prof 3

Mr. Lawrence, Be pleased to send me

a geenteel sute of Cloaths made of superfine

broad Cloth handsomely chosen...

—George Washington, April, 26, 1763

TO

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George Whitefield preaches an outdoor sermon to a crowd of worshippers.

a.

5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL

NORTH AMERICA 1700-1780

HOW DID Indian America adapt to the new conditions created by colonization?

HOW DID the structure of colonial society differ

from European social structure?

TO WHAT extent did North America participate in the Enlightenment?

102 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

AMERICAN COMMUNITIES The Revival of Religion and Community

in Northampton JONATHAN EDWARDS, MINISTER OF THE PURITAN CHURCH IN

Northampton, a rural town on the Connecticut River in western Massachusetts, rose before his congregation and began to preach. His words were frightening: "God will crush you under his feet without mercy, He will crush out your blood and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on His garments." Such torments would continue for "millions of millions of ages," and there could be no hope of relief from hell's fires. The people needed to "have their hearts touched," Edwards believed, and he was gratified by their response to his sermon.

"Before the sermon was done," one Northampton parish- ioner later recalled, "there was a great moaning and crying through the whole house—What shall I do to be saved?—I am going to Hell!—Oh what shall I do for Christ?" Religious fervor swept through the community, and church membership increased. A few years later an even greater revival known as the Great Awakening swept through all the colonies and plunged Northampton into turmoil once again. Important underlying issues prepared the ground for these religious revivals. They reflected the tensions that had arisen in the maturing communi- ties of the colonies in which frontier opportunity was giv- ing way to class inequity.

Founded in 1654 on the site of an Algo- nquin village, Northampton had grown from the original fifty households to more than 200 by the time of the 1734 revival. The last of the community's land had been parceled out to its residents. With the French and their Indian allies barring move- ment northward, and the colony of New York to the west, there was little opportunity for young men. Few could afford to buy land at the high market prices, so they had to rely on gifts or bequests from their fathers. Meanwhile, a small elite of well-to-do families, known as the "River Gods," controlled a disproportionately large share of local real estate. From their ranks came the majority of the officials of local and county government, as well as the ministers and elders of the Puritan congregations.

By the time Edwards became pastor in 1729, the authority and influence of the church had declined greatly from the hey- day of Puritan power in the seventeenth century. In those early days, church and community had been one, but as Northamp- ton's leaders devoted their energies to the pursuit of wealth, the

fires of religious enthusiasm dimmed. The Northampton com- munity, Edwards believed, had been divided into "two parties," the rich and the envious.

Many of the town's young people faced a bleak future. The farm household was the most important economic unit, and the tight supply of real estate meant that most couples were forced to postpone marriage until they were in their late twenties. Rest- less young people of both sexes began to meet together at nightly "frolics," and pastor Edwards issued a warning about the "growth of uncleanness that has been in the land."

This group became Edwards's special constituency. It was the same everywhere throughout the British colonies. Young people in their early twenties played the most important role in the movement to restore religious enthusiasm. Reversing a long-standing tendency for women to be more active in the church, young men predominated among the reborn. Edwards and other revival preachers called for a return to the Calvinist traditions of the Puritan faith, criticizing what they saw as the growing materialism, joining the rising generation in question- ing the order of the world into which they had been born.

The revival of religion that shook communities throughout the British colonies in the mid-

eighteenth century was one of the first unify- ing events in American history. Thousands of people experienced conversion, new sects and churches sprang up, and old ones split into opposing factions. In the

town of South Hadley, near Northampton, the congregation voted to dismiss their minis-

ter, who lacked the emotional fire they desired in a preacher. When he refused to vacate his pulpit

they pulled him down, roughed him up, and threw him out the church door. According to one minister: "Multitudes were seriously, soberly, and solemnly out of their wits."

The disaffection of young people with the social and eco- nomic conditions of the mid-eighteenth century created the con- ditions for the Great Awakening, but the revival remained a religious event. The social order in Northampton was challenged, but it remained intact. The "River Gods" had always been uncom- fortable with the message Edwards preached, and when the fer- vor died down, as it inevitably did, they succeeded in voting him out The turmoil in Northampton subsided, yet the tensions remained.

INDIAN AMERICA NEW ENGLAND

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.111MIEN1111111 HOW DID Indian America adapt to

the new conditions created by

colonization?

myhishOylab Review Summary

IMAGE KEY for pages 100-101

a. A brown patterned neckcloth. b. George Whitefield preaches an outdoor

sermon to a crowd of worshippers. c. A small pile of muscovado sugar. d. A mounted moth. e. A half-loom width of oyster silk

damask of the 18 th century. f. Dried tobacco leaves. g. A merchant ship. h. A Jesuit missionary baptizing an

Indian in New France. i. A hand-colored woodcut of a settler's

log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains (Appalachians).

j. George Whitefield extends his hands over kneeling worshippers while wearing black ministerial robes in a 1770 painting by John Wallaston.

