.3 Free Black Population, 1860...407
CHAPTER 14 Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus
Confederacy...506
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
xxxv
CHAPTER 16 Table 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change,
1870–1920...590 Figure 16.1 Railroad Mileage Built, 1830–1975...591
CHAPTER 17 Table 17.1 States with over 200 Lynchings,
1889–1918...652
CHAPTER 18 Table 18.1 Rise of the City, 1880–1920...681 Table 18.2 Immigrants and Their Children as Percentage
of Population, Ten Major Cities, 1920...683 Table 18.3 Percentage of Women 14 Years and Older
in the Labor Force, 1900–1930...684 Table 18.4 Percentage of Women Workers in Various
Occupations, 1900–1920...685 Table 18.5 Sales of Passenger Cars, 1900–1925...686
CHAPTER 19 Table 19.1 The Great Migration...744
CHAPTER 20 Figure 20.1 Household Appliances,
1900–1930...762 Figure 20.2 The Stock Market, 1919–1939...765 Table 20.1 Selected Annual Immigration Quotas
under the 1924 Immigration Act...782
CHAPTER 21 Figure 21.1 The Building Boom and Its Collapse,
1919–1939...809 Figure 21.2 Unemployment, 1925–1945...824
CHAPTER 22 Table 22.1 Labor Union Membership...855
CHAPTER 24 Figure 24.1 Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita,
1790–2000...925 Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing...929 Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and Its Decline...931
CHAPTER 25 Figure 25.1 Percentage of Population below Poverty
Level, by Race, 1959–1969...978
CHAPTER 26 Figure 26.1 Median Age at First Marriage,
1947–1981...1013 Table 26.1 Rate of Divorce: Divorces of Existing
Marriages per 1,000 New Marriages, 1950–1980...1014
Table 26.2 The Misery Index, 1970–1980...1021 Figure 26.2 Real Average Weekly Wages,
1955–1990...1022 Figure 26.3 Changes in Families’ Real Income,
1980–1990...1038
CHAPTER 27 Figure 27.1 U.S. Income Inequality,
1913–2003...1060 Table 27.1 Immigration to the United States,
1960–2010...1065 Figure 27.2 Birthplace of Immigrants,
1990–2000...1067 Figure 27.3 The Projected Non-White Majority:
Racial and Ethnic Breakdown...1069 Figure 27.4 Unemployment Rate by Sex and Race,
1954–2000...1070 Table 27.2 Home Ownership Rates by Group,
1970–2000...1070 Figure 27.5 Institutional Inmates as a Percentage of
the Population by Sex and Race, 1850–2010...1072
Figure 27.6 Change in Family Structure, 1970–2010...1076
Figure 27.7 Women in the Paid Workforce, 1940–2010...1077
CHAPTER 28 Figure 28.1 The Housing Bubble...1111 Figure 28.2 Portrait of a Recession...1112 Figure 28.3 Income Gains, 1947–2009...1121
For my mother,
Liza Foner (1909–2005),
an accomplished artist
who lived through
most of the twentieth century
and into the twenty-first
�
�
Preface
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P R E F A C E
Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decades of the twenty-first century. It offers students a clear, con- cise narrative whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first three editions of Give Me Liberty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of two- and four-year colleges and universities throughout the country. The comments I have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive treatment. In making revisions for this Fourth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions into account. I have also incorporated the find- ings and insights of new scholarship that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my desire to inte- grate the history of American religion more fully into the narrative. Today, this is
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a thriving subfield of American historical writing, partly because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates over the relations between government and religion and over the definition of religious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American experience. Changes relating to this theme may be found through- out the book, but some of the major additions seeking to illuminate the history of American religion are as follows:
Chapter 1 includes a new discussion of religious toleration and its limits in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland, which became New York after being seized by Great Britain in 1664. Chapter 2 expands the previous discus- sion of the complex relationship between church and state in Puritan New England. Chapter 4 examines the religious traditions brought to the American colonies by enslaved Africans. In Chapter 6, I have added a discussion of the Christian Repub- licanism of the era of the American Revolution, a set of ideas that linked public virtue in the new nation with religious conviction despite the separation of church and state. Chapter 9 now includes an extended discussion of the emergence of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (or the Mormon Church) and their experience of perse- cution, despite which they’ve become one of the largest and most rapidly growing denominations in the United States.
A further discussion of conflict between Mormons and other settlers in the West occurs in Chapter 16. That chapter also includes an expanded discussion of the Ghost Dance, an Indian religious movement of the late nineteenth century, and a new section on the role of Protestant leaders in the era’s moral reform campaigns. In Chapter 17, a new section discusses the religious dimensions of the revised “mem- ory” of the Civil War that rose to prominence in the 1890s. In Chapter 18, I have added a discussion of the spiritual elements in the early environmental movement, especially in relation to the career of the pioneer conservationist John Muir. The rise of religious fundamentalism, and its use of modern media like the radio to spread its message, is examined in Chapter 21. In Chapter 24, there is a new section on reli- gion and the anticommunist crusade of the 1950s. Chapter 25 now contains a sec- tion on religious movements that arose in connection with the counterculture of the 1960s. Finally, I have added to Chapter 28, the book’s final chapter, a new section on how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to profound controversy over the role of Islam in American life, a debate that continues to this day.
As in the Second and Third Editions, the Voices of Freedom sections in each chapter include two documents illustrating the contested history of freedom in the United States. I have changed a number of them to reflect the new emphasis on the history of American religion. I have also revised the end-of-chapter bibliographies to reflect current scholarship.
The Fourth Edition sports a bright, award-winning design featuring enhanced pedagogy to give students more guidance as they move through chapters. New topic flags function as chapter outlines on the page. They provide easy visual cues that correspond to major points in the narrative and are handy tools for review. The chronology at the beginning of the chapter and the end-of-chapter review pages, including review questions and key terms with page references, have been revisited
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for the Fourth Edition. The aim of the pedagogy, as always, is to offer students guid- ance through the material without getting in the way of the presentation.
I have also added new images in each chapter to expand the visual represen- tation of key ideas and personalities in the text. Taken together, I believe these changes enhance the purpose of Give Me Liberty!: to offer students a clear, concise, and thematically enriched introduction to American history.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a burden to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Ameri- cans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with all degrees of interest that history does matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of his- tory comes from the fact that we carry it within us, . . . . [that] history is literally pres- ent in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose govern- ment is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or immedi- ate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for exam- ple, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is constantly changing. There is noth- ing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the reasons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each gen- eration asks different questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, includ- ing women, African-Americans, working people, and others, have received unprec- edented attention from historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional politi- cal and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to present an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention to the
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experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious atten- tion to political, social, cultural, and economic history, and to their interconnec- tions. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary people who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of characters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suf- frage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War.
Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed knowledge of American history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the com- plexities of the subject without overwhelming them with excessive detail. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory survey course.
Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, has long been central to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of different groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of making sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole.
No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our political language, freedom— or liberty, with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embed- ded in the record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces its purpose as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Free- doms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles, liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red, or yellow,” wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’ ”
The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be misleading. Free- dom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging definition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of freedom
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has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.
Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a reality and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice.
Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of freedom that determine who is enti- tled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed over time.
In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was primarily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—the right of a community to be governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identified with each person’s opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom. This devel- opment was encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace (a development that receives considerable attention in Give Me Liberty!), which offered Americans an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom.
A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social conditions nec- essary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions and rela- tionships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the independent small producer—the farmer, skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper—who did not have to depend on another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision-making) in the Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy mass consumption within a market economy.
The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of freedom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white Americans. The belief in equal oppor- tunity as the birthright of all Americans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, class, and in other ways.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has frequently been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nineteenth century, expanding
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freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for others. By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept extended into new realms.
Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birth- right owes much both to abolitionists who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and the Civil War and was reinvigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birth-control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans.
Although concentrating on events within the United States, Give Me Liberty! also, as indicated above, situates American history in the context of developments in other parts of the world. Many of the forces that shaped American history, includ- ing the international migration of peoples, the development of slavery, the spread of democracy, and the expansion of capitalism, were worldwide processes not con- fined to the United States. Today, American ideas, culture, and economic and mili- tary power exert unprecedented influence throughout the world. But beginning with the earliest days of settlement, when European empires competed to colonize North America and enrich themselves from its trade, American history cannot be understood in isolation from its global setting.
Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the powerless and as a jus- tification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our culture together and exposes the contradictions between what America claims to be and what it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.” Though freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened, for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role in American political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who seek to secure American freedom at home and export it abroad. I hope that Give Me Liberty! will offer beginning students a clear account of the course of American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied, contentious, and ever- changing as America itself.
Acknowledgments
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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable historians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list at the end of each chap- ter offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically, however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who generously read portions of this work and offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions:
Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University Mary E. Adams, City College of San Francisco Jeff Adler, University of Florida David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University John Barr, Lone Star College, Kingwood Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College James Broussard, Lebanon Valley College Michael Bryan, Greenville Technical College Stephanie Cole, The University of Texas at Arlington Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College Beverly Gage, Yale University Monica Gisolfi, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Adam Goudsouzian, University of Memphis Mike Green, Community College of Southern Nevada Vanessa Gunther, California State University, Fullerton David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky Brian Harding, Mott Community College Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–Cy Fair David Hsiung, Juniata College James Karmel, Harford Community College Kelly Knight, Penn State University Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College Jeffrey K. Lucas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke Lillian E. Marrujo-Duck, City College of San Francisco Kent McGaughy, HCC Northwest College James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville Gil Montemayor, McLennan Community College Jonathan Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College Robert M. O’Brien, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
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Acknowledgments
Joseph Palermo, California State University, Sacramento Ann Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Esther Robinson, Lone Star College–Cy Fair Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernadino Diane Sager, Maple Woods Community College John Shaw, Portland Community College Mark Spencer, Brock University David Stebenne, Ohio State University Judith Stein, City College, City University of New York George Stevens, Duchess Community College Robert Tinkler, California State University, Chico Elaine Thompson, Louisiana Tech University David Weiman, Barnard College William Young, Maple Woods Community College
I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American history; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for improve- ments in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the history of the environment.
I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia University’s Department of History who helped with this project. Theresa Ventura offered invaluable assistance in gathering material for the new sections placing American history in a global context. April Holm provided similar assistance for new cover- age in this edition of the history of American religion and debates over religious freedom. James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era. Beverly Gage did the same for the twentieth century. Daniel Freund provided all- round research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brinkley for offering advice and encouragement throughout the writing of this book.
Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources for the study of American history. Nancy Robertson at IUIPUI did a superb job revising and enhancing the in-book pedagogy. Monica Gisolfi (University of North Carolina, Wilmington) and Robert Tinkler (California State University, Chico) did excel- lent work on the Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank. Kathleen Thomas (Univer- sity of Wisconsin, Stout) helped greatly in the revisions of the companion media packages.
At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor—patient, encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank Steve’s assistant, Justin Cahill, for his indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Debbie Nichols for their careful
Acknowledgments
xlvii
copyediting and proof reading work. Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri for their resourceful attention to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin- Yee Lai for their refinements of the book design; Mike Fodera and Debra Morton- Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fourth Edition; Kim Yi for keeping the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production; Steve Hoge for orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the textbook; Jessica Brannon-Wranowsky for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Nicole Netherton, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in help- ing establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned pub- lisher dedicated to excellence in its work.
Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales and avoid alien- ating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations presented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at [email protected].
My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola, for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that consumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was written and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and grammar.
Eric Foner New York City
July 2013
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
Fo u r t h E d i t i o n
�
A M E R I C A N C O L O N I E S
T O 1 7 6 3
T he colonial period of American history was a time of enormous change, as the people of four continents—North America, South America, Europe, and Africa—were suddenly and unexpectedly thrown into contact with one another. The period also initiated a new era in the history of freedom. It was not, however, a desire for freedom that drove early European explorations of North and South America. Contact between Europe and the Americas began as a by-product of the quest for a sea route for trade with Asia. But it quickly became a contest for power between rival empires, who moved to conquer, colonize, and exploit the resources of the New World.
At the time of European contact, the Western Hemisphere was home to tens of millions of people. Within the present border of the United States there existed Indian societies based on agriculture, hunting, or fishing, with their own languages, religious practices, and forms of government. All experienced wrenching changes after Europeans arrived, including incorporation into the world market and epidemics of disease that devastated many native groups.
The colonies that eventually came to form the United States originated in very different ways. Virginia, the first permanent colony to be established, was created by a private company that sought to earn profits through exploration for gold and the development of transatlantic trade. Individual proprietors— well-connected Englishmen given large grants of land by the king—established Maryland and Pennsylvania. New York, which had been founded by the Dutch, came into British hands as the result of a war. Religious groups seek- ing escape from persecution in England and hoping to establish communities rooted in their understanding of the principles of the Bible founded colonies in New England.
In the seventeenth century, all the British colonies experienced wrenching social conflicts as groups within them battled for control. Relations with Indi- ans remained tense and sometimes violent. Religious and political divisions in England, which experienced a civil war in the 1640s and the ouster of the king in 1688, reverberated in the colonies. So did wars between European powers, which spilled over into North America. Nonetheless, after difficult begin- nings, Britain’s mainland colonies experienced years of remarkable growth in
P A R T 1
population and economic activity. By the eighteenth century, the non-Indian population of Britain’s North American colonies had far outstripped that of the colonies of France and Spain.
In every colony in British America, well-to-do landowners and merchants dominated economic and political life. Nonetheless, emigration to the colonies offered numerous settlers opportunities they had not enjoyed at home, includ- ing access to land, the freedom to worship as they pleased, and the right to vote. Every British colony had an elected assembly that shared power with a governor, who was usually appointed from London. Even this limited degree of self-government contrasted sharply with the lack of representative institu- tions in the Spanish and French empires. All these circumstances drew thou- sands of English emigrants to North America in the seventeenth century, and thousands more from Ireland, Scotland, and the European continent in the eighteenth century.
Yet the conditions that allowed colonists to enjoy such freedoms were made possible by lack of freedom for millions of others. For the native inhabit- ants of the Western Hemisphere, European colonization brought the spread of devastating epidemics and either dispossession from the land or forced labor for the colonizers. Millions of Africans were uprooted from their homes and transported to the New World to labor on the plantations of Brazil, the Caribbean, and England’s North American colonies. Even among European immigrants, the majority arrived not as completely free individuals but as indentured servants who owed a prearranged number of years of labor to those who paid their passage.
In colonial America, many modern ideas of freedom did not exist, or existed in very different forms than today. Equality before the law was unknown—women, non-whites, and propertyless men enjoyed far fewer rights than landowning white male citizens. Economic freedom, today widely identified with participation in an unregulated market, meant independence— owning land or a shop and not relying on another person for a livelihood. Most colonies had official churches, and many colonists who sought religious liberty for themselves refused to extend it to others. Speaking or writing critically of public authorities could land a person in jail.
Nonetheless, ideas about freedom played a major role in justifying Euro- pean colonization. The Spanish and French claimed to be liberating Native Americans by bringing them advanced civilization and Roman Catholicism. England insisted that true freedom for Indians meant adopting English ways, including Protestantism. Moreover, the expansion of England’s empire occurred at a time when freedom came to be seen as the defining characteristic of the English nation. Slavery existed in every New World colony. In many, it became the basis of economic life. Yet most Britons, including colonists, prided themselves on enjoying “British liberty,” a common set of rights that included protection from the arbitrary exercise of governmental power.
Thus, freedom and lack of freedom expanded together in the colonies of British North America that would eventually form the United States.