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700 - 1780 CHAPTER 5 103

NORTH AMERICAN REGIONS

A merican history too often is written as if only the British colonists really mattered. It is an error residents of the British colonies could not afford to make. Most critically, there was Indian America. In the mid-eighteenth

century Indian peoples retained their majority in North America (see Table 5.1). From the fringes of colonial societies to the native heart of the continent, thou- sands of native communities, despite being deeply affected by the spread of colo- nial cultures, remained firmly in control of their homelands.

Neither could British colonists afford to ignore their colonial competitors. North and west of the English-speaking enclaves along the Atlantic coast, French- speaking communities were clustered along the St. Lawrence and scattered down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. South and west, isolated Spanish-speaking communities of the northern Spanish borderlands stretched from Florida to Texas and on to California (see Map 5.1).

INDIAN AMERICA

After two centuries of European colonization, Indian peoples had adapted and changed. They incorporated firearms and metal tools and learned to build their homes of logs. They participated enthusiastically in the fur trade. But in the process they became dependent on European commerce.

MAP 5.1 Regions in Eighteenth-Century North America By the middle of the eighteenth century, European colonists had established a number of distinctive colonial regions in North America. The northern periphery of New Spain, stretched from Baja California to eastern Texas, then jumped to the settle- ments on the northern end of the Florida peninsula. New France was like a great crescent, extend- ing from the plantation communities along the Mississippi near New Orleans to the French colonial communities along the St. Lawrence.

WHAT STEPS did Spain take to reinforce and expand its holdings in North

America in the eighteenth century?

104 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

TABLE 5.1

Population of North America in 1750

Region

New France

New England

New York

Pennsylvania

Chesapeake

Lower South

Backcountry

Northern New Spain

Indian America

TOTAL

Population

70,000

400,000

100,000

230,000

390,000

100,000

100,000

20,000

1,500,000

2,910,000

myhistdrylab Exploring America: America and the Horse

A portrait of the Delaware chief Tishcohan by Gustavus Hesselius, painted in 1732. In his purse of chipmunk hide is a clay pipe, a common item of the Indian trade. Tishcohan was one of the Delaware leaders forced by Pennsylvania authorities into signing a fraud- ulent land deal that reversed that colony's history of fair dealing with Indians over land. He moved west to the Ohio River as settlers poured into his former homeland. Gustavus Hesselius, "Tishcohan," Native American Portrait,

1735. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Col-

lection, Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia.

Yet Indian peoples continued to assert a proud independence and demon- strated considerable skill in playing off colonial powers one against the other. In 1701 the Iroquois, allies of the British, signed a treaty of neutrality with the French. Exploiting the vulnerabilities of these two powers, the Iroquois Con- federacy became a major power broker during the first half of the eigh- teenth century. In the Lower South native peoples found similar room to maneuver between the competing interests of Britain, France, and Spain.

But native leaders confronted enormous difficulties. In the eastern por- tion of the continent the preeminent concern was the tremendous growth of the population in the British colonies and especially the movement of

settlers westward. In the 1730s and 1740s Pennsylvania abandoned its tradi- tion of fair dealing and perpetrated a series of fraudulent seizures of western

lands from the Delawares. It was a disturbing sign of things to come. Meanwhile, Indian communities continued to suffer from long-term pop-

ulation decline as the result of epidemic Old World diseases. Historical demogra- phers estimate that from a high of 7 to 10 million north of Mexico in 1500, the native population had fallen to around a million by 1800. Population loss did not affect all Indian tribes equally, however. Native peoples with a century or more of colonial contact and interaction had lost 50 percent or more of their numbers, but most Indian societies in the interior had yet to be struck by the epidemics.

Other changes offered opportunity. By the early eighteenth century, Indians on the southern fringe of the Great Plains had acquired horses from Spanish colonists in New Mexico (see Map 5.2). Horses enabled Indian hunters to exploit the buffalo herds much more efficiently. Great numbers of Indian peoples moved onto the plains during the eighteenth century, pulled by this new way of life and pushed by colonial invasions and disruptions radiating southwest from Canada and north from the Spanish borderlands. The invention of nomadic Plains Indian culture was another of the dramatic cultural innovations of the eighteenth century.

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map5.2

PLAINS CREE

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MAP 5.2 Growing Use of the Horse by Plains Indians In the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries, Spanish settlers introduced horses into their New Mex- ican colony. The horse offered the Indian peoples of the Great Plains the opportunity to create a distinctive hunting and warrior culture.