A N E W W O R L D
�
C H A P T E R 1
T he discovery of America,” the British writer Adam Smith announced in his celebrated work The Wealth of Nations (1776), was one of “the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” Historians no longer use the word “discovery” to describe the European exploration, conquest, and colonization of a hemi- sphere already home to millions of people. But there can be no doubt that when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the West Indian islands in 1492, he set in motion some of the most pivotal developments in human history. Immense changes soon followed in both the Old and New Worlds; the consequences of these changes are still with us today.
The peoples of the American continents and Europe, previously unaware of each other’s existence, were thrown into continuous interaction. Crops new to each hemisphere crossed the Atlantic, reshaping diets and transforming the natural environment. Because of their long isolation, the inhabitants of North and South America had developed no immunity to the germs that also accom- panied the colonizers. As a result, they suffered a series of devastating epidem- ics, the greatest population catastrophe in human history. Within a decade of Columbus’s voyage, a fourth continent—Africa—found itself drawn into the new Atlantic system of trade and population movement. In Africa, Europeans found a supply of unfree labor that enabled them to exploit the fertile lands of the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, of approximately 10 million men, women, and children who crossed from the Old World to the New between 1492 and 1820, the vast majority, about 7.7 million, were African slaves.
From the vantage point of 1776, the year the United States declared itself an independent nation, it seemed to Adam Smith that the “discovery” of America had produced both great “benefits” and great “misfortunes.” To the nations of western Europe, the development of American colonies brought an era of “splen- dor and glory.” The emergence of the Atlantic as the world’s major avenue for trade and population movement, Smith noted, enabled millions of Europeans to increase the “enjoyments” of life. To the “natives” of the Americas, however, Smith went on, the years since 1492 had been ones of “dreadful misfortunes” and “every sort of injustice.” And for millions of Africans, the settlement of America meant a descent into the abyss of slavery.
Long before Columbus sailed, Europeans had dreamed of a land of abun- dance, riches, and ease beyond the western horizon. Once the “discovery” of this New World had taken place, they invented an America of the imagination, projecting onto it their hopes for a better life. Here, many believed, would arise unparalleled opportunities for riches, or at least liberation from poverty. Euro- peans envisioned America as a religious refuge, a society of equals, a source of power and glory. They searched the New World for golden cities and fountains of eternal youth. Some sought to establish ideal communities based on the lives of the early Christian saints or other blueprints for social justice.
Some of these dreams of riches and opportunity would indeed be fulfilled. To many European settlers, America offered a far greater chance to own land and worship as they pleased than existed in Europe, with its rigid, unequal
5
France Bringing the Faith to the Indians
of New France. European nations justified
colonization, in part, with the argument
that they were bringing Christianity—
without which true freedom was
impossible—to Native Americans. In this
painting from the 1670s, attributed to a
Franciscan missionary, an Indian kneels
before a female representation of France.
Both hold a painting of the Trinity.
F O C U S Q U E S T I O N S What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived? –p. 7
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact? –p. 15
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic? –p. 19
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans? –p. 21
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America? –p. 25
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America? –p. 35
“
social order and official churches. Yet the conditions that enabled millions of settlers to take control of their own destinies were made possible by the debase- ment of millions of others. The New World became the site of many forms of unfree labor, including indentured servitude, forced labor, and one of the most brutal and unjust systems ever devised by man, plantation slavery. The con- quest and settlement of the Western Hemisphere opened new chapters in the long histories of both freedom and slavery.
There was a vast human diversity among the peoples thrown into contact with one another in the New World. Exploration and settlement took place in an era of almost constant warfare among European nations, each racked by internal religious, political, and regional conflicts. Native Americans and Africans con- sisted of numerous groups with their own languages and cultures. They were as likely to fight one another as to unite against the European newcomers. All these peoples were changed by their integration into the new Atlantic economy. The complex interactions of Europeans, American Indians, and Africans would shape American history during the colonial era.
T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S The Settling of the Americas The residents of the Americas were no more a single group than Europeans or Africans. They spoke hundreds of different languages and lived in numerous kinds of societies. Most, however, were descended from bands of hunters and fish- ers who had crossed the Bering Strait via a land bridge at various times between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago—the exact dates are hotly debated by archaeolo- gists. Others may have arrived by sea from Asia or Pacific islands. Around 14,000 years ago, when glaciers began to melt at the end of the last Ice Age, the land link became submerged under water, once again separating the Western Hemisphere from Asia.
History in North and South America did not begin with the coming of Euro- peans. The New World was new to Europeans but an ancient homeland to those who already lived there. The hemisphere had witnessed many changes during its human history. First, the early inhabitants and their descendants spread across the two continents, reaching the tip of South America perhaps 11,000 years ago. As the climate warmed, they faced a food crisis as the immense ani- mals they hunted, including woolly mammoths and giant bison, became extinct. Around 9,000 years ago, at the same time that agriculture was being developed in the Near East, it also emerged in modern-day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread to other parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible. Throughout the hemisphere, maize (corn), squash, and beans formed the basis of agriculture. The absence of livestock in the Western Hemisphere, however, limited farming by preventing the plowing of fields and the application of natural fertilizer.
6
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
7000 BC Agriculture developed in Mexico and Andes
900– Hopi and Zuni tribes 1200 AD build planned towns
1200 Cahokia city-empire along the Mississippi
1400s Iroquois League established
1434 Portuguese explore sub- Saharan African Coast
1487 Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope
1492 Reconquista of Spain
Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas
1498 Vasco da Gama sails to the Indian Ocean
1500 Pedro Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal
1502 First African slaves transported to Caribbean islands
1517 Martin Luther’s Ninety- Five Theses
1519 Hernán Cortés arrives in Mexico
1528 Las Casas’s History of the Indies
1530s Pizarro’s conquest of Peru
1542 Spain promulgates the New Laws
1608 Champlain establishes Quebec
1609 Hudson claims New Netherland
1610 Santa Fe established
1680 Pueblo Revolt
7T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
A map illustrating the probable routes by which the first Americans settled the Western Hemisphere at various times between 15,000 and 60,000
years ago.
Tenochtitlán
Monte Alban
Poverty Point
Chichen Itzá
Chaco Canyon
Cahokia
Palenque
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
CENTRAL AMERICA
C h ukch i Pen ins u la
Yucatán Pen insu la
Aleut ian I s lands INC
MAY ANS
MOHAWK ONEIDA
CAYUGA SENECA
ONONDAGA
CHEROKEE
HOPI ZUNI
PUEBLO CHICKASAW
CHOCTAW
AZTECS
Be rin
g St rait
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
A tlantic Ocean
Pa c i f i c Ocean
0
0
500
500
1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
Possible migration routes
Oh io Ri
ve r
M ississippi R.
THE FIRST AMERICANS
8
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
Indian Societies of the Americas North and South America were hardly an empty wilderness when Europeans arrived. The hemisphere contained cities, roads, irrigation systems, extensive trade networks, and large structures such as the pyramid-temples, whose beauty still inspires wonder. With a population close to 250,000, Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico, was one of the world’s largest cities. Its great temple, splendid royal palace, and a central market comparable to that of European capitals made the city seem “like an enchanted vision,” according to one of the first Europeans to encounter it. Farther south lay the Inca kingdom, centered in modern-day Peru. Its population of perhaps 12 million was linked by a complex system of roads and bridges that extended 2,000 miles along the Andes mountain chain.
When Europeans arrived, a wide variety of native peoples lived within the present borders of the United States. Indian civilizations in North America had not developed the scale, grandeur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and Inca societies to their south. North American Indians lacked the technologies Europeans had mastered, such as metal tools and machines, gunpowder, and the scientific knowledge necessary for long-distance navigation. No society north of Mexico had achieved literacy (although some made maps on bark and animal hides). They also lacked wheeled vehicles, since they had no domestic animals like horses or oxen to pull them. Their “backwardness” became a central jus- tification for European conquest. But, over time, Indian societies had perfected
This world map, produced in 1507 by the
German map-maker Martin Waldseemüller,
was the first to depict the full Western
Hemisphere and the first to include the
name “America” (on the lower part of
South America) for part of the New World.
It also seems to indicate the Pacific
Ocean, but no European encountered that
ocean until the Spanish explorer Balboa
in 1513.
Roads, irrigation systems, and trade networks
9T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
techniques of farming, hunting, and fishing, developed structures of political power and religious belief, and engaged in far-reaching networks of trade and communication.
Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley Remarkable physical remains still exist from some of the early civilizations in North America. Around 3,500 years ago, before Egyptians built the pyramids, Native Americans constructed a large community centered on a series of giant semicircular mounds on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana. Known today as Poverty Point, it was a commercial and governmental center whose residents established trade routes throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Archaeologists have found there copper from present-day Min- nesota and Canada, and flint mined in Indiana.
More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of the Ohio River valley, called “mound builders” by eighteenth-century settlers who encoun- tered the large earthen burial mounds they created, had traded across half the continent. After their decline, another culture flourished in the Mississippi River valley, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, a fortified community with between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200. Its
Map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán and
the Gulf of Mexico, probably produced by
a Spanish conquistador and published in
1524 in an edition of the letters of Hernán
Cortés. The map shows the city’s complex
system of canals, bridges, and dams, with
the Great Temple at the center. Gardens
and a zoo are also visible.
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
Cahokia
10
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
residents, too, built giant mounds, the largest of which stood 100 feet high and was topped by a temple. Little is known of Cahokia’s political and economic structure. But it stood as the largest settled community in what is now the United States until surpassed in population by New York and Philadelphia around 1800.
Western Indians In the arid northeastern area of present-day Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni and their ances- tors engaged in settled village life for over 3,000 years. During the peak of the region’s culture, between the years 900 and 1200, these peoples built great planned towns with large multiple-family dwellings in local can- yons, constructed dams and canals to gather and distribute water, and conducted trade
with groups as far away as central Mexico and the Mississippi River valley. The largest of their structures, Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, stood five stories high and had more than 600 rooms. Not until the 1880s was a dwelling of comparable size constructed in the United States.
After the decline of these communities, probably because of drought, survivors moved to the south and east, where they established villages and perfected the techniques of desert farming, complete with irrigation systems to provide water for crops of corn, beans, and cotton. These were the people Spanish explorers called the Pueblo Indians (because they lived in small villages, or pueblos, when the Spanish first encountered them in the sixteenth century).
On the Pacific coast, another densely populated region, hundreds of distinct groups resided in independent villages and lived primarily by fishing, hunting sea mammals, and gathering wild plants and nuts. As many as 25 million salmon swam up the Columbia River each year, providing Indians with abundant food. On the Great Plains, with its herds of buffalo—descendants of the prehistoric giant bison—many Indians were hunters (who tracked animals on foot before the arrival of horses with the Spanish), but others lived in agricultural communities.
Indians of Eastern North America In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes inhabited towns and villages scat- tered from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. They lived on corn, squash, and beans, supplemented by fishing and hunting deer, turkeys, and other animals. Indian trade routes crisscrossed the eastern part of the continent. Tribes frequently warred with one another to obtain goods, seize captives, or take revenge for the killing of relatives. They conducted diplomacy and made peace. Little in the way of centralized authority existed until, in the fifteenth century, various leagues or con- federations emerged in an effort to bring order to local regions. In the Southeast, the
A modern aerial photograph of the ruins
of Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon in
present-day New Mexico. The rectangular
structures are the foundations of dwell-
ings, and the circular ones are kivas, or
places of religious worship.
Cliff dwellings in Cañon de Chelly, in
the area of modern-day Arizona, built
sometime between 300 and 1300 and
photographed in 1873.
11T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
The native population of North America at the time of first contact with Europeans consisted of numerous tribes with their own languages,
religious beliefs, and economic and social structures. This map suggests the numerous ways of life existing at the time.
NATIVE WAYS OF LIFE, ca. 1500
INUIT
INUIT
ALGONQUIAN
MICMAC PENOBSCOT
ABENAKI
HURON
NEUTRAL
ERIE
IROQUOIS
SUSQUEHANNOCK NARRAGANSETT
WAMPANOAG
PEQUOT MOHEGAN
CREE
CHIPPEWA
CHIPPEWA
OTTOWAMENOMINEE
WINNEBAGO
POTAWATOMI
ASSINIBOINE CHEYENNE SIOUX
TLINGIT
TSHIMSHIAN
KWAKIUTLS
NOOTKIN SHUSWAP
KOOTENAY BLACKFEET
SHOSHONE
FLATHEAD HIDATSA
MANDAN
KIOWA
SIOUX
ARAPAHO
PAWNEE IOWA
CHUMASH
LUISENO
DIEGUENO
COSTANO
POMO
TILLAMOOK
CHINOOK
SKAGIT WALLA WALLA
CAYUSE NEZ
PERCE
KLAMATH MODOC
MAIDU
SOUTHERN PAIUTE
HOPI
UTE
CHEMEHUEVI
SERRANO
CAHUILLA ZUNI TEWA
JUMANO
YACHI CONCHO
LAGUERNO
COAHUILTEC
KABANKAWA
NATCHEZ APALACHEE
CALUSA
ARAWAK
CHOCTAW
YAMASEE
TIMUCUA
CREEK
CHEROKEE
CHICKASAW
PAMLICO
TUSCARORA
MOSOPELEA
SHAWNEESAUK KICKAPOO
ILLINOIS KASKASKIA
MESCALERO
COMANCHE
WICHITA
CADDO
t h i n l y p o p u l a t e d
th i n
l y p o p u l a t e d
L. Sup erior
L. M
ic hi
ga n
L. Huron
L. E rie
L. O ntar
io
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Arctic hunter-gatherers Subarctic hunter-fisher-gatherers Northwest coast marine economy Plains hunter-gatherers Plains horticulturalists
Non-horticultural rancherian peoples Rancherian peoples with low-intensity horticulture Rancherian peoples with intensive horticulture Pueblos with intensive horticulture Seacoast foragers
Ways of Life in North America, AD 1515 Marginal horticultural hunters River-based horticultural chiefdoms Orchard-growing alligator hunters Tidewater horticulturalists Fishers and wild-rice gatherers
12
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
Rituals
Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw each united dozens of towns in loose alliances. In present-day New York and Pennsylvania, five Iroquois peoples—the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga—formed a Great League of Peace, bringing a period of stability to the area. Each year a Great Council, with representatives from the five groupings, met to coordinate behavior toward outsiders.
The most striking feature of Native American society at the time Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each group had its own political system and set of religious beliefs, and North America was home to literally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Indians had no sense of “America” as a continent or hemisphere. They did not think of themselves as a single unified people, an idea invented by Europeans and only many years later adopted by Indians themselves. Indian identity centered on the immediate social group—a tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy. When Europeans first arrived, many Indians saw them as simply one group among many. Their first thought was how to use the newcomers to enhance their standing in relation to other native peoples, rather than to unite against them. The sharp dichotomy between Indians and “white” persons did not emerge until later in the colonial era.
Native American Religion Nonetheless, the diverse Indian societies of North America did share certain common characteristics. Their lives were steeped in religious ceremonies often directly related to farming and hunting. Spiritual power, they believed, suffused the world, and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds of living and inanimate things—animals, plants, trees, water, and wind—an idea known as “animism.” Through religious ceremonies, they aimed to harness the aid of powerful supernatural forces to serve the interests of man. In some tribes, hunters performed rituals to placate the spirits of animals they had killed. Other religious ceremonies sought to engage the spiritual power of nature to secure abundant crops or fend off evil spirits. Indian villages also held elaborate religious rites, participation in which helped to define the boundaries of community membership. In all Indian societies, those who seemed to possess special abilities to invoke supernatural powers—shamans, medicine men, and other religious leaders—held positions of respect and authority.