HOW DRD the spread of the horse transform Indian lifestyles?

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTER 5 4104' 105

THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS

In the mid-eighteenth century the region now known as the Sun- belt formed the periphery of the largest and most prosperous European colony on the North American continent, the viceroy- alty of New Spain, with a population of approximately 1 million Spanish-speaking inhabitants and 2 million Indians. Mexico City, the administrative capital of New Spain, was the most sophisti- cated city in the Western Hemisphere. New Spain's northern provinces of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California, however, were far removed from this sophistication. Officials who over- saw these colonies thought of them as buffer zones, protecting New Spain from the expanding empires of Spain's rivals. Com- pared to the dynamic changes going on in the English colonies, society in the Spanish borderland was relatively static.

In Florida, the oldest of the European colonies in North America, fierce fighting with the British and their Indian allies had reduced the Spanish presence to little more than the forts of St. Augustine on the Atlantic and Pensacola on the Gulf of Mexico, each surrounded by small colonized territories pop- ulated with the families of Spanish troops. In their weakened condition, the Spanish had no choice but to establish cooper- ative relations with the Creek and Seminole Indians who dom- inated the region, as well as hundreds of African American runaways who fled to Florida.

Nearly 2,000 miles to the west, New Mexico was similarly isolated from the mainstream of New Spain. In 1750 New Mex- ico included some 20,000 Pueblo Indians (their numbers greatly reduced by disease) and perhaps 10,000 mestizo colonists. The prosperity of these colonists, who supported themselves with subsistence agriculture, was severely limited by a restrictive colonial economic policy that required them to exchange their wool, pottery, and buffalo hides for imported goods at unfavorable rates. But unlike the population of Florida, that of colonial New Mexico was gradually expand- ing, as settlers left the original colonial outposts along the upper Rio Grande to follow the valleys and streams leading north and east.

Concerned about the expansion of other colonial empires, the Spanish founded several new northern outposts in the eighteenth century. French activ- ity in the Mississippi Valley prompted authorities to establish a number of military posts or presidios on the fringes of Louisiana and in 1716 to begin the construc- tion of a string of Franciscan missions among the Indian peoples of Texas. By 1750 the settlement of San Antonio had become the center of a developing fron- tier province known as Tejas (Texas). New colonial outposts were also founded west of New Mexico in what is today southern Arizona. In the 1690s, Jesuit missionar- ies built missions among the desert Indians of the lower Colorado River and Gila River Valleys and introduced cattle herding.

In 1769, acting on rumors of Russian expansion in the north Pacific (for a discussion of Russian America, see Chapter 9), officials in Mexico City ordered Gas- par de Portold, governor of what is today Baja California, to establish a Spanish pres- ence along the Pacific coast to the north. With Portola were Franciscan missionaries

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106 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

A mounted Soldado de Cuera (Leather- Coated Soldier), a watercolor by Ramon

de Murillo, c. 1803. Thick leather coats

offered protection from Indian arrows for

the cavalry posted to the northern fron- tiers of eighteenth-century New Spain.

led by Junipero Serra, president of the missions in Baja. At the harbor of San Diego their company, composed of some 200 men, founded the first mission and presidio in present-day California. Over the next fifty years the number of Califor- nia settlements grew to include twenty-one missions and a half-dozen presidios and pueblos (towns).

The Spanish plan for California called for converting the natives to Catholicism, subjecting them to the rule of the crown, and putting them to work raising the subsistence necessary for a small civil and military establishment that would hold the province against colonial rivals. The first contacts between Franciscans and natives were not encouraging, but numerous native families were attracted by offerings of food and clothing, by new tools and crafts, and by fascination with the spiritual power of the newcomers. Gradually the Span- ish built a flourishing local economy based on irrigated farming and livestock raising.

Indians were not forced to join the missions, but once they did so they were not permitted to leave. The Franciscan missionaries resorted to cruel and some- times violent means of controlling their Indian subjects, including shackles, soli- tary confinement, and whipping posts. Resistance developed early. In 1775, the natives at San Diego rose up and killed several priests, and over the years several other missions experienced similar revolts. But Spanish soldiers suppressed the uprisings. Another form of protest was flight. Soldiers hunted the runaways down and brought many back. Aggressive tribes in the hills and deserts, however, often proved even more threatening than the Spanish, so many Indians remained at the missions despite the harsh discipline. Overwork, inadequate nutrition, over- crowding, poor sanitation, and epidemic disease contributed to death rates that exceeded birthrates. During the period of the mission system, the native popula- tion of coastal California fell by 74 percent.

Throughout the Spanish borderlands the Catholic Church played a dom- inant role in community life. The object of colonization, one colonial promoter wrote in 1584, was "enlarging the glorious gospel of Christ, and leading the infi- nite multitudes of these simple people that are in error into the right and per-

QUICK REVIEW

Spanish Colonies

• Mexico City was the capital of New Spain.

• Conflict with Indians and the British reduced the Spanish pres- ence in Florida.

• New Mexico was isolated from the mainstream of New Spain.

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTER 5 107

The Church of San Xavier del Bac, constructed in the late eighteenth century, is located a few miles south of the city of Tucson, where Jesuit Father Eusebio Kino founded a mission among the

Pima Indians in 1700. Known as the White Dove of the Desert, it is acclaimed as the most strik-

ing example of Spanish colonial architecture in the United States.

fect way of salvation." Although these were the words of the English imperialist Richard Hakluyt, they could as easily have come from a Jesuit missionary in New France or the Spanish padres Kino or Serra. There was no tradition of religious dissent.

THE FRENCH CRESCENT

In France, as in Spain, church and state were closely interwoven. During the seven- teenth century the chief ministers to the French monarchy, Cardinal Richelieu and his successor Cardinal Mazarin, laid out a fundamentally Catholic imperial policy, and under their guidance colonists constructed a second Catholic empire in North America. In 1674 church and state collaborated in establishing the bishopric of Quebec, which founded local seminaries, oversaw the appointment and review of priests, and laid the foundation of the resolutely Catholic culture of New France. Jesuit missionaries, meanwhile, continued to carry Catholicism deep into the continent.

The French sent few colonists to New France, but by natural increase the pop- ulation rose from less than 15,000 in 1700 to more than 70,000 by 1750. The French used their trade and alliance network to establish colonies, military posts, and settle- ments that extended in a great crescent from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River

southwest through the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico (see Map 5.3). The great port and fortress of Louisbmtrg on Ile Royale (Cape Breton Island) was built to guard the northern approach to New France. The south- ern approach was protected by French troops at the port of New Orleans in Louisiana. Between these two points, the French laid a thin colonial veneer. By the middle of the century, the French were ascending the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers, placing mis- sionaries and traders in Indian communities on the fringe of the Great Plains.

At the heart of the French empire in North America were the communities of farmers or habitants that stretched along the banks of the St. Lawrence between the provincial capital of Quebec and the fur trade center of Montreal. There were

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Fort St. Louis ■

Louisbourg.

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Kahnawake

Missouri,

ikhokia Kaskask

108 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

CANADA

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atchez

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ar• w Orleans

Fort Frontenac

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MAP 5.3 The French Crescent The French empire in North America was based on a series of alliances and trade relations with Indian nations linking a great crescent of colonies, settlements, and outposts that extended from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River to the Gulf of Mexico.

WHAT GEOGRAPHIIC rationale might have been behind French deci- sions to convert native peoples to Catholic Christianity?

also farming communities in the Illinois country, supplying wheat to sugar plan- tations in Louisiana. By the 1750s, those plantations, extending along the Missis- sippi from Natchez and Baton Rouge to New Orleans, had become the most profitable French enterprise in North America.

Among the most distinctive French stamps on the North American land- scape were the "long lots" stretching back from the rivers, providing each settler a share of good bottomland to farm and frontage on the waterways, the "interstate

QUICK REVIEW

The French in North America

• Few French colonists.

• French empire in North America centered on St. Lawrence River.

• Distinctive "long lots."

• Close ties between Indians and French.

The persistence of French colonial long lots in the pattern of modern

landholding is clear in this enhanced satellite photograph of the

Mississippi River near New Orleans. Long lots, the characteristic form

of property holding in New France, were designed to offer as many

settlers as possible a share of good bottomland as well as a frontage

on the waterways, which served as the basic transportation network.

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTER 5 109

highway system" of the French Crescent. Long lots were laid out along the Mississippi River in Louisiana and Illinois and at the strategic passages of the Great Lakes. Detroit, the most impor- tant of those, was a stockaded town with a military garrison, a small administrative center, several stores, a Catholic church, and 100 households of mitis (French for mestizo) families. Farmers worked the land along the Detroit River, not far from communities inhabited by several thousand Indians from the Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Huron tribes.

Communities of this sort, combining both European and native American elements, were in the tradition of the inclusive frontier. Detroit had much of the character of a mixed commu- nity. Family and kinship were cast in the Indian pattern, yet the people focused their activities on commerce and overwhelm- ingly identified themselves as Catholics.

NEW ENGLAND

Just as New Spain and New France had their official church, so too did the inhabitants of New England. Rather than the centralized authority of the Catholic hierarchy, however, com- munities in New England (except Rhode Island) were gov- erned by Puritan congregations. Adult male church members constituted the freemen of the town, so there was very little distinction between religious and secular authority. At the town meeting the freemen chose their minister, voted on his salary, and elected local men to offices ranging from town clerk to animal warden.