Indian religion did not pose a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural, or secular and religious activities. In some respects, however, Indian religion was not that different from popular spiritual beliefs in Europe. Most Indians held that a single Creator stood atop the spiritual hierarchy. Nonetheless, nearly all Europeans arriving in the New World quickly concluded that Indians were in dire need of being converted to a true, Christian faith.
Land and Property Equally alien in European eyes were Indian attitudes toward property. Numerous land systems existed among Native Americans. Generally, however, village leaders assigned plots of land to individual families to use for a season or more, and tribes claimed specific areas for hunting. Unclaimed land remained free for anyone to use. Families “owned” the right to use land, but they did not own the land itself. Indians saw land, the basis of economic life for both hunting and farming societies, as a common resource, not an economic commodity. In the nineteenth century, the
The Village of Secoton, by John White,
an English artist who spent a year on the
Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1585–
1586 as part of an expedition sponsored
by Sir Walter Raleigh. A central street links
houses surrounded by fields of corn. In the
lower part, dancing Indians take part in a
religious ceremony.
13T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
Indian leader Black Hawk would explain why, in his view, land could not be bought and sold: “The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil.” Few if any Indian societies were familiar with the idea of a fenced-off piece of land belonging forever to a single individual or family. There was no market in real estate before the coming of Europeans.
Nor were Indians devoted to the accumulation of wealth and material goods. Especially east of the Mississippi River, where villages moved every few years when soil or game became depleted, acquiring numerous possessions made little sense. However, status certainly mattered in Indian societies. Tribal leaders tended to come from a small number of families, and chiefs lived more splendidly than average members of society. But their reputation often rested on their willingness to share goods with others rather than hoarding them for themselves.
A few Indian societies had rigid social distinctions. Among the Natchez, descendants of the mound-building Mississippian culture, a chief, or “Great Sun,” occupied the top of the social order, with nobles, or “lesser suns,” below him, and below them, the common people. In general, however, wealth mattered far less in Indian society than in European society at the time. Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift giving was essential to Indian society. Trade, for example, meant more than a commercial transaction—it was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies of gift exchange. A central part of Indian economies, gift giving bound different groups in webs of mutual obligation. Although Indians had no experience of the wealth enjoyed at the top of European society, under normal circumstances no one in Indian societies went hungry or experienced the extreme inequalities of Europe. “There are no beggars among them,” reported the English colonial leader Roger Williams of New England’s Indians.
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
Land as a common resource
A Catawba map illustrates the differences
between Indian and European conceptions
of landed property. The map depicts not
possession of a specific territory, but trade
and diplomatic connections between
various native groups and with the colony
of Virginia, represented by the rectangle
on the lower right. The map, inscribed
on deerskin, was originally presented
by Indian chiefs to Governor Francis
Nicholson of South Carolina in 1721. This
copy, the only version that survives, was
made by the governor for the authorities
in London. It added English labels that
conveyed what the Indians had related
orally with the gift.
Gift giving
14
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
Gender Relations The system of gender relations in most Indian societies also differed markedly from that of Europe. Membership in a family defined women’s lives, but they openly engaged in premarital sexual relations and could even choose to divorce their husbands. Most, although not all, Indian societies were matrilineal—that is, centered on clans or kinship groups in which children became members of the mother’s family, not the father’s. Tribal leaders were almost always men, but women played an important role in certain religious ceremonies, and female elders often helped to select male village leaders and took part in tribal meetings. Under English law, a married man controlled the family’s property and a wife had no independent legal identity. In contrast, Indian women owned dwellings and tools, and a husband generally moved to live with the family of his wife. In Indian societies, men contributed to the community’s well-being and demonstrated their masculinity by success in hunting or, in the Pacific Northwest, by catching fish with nets and harpoons. Because men were frequently away on the hunt, women took responsibility not only for household duties but for most agricultural work as well. Among the Pueblo of the Southwest, however, where there was less hunting than in the East, men were the primary cultivators.
European Views of the Indians Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms. They were regarded either as “noble savages,” gentle, friendly, and superior in some ways to Europeans, or as uncivilized and brutal savages. Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator who sailed up and down the eastern coast of North America in 1524, described Indians he encountered as “beautiful of stature and build.” (For their part, many Indians, whose diet was probably more nutritious than that of most Europeans, initially found the newcomers weak and ugly.)
Indians fishing, in a 1585 drawing by John
White. The canoe is filled with fish, while
two men harpoon others in the back-
ground. Among the wildlife illustrated are
hammerhead sharks and catfish.
Matrilineal societies
15I N D I A N F R E E D O M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D O M
Over time, however, negative images of Indians came to overshadow posi- tive ones. Early European descriptions of North American Indians as barbaric centered on three areas—religion, land use, and gender relations. Whatever their country of origin, European newcomers concluded that Indians lacked genuine religion, or in fact worshiped the devil. Their shamans and herb healers were called “witch doctors,” their numerous ceremonies and rituals at best a form of superstition, their belief in a world alive with spiritual power a worship of “false gods.” Christianity presented no obstacle to the commercial use of the land, and indeed in some ways encouraged it, since true religion was thought to promote the progress of civilization. Whereas the Indians saw nature as a world of spirits and souls, the Europeans viewed it as a collection of potential commodities, a source of economic opportunity.
Europeans invoked the Indians’ distinctive pattern of land use and ideas about property to answer the awkward question raised by a British minister at an early stage of England’s colonization: “By what right or warrant can we enter into the land of these Savages, take away their rightful inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places?” While the Spanish claimed title to land in America by right of con- quest and papal authority, the English, French, and Dutch came to rely on the idea that Indians had not actually “used” the land and thus had no claim to it. Despite the Indians’ highly developed agriculture and well-established towns, Europeans frequently described them as nomads without settled communities. The land was thus deemed to be a vacant wilderness ready to be claimed by newcomers who would cultivate and improve it. European settlers believed that mixing one’s labor with the earth, which Indians supposedly had failed to do, gave one title to the soil.
In the Indians’ gender division of labor and matrilineal family structures, Europeans saw weak men and mistreated women. Hunting and fishing, the primary occupations of Indian men, were considered leisure activities in much of Europe, not “real” work. Because Indian women worked in the fields, Europeans often described them as lacking freedom. They were “not much better than slaves,” in the words of one English commentator. Europeans considered Indian men “unmanly”—too weak to exercise authority within their families and restrain their wives’ open sexuality, and so lazy that they forced their wives to do most of the productive labor. Through- out North America, Europeans promoted the ideas that women should confine themselves to household work and that men ought to exercise greater authority within their families. Europeans insisted that by subduing the Indians, they were actually bringing them freedom—the freedom of true religion, private property, and the liberation of both men and women from uncivilized and unchristian gender roles.
I N D I A N F R E E D O M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D O M Indian Freedom And what of liberty as the native inhabitants of the New World understood it? Many Europeans saw Indians as embodying freedom. The Iroquois, wrote one colonial official, held “such absolute notions of liberty that they allow of no kind of superiority of one over another, and banish all servitude from their territories.” But
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
A seventeenth-century engraving by
a French Jesuit priest illustrates many
Europeans’ view of Indian religion.
A demon hovers over an Iroquois long-
house, suggesting that Indians worship
the devil.
Indian women planting crops while men
break the sod. An engraving by Theodor
de Bry, based on a painting by Jacques
Le Moyne de Morgues. Morgues was part
of an expedition of French Huguenots
to Florida in 1564; he escaped when the
Spanish destroyed the outpost in the
following year.
16
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
most colonizers quickly concluded that the notion of “freedom” was alien to Indian societies. Early English and French dictionaries of Indian languages contained no entry for “freedom” or liberté. Nor, wrote one early trader, did Indians have “words to express despotic power, arbitrary kings, oppressed or obedient subjects.”
Indeed, Europeans considered Indians barbaric in part because they did not appear to live under established governments or fixed laws, and had no respect for authority. “They are born, live, and die in a liberty without restraint,” wrote one religious missionary. In a sense, they were too free, lacking the order and discipline that Europeans considered the hallmarks of civilization. Even slavery, wrote Richard Eden, an English writer of the mid-sixteenth century, was preferable to the Indians’ condition before European contact, which he described as “rather a horrible licentiousness than a liberty.” When Giovanni da Verrazano described the Indians as living in “absolute freedom,” he did not intend this as a compliment.
The familiar modern understanding of freedom as personal independence, often based on ownership of private property, had little meaning in most Indian societies. But Indians certainly had their own ideas of freedom. While the buying and selling of slaves was unknown, small-scale slavery existed in some Indian societies. So too did the idea of personal liberty as the opposite of being held as a slave. Indians would bitterly resent the efforts of some Europeans to reduce them to slavery.
Although individuals were expected to think for themselves and did not always have to go along with collective decision making, Indian men and women judged one another according to their ability to live up to widely understood ideas of appropriate behavior. Far more important than individual autonomy were kin- ship ties, the ability to follow one’s spiritual values, and the well-being and security of one’s community. In Indian culture, group autonomy and self-determination, and the mutual obligations that came with a sense of belonging and connectedness, took precedence over individual freedom. Ironically, the coming of Europeans, armed with their own language of liberty, would make freedom a preoccupation of American Indians, as part and parcel of the very process by which they were reduced to dependence on the colonizers.
Christian Liberty On the eve of colonization, Europeans held numerous ideas of freedom. Some were as old as the city-states of ancient Greece, others arose during the political struggles of the early modern era. Some laid the foundations for modern conceptions of freedom, others are quite unfamiliar today. Freedom was not a single idea but a collection of distinct rights and privileges, many enjoyed by only a small portion of the population.
One conception common throughout Europe was that freedom was under- stood less as a political or social status than as a moral or spiritual condition. Free- dom meant abandoning the life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” declares the New Testament, “there is liberty.” In this definition, servitude and freedom were mutually reinforcing, not contradictory states, since those who accepted the teachings of Christ simultaneously became “free from sin” and “servants to God.”
The title page of The Great Voyage to the
Country of the Hurons, published in Paris
in 1632 by the Gabriel Sagard, one of the
first missionaries to New France, includes
images of Native Americans and Catholic
friars. Father Sagard also produced a
dictionary of the Huron language.
Freedom as a spiritual condition
17I N D I A N F R E E D O M, E U R O P E A N F R E E D O M
“Christian liberty” had no connection to later ideas of religious toleration, a notion that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of colonization. Every nation in Europe had an established church that decreed what forms of religious wor- ship and belief were acceptable. Dissenters faced persecution by the state as well as condemnation by church authorities. Religious uniformity was thought to be essential to public order; the modern idea that a person’s religious beliefs and practices are a matter of private choice, not legal obligation, was almost unknown. The religious wars that racked Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries centered on which religion would predominate in a kingdom or region, not the right of individuals to choose which church in which to worship.
Freedom and Authority In its secular form, the equating of liberty with obedience to a higher authority suggested that freedom meant not anarchy but obedience to law. Aristotle had described the law as liberty’s “salvation,” not its enemy. The identification of freedom with the rule of law did not, however, mean that all subjects of the crown enjoyed the same degree of freedom. Early modern European societies were extremely hierarchical, with marked gradations of social status ranging from the king and hereditary aristocracy down to the urban and rural poor. Inequality was built into virtually every social relationship. The king claimed to rule by the authority of God. Persons of high rank demanded deference from those below them. Less than 5 percent of the population monopolized English economic wealth and political power.
Within families, men exercised authority over their wives and children. Accord- ing to the widespread legal doctrine known as “coverture,” when a woman married she surrendered her legal identity, which became “covered” by that of her husband. She could not own property or sign contracts in her own name, control her wages if she worked, write a separate will, or, except in the rarest of circumstances, go to court seeking a divorce. The husband conducted business and testified in court for the entire family. He had the exclusive right to his wife’s “company,” including domestic labor and sexual relations.
Everywhere in Europe, family life depended on male dominance and female submission. Indeed, political writers of the sixteenth century explicitly compared the king’s authority over his subjects with the husband’s over his family. Both were ordained by God. To justify this argument, they referred to a passage in the New Testament: “As the man is the head of the woman, so is Christ the head of the Church.” Neither kind of authority could be challenged without threatening the fabric of social order.
Liberty and Liberties In this hierarchical society, liberty came from knowing one’s social place and fulfill- ing the duties appropriate to one’s rank. Most men lacked the freedom that came with economic independence. Property qualifications and other restrictions limited the electorate to a minuscule part of the adult male population. The law required strict obedience of employees, and breaches of labor contracts carried criminal penalties.
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
Hierarchy in society
Hierarchy in the family
Religious uniformity
18
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
European ideas of freedom still bore the imprint of the Middle Ages, when “liberties” meant formal, specific privileges such as self-government, exemption from taxation, or the right to practice a particular trade, granted to individuals or groups by contract, royal decree, or purchase. One legal dictionary defined a liberty as “a privilege . . . by which men may enjoy some benefit beyond the ordinary sub- ject.” Only those who enjoyed the “freedom of the city,” for example, could engage in certain economic activities. Numerous modern civil liberties did not exist. The law decreed acceptable forms of religious worship. The government regularly suppressed publications it did not like, and criticism of authority could lead to imprisonment. In England, members of the House of Commons enjoyed freedom of speech during parliamentary sessions, but the right did not extend to ordinary citizens. Personal independence was reserved for a small part of the population, and this was one reason why authorities found “masterless men”—those without regular jobs or otherwise outside the control of their social superiors—so threaten- ing. Nonetheless, every European country that colonized the New World claimed to be spreading freedom—for its own population and for Native Americans.
T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E It is fitting that the second epochal event that Adam Smith linked to Columbus’s voyage of 1492 was the discovery by Portuguese navigators of a sea route from Europe to Asia around the southern tip of Africa. The European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest for a sea route to India, China, and the islands of the East Indies, the source of the silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury goods on which international trade in the early modern era centered. For centuries, this commerce had been conducted across land, from China and South Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean region. Profit and piety—the desire to eliminate Islamic middlemen and win control of the lucrative trade for Christian western Europe—combined to inspire the quest for a direct route to Asia.
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation At the beginning of the fifteenth century, one might have predicted that China would establish the world’s first global empire. Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng He led seven large naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean. The first convoy consisted of 62 ships that were larger than those of any European nation, along with 225 support vessels and more than 25,000 men. On his sixth voyage, Zheng explored the coast of East Africa. China was already the world’s most important trading economy, with trade routes dotting the Indian Ocean. Zheng’s purpose was not discovery, but to impress other peoples with China’s might. Had his ships continued westward, they could easily have reached North and South America. But as a wealthy land-based empire, China did not feel the need for overseas expansion, and after 1433 the government ended support for long-distance maritime expedi- tions. It fell to Portugal, situated on the western corner of the Iberian Peninsula, far removed from the overland route to Asia, to take advantage of new techniques of sailing and navigation to begin exploring the Atlantic.
Sea route to the East
Liberty as a privilege
Zheng He’s voyages
19T H E E X PA N S I O N O F E U R O P E
The development of the caravel, a ship capable of long-distance travel, and of the compass and quadrant, devices that enabled sailors to determine their location and direction with greater accuracy than in the past, made it possible to sail down the coast of Africa and return to Portugal. Portuguese seafarers initially hoped to locate the source of gold that for centuries had been transported in caravans across the Sahara Desert to North Africa and Europe. This commerce, which passed through the African kingdom of Mali on the southern edge of the Sahara, provided Europe with most of its gold. Around 1400, it rivaled trade with the East in economic impor- tance. And like trade with Asia, it was controlled by Muslim merchants.