The Puritan tradition was a curious mix of freedom and repression. Although local communities had considerable auton- omy, they were tightly bound by the religious restrictions. The Puritans had not come to America to create a society where religion could be freely practiced but in order to establish their own version of the "right and perfect way." Puritan authorities banned and exiled Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, and other dissidents. Between 1659 and 1661 four Quakers were executed for proselytizing.

Soon after the last of these executions King Charles II, newly placed on the throne, ordered a stop to religious persecution in Massachusetts. Several years later Roger Williams, whose Rhode Island colony had no established religion, made one of the first formal arguments for religious toleration. The new climate of opinion was best expressed by English political philosopher John Locke in "A Letter Con- cerning Tolerance," written in 1689. Churches were voluntary societies, Locke argued, and could gain genuine converts only through persuasion. The state, he asserted, had no legitimate concern with religious belief. That same year Parlia-

ment passed The Act of Toleration, granting religious freedom to Protestant dis- senters (but not to Catholics). It was at first resisted by New England Puritans, but in 1700, under pressure from English authorities, Massachusetts and Connecticut reluctantly permitted other Protestant denominations to meet openly.

By then New Englanders were less concerned with religious conformity than with the problem of land. As population grew, groups of residents left established towns, "hiving off" to form new congregations and towns elsewhere. By the 1730s, Puritan communities had taken up most of the available land of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, leaving only a few isolated reservations for small

The Act of Toleration Act passed in 1661 by King Charles II ordering a stop to religious persecution in Massachusetts.

110 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

This view of the Philadelphia waterfront, painted about 1720, conveys the

impression of a city firmly anchored to maritime commerce. The long narrow canvas was probably intended for dis-

play over the mantel of a public room.

Peter Cooper, "The South East Prospect of the City of

Philadelphia," ca. 1720. The Library Company of

Philadelphia.

communities of Pequots, Narragansets, and Wampanoagas. New England had reached the limit of its land supply.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES

New York featured one of the most ethnically diverse populations on the continent. At midcentury, society along the lower Hudson River, including the counties in northern New Jersey, was a veritable mosaic of ethnic communities. African Amer- icans, both slave and free, constituted more than 15 percent of the population of the lower Hudson. Puritan, Baptist, Quaker, and Catholic congregations wor- shiped without legal hindrance, and in New York City, several hundred Jewish families built North America's first synagogue in 1730.

Although New York City grew by leaps and bounds in the eighteenth century, the colony as a whole was less attractive to immigrants than neighboring Pennsyl- vania. The region along the Delaware River—encompassing not only Pennsylva- nia but New Jersey, Delaware, and the northern portion of Maryland—grew more dramatically than any other in North America during the eighteenth century. Immigration played the dominant role in achieving the astonishing annual growth rate of nearly 4 percent. With access to some of the best farmland in North Amer- ica, farmers and merchants were soon exporting abundant produce through the prosperous port at Philadelphia.

The Quakers quickly became a minority, but unlike the Puritans they were generally comfortable with religious and ethnic pluralism. This was a perspective well suited to the ethnically and religiously diverse population of the colony. Most German immigrants were Lutherans or Calvinists, most North Britons were Pres- byterians, and there were plenty of Anglicans and Baptists as well.

The institutions of government were another pillar of community organi-

zation. Colonial officials appointed justices of the peace who provided judicial authority for the countryside. Property-owning farmers chose their own local officials. Country communities were bound together by kinship bonds as well as economic relations between neighbors. These communities were more loosely bound than those of New England. Because land was sold in individual lots rather than in communal parcels, farmers tended to disperse themselves over the open countryside. Villages gradually developed at crossroads and ferries but with little forethought or planning.

THE BACKCOUNTRY

By 1750 Pennsylvania's exploding population had pushed beyond the first range of the Appalachian highlands (see Map 5.4). Settlers moved southwest, through western Maryland and down the valley of the Shenandoah River into western Vir- ginia (see Seeing History).