Portugal and West Africa Until 1434, no European sailor had seen the coast of Africa below the Sahara, or the forest kingdoms south of Mali that contained the actual gold fields. But in that year, a Portuguese ship brought a sprig of rosemary from West Africa, proof that
Lisbon
Genoa Venice
da Gama
da G ama
Dias
Zh en
g He
Zhe ng
He
PORTUGAL SPAIN
FRANCE
ENGLAND
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
NETHERLANDS
PERSIA
INDIA
CHINA
EAST INDIES
MALI
BENIN
CHAMPA
MALACCA
Horm u z
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Ma d e i ra I s .
Cana r y I s .
Cape o f Good Hope
Cape Ve rd e
I s .
Az or es
Cyp ru s Crete
S A H A R A D E S E R T
J ava
S u m at ra
Cey lon
Mediterranean Sea
Atlantic Ocean
In di an O c e an
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
THE OLD WORLD ON THE EVE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION, ca. 1500
In the fifteenth century, the world known
to Europeans was limited to Europe,
parts of Africa, and Asia. Explorers from
Portugal sought to find a sea route to
the East in order to circumvent the Italian
city-states and Middle Eastern rulers who
controlled the overland trade.
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
20
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
one could sail beyond the desert and return. Little by little, Portuguese ships moved farther down the coast. In 1485, they reached Benin, an imposing city whose craftsmen produced bronze sculptures that still inspire admiration for their artistic beauty and superb casting techniques. The Portuguese established fortified trading posts on the western coast of Africa. The profits reaped by these Portuguese “facto- ries”—so named because merchants were known as “factors”—inspired other European powers to follow in their footsteps.
Portugal also began to colonize Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, which lie in the Atlantic off the African coast. Sugar plantations worked by Muslim captives and slaves from Slavic areas of eastern Europe had flourished in the Middle Ages on Mediterranean islands like Cyprus, Malta, and Crete. Now, the Portuguese established plantations on the Atlantic islands, eventually
replacing the native populations with thousands of slaves shipped from Africa—an ominous precedent for the New World. Soon, the center of sugar production would shift again, to the Western Hemisphere.
Freedom and Slavery in Africa Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans. Traditionally, African slaves tended to be criminals, debtors, and captives in war. They worked within the households of their owners and had well-defined rights, such as possessing property and marrying free persons. It was not uncommon for African slaves to acquire their freedom. Slavery was one of several forms of labor, not the basis of the economy as it would become in large parts of the New World. The coming of the Portuguese, soon followed by traders from other European nations, accelerated the buying and selling of slaves within Africa. At least 100,000 African slaves were transported to Spain and Portugal between 1450 and 1500. In 1502, the first African slaves were transported to islands in the Caribbean. The transatlantic slave trade, and its impact on Africa, will be discussed in Chapter 4.
Having reached West Africa, Portuguese mariners pushed their explorations ever southward along the coast. Bartholomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope
at the continent’s southern tip in 1487. In 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around it to India, demonstrating the feasibility of a sea route to the East. With a population of under 1 million, Portugal established a vast trading empire, with bases in India, southern China, and Indonesia. It replaced the Italian city-states as the major European commercial partner of the East. But six years before da Gama’s voyage, Christo- pher Columbus had, he believed, discovered a new route to China and India by sailing west.
The Voyages of Columbus A seasoned mariner and fearless explorer from Genoa, a major port in northern Italy, Columbus had for years sailed the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, studying ocean currents and wind patterns. Like nearly all navigators of the time, Columbus knew the earth
Sankore University in Timbuktu, in
present-day Mali, was one of the great
Islamic centers of learning in fourteenth-
century Africa.
A detail from the Cantino World Map
depicting the western coast of Africa at
the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.
Created by an anonymous Portuguese
mapmaker in 1502, the map included
Europe, Africa, and a small part of the
Western Hemisphere, described as “the
islands lately discovered in the parts of
India.” It was smuggled out of Portugal by
Alberto Cantino, a diplomat representing
an Italian city-state.
21C O N T A C T
was round. But he drastically underestimated its size. He believed that by sailing westward he could relatively quickly cross the Atlantic and reach Asia. No one in Europe knew that two giant continents lay 3,000 miles to the west. The Vikings, to be sure, had sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland around the year 1000 and established a settlement, Vinland, at a site now known as L’Anse aux Meadows. But this outpost was abandoned after a few years and had been forgotten, except in Norse legends.
For Columbus, as for other figures of the time, religious and commercial motives reinforced one another. A devout Catholic, he drew on the Bible for his estimate of the size of the globe. Along with developing trade with the East, he hoped to convert Asians to Christianity and enlist them in a crusade to redeem Jerusalem from Muslim control. Columbus sought financial support throughout Europe for the planned voyage. Most of Columbus’s contemporaries, however, knew that he considerably underestimated the earth’s size, which helps to explain why he had trouble gaining backers for his expedition. Eventually, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to become sponsors. Their marriage in 1469 had united the warring kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the reconquista—the “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who had occupied part of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. To ensure its religious unification, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered all Muslims and Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Along with the crown, much of Columbus’s financing came from bankers and merchants of Spain and the Italian city-states, who desperately desired to circumvent the Muslim stranglehold on eastern trade. Columbus set sail with royal letters of introduction to Asian rulers, authorizing him to negotiate trade agreements.
C O N T A C T Columbus in the New World On October 12, 1492, after only thirty-three days of sailing from the Canary Islands, where he had stopped to resupply his three ships, Columbus and his expedition arrived at the Bahamas. His exact landing site remains in dispute, but it was probably San Salvador, a tiny spot of land known today as Watling Island. Soon afterward, he encountered the far larger islands of Hispaniola (today the site of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. When one of his ships ran aground, he abandoned it and left thirty-eight men behind on Hispaniola. But he found room to bring ten inhabitants of the island back to Spain for conversion to Christianity.
In the following year, 1493, European colonization of the New World began. Columbus returned with seventeen ships and more than 1,000 men to explore the area and establish a Spanish outpost. Columbus’s settlement on the island of Hispaniola, which he named La Isabella, failed, but in 1502 another Spanish explorer, Nicolás de Ovando, arrived with 2,500 men and established a perma- nent base, the first center of the Spanish empire in America. Before he died in 1506, Columbus made two more voyages to the New World, in 1498 and 1502.
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
Columbus’s Landfall, an engraving from
La lettera dell’isole (Letter from the
Islands). This 1493 pamphlet reproduced,
in the form of a poem, Columbus’s
first letter describing his voyage of the
previous year. Under the watchful eye of
King Ferdinand of Spain, Columbus and
his men land on a Caribbean island, while
local Indians flee.
Hispaniola
22
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
Vinland
Magellan (1519-1522)
Cabot (1497)
Columbus (1492)
Ba lbo
a ( 151
3)
M ag
ell an
(1 51
9- 15
22 )
Ve sp
uc ci
(1 50
1- 15
02 )
Ca br
al (1
50 0)
Cor tés (1519) Colum
bus (1 493)
Colu mbus
(150 2)
Columbus (1498)
NEWFOUNDLAND NORTH
AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
AFRICA
EUROPE
Atlantic Ocean
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic crossing, in 1492, was soon followed by voyages of discovery by English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian
explorers.
23C O N T A C T
He went to his grave believing that he had discovered a westward route to Asia. The explorations of another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, along the coast of South America between 1499 and 1502 made plain that a continent entirely unknown to Europeans had been encountered. The New World would come to bear not Columbus’s name but one based on Vespucci’s—America. Vespucci also realized that the native inhabitants were distinct peoples, not residents of the East Indies as Columbus had believed, although the name “Indians,” applied to them by Columbus, has endured to this day.
Exploration and Conquest The speed with which European exploration proceeded in the aftermath of Columbus’s first voyage is remarkable. The technique of printing with movable type, invented in the 1430s by the German craftsman Johannes Gutenberg, had made possible the rapid spread of information in Europe, at least among the educated minority. News of Columbus’s achievement traveled quickly. One writer hailed him as “a hero such as the ancients made gods of.” Others were inspired to follow in his wake. John Cabot, a Genoese merchant who had settled in England, reached Newfoundland in 1497. Soon, scores of fishing boats from France, Spain, and England were active in the region. Pedro Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal in 1500.
But the Spanish took the lead in exploration and conquest. Inspired by a search for wealth, national glory, and the desire to spread Catholicism, Spanish conquista- dores, often accompanied by religious missionaries and carrying flags emblazoned with the sign of the cross, radiated outward from Hispaniola. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked across the isthmus of Panama and became the first European to gaze upon the Pacific Ocean. Between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the world, encoun- tering Pacific islands and peoples previously unknown to Europe. Magellan was killed in the Philippines, but his fleet completed the journey, correcting once and for all Columbus’s erroneous assess- ment of the earth’s size.
The first explorer to encounter a major American civilization was Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 arrived at Tenochtitlán, the nerve center of the Aztec empire, whose wealth and power rested on domination of numerous subordinate peoples nearby. The Aztecs were violent warriors who engaged in the ritual sacrifice of cap- tives and others, sometimes thousands at a time. This practice thoroughly alienated their neighbors and reinforced the Spanish view of America’s native inhabitants as barbarians, even though in Europe at this time thousands of men and women were burned at the stake as witches or religious heretics, and criminals were executed in public spectacles that attracted throngs of onlookers.
With only a few hundred European men, the daring Cortés conquered the Aztec city, relying on superior military technology such as iron weapons and gunpowder, as well as shrewdness in
Engravings, from the Florentine Codex,
of the forces of Cortés marching on
Tenochtitlán and assaulting the city with
cannon fire. The difference in military
technology between the Spanish and
Aztecs is evident. Indians who allied with
Cortés had helped him build vessels and
carry them in pieces over mountains to
the city. The codex (a volume formed
by stitching together manuscript pages)
was prepared under the supervision of a
Spanish missionary in sixteenth-century
Mexico.
Vespucci
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
24
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
enlisting the aid of some of the Aztecs’ subject peoples, who supplied him with thousands of warriors. His most powerful ally, however, was disease—a smallpox epidemic that devastated Aztec society. A few years later, Francisco Pizarro con- quered the great Inca kingdom centered in modern-day Peru. Pizarro’s tactics were typical of the conquistadores. He captured the Incan king, demanded and received a ransom, and then killed the king anyway. Soon, treasure fleets carrying cargoes of gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru were traversing the Atlantic to enrich the Spanish crown.
The Demographic Disaster The transatlantic flow of goods and people, sometimes called the Columbian Exchange, altered millions of years of evolution. Plants, animals, and cultures that had evolved independently on separate continents were now thrown together. Products introduced to Europe from the Americas included corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tobacco, and cotton, while people from the Old World brought wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep to the New. But Europeans also carried germs previously unknown in the Americas.
No one knows exactly how many people lived in the Americas at the time of Columbus’s voyages—current estimates range between 50 and 90 million. By com- parison, the European population in 1492 (including Russia) was around 90 million, the African population was around 40 million, and about 210 million lived in China and modern-day India. Most inhabitants of the New World lived in Central and South America. In 1492, the Indian population within what are now the borders of the United States was between 2 and 5 million.
Whatever their numbers, the Indian populations suffered a catastrophic decline because of contact with Europeans and their wars, enslavement, and especially diseases like smallpox, influenza, and measles. Never having encountered these diseases, Indians had not developed antibodies to fight them. The result was dev- astating. Many West Indian islands were all but depopulated. On Hispaniola, the native population, estimated at between 300,000 and 1 million in 1492, had nearly disappeared fifty years later. The population of Mexico would fall by more than 90 percent in the sixteenth century, from perhaps 20 million to less than 2 million. As for the area that now forms the United States, its Native American population fell continuously. It reached its lowest point around 1900, at only 250,000.
Overall, the death of perhaps 80 million people—close to one-fifth of human- kind—in the first century and a half after contact with Europeans represents the greatest loss of life in human history. It was disease as much as military prowess and more-advanced technology that enabled Europeans to conquer the Americas.
T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain had established an immense empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans, once barriers separating different parts of the world, now became
The Columbian Exchange
A drawing from around 1700 shows
an Indian suffering from smallpox. The
Columbian Exchange—the flow of goods
and people across the Atlantic—included
animals, plants, technology, and diseases.
25T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E
highways for the exchange of goods and the movement of people. Spanish galleons carried gold and silver from Mexico and Peru eastward to Spain and westward to Manila in the Philippines and on to China.
The Spanish empire included the most populous parts of the New World and the regions richest in natural resources. Stretching from the Andes Mountains of South America through present-day Mexico and the Caribbean and eventually into Florida and the southwestern United States, Spain’s empire exceeded in size the Roman empire of the ancient world. Its center in North America was Mexico City, a magnificent capital built on the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán that boasted churches, hospitals, monasteries, government buildings, and the New World’s first university. Unlike the English and French New World empires, Spanish America was essentially an urban civilization, an “empire of towns.” For centuries, its great cities, notably Mexico City, Quito, and Lima, far outshone any urban centers in North America and most of those in Europe.
Governing Spanish America Spain’s system of colonial government rivaled that of ancient Rome. Alarmed by the destructiveness of the conquistadores, the Spanish crown replaced them with a more stable system of government headed by lawyers and bureaucrats. At least in theory, the government of Spanish America reflected the absolutism of the newly unified nation at home. Authority originated with the king and flowed downward through the Council of the Indies—the main body in Spain for colonial administration—and then to viceroys in Mexico and Peru and other local officials in America. The Catholic Church also played a significant role in the administra- tion of Spanish colonies, frequently exerting its authority on matters of faith, morals, and treatment of the Indians.
Successive kings kept elected assemblies out of Spain’s New World empire. Royal officials were generally appointees from Spain, rather than criollos, as per- sons born in the colonies of European ancestry were called. The imperial state was a real and continuous presence in Spanish America. But as its power declined in Europe beginning in the seventeenth century, the local elite came to enjoy more and more effective authority over colonial affairs. Given the vastness of the empire, local municipal councils, universities, merchant organizations, and craft guilds enjoyed considerable independence.
Colonists in Spanish America Despite the decline in the native population, Spanish America remained populous enough that, with the exception of the West Indies and a few cities, large-scale importations of African slaves were unnecessary. Instead, the Spanish forced tens of thousands of Indians to work in gold and silver mines, which supplied the empire’s wealth, and on large-scale farms, or haciendas, controlled by Spanish land- lords. In Spanish America, unlike other New World empires, Indians performed most of the labor, and although the Spanish introduced livestock, wheat, and sugar, the main agricultural crops were the same ones grown before colonization—corn, beans, and squash.
Extent of the empire
Mexico City
Authority in Spanish America
Indian labor
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
26
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
“The maxim of the conqueror must be to settle,” said one Spanish official. The government barred non-Spaniards from emigrating to its American domains, as well as non-Christian Spaniards, including Jews and Moors. But the opportunity for social advancement drew numerous colonists from Spain—225,000 in the sixteenth century and a total of 750,000 in the three centuries of Spain’s colonial rule. Eventually, a significant number came in families, but at first the large major- ity were young, single men, many of them laborers, craftsmen, and soldiers. Many also came as government officials, priests, professionals, and minor aristocrats, all ready to direct the manual work of Indians, since living without having to labor was a sign of noble status. The most successful of these colonists enjoyed lives of luxury similar to those of the upper classes at home.
Colonists and Indians Although persons of European birth, called peninsulares, stood atop the social hierarchy, they never constituted more than a tiny proportion of the population of Spanish America. Unlike in the later British empire, Indian inhabitants always outnumbered European colonists and their descendants in Spanish America, and large areas remained effectively under Indian control for many years. Like the later French empire and unlike the English, Spanish authorities granted Indians certain rights within colonial society and looked forward to their eventual assimilation. Indeed, the success of the Spanish empire depended on the nature of the native societies on which it could build. In Florida, the Amazon, and Caribbean islands like Jamaica, which lacked major Indian cities and large native populations, Span- ish rule remained tenuous.
A late-seventeenth-century painting of
the Plaza Mayor (main square) of Mexico
City. The image includes a parade of
over 1,000 persons, of different ethnic
groups and occupations, dressed in their
characteristic attire.
Spanish colonists
Native societies and Spanish empire
27T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E
The Spanish crown ordered wives of colonists to join them in America and demanded that single men marry. But with the population of Spanish women remaining low, the intermixing of the colonial and Indian peoples soon began. As early as 1514, the Spanish government formally approved of such marriages, partly as a way of bringing Christianity to the native population. By 1600, mestizos (persons of mixed origin) made up a large part of the urban population of Spanish America. In the century that followed, mestizos repopulated the Valley of Mexico, where disease had decimated the original inhabitants. Over time, Spanish America evolved into a hybrid culture, part Spanish, part Indian, and in some areas part African, but with a single official faith, language, and governmental system. In 1531, a poor Indian, Juan Diego, reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary, looking very much like a dark-skinned Indian, near a Mexican village. Miracles began to be reported, and a shrine was built in her honor. The Virgin of Guadalupe would come to be revered by millions as a symbol of the mixing of Indian and Spanish cultures, and later of the modern nation of Mexico.
Justifications for Conquest What allowed one nation, the seventeenth-century Dutch legal thinker Hugo Grotius wondered, to claim possession of lands that “belonged to someone else”? This question rarely occurred to most of the Europeans who crossed the Atlantic in the wake of Columbus’s voyage, or to rulers in the Old World. They had immense confidence in the superiority of their own cultures to those they encountered in America. They expected these societies to abandon their own beliefs and traditions
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
An illustration from the Huexotzinco
Codex (1531) depicts Mexicans providing
products and services as taxes to the
Spanish conquerors. The banner of the
Virgin Mary and baby Jesus reflects the
early spread of Christianity. The people
of Huexotzinco, a town near Mexico City,
had aided Hernán Cortés in his conquest
of the Aztec empire. The codex was part
of a successful lawsuit, endorsed by
Cortés, in which the Indians challenged
excessive taxation by colonial officials.
A hybrid culture
28
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
and embrace those of the newcomers. Failure to do so reinforced the conviction that these people were uncivilized “heathens” (non-Christians).
Europeans brought with them not only a long history of using violence to sub- due their internal and external foes but also missionary zeal to spread the benefits of their own civilization to others, while reaping the rewards of empire. Spain was no exception. The establishment of its empire in America took place in the wake of Spain’s own territorial unification, the rise of a powerful royal government, and the enforcement of religious orthodoxy by the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in 1492. To further legitimize Spain’s claim to rule the New World, a year after Columbus’s first voyage Pope Alexander VI divided the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal. The line was subsequently adjusted to give Portugal control of Brazil, with the remainder of the Western Hemisphere falling under Spanish authority.
Spreading the Faith Not surprisingly, the pope justified this pronouncement by requiring Spain and Portugal to spread Catholicism among the native inhabitants of the Americas. The missionary element of colonization, already familiar because of the long holy war against Islam within Spain itself, was powerfully reinforced in the sixteenth cen- tury, when the Protestant Reformation divided the Catholic Church. In 1517, Martin Luther, a German priest, posted his Ninety-Five Theses, which accused the church of worldliness and corruption. Luther wanted to cleanse the church of abuses such as the sale of indulgences (official dispensations forgiving sins). He insisted that all believers should read the Bible for themselves, rather than relying on priests to interpret it for them. His call for reform led to the rise of new Protestant churches independent of Rome and plunged Europe into more than a century of religious and political strife.
Spain, the most powerful bastion of orthodox Catholicism, redoubled its efforts to convert the Indians to the “true faith.” National glory and religious mission went hand in hand. Convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other religions, Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism. The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them
Four Racial Groups, taken from a series
of paintings by the eighteenth-century
Mexican artist Andrés de Islas, illustrates
the racial mixing that took place in the
Spanish empire and some of the new
vocabulary invented to describe it. First:
The offspring of a Spaniard and Indian
is a mestizo. Second: A Spaniard and a
mestiza produce a castizo. Third: The child
of an Indian and a mestiza is a coyote.
Fourth: And the child of an Indian man and
African woman is a chino.
The Virgin of Guadalupe, a symbol of
Mexican culture, in an image from 1770. She
is portrayed as the protector of the Indians.
29T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E
into obedient, Christian subjects of the crown. Indeed, lacking the later concept of “race” as an unchanging, inborn set of qualities and abilities, many Spanish writers insisted that Indians could in time be “brought up” to the level of European civili- zation. Of course, this meant not only the destruction of existing Indian political structures but also a transformation of their economic and spiritual lives.
Piety and Profit To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver that would enrich the mother country. The tension between these two outlooks would mark Spanish rule in America for three centuries. On the one hand, Spanish rulers proclaimed the goal of bringing true “freedom” to the Indians by instructing them in Christianity. Even enslaving the natives was justified as a means of liberat- ing them from their own backwardness and savagery and enabling them to become part of Christian civilization. Religious orders established missions throughout the empire, and over time millions of Indians were converted to Catholicism.
On the other hand, Spanish rule, especially in its initial period, witnessed a disastrous fall in Indian population, not only because of epidemics but also because of the brutal conditions of labor to which Indians were subjected. The conquista- dores and subsequent governors, who required conquered peoples to acknowledge the Catholic Church and provide gold and silver, saw no contradiction between serving God and enriching themselves. Others, however, did.
Las Casas’s Complaint As early as 1537, Pope Paul III, who hoped to see Indians become devout subjects of Catholic monarchs, outlawed their enslavement (an edict never extended to apply to Africans). His decree declared Indians to be “truly men,” who must not be “treated as dumb beasts.” Fifteen years later, the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
Converting Indians
Tension in the empire
A benign view of Spanish colonization.
This engraving from a 1621 book depicts
Spanish missionaries bringing Christianity
to New World natives while priests do
construction work. A fortified colonial
town is visible in the background.
30
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
published an account of the decimation of the Indian population with the compelling title A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Las Casas’s father had sailed on Columbus’s second voyage, and he himself had participated in the conquest of Cuba. But in 1514 Las Casas freed his own Indian slaves and began to preach against the injustices of Spanish rule.
Las Casas’s writings denounced Spain for causing the death of millions of innocent people. He narrated in shocking detail the “strange cruelties” carried out by “the Christians,” including the burning alive of men, women, and children and the imposition of forced labor. The Indians, he wrote, had been “totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most ter- rible servitude and captivity.” Long before the idea was common, Las Casas insisted that Indians were rational beings, not barbarians, and that Spain had no grounds on which to deprive them of their lands and liberty. “The
entire human race is one,” he proclaimed, and while he continued to believe that Spain had a right to rule in America, largely on religious grounds, he called for Indi- ans to enjoy “all guarantees of liberty and justice” from the moment they became subjects of Spain. “Nothing is certainly more precious in human affairs, nothing more esteemed,” he wrote, “than freedom.” Yet Las Casas also suggested that importing slaves from Africa would help to protect the Indians from exploitation.
Reforming the Empire Like other Spaniards, Las Casas believed that the main justification for empire was converting the Indians to Christianity. Spanish cruelty, he feared, undermined this effort. Largely because of Las Casas’s efforts, Spain in 1542 promulgated
Spanish conquistadores murdering
Indians at Cuzco, in Peru. The Dutch-born
engraver Theodor de Bry and his sons
illustrated ten volumes about New World
exploration published between 1590 and
1618. A Protestant, de Bry created vivid
images that helped to spread the Black
Legend of Spain as a uniquely cruel
colonizer.
A 1791 view of Mission San Carlos in what
is now California depicts the Indian com-
munity and a corral in the background,
while missionaries and Spanish explorers
greet each other in the foreground.
31T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E
the New Laws, commanding that Indians no longer be enslaved. In 1550, Spain abolished the encomienda system, under which the first settlers had been granted authority over conquered Indian lands with the right to extract forced labor from the native inhabitants. In its place, the government established the repartimiento system, whereby residents of Indian villages remained legally free and entitled to wages, but were still required to perform a fixed amount of labor each year. The Indians were not slaves—they had access to land, were paid wages, and could not be bought and sold. But since the requirement that they work for the Spanish remained the essence of the system, it still allowed for many abuses by Spanish landlords and by priests who required Indians to toil on mission lands as part of the conversion process. Indeed, a long struggle ensued among settlers, missionar- ies, and colonial authorities for control of Indian labor. Each party proclaimed itself a humane overlord and denounced the others for exploiting the native population.
By the end of the sixteenth century, work in the Spanish empire consisted largely of forced wage labor by native inhabitants and slave labor by Africans on the West Indian islands and a few parts of the mainland. Like all empires, Spain’s always remained highly exploitative. Over time, the initial brutal treatment of Indians improved somewhat. But Las Casas’s writings, translated almost imme- diately into several European languages, contributed to the spread of the Black Legend—the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This would provide a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World. Influenced by Las Casas, the eighteenth-century French historian Guillaume Thomas Raynal would write of Columbus’s arrival in the New World, “Tell me, reader, whether these were civilized people landing among savages, or savages among civilized people?”
Exploring North America While the Spanish empire centered on Mexico, Peru, and the West Indies, the hope of finding a new kingdom of gold soon led Spanish explorers into territory that now forms part of the United States. Juan Ponce de León, who had conquered Puerto Rico, entered Florida in 1513 in search of slaves, wealth, and a fabled fountain of youth, only to be repelled by local Indians. In 1528, another expedition seeking plunder in Florida embarked from Spain, but after a series of storms only a handful of men reached the Gulf Coast. For seven years they traversed the Southwest until a few survivors arrived in Mexico in 1536. One, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, wrote an account of his adventures, including tales told by native inhabitants (possibly to persuade the newcomers to move on) of the seven golden cities of Cibola, somewhere over the horizon.
In the late 1530s and 1540s, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast as far north as present-day Oregon, and expeditions led by Hernando de Soto, Cabeza de Vaca, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, and others marched through the Gulf region and the Southwest, fruitlessly searching for another Mexico or Peru. Coronado explored much of the interior of the continent, reaching as far north as the Great Plains, and became the first European to encounter the immense herds of buffalo that roamed the West. These expeditions, really mobile communities with
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
TABLE 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations: The Americas, ca. 1500
North America 3,800,000 Mexico 17,200,000 Central America 5,625,000 Hispaniola 1,000,000 The Caribbean 3,000,000 The Andes 15,700,000 South America 8,620,000
Total 54,945,000
TABLE 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations:
The World, ca. 1500
India 110,000,000 China 103,000,000 Other Asia 55,400,000 Western Europe 57,200,000 The Americas 54,000,000 Russia and Eastern Europe 34,000,000 Sub-Saharan Africa 38,300,000 Japan 15,400,000
World Total 467,300,000
32
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
hundreds of adventurers, priests, potential settlers, slaves, and livestock, spread disease and devastation among Indian communities. De Soto’s was particularly brutal. His men tortured, raped, and enslaved countless Indians and transmitted deadly diseases. When Europeans in the seventeenth century returned to
By around 1600, New Spain had become a vast empire stretching from the modern-day American Southwest through Mexico, Central America, and into the former Inca kingdom in South America. This map shows early Spanish exploration, especially in the present-day United States.
Mexico City
St. Augustine
Santa Fe
Roanoke
Acoma
Pi za
rro
Cort és
Ponce de León
Cabeza de Vaca
de Soto Coronado
Oñate Ca
br illo
Fort Caroline
Pueblo Revolt, 1680
PERU
H ispan io l a
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
At la ntic Ocea n
Paci f ic Ocean
0 0
500 500
1,000 miles 1,000 kilometers
Cabrillo Oñate Coronado de Soto Cabeza de Vaca Ponce de León Cortés Pizarro Extent of Incan peoples Extent of Aztec peoples
EARLY SPANISH CONQUESTS AND EXPLORATIONS
IN THE NEW WORLD
33T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E
colonize the area traversed by de Soto’s party, little remained of the societies he had encountered. Where large towns had existed, explorers found only herds of grazing bison.
Spanish Florida Nonetheless, these explorations established Spain’s claim to a large part of what is now the American South and Southwest. The first region to be colonized within the present-day United States was Florida. Spain hoped to establish a military base there to combat pirates who threatened the treasure fleet that each year sailed from Havana for Europe loaded with gold and silver from Mexico and Peru. Spain also wanted to forestall French incursions in the area. In 1565, Philip II of Spain authorized the nobleman Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to lead a colonizing expedi- tion to Florida. Menéndez destroyed a small outpost at Fort Caroline, which a group of Huguenots (French Protestants) had established in 1562 near present-day Jacksonville. Menéndez and his men massacred the 500 colonists and went on to establish Spanish forts on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and at St. Augustine, Florida. The latter remains the oldest site in the United States continuously inhabited by European settlers and their descendants.
Spanish expeditions soon established forts from present-day Miami into South Carolina, and Spanish religious missionaries set up outposts in Florida and on the Sea Islands, hoping to convert the local Indians to Christianity. Most of the forts fell into disuse, and many of the missions were destroyed by local Guale Indians in an uprising that began in 1597. The Indians explained their revolt by noting that the missionaries had sought to eliminate “our dances, banquets, feasts, celebrations, and wars. . . . They persecute our old people by calling them witches.” The missions were soon rebuilt, only to be devastated again a century later, this time by English and Indian forces from South Carolina. In general, Florida failed to attract settlers, remaining an isolated military settlement, in effect a fortified outpost of Cuba. As late as 1763, Spanish Florida had only 4,000 inhabitants of European descent.
Spain in the Southwest Spain took even longer to begin the colonization of the American Southwest. Although Coronado and others made incursions into the area in the sixteenth cen- tury, their explorations were widely considered failures, since they had discovered neither gold nor advanced civilizations whose populations could be put to work for the Spanish empire. Spain then neglected the area for another half-century. It was not until 1598 that Juan de Oñate led a group of 400 soldiers, colonists, and mis- sionaries north from Mexico to establish a permanent settlement. While searching for fabled deposits of precious metals, Oñate’s nephew and fourteen soldiers were killed by inhabitants of Acoma, the “sky city” located on a high bluff in present-day New Mexico.
Oñate decided to teach the local Indians a lesson. After a two-day siege, his forces scaled the seemingly impregnable heights and destroyed Acoma, killing more than 800 of its 1,500 or so inhabitants, including 300 women. Of the 600 Indians captured, the women and children were consigned to servitude in Spanish families, while adult men were punished by the cutting off of one foot.
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
Military base
Juan de Oñate in New Mexico
34
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
Not until the 1640s was Acoma, which had been inhabited since the thirteenth century, rebuilt. Oñate’s message was plain—any Indians who resisted Spanish authority would be crushed. But his method of rule, coupled with his failure to locate gold, alarmed authorities in Mexico City. In 1606, Oñate was ordered home and punished for his treatment of New Mexico’s Indians. In 1610, Spain established the capital of New Mexico at Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest.