A Plan of an American New Cleared Farm

p atrick Campbell, a Scottish gentleman traveler, included this plate in the account of his tour

of the American backcountry, published in 1793. The illustration provides a composite view

of the raw frontier farms he visited, entirely typical of the eighteenth century. Note the way the

pioneers hacked out their farms from the forest, leav-

HOW DOES the presence of Indians in this ing stumps standing in the fields. See how they image contradict the popular view of frontier life? fenced their fields to keep out livestock, which were

allowed to forage freely. The engraving illustrates

four different types of fencing: plain log (marked 4), worm fence made of split poles (5), post-

and-rail (6), and Virginia rail fence of crossed stakes (7). The use of wood from the abundant for-

est was an essential economic strategy. Campbell was notably free of the prejudice of many British

visitors to the frontier, but he could not disguise his scorn of pioneer cabins, which he described

as "miserable little hovels covered with bark." He included one of them in the engraving (14), one

of the first illustrations of a log cabin to appear in print. Also notable here are the Indian canoes,

one poled by a man, the other paddled by two women with what Campbell's note mistakenly

labels a "Babose." Campbell made the entire trip with his own hunting dog, seen in the front of

the canoe on the left. Note also the wonderful little "Indian dog" (15). ■ Patrick Campbell, Travels in the Interior Inhabited Parts of North America (1793).

111111111.m.-

111

I

Areas settled by 1720

Areas settled by 1760

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map5.4

vs. uyerior

NEW ENGLAND

NEW YORK

4'

UPPER

0 SOUTH

LOWER SOUTH

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

0 300 mi

Gulf of Mexico

MAP 5.4 Spread of Settlement: Movement into the Backcountry, 1720-60 The spread of settlement from 1720 to 1760 shows the movement of

population into the backcountry during the midcentury.

HOW DID the movement into the backcountry affect the

relations among colonists, Indians, and English authorities?

112 ,,41111,1 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

generally located o

The movement into the Pennsylvania and Virginia back- country that began during the 1720s was the first of the great pioneer treks that would take white pioneers into the conti- nental interior. Many, perhaps most, of these pioneers held no legal title to the lands they occupied. They simply hacked out and defended squatter's claims from native proprietors and all other comers. To the Delawares and Shawnees, who had been pushed into the interior, or the Cherokees, who occupied the Appalachian highlands to the south, these set- tlers presented a new and deadly threat. Rising fears and resentments over this expanding population triggered much eighteenth-century violence.

THE SOUTH

The Chesapeake and the Lower South were triracial societies, with intermingled communities of white colonists and black slaves, along with substantial Indian communities living on the fringes of colonial settlement. Much of the population growth of the region resulted from the forced migration of enslaved Africans, who by 1750 made up 40 percent of the population. Specializing in rice, tobacco, and other commercial crops, these colonies were overwhelmingly rural. Farms and plantations were dispersed across the countryside, and villages or towns were few.

English authorities established the Church of England as the state religion in the Chesapeake colonies. Residents paid taxes to support the church and were required to attend ser- vices. No other churches were allowed into Virginia or Mary- land (despite its founding by Catholics) and dissenters were excluded or exiled. Yet the Anglican establishment was inter- nally weak. It maintained neither a colonial bishop nor local institutions for training clergy.

Along the rice coast, the dominant social institution was the large plantation. Transforming the tangle of woods and swamps along the region's rivers into an ordered pattern of dams, dikes, and flooded fields required heavy capital investment. Consequently, only men of means could under- take rice cultivation. By midcentury established rice planta- tions typically were dominated by a large main house,

n a spot of high ground overlooking the fields. Nearby, but a world apart, were the slave quarters, rough wooden cabins lining two sides of a muddy pathway near the outbuildings and barns.

Because tobacco, unlike rice, could be grown profitably in small plots, the Chesapeake included a greater variety of farmers and a correspondingly diverse land- scape. The poorest farmers lived in wooden cabins little better than the shacks of the slaves. More prosperous farm families lived with two or three slaves in houses that nev- ertheless were considerably smaller than the substantial homes of New England.

Compared to the Lower South, where there was almost no community life outside the plantation, the Chesapeake boasted well-developed neighborhoods con- structed from kinship networks and economic connections. The most important community institution was the county court, which held both executive and judicial power. The gentleman justices of the county, appointed by the governor, included

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTER 5 113

the heads of the elite planter families. These men in turn selected the grand jury, composed of substantial freeholders. One of the most significant bonding forces in this free white population was a growing sense of racial solidarity in response to the increasing proportion of African slaves dispersed throughout the neighborhoods.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PATTERNS

D espite important similarities among the colonial regions of North Amer- ica, during the eighteenth century the trajectory of the British colonies began to diverge sharply from that of the French and Spanish. Immi-

gration, economic growth, and provincial political struggles all pushed British colonists in a radically new direction.

THE PERSISTENCE OF TRADITIONAL CULTURE IN THE NEW WORLD

In each of the regional North American societies, family and kinship, the church, and the local community were the most significant factors in everyday life. Every- where colonists tended to live much as people had lived in European homeland communities at the time the colonies were settled. The residents of New Mexico, Quebec, and New England continued to be attached to the religious passions of the seventeenth century long after their mother countries had put those religious controversies aside in favor of imperial geopolitics. Nostalgia for Europe helped to fix a conservative colonial attitude toward culture.

These were oral cultures, depending on the transmission of information by the spoken rather than the printed word, on the passage of traditions through oral story and song. North American colonial folk cultures, traditional and suspicious of change, preserved an essentially medieval worldview. The rhythms of life were regulated by the hours of sunlight and the seasons of the year. People rose with the sun and went to bed soon after sundown. The demands of the season determined their working routines. They farmed with simple tools, and drought, flood, or pesti- lence might quickly sweep away their efforts. Experience told them that the natural

world imposed limitations within which men and women had to learn to live. These were also communal cultures. In Quebec, villagers worked side by

side to repair the roads. In New Mexico they collectively maintained the irriga- tion ditches. In New England they gathered in town meetings to decide the dates when common fields were to be plowed, sowed, and harvested. Houses offered little privacy, with families often sleeping together in the same chamber, sitting together on benches rather than in chairs, and taking their supper from a com- mon bowl or trencher. For most North American colonists of the mid-eighteenth century, the community was more important than the individual.

Most colonists continued the traditional European occupation of working the land. The majority of North American farmers grew crops and raised livestock for their own

needs or for local barter, and communities were largely self-sufficient. Most farmers attempted to produce small surpluses as well, which they sold to pay their taxes and buy some manufactured goods. But rather than specializing in the production of one or two crops for sale, most farmers diversified production in order to remain as indepen- dent of the market as possible. The primary goal was ownership of land and the assur-

ance that children and descendants would be able to settle on lands nearby. Colonial cities, by contrast, were centers of commerce. Artisans and crafts-

men worked at their trades full time, organizing themselves according to the European craft system. A young man who wished to pursue a trade served several

=11111.1111= HOW DID the structure of colonial

society differ from European social

structure?

myhistehlab Review Summary

3-15 Peter Kalm, A Swedish Visitor Tells about Philadelphia (1748)

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11 4 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

A spinner and carpenter from The Book of Trades, an eighteenth-century British survey of the crafts practiced in colonial America. In colonial cities, artisans organized themselves into the traditional European craft system with apprentices, journeymen, and masters. There were few opportunities for the employment of women outside the household, but women sometimes earned income by establishing sidelines as midwives or spinners.

years as an apprentice, working in exchange for learning the skills and secrets of the craft. After completing his apprenticeship, the young craftsman sought employ- ment in a shop, often necessitating his migration to some other area, thus becom- ing a "journeyman." Most craftsmen remained at the journeyman level for the whole of their careers. But by building a good name and carefully saving, a jour- neyman hoped to become a master craftsman, opening his own shop and employ- ing journeymen and apprentices of his own. As in farming, the ultimate goal was independence.

There were few opportunities for women outside the household. By law, hus- bands held managerial rights over family property, but widows received support in the form of a one-third lifetime interest, known as "dower," in a deceased hus- band's real estate (the rest of the estate being divided among the heirs). And in certain occupations, such as printing (which had a tradition of employing women), widows succeeded their husbands in business. As a result, some colonial women played active roles in eighteenth-century journalism.

QUICK REVIEW

Key Aspects of Early Colonial Culture

• Family and kinship.

• Church and religion.

• Local community.

QUICK REVIEW

Population Growth

• 1700: 290,000 colonists north of Mexico.

• 1750: 1.3 million colonists north of Mexico.

• High fertility rates fueled popula- tion growth.

5-1 Benjamin Franklin,

Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c. (1751)

P o p

u la

t io

n (

in t

h o

u s a n

d s

)

4000 —

3000—

2000—

1000

Figure 5.1 Estimated Total Population of New Spain, New France,

and the British North American Colonies, 1700-1780

Although the populations of all three North American colonial

empires grew in the eighteenth century, the explosive growth of

the British colonies was unmatched.

Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,

1976), 1168.

4146 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1 700-1 7 80 CHAPTER 5 115 c

THE FRONTIER HERITAGE

The colonial societies of eighteenth-century North America also shared a set of

assumptions originating in their common frontier heritage. European colonists came from Old World societies in which land was scarce and monopolized by prop- erty-owning elites. They settled in a continent where, for the most part, land was abun- dant and cheap. The widespread and general expectation of property ownership was the most important cultural distinction between North America and Europe.

This expectation led to rising popular demands in all the colonial regions of the continent that land be taken from the Indian inhabitants and opened to colo- nial settlement. The majority of colonists—whether British, Spanish, or French— endorsed the violence directed against Indian peoples as an essential aspect of colonial life. This attitude was as true of inclusive as exclusive societies, with the dif- ference that in the former, native peoples were incorporated into colonial society, while in the latter, tribes were pushed from the frontier.