The Pueblo Revolt In 1680, New Mexico’s small and vulnerable colonist population numbered less than 3,000. Most were mestizos (persons of mixed Spanish and Indian origin), since few European settlers came to the region. Relations between the Pueblo Indians and colonial authorities had deteriorated throughout the seventeenth century, as governors, settlers, and missionaries sought to exploit the labor of an Indian population that declined from about 60,000 in 1600 to some 17,000 eighty years later. Franciscan friars worked relentlessly to convert Indians to Catholicism, often using intimidation and violence. Their spiritual dedication and personal courage impressed many Indians, however, as did the European goods and technologies they introduced. Some natives welcomed them as a counterbalance to the depredations of soldiers and settlers and accepted baptism, even as they continued to practice their old religion, adding Jesus, Mary, and the Catholic saints to their already rich spiritual pantheon. But as the Inquisition—the persecution of non-Catholics—became more and more intense in Spain, so did the friars’ efforts to stamp out traditional religious ceremonies in New Mexico. By burning Indian idols, masks, and other sacred objects, the mis- sionaries alienated far more Indians than they converted. A prolonged drought that began around 1660 and the authorities’ inability to protect the villages and missions from attacks by marauding Navajo and Apache Indians added to local discontent.
The Pueblo peoples had long been divided among them- selves. The Spanish assumed that the Indians could never unite against the colonizers. In August 1680, they were proven wrong.
Little is known about the life of Popé, who became the main organizer of an uprising that aimed to drive the Spanish from the colony and restore the Indians’ traditional autonomy. A religious leader born around 1630 in San Juan Pueblo in present-day New Mexico, Popé first appears in the historical record in 1675, when he was one of forty-seven Pueblo Indians arrested for “sorcery”—that is, practicing their traditional religion. Four of the prisoners were hanged, and the rest, including Popé, were brought to Santa Fe to be publicly whipped. After this humilia- tion, Popé returned home and began holding secret meetings in Pueblo communities.
Under Popé’s leadership, New Mexico’s Indians joined in a coordinated uprising. Ironically, because the Pueblos spoke six different languages, Spanish became the revolt’s “lingua
Acoma, the “sky city,” as it appeared in
1904.
Religious tensions
35T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
franca” (a common means of communication among persons of different linguistic backgrounds). Some 2,000 warriors destroyed isolated farms and missions, killing 400 colonists, including 21 Franciscan missionaries. They then surrounded Santa Fe. The Spanish resisted fiercely but eventually had no choice but to abandon the town. Most of the Spanish survivors, accompanied by several hundred Christian Indians, made their way south out of New Mexico. Within a few weeks, a century of coloniza- tion in the area had been destroyed. From their own point of view, the Pueblo Indians had triumphantly reestablished the freedom lost through Spanish conquest.
The Pueblo Revolt was the most complete victory for Native Americans over Europeans and the only wholesale expulsion of settlers in the history of North America. According to a royal attorney who interviewed the Spanish survivors in Mexico City, the revolt arose from the “many oppressions” the Indians had suffered. The victorious Pueblos turned with a vengeance on all symbols of European culture, uprooting fruit trees, destroying cattle, burning churches and images of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and wading into rivers to wash away their Catholic baptisms. They rebuilt their places of worship, called “kivas,” and resumed sacred dances the friars had banned. “The God of the Spaniards,” they shouted, “is dead.”
Cooperation among the Pueblo peoples, however, soon evaporated. By the end of the 1680s, warfare had broken out among several villages, even as Apache and Navajo raids continued. Popé died around 1690. In 1692, the Spanish launched an invasion that reconquered New Mexico. Some communities welcomed them back as a source of military protection. But Spain had learned a lesson. In the eighteenth century, colonial authorities adopted a more tolerant attitude toward traditional religious practices and made fewer demands on Indian labor.
T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S If the Black Legend inspired a sense of superiority among Spain’s European rivals, the precious metals that poured from the New World into the Spanish treasury aroused the desire to try to match Spain’s success. The establishment of Spain’s American empire transformed the balance of power in the world economy. The Atlantic replaced the overland route to Asia as the major axis of global trade. Dur- ing the seventeenth century, the French, Dutch, and English established colonies in North America. England’s mainland colonies, to be discussed in the next chapter, consisted of agricultural settlements with growing populations whose hunger for land produced incessant conflict with native peoples. New France and New Netherland were primarily commercial ventures that never attracted large numbers of colonists. More dependent on Indians as trading partners and military allies, these French and Dutch settlements allowed Native Americans greater freedom than the English.
French Colonization The first of Spain’s major European rivals to embark on New World explorations was France. The French initially aimed to find gold and to locate a Northwest Pas- sage—a sea route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. But early French explorers
St. Anthony and the Infant Jesus, painted
on a tanned buffalo hide by a Francis-
can priest in New Mexico in the early
eighteenth century. This was not long
after the Spanish reconquered the area,
from which they had been driven by the
Pueblo Revolt.
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M
36
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
From BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS,
HISTORY OF THE INDIES (1528)
which was very frequently because they are a deli- cate people unaccustomed to such work, the Span- iards did not believe them and pitilessly called them lazy dogs and kicked and beat them; and when illness was apparent they sent them home as useless. . . . They would go then, falling into the first stream and dying there in desperation; others would hold on longer but very few ever made it home. I sometimes came upon dead bodies on my way, and upon others who were gasping and moaning in their death agony, repeating “Hungry, hungry.” And this was the freedom, the good treat- ment and the Christianity the Indians received.
About eight years passed under [Spanish
rule] and this disorder had time to grow; no one
gave it a thought and the multitude of people
who originally lived on the island . . . was con-
sumed at such a rate that in these eight years
90 per cent had perished. From here this sweep-
ing plague went to San Juan, Jamaica, Cuba and
the continent, spreading destruction over the
whole hemisphere.
Las Casas was the Dominican priest who condemned the treatment of Indians in the Spanish empire. His widely disseminated History of the Indies helped to establish the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty.
The Indians [of Hispaniola] were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fierc- est, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the fields. But our Spaniards gave no such opportunity to Indians and truly considered them perpetual slaves, since the Indians had not the free will to dispose of their persons but instead were disposed of according to Spanish greed and cruelty, not as men in captivity but as beasts tied to a rope to prevent free movement. When they were allowed to go home, they often found it deserted and had no other recourse than to go out into the woods to find food and to die. When they fell ill,
VOICES OF FREEDOM
37
Josephe was a Spanish-speaking Indian ques- tioned by a royal attorney in Mexico City investi- gating the Pueblo Revolt. The revolt of the Indian population, in 1680, temporarily drove Spanish settlers from present-day New Mexico.
Asked what causes or motives the said Indian rebels had for renouncing the law of God and obe- dience to his Majesty, and for committing so many of crimes, [he answered] the causes they have were alleged ill treatment and injuries received from [Spanish authorities], because they beat them, took away what they had, and made them work without pay. Thus he replies.
Asked if he has learned if it has come to
his notice during the time that he has been here
the reason why the apostates burned the images,
churches, and things pertaining to divine worship,
making a mockery and a trophy of them, killing
the priests and doing the other things they did,
he said that he knows and had heard it generally
stated that while they were besieging the villa the
rebellious traitors burned the church and shouted
in loud voices, “Now the God of the Spaniards, who
was their father, is dead, and Santa Maria, who was
their mother, and the saints, who were pieces of
rotten wood,” saying that only their own god lived.
Thus they ordered all the temples and images,
crosses and rosaries burned, and their function
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why does Las Casas, after describing the ill treatment of Indians, write, “And this was the freedom, the good treatment and the Christianity the Indians received”?
2. What role did religion play in the Pueblo Revolt?
3. What ideas of freedom are apparent in the two documents?
being over, they all went to bathe in the rivers,
saying that they thereby washed away the water
of baptism. For their churches, they placed on the
four sides and in the center of the plaza some small
circular enclosures of stone where they went to
offer flour, feathers, and the seed of maguey
[a local plant], maize, and tobacco, and performed
other superstitious rites, giving the children to
understand that they must all do this in the future.
The captains and the chiefs ordered that the
names of Jesus and Mary should nowhere be
uttered. . . . He has seen many houses of idolatry
which they have built, dancing the dance of the
cachina [part of a traditional Indian religious
ceremony], which this declarant has also danced.
Thus he replies to the question.
From “DECLARATION OF JOSEPHE”
(DECEMBER 19, 1681)
38
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
were soon disappointed, and North America came to seem little more than a barrier to be crossed, not a promising site for settlement or exploitation. For most of the sixteenth century, only explorers, fishermen, pirates preying on Spanish shipping farther south, and, as time went on, fur traders visited the eastern coast of North America. French efforts to establish settlements in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia failed, beset by native resistance and inadequate planning and financing. Not until the seventeenth century would France, as well as England and the Netherlands, establish permanent settlements in North America.
The explorer Samuel de Champlain, sponsored by a French fur-trading company, founded Quebec in 1608. In 1673, the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and the fur trader Louis Joliet located the Mississippi River, and by 1681 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, had descended to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire Mississippi River valley for France. New France eventually formed a giant arc along the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers.
Until 1663, when the population of European origin was fewer than 3,000, French Canada was ruled by the Company of New France through a governor- general appointed in Paris. There was no representative assembly. In that year, the French government established a new company. It granted land along the St. Lawrence River in seigneuries to well-connected nobles and army officers who would transport colonists to take their place in a feudal society. But most of the engagés, or indentured servants, returned home after their contracts expired. More than 80 percent of the migrants were men. Apart from nuns, fewer than 1,800 women (compared with more than 12,000 men) emigrated to French Canada in the seventeenth century. And during the entire colonial period, only about 250 complete families did so.
By 1700, the number of white inhabitants of New France had risen to only 19,000. With a far larger population than England, France sent many fewer emigrants to the Western Hemisphere. The government at home feared that significant emigration would undermine France’s role as a European great power and might compromise its effort to establish trade and good relations with the Indians. Unfavorable reports about America circulated widely in France. Canada was widely depicted as an icebox, a land of savage Indians, a dumping ground for criminals. Most French who left their homes during these years preferred to settle in the Netherlands, Spain, or the West Indies. The revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, which had extended religious toleration to French Protestants, led well over 100,000 Huguenots to flee their country. But they were not welcome in New France, which the crown desired to remain an outpost of Catholicism.
New France and the Indians The viability of New France, with its small white population and emphasis on the fur trade rather than agricultural settlement, depended on friendly relations with local Indians. The French prided themselves on adopting a more humane policy than their imperial rivals. “Only our nation,” declared one French writer, “knows the secret of winning the Indians’ affection.” Lacking the voracious appetite for land of the English colonies and relying on Indians to supply furs to trading posts, the French worked out a complex series of military, commercial, and diplomatic
A Native American in present-day Nova
Scotia carved this image of a European
ship on a rock. Long before explorers
and colonists descended on the area, its
residents were familiar with Europeans.
One chief, Membertou, acquired a
French ship and traded with fishermen
out at sea.
Settlement in New France
Alliances with Indians
39T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
connections, the most enduring alliances between Indians and settlers in colonial North America. They neither appropriated substantial amounts of Indian land, like the English, nor conquered native inhabitants militarily and set them to forced labor, like the Spanish. Samuel de Champlain, the intrepid explorer who dominated the early history of New France, insisted on religious toleration for all Christians and denied that Native Americans were intellectually or culturally inferior to
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
Quebec
Manhattan
Albany
New York Harbor
St
. La w
re nc
e R iv
er
Oh io R
iver
M is
sis sip
pi R
iv er
Lak e Superior
La ke
M ic
hi ga
n
Lak e E
rie
L. O ntario
L. H
uron
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Gulf of St. Lawrence
Atlantic Ocean
0
0
200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers
New France New Netherland
THE NEW WORLD—NEW FRANCE AND NEW
NETHERLAND, ca. 1650
New France and New Netherland.
40
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
Europeans—two positions that were unusual for his time. Although he occasion- ally engaged in wars with local Indians, he dreamed of creating a colony based on mutual respect between diverse peoples. The Jesuits, a missionary religious order, did seek, with some success, to convert Indians to Catholicism. But unlike Span- ish missionaries in early New Mexico, they allowed Christian Indians to retain a high degree of independence and much of their traditional social structure, and they did not seek to suppress all traditional religious practices. A product of the Counter-Reformation, through which the Catholic Church sought to combat the rise of Protestantism, the Jesuits had already established missions in Japan, China, and India, where they produced local dictionaries and translated the Bible. Their experience in Asia probably contributed to their relative success in New France.
Like other colonists throughout North America, however, the French brought striking changes in Indian life. Contact with Europeans was inevitably followed by the spread of disease. Participation in the fur trade drew natives into the burgeoning Atlantic economy, introducing new goods and transforming hunting from a search for food into a quest for marketable commodities. Indians were soon swept into the rivalries among European empires, and Europeans into conflicts among Indians. As early as 1615, the Huron of present-day southern Ontario and upper New York State forged a trading alliance with the French, and many converted to Catholicism. In the 1640s, however, after being severely weakened by a smallpox epidemic, the tribe was virtually destroyed in a series of attacks by Iroquois armed by the Dutch.
As in the Spanish empire, New France witnessed considerable cultural exchange and intermixing between colonial and native populations. On the “middle ground” of the upper Great Lakes region in French America, Indians and whites encountered each other for many years on a basis of relative equality. And métis, or children of marriages between Indian women and French traders and officials, became guides, traders, and interpreters. Like the Spanish, the French seemed willing to accept Indians as part of colonial society. They encouraged Indi- ans to adopt the European division of labor between men and women, and to speak
The middle ground
This engraving, which appears in Samuel
de Champlain’s 1613 account of his
voyages, is the only likeness of the
explorer from his own time. Champlain,
wearing European armor and brandishing
an arquebus (an advanced weapon of
the period), stands at the center of this
pitched battle between his Indian allies
and the hostile Iroquois.
Jesuits
41T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
French. Indians who converted to Catholicism were promised full citizenship. In fact, however, it was far rarer for natives to adopt French ways than for French settlers to become attracted to the “free” life of the Indians.
The Dutch Empire In 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch East India Com- pany, sailed into New York Harbor searching for a Northwest Passage to Asia. Hudson and his crew became the first Europeans to sail up the river that now bears his name. Hudson did not find a route to Asia, but he did encounter abundant fur-bearing animals and Native Americans more than willing to trade furs for European goods. He claimed the area for the Netherlands, and his voyage planted the seeds for what would eventually become a great metropolis, New York City. By 1614, Dutch traders had established an outpost at Fort Orange, near present-day Albany. Ten years later, the Dutch West India Company, which had been awarded a monopoly of Dutch trade with America, settled colonists on Manhattan Island.
These ventures formed one small part in the rise of the Dutch overseas empire. In the early seventeenth century, the Netherlands dominated international com- merce, and Amsterdam was Europe’s foremost shipping and banking center. The small nation had entered a golden age of rapidly accumulating wealth and stunning achievements in painting, philosophy, and the sciences. The Dutch invented the joint stock company, a way of pooling financial resources and sharing the risk of maritime voyages, which proved central to the development of modern capitalism. With a population of only 2 million, the Netherlands established a far-flung empire that reached from Indonesia to South Africa and the Caribbean and temporarily wrested control of Brazil from Portugal.
Dutch Freedom The Dutch prided themselves on their devotion to liberty. Indeed, in the early seventeenth century they enjoyed two freedoms not recognized elsewhere in Europe—freedom of the press and of private religious practice. Even though there was an established church, the Dutch Reformed, individuals could hold whatever religious beliefs they wished. Amsterdam had become a haven for persecuted Prot- estants from all over Europe, including French Huguenots, German Calvinists, and those, like the Pilgrims, who desired to separate from the Church of England. Jews, especially those fleeing from Spain, also found refuge there. Other emigrants came to the Netherlands in the hope of sharing in the country’s prosperity. During the seventeenth century, the nation attracted about half a million migrants from elsewhere in Europe. Many of these newcomers helped to populate the Dutch overseas empire.
Freedom in New Netherland Despite the Dutch reputation for cherishing freedom, New Netherland was hardly governed democratically. New Amsterdam, the main population center, was essentially a fortified military outpost controlled by appointees of the West India Company. Although the governor called on prominent citizens for advice from time
Henry Hudson
Dutch trade
Religious freedom
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
42
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
to time, neither an elected assembly nor a town council, the basic unit of govern- ment at home, was established.
In other ways, however, the colonists enjoyed more liberty, especially in religious matters, than their counterparts elsewhere in North America. Even their slaves possessed rights. The Dutch dominated the Atlantic slave trade in the early seventeenth century, and they introduced slaves into New Netherland as a matter of course. By 1650, the colony’s 500 slaves outnumbered those in the Chesapeake. Some enjoyed “half-freedom”—they were required to pay an annual fee to the com- pany and work for it when called upon, but they were given land to support their families. Settlers employed slaves on family farms or for household or craft labor, not on large plantations as in the West Indies.
Women in the Dutch settlement enjoyed far more independence than in other colonies. According to Dutch law, married women retained their separate legal identity. They could go to court, borrow money, and own property. Men were used to sharing property with their wives. Their wills generally left their possessions to their widows and daughters as well as sons. Margaret Hardenbroeck, the widow of a New Amsterdam merchant, expanded her husband’s business and became one of the town’s richest residents after his death in 1661.
The Dutch and Religious Toleration New Netherland attracted a remarkably diverse population. As early as the 1630s, at least eighteen languages were said to be spoken in New Amsterdam, whose residents included not only Dutch settlers but also Africans, Belgians, English, French, Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians. Of course, these settlers adhered to a wide variety of religions.
The Dutch long prided themselves on being uniquely tolerant in religious matters compared to other European nations and their empires. It would be wrong, however, to attribute modern ideas of religious freedom to either the Dutch government and company at home or the rulers of New Netherland. Both Holland and New Netherland had an official religion, the Dutch Reformed Church, one of the Protestant national churches to emerge from the Reformation. The Dutch commitment to freedom of conscience extended to religious devotion exercised in
Limits of religious toleration
A view of New Amsterdam from 1651
illustrates the tiny size of the outpost.
Slavery
Women’s rights
43T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
private, not public worship in nonestablished churches. It did not reflect a willing acceptance of religious diversity.
The West India Company’s officials in the colony, particularly Governor Petrus Stuyvesant, were expected to be staunch defenders of the Dutch Reformed Church. When Jews, Quakers, Lutherans, and others demanded the right to practice their religion openly, Stuyvesant adamantly refused, seeing such diversity as a threat to a godly, prosperous order. Under Stuyvesant, the colony was more restrictive in its religious policies than the Dutch government at home. Twenty-three Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from Brazil and the Caribbean. Referring to them as “members of a deceitful race,” Stuyvesant ordered the newcomers to leave. But the company overruled him, noting that Jews at home had invested “a large amount of capital” in its shares.
As a result of Stuyvesant’s policies, challenges arose to the limits on religious toleration. One, known as the Flushing Remonstrance, was a 1657 petition by a group of English settlers protesting the governor’s order barring Quakers from living in the town of Flushing, on Long Island. Although later seen as a landmark of religious liberty, the Remonstrance had little impact at the time. Stuyvesant ordered several signers arrested for defying his authority.
Nonetheless, it is true that the Dutch dealt with religious pluralism in ways quite different from the practices common in other New World empires. Religious dissent was tolerated—often grudgingly, as in the case of Catholics—as long as it did not involve open and public worship. No one in New Netherland was forced to attend the official church, nor was anyone executed for holding the wrong religious beliefs (as would happen in Puritan New England around the time of the Flushing Remonstrance).
Settling New Netherland In an attempt to attract settlers to North America, the Dutch West India Company promised colonists not only the right to practice their religion freely (in private) but also cheap livestock and free land after six years of labor. Eventually, it even surrendered its monopoly of the fur trade, opening this profitable commerce to all comers. Many settlers, Stuyvesant complained, had been lured by “an imaginary liberty” and did not display much respect for the company’s authority.
In 1629, the company adopted a plan of “Freedoms and Exemptions,” offering large estates to patroons—shareholders who agreed to transport tenants for agricul- tural labor. The patroon was required to purchase title to the land from Indians, but otherwise his “freedoms” were like those of a medieval lord, including the right to 10 percent of his tenants’ annual income and complete authority over law enforce- ment within his domain. Only one patroonship became a going concern, that of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, who acquired some 700,000 acres in the Hudson Valley. His family’s autocratic rule over the tenants, as well as its efforts to extend its domain to include lands settled by New Englanders who claimed that they owned their farms, would inspire sporadic uprisings into the mid-nineteenth century.
During the seventeenth century, the Netherlands sent 1 million people overseas (many of them recent immigrants who were not in fact Dutch) to populate and govern their far-flung colonies. Very few, however, made North America their
The seal of New Netherland, adopted by
the Dutch West India Company in 1630,
suggests the centrality of the fur trade
to the colony’s prospects. Surrounding
the beaver is wampum, a string of beads
used by Indians in religious rituals and as
currency.
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
Governor Stuyvesant
44
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
destination. By the mid-1660s, the European population of New Netherland numbered only 9,000. New Netherland remained a tiny backwater in the Dutch empire. So did an even smaller outpost near present-day Wilmington, Delaware, established in 1638 by a group of Dutch merchants. To circumvent the West India Company’s trade monopoly, they claimed to be operating under the Swedish flag and called their settlement New Sweden. Only 300 settlers were living there when New Netherland seized the colony in 1655.
New Netherland and the Indians The Dutch came to North America to trade, not to conquer. They were less inter- ested in settling the land than in exacting profits from it. Mindful of the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty, the Dutch determined to treat the native inhabit- ants more humanely than the Spanish. Having won their own independence from Spain after the longest and bloodiest war of sixteenth-century Europe, many Dutch identified with American Indians as fellow victims of Spanish
A map of the Western Hemisphere,
published in 1592 in Antwerp, then ruled
by Spain and now part of Belgium. It
shows North America divided between
New France and New Spain before the
coming of the English.
45S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G
oppression. They justified their imperial ambitions, in part, as an effort to liber- ate the New World from the tyranny of Spain and the Catholic Church. Initially, however, they aimed less to convert the Indian population than to employ it in the profitable fur trade.
From the beginning, Dutch authorities recognized Indian sovereignty over the land and forbade settlement in any area until it had been purchased. But they also required tribes to make payments to colonial authorities. Near the coast, where most newcomers settled, New Netherland was hardly free of conflict with the Indians. The expansionist ambitions of Governor William Kieft, who in the 1640s began seizing fertile farmland from the nearby Algonquian Indians, sparked a three-year war that resulted in the death of 1,000 Indians and more than 200 colonists. With the powerful Iroquois Confederacy of the upper Hudson Valley, however, the Dutch established friendly commercial and diplomatic relations.
Thus, before the planting of English colonies in North America, other European nations had established various kinds of settlements in the New World. Despite their differences, the Spanish, French, and Dutch empires shared certain features. All brought Christianity, new forms of technology and learning, new legal systems and family relations, and new forms of economic enterprise and wealth creation. They also brought savage warfare and widespread disease. These empires were aware of one another’s existence. They studied and borrowed from one another, each lauding itself as superior to the others.
From the outset, dreams of freedom—for Indians, for settlers, for the entire world through the spread of Christianity—inspired and justified colonization. It would be no different when, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, England entered the struggle for empire in North America.
S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G
B O O K S
Bender, Thomas. A Nation among Nations: America’s Place in World History (2006). Attempts to place American history in an international context; the opening chapters offer a global portrait of the age of exploration and conquest.
Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The American West before Lewis and Clark (2003). A comprehensive portrait of Indian life in one key region of North America.
Crosby, Alfred J. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972). Examines the flow of goods and diseases across the Atlantic and their consequences.
Elliott, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (2006). A fascinating comparison of the development of two New World empires.
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (2006). A history of explorations throughout the centuries, including those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Fischer, David H. Champlain’s Dream (2008). A lively account of Samuel de Champlain’s effort to build a French colony in North America based on toleration and mutual respect between settlers and Native Americans.
Gibson, Charles. Spain in America (1966). Surveys the history of Spain’s American empire.
Gutiérrez, Ramón A. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (1991). Discusses the changes in Indian life in New Mexico as a result of Spanish colonization.
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
Shared features of the Spanish, French, and Dutch empires
46
Chapter 1 ★ A New World
W E B S I T E S
Archive of Early American Images: www.brown.edu /academics/libraries/john-carter-brown/jcb-online/ imag-collections/archive-early-american-images
Exploring the Early Americas: www.loc.gov/exhibits /earlyamericas/
France in America: http://international.loc.gov/intldl /fiahtml/fiahome.html
Jamestown, Quebec, Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings: http://american history.si.edu/ jamestown-quebec-santafe/en/introduction
Haefeli, Evan. New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (2012). Explores the complex conditions of religious life in New Netherland.
Knaut, Andrew L. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico (1997). A recent account of the largest revolt of native peoples.
Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2005). A comprehensive portrait of life in the Western Hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans.
Parry, J. H. The Age of Reconnaissance (1981). A global history of the era of European exploration and colonization.
Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country (2001). Examines the era of exploration and settlement as viewed through the experience of Native Americans.
. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992). Describes life among one of the most important Indian groups before and after the arrival of Europeans.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S
C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S
47
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Describe why the “discovery” of America was one of the “most important events recorded in the history of mankind,” according to Adam Smith.
2. Describe the different global economies that Europeans participated in or created during the European age of expansion.
3. One of the most striking features of Indian societies at the time of the encounter with Europeans was their diversity. Support this statement with several examples.
4. Compare and contrast European values and ways of life with those of the Indians. Consider address- ing religion, views about ownership of land, gender relations, and notions of freedom.
5. What were the main factors fueling the European age of expansion?
6. Compare the different economic and political systems of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France in the age of expansion.
7. Compare the political, economic, and religious motivations behind the French and Dutch empires with those of New Spain.
8. Describe how the idea of the “Black Legend” affected subsequent policies and practices of Spain as well as those of the Netherlands and France.
9. How would European settlers explain their superiority to Native Americans and justify both the conquest of Native lands and terminating their freedom?
KEY TERMS
corn, beans, and squash (p. 6)
Tenochtitlán (p. 8)
mound builders (p. 9)
Cahokia (p. 9)
Iroquois League (p. 12)
animism (p. 12)
matrilineal societies (p. 14)
“Christian Liberty” (p. 16)
caravel (p. 19)
reconquista (p. 21)
conquistadores (p. 23)
Columbian exchange (p. 24)
mestizos (p. 27)
Ninety-Five Theses (p. 28)
Bartolomé de Las Casas (p. 29)
repartimiento system (p. 31)
Black Legend (p. 31)
Pueblo Revolt (p. 34)
engagés, or, indentured servants (p. 38)
métis (p. 40)
Flushing Remonstrance (p. 43)
patroons (p. 43)
wwnorton.com/studyspace
B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A
�
1 6 0 7 – 1 6 6 0
C H A P T E R 2
O n April 26, 1607, three small ships carrying colonists from England sailed out of the morning mist at what is now called Cape Henry into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. After exploring the area for a little over two weeks, they chose a site sixty miles inland on the James River for their settlement, hoping to protect themselves from marauding Spanish warships. Here they established Jamestown (named for the king of England) as the capital of the colony of Virginia (named for his predecessor, Elizabeth I, the “virgin queen”). But despite these bows to royal authority, the voyage was sponsored not by the English government, which in 1607 was hard-pressed for funds, but by the Virginia Company, a private business organization whose shareholders included merchants, aristocrats, and members of Parliament, and to which the queen had given her blessing before her death in 1603.
When the three ships returned home, 104 settlers remained in Virginia. All were men, for the Virginia Company had more interest in searching for gold and in other ways exploiting the area’s natural resources than in establishing a functioning society. Nevertheless, Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the area that is now the United States. The settlers were the first of tens of thousands of Europeans who crossed the Atlantic during the seventeenth century to live and work in North America. They led the way for new empires that mobilized labor and economic resources, reshaped societies throughout the Atlantic world, and shifted the balance of power at home from Spain and Portugal to the nations of northwestern Europe.
The founding of Jamestown took place at a time of heightened European involvement in North America. Interest in colonization was spurred by national and religious rivalries and the growth of a merchant class eager to invest in overseas expansion and to seize for itself a greater share of world trade. As noted in Chapter 1, it was quickly followed by the founding of Que- bec by France in 1608, and Henry Hudson’s exploration in 1609 of the river that today bears his name, leading to the founding of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. In 1610, the Spanish established Santa Fe as the capital of New Mexico. More than a century after the voyages of Columbus, the European penetration of North America had finally begun in earnest. It occurred from many directions at once—from east to west at the Atlantic coast, north to south along the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers, and south to north in what is now the American Southwest.
English North America in the seventeenth century was a place where entre- preneurs sought to make fortunes, religious minorities hoped to worship without governmental interference and to create societies based on biblical teachings, and aristocrats dreamed of re-creating a vanished world of feudalism. Those who drew up blueprints for settlement expected to reproduce the social structure with which they were familiar, with all its hierarchy and inequality. The lower orders would occupy the same less-than-fully-free status as in England, subject to laws regulat- ing their labor and depriving them of a role in politics. But for ordinary men and women, emigration offered an escape from lives of deprivation and inequality. “No man,” wrote John Smith, an early leader of Jamestown, “will go from [England] to
F O C U S Q U E S T I O N S What were the main contours of English colonization in the seventeenth century? –p. 51
What obstacles did the English settlers in the Chesapeake overcome? –p. 55
How did Virginia and Maryland develop in their early years? –p. 59
What made the English settlement of New England distinctive? –p. 65
What were the main sources of discord in early New England? –p. 71
How did the English Civil War af fect the colonies in America? –p. 79
49
Samuel de Champlain’s 1605 sketch of
Plymouth Harbor, made when he was
exploring the coast of modern-day New
England in search of a site for a French
settlement, shows the area dotted with
wigwams and fields of corn, squash, and
beans. By the time the Pilgrims arrived
in 1620, epidemics had destroyed this
thriving Indian community.
50
Chapter 2 ★ Beginnings of English America
have less freedom” in America. The charter of the Virginia Company, granted by James I in 1606, promised that colonists would enjoy “all liberties” of those residing in “our realm of England.” The settlers of English America came to enjoy greater rights than colonists of other empires, including the power to choose members of elected assemblies, protections of the common law such as the right to trial by jury, and access to land, the key to economic independence. In some colonies, though by no means all, colonists enjoyed considerably more religious freedom than existed in Europe.
Many degrees of freedom coexisted in seventeenth-century North Amer- ica, from the slave, stripped completely of liberty, to the independent land- owner, who enjoyed a full range of rights. During a lifetime, a person might well occupy more than one place on this spectrum. The settlers’ success, how- ever, rested on depriving Native Americans of their land and, in some colonies, on importing large numbers of African slaves as laborers. Freedom and lack of freedom expanded together in seventeenth-century America.
E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D Unifying the English Nation Although John Cabot, sailing from England in 1497, had been the first European since the Vikings to encounter the North American continent, English exploration and colonization would wait for many years. As the case of Spain suggests, early empire building was, in large part, an extension of the consolidation of national power in Europe. But during the sixteenth century, England was a second-rate power racked by internal disunity. Henry VII, who assumed the throne in 1485, had to unify the kingdom after a long period of civil war. His son and successor, Henry VIII, launched the Reformation in England. When the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry severed the nation from the Catholic Church. In its place he established the Church of England, or Anglican Church, with himself at the head. Decades of religious strife followed. Under Henry’s son Edward VI, who became king at the age of ten in 1547, the regents who governed the country persecuted Catholics. When Edward died in 1553, his half sister Mary became queen. Mary temporarily restored Catholicism as the state religion and executed a number of Protestants. Her rule was so unpopular that reconciliation with Rome became impossible. Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603), restored the Anglican ascendancy and executed more than 100 Catholic priests.
England and Ireland England’s long struggle to conquer and pacify Ireland, which lasted well into the seventeenth century, absorbed money and energy that might have been directed toward the New World. In subduing Ireland, whose Catholic population was
1215 Magna Carta
1584 Hakluyt’s A Discourse Concerning Western Planting
1585 Roanoke Island settlement
1607 Jamestown established
1619 First Africans arrive in Virginia
1619 House of Burgesses convenes
1620 Pilgrims found Plymouth
1622 Uprising led by Opechanca- nough against Virginia
1624 Virginia becomes first royal colony
1630s Great Migration to New England
1630 Massachusetts Bay Colony founded
1632 Maryland founded
1636 Roger Williams banished from Massachusetts to Rhode Island
1637 Anne Hutchinson placed on trial in Massachusetts
1637– Pequot War
1638
1639 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
1641 Body of Liberties
1642– English Civil War
1651
1649 Maryland adopts an Act Concerning Religion
1662 Puritans’ Half-Way Covenant
1691 Virginia outlaws English- Indian marriages
51E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D
deemed a threat to the stability of Protestant rule in Eng- land, the government employed a variety of approaches, including military conquest, the slaughter of civilians, the seizure of land and introduction of English economic practices, and the dispatch of large numbers of settlers. Rather than seeking to absorb the Irish into English society, the English excluded the native population from a territory of settlement known as the Pale, where the colonists created their own social order.
Just as the “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors estab- lished patterns that would be repeated in Spanish New World colonization, the methods used in Ireland antici- pated policies England would undertake in America. Some sixteenth-century English writers directly compared the allegedly barbaric “wild Irish” with American Indians. Like the Indians, the Irish supposedly confused liberty and license. They refused to respect English authority and resisted conversion to English Protestantism. The early English colonies in North America and the West Indies were known as “plantations” (that is, communities “planted” from abroad among an alien population); the same term was originally used to describe Protestant settlements in Ireland.
England and North America Not until the reign of Elizabeth I did the English turn their attention to North America, although sailors and adventurers still showed more interest in raiding Spanish cities and treasure fleets in the Caribbean than establishing settlements. The government granted charters (grants of exclusive rights and privileges) to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, authorizing them to establish colonies in North America at their own expense.
With little or no support from the crown, both ventures failed. Gilbert, who had earned a reputation for brutality in the Irish wars by murdering civilians and burning their crops, established a short-lived settlement on Newfoundland in 1582. Three years later, Raleigh dispatched a fleet of five ships with some 100 colonists (many of them his personal servants) to set up a base on Roanoke Island, off the North Carolina coast, partly to facilitate continuing raids on Spanish ship- ping. But the colonists, mostly young men under military leadership, abandoned the venture in 1586 and returned to England. A second group of 100 settlers, composed of families who hoped to establish a permanent colony, was dispatched that year. Their fate remains a mystery. When a ship bearing supplies arrived in 1590, the sailors found the colony abandoned, with the inhabitants evidently having moved to live among the Indians. The word “Croaton,” the Indian name for a nearby island or tribe, had been carved on a tree. Raleigh, by now nearly bankrupt, lost his enthusiasm for colonization. To establish a successful colony, it seemed clear, would require more planning and economic resources than any individual could provide.
What were the main contours of English colonization in the seventeenth century?
The Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I,
by the artist George Gower, commemo-
rates the defeat of the Spanish Armada in
1588 and appears to link it with English
colonization of the New World. England’s
victorious navy is visible through the
window, while the queen’s hand rests on
a globe, with her fingers pointing to the
coast of North America.
The Roanoke settlement
52
Chapter 2 ★ Beginnings of English America
Spreading Protestantism As in the case of Spain, national glory, profit, and religious mission merged in early English thinking about the New World. The Reformation heightened the English government’s sense of Catholic Spain as its mortal enemy (a belief reinforced in 1588 when a Spanish naval armada unsuccessfully attempted to invade the British Isles). Just as Spain justified its empire in part by claiming to convert Indians to Catholicism, England expressed its imperial ambitions in terms of an obligation to liberate the New World from the tyranny of the pope. The very first justification James I offered for the English settlement of Virginia was “propagating of the Christian religion (by which he meant Protestantism) to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.” By the late sixteenth century, anti-Catholicism had become deeply ingrained in English popular culture. Reports of the atrocities of Spanish rule were widely circulated. English translations of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s writings appeared during Elizabeth’s reign. One, using a common Protestant term for the Catholic Church, bore the title, “Popery Truly Displayed.”
Although atrocities were hardly confined to any one nation—as England’s own conduct in Ireland demonstrated—the idea that the empire of Catholic Spain was uniquely murderous and tyrannical enabled the English to describe their own imperial ambitions in the language of freedom. In A Discourse Concerning Western Planting, written in 1584 at the request of Sir Walter Raleigh, the Prot- estant minister and scholar Richard Hakluyt listed twenty-three reasons why Queen Elizabeth I should support the establishment of colonies. Among them was the idea that English settlements would strike a blow against Spain’s empire and therefore form part of a divine mission to rescue the New World and its inhabitants from the influence of Catholicism and tyranny. “Tied as slaves” under Spanish rule, he wrote, the Indians of the New World were “crying out to us . . . to come and help.” They would welcome English settlers and “revolt clean from the Spaniard,” crying “with one voice, Liberta, Liberta, as desirous of liberty and
freedom.” England would repeat much of Spain’s behavior in the New World. But the English always believed that they were unique. In their case, empire and freedom would go hand in hand.
But bringing freedom to Indians was hardly the only argument Hakluyt marshaled as England prepared to step onto the world stage. National power and glory were never far from the minds of the era’s propagandists of empire. Through colonization, Hakluyt and other writers argued, England, a relatively minor power in Europe at the end of the sixteenth century, could come to rival the wealth and standing of great nations like Spain and France.
The Social Crisis Equally important, America could be a refuge for England’s “surplus” population, benefiting mother country and emi- grants alike. The late sixteenth century was a time of social
Richard Hakluyt
An engraving by Theodor de Bry depicts
colonists hunting and fishing in Virginia.
Promotional images such as this empha-
sized the abundance of the New World
and suggested that colonists could live
familiar lives there.
Religion and imperial purpose
53E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D
crisis in England, with economic growth unable to keep pace with the needs of a population that grew from 3 million in 1550 to about 4 million in 1600. For many years, English peasants had enjoyed a secure hold on their plots of land. But in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, landlords sought profits by raising sheep for the expanding trade in wool and introducing more modern farming practices such as crop rotation. They evicted small farmers and fenced in “commons” previously open to all.
While many landlords, farmers, and town merchants ben- efited from the “enclosure” movement, as this process was called, thousands of persons were uprooted from the land. Many flooded into England’s cities, where wages fell dramati- cally. Others, denounced by authorities as rogues, vagabonds, and vagrants, wandered the roads in search of work. Their situation grew worse as prices throughout Europe rose, buoyed by the influx of gold and silver from the mines of Latin America into Spain. A pioneering study of English society conducted at the end of the seventeenth century estimated that half the population lived at or below the poverty line. The cost of poor relief fell mainly on local communities. “All our towns,” wrote the Puritan leader John Winthrop in 1629, shortly before leav- ing England for Massachusetts, “complain of the burden of poor people and strive by all means to rid any such as they have.” England, he added somberly, “grows weary of her inhabitants.”
The government struggled to deal with this social crisis. Under Henry VIII, those without jobs could be whipped, branded, forced into the army, or hanged. During Elizabeth’s reign, a law authorized justices of the peace to regulate hours and wages and put the unemployed to work. “Vagrants” were required to accept any job offered to them and could be punished if they sought to change employ- ment. Another solution was to encourage the unruly poor to leave for the New World. Richard Hakluyt wrote of the advantages of settling in America “such needy people of our country who now trouble the commonwealth and . . . commit outrageous offenses.” As colonists, they could become productive citizens, contrib- uting to the nation’s wealth.
Masterless Men As early as 1516, when Thomas More published Utopia, a novel set on an imaginary island in the Western Hemisphere, the image of America as a place where settlers could escape from the economic inequalities of Europe had been circulating in England. This ideal coincided with the goals of ordinary Englishmen. Although authorities saw wandering or unemployed “masterless men” as a danger to society and tried to force them to accept jobs, popular attitudes viewed economic dependence as itself a form of servitude. Working for wages was widely associated with servility and loss of liberty. Only those who controlled their own labor could be regarded as truly free. Indeed, popular tales and ballads romanticized the very
What were the main contours of English colonization in the seventeenth century?
William Hogarth’s well-known engraving
Gin Lane (1751) offers a satiric glimpse of
lower-class life in London. Hogarth was
particularly concerned about the abuse of
alcohol. A drunken woman allows her baby
to fall from her arms while, on the left, a
man and his wife pawn their coats, tools,
and cooking utensils for money for liquor.
Land, labor, and freedom
54
Chapter 2 ★ Beginnings of English America
vagabonds, highwaymen, and even beggars denounced by the propertied and pow- erful, since despite their poverty they at least enjoyed freedom from wage work.
The image of the New World as a unique place of opportunity, where the English laboring classes could regain economic independence by acquiring land and where even criminals would enjoy a second chance, was deeply rooted from the earliest days of settlement. John Smith had scarcely landed in Virginia in 1607 when he wrote that in America “every man may be the master and owner of his own labor and land.” In 1623, the royal letter approving the recruitment of emigrants to New England promised that any settler could easily become “lord of 200 acres of land”—an amount far beyond the reach of most Englishmen. The main lure for emigrants from England to the New World was not so much riches in gold and silver as the promise of independence that followed from owning land. Economic freedom and the possibility of passing it on to one’s children attracted the largest number of English colonists.
T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H English Emigrants Seventeenth-century North America was an unstable and dangerous environment. Diseases decimated Indian and settler populations alike. Colonies were racked by religious, political, and economic tensions and drawn into imperial wars and conflict with Indians. They remained dependent on the mother country for protec- tion and economic assistance. Without sustained immigration, most settlements would have collapsed. With a population of between 4 million and 5 million, about half that of Spain and a quarter of that of France, England produced a far larger number of men, women, and children willing to brave the dangers of emigration to the New World. In large part, this was because economic conditions in England were so bad.
Between 1607 and 1700, more than half a million people left England. North America was not the destination of the majority of these emigrants. Approximately 180,000 settled in Ireland, and about the same number migrated to the West Indies, where the introduction of sugar cultivation promised riches for those who could obtain land. Nonetheless, the population of England’s mainland colonies quickly outstripped that of their rivals. The Chesapeake area, where the tobacco- producing colonies of Virginia and Maryland developed a constant demand for cheap labor, received about 120,000 settlers, most of whom landed before 1660. New England attracted 21,000 emigrants, nearly all of them arriving before 1640. In the second part of the seventeenth century, the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) attracted about 23,000 settlers. Although the arrivals to New England and the Middle Colonies included many families, the majority of newcomers were young, single men from the bottom rungs of English society, who had little to lose by emigrating. Many had already moved from place to place in England. Colonial settlement was in many ways an extension of the migration at home of an increasingly mobile English population.
A pamphlet published in 1609 promoting
emigration to Virginia.
Surging numbers
55T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
Indentured Servants Settlers who could pay for their own passage—government officials, clergymen, merchants, artisans, landowning farm- ers, and members of the lesser nobility—arrived in America as free persons. Most quickly acquired land. In the seventeenth century, however, nearly two-thirds of English settlers came as indentured servants, who voluntarily surrendered their freedom for a specified time (usually five to seven years) in exchange for passage to America.
Like slaves, servants could be bought and sold, could not marry without the permission of their owner, were subject to physical punishment, and saw their obligation to labor enforced by the courts. To ensure uninterrupted work by female ser- vants, the law lengthened the term of their indenture if they became pregnant. “Many Negroes are better used,” complained Elizabeth Sprigs, an indentured servant in Maryland who described being forced to work “day and night . . . then tied up and whipped.” But, unlike slaves, servants could look forward to a release from bondage. Assuming they survived their period of labor, servants would receive a payment known as “freedom dues” and become free members of society.
For most of the seventeenth century, however, indentured servitude was not a guaranteed route to economic autonomy. Given the high death rate, many servants did not live to the end of their terms. Freedom dues were sometimes so meager that they did not enable recipients to acquire land. Many servants found the reality of life in the New World less appealing than they had anticipated. Employers constantly complained of ser- vants running away, not working diligently, or being unruly, all manifestations of what one commentator called their “fondness for freedom.”
Land and Liberty Access to land played many roles in seventeenth-century America. Land, English settlers believed, was the basis of liberty. Owning land gave men control over their own labor and, in most colonies, the right to vote. The promise of immediate access to land lured free settlers, and freedom dues that included land persuaded potential immigrants to sign contracts as indentured servants. Land in America also became a way for the king to reward relatives and allies. Each colony was launched with a huge grant of land from the crown, either to a company or to a private individual known as a proprietor. Some grants, if taken literally, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
Land was a source of wealth and power for colonial officials and their favorites, who acquired enormous estates. Without labor, however, land would have little value. Since emigrants did not come to America intending to work the land of others (except temporarily in the case of indentured servants), the very
What obstacles did the English settlers in the Chesapeake overcome?
An indenture (a contract for labor for
a period of years) signed by James
Mahoney, who emigrated from Ireland to
North America in 1723.
Landownership as the basis of liberty
56
Chapter 2 ★ Beginnings of English America
abundance of “free” land eventually led many property owners to turn to slaves as a workforce.
Englishmen and Indians Land in North America, of course, was already occupied. And the arrival of English settlers presented the native inhabitants of eastern North America with the greatest crisis in their history. Unlike the Spanish, English colonists did not call themselves “conquerors” (conquistadores). They wanted land, not dominion over the existing population. The Chesapeake and New England attracted more settlers than New Mexico, Florida, and New France combined, thus placing far greater pres- sure on Indian landholdings and provoking more frequent wars. The English were chiefly interested in displacing the Indians and settling on their land, not intermar- rying with them, organizing their labor, or making them subjects of the crown. The marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas, the daughter of Virginia’s leading chief, discussed below, is well known but almost unique. No such mixed marriage took place in seventeenth-century Massachusetts and only two more occurred in Virginia before the legislature outlawed the practice in 1691. The English exchanged goods with the native population, and Indians often traveled through colonial settle- ments. Fur traders on the frontiers of settlement sometimes married Indian women, partly as a way of gaining access to native societies and the kin networks essential to economic relationships. Most English settlers, however, remained obstinately separate from their Indian neighbors. Moreover, the aim of converting Indians to Christianity foundered on Indian indifference to the religious disputes that wracked
The English and Indian land
Another drawing by the artist John
White shows ten male and seven female
Native Americans dancing around a
circle of posts in a religious ritual. White
was a careful observer of their clothing,
body markings, and objects used in the
ce