American historians once tied the existence of this "free land" directly to the development of democracy. But the frontier heritage encouraged the popu- lar acceptance of forced labor, a system that was anything but democratic. When asked how to achieve a good living, a woman of eighteenth-century South Car- olina offered the following advice: "get a few slaves and beat them well to make them work hard." Labor was the key to prosperity, and it was in short supply throughout the colonies. In a land where free men and women could work for themselves on their own plot of ground, there was little incentive to work for wages. The use of forced labor was one of the few ways a landowner could secure an agricultural workforce.

More than half the immigrants to eighteenth-century British America arrived as indentured servants. Agents paid for the Atlantic crossing of poor immigrants in exchange for several years of service in America. But at the conclu- sion of their indentures, eighteenth-century servants enjoyed con- siderably more opportunity than their seventeenth-century counterparts, probably because of the rise in overall prosperity in the British colonies.

POPULATION GROWTH AND IMMIGRATION

All the colonial regions of North America experienced unprece- dented growth in the eighteenth century. "Our people must at least be doubled every twenty years," Benjamin Franklin wrote in a remarkable 1751 essay on population, and he was nearly right. In 1700, there were 290,000 colonists north of Mexico; fifty years later they had grown to approximately 1.3 million, an average annual growth rate of about 3 percent. Preindustrial societies typ- ically grew at rates of less than 1 percent per year.

High fertility and low mortality played important roles. Colo- nial women typically bore seven or more children during their child- bearing years. And blessed with an abundance of food, colonists enjoyed generally good health and relatively low mortality.

But the British colonies grew far more rapidly than those of France or Spain (see Figure 5.1). It was immigration that made the difference. Fearful of depleting their population at home, the Spanish severely limited the migration of their own subjects and absolutely forbade the immigration of foreigners. Dedicated to keeping their colonies exclusively Catholic, the French ignored

the desire of Protestant Huguenots to emigrate, instead sending thousands of

Catholic engages to Canada, most of whom returned, discouraged by the climate

and the lack of commercial opportunity. But the English dispatched an estimated

400,000 of their own countrymen to populate their North American colonies dur-

ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Moreover, the British were the only

colonial power to encourage the immigration of foreign nationals.

Trans-Atlantic migration made for colonies characterized by extraordinary

ethnic diversity (see Map 5.5 and Figure 5.2). First there were the Africans, the

largest group to come to North America in the colonial period, larger even than

the English. Forced relocation brought an estimated 600,000 to the colonies before

the official end of the slave trade to the United States in

1807. Then there was the massive emigration from the

northern British Isles. Squeezed by economic hardship, an

estimated 150,000 Highland Scots and Protestant Irish from

the Ulster region of northern Ireland (known as the "Scots-

Irish") emigrated in the eighteenth century. German speak-

ers were next in importance, at least 125,000 of them

settling in the colonies. It is worth noting once again that

a majority of these immigrants to British North America

came as bonded servants or slaves.

Boston

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116 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

Engages Catholic immigrants to New France.

Encomienda In the Spanish colonies, the grant to a Spanish

settler of a certain number of

Indian subjects, who would pay him

tribute in goods and labor.

3-7 William Byrd II, Diary—An American Gentleman (1709)

NEW HAmPsHittf

\ RHODE ISLAND

CONNECTICUT • New York

NEW JERSEY

• Philadelphia

DELAWARE

MARYLAND

ATLANTIC OCEAN

NORTH CAROLINA

SOUTH CAROLINA

I I I I

English and Welsh

Scots, Scots-Irish

Dutch

German and Swiss

African (slaves)

MAP 5.5 Ethnic Groups in Eighteenth-Century British North America The first federal census, taken in 1790, revealed remarkable ethnic diversity. New Eng-

land was filled with people from the British Isles, but the rest of the

colonies were a patchwork. Most states had at least three different ethnic

groups within their borders.

Ili WHAT areas were Scots and Scots-Irish most heavily

concentrated? Why?

SOCIAL CLASS

In New France, landowning seigneurs (lords) claimed priv-

ileges similar to those enjoyed by their aristocratic coun-

terparts at home; the Spanish system of encomienda and

the great manors created by the Dutch and continued by

the English along the Hudson River also represented

attempts to transplant European feudalism to North Amer-

ica. But because settlers in most areas had relatively free

access to land, these monopolies proved difficult or impos-

sible to maintain. North American society was not aristo-

cratic in the European fashion, but neither was it without

social hierarchy.

In New Spain the official criterion for status was racial purity. Espanoles (Spaniards), also known as gente de razon (literally, "people of reason"), occupied the top rung of

the social ladder, with mestizos, mulattoes, and others on

descending levels, with Indians and African slaves at the

bottom. In the isolated northern borderlands, however,

such distinctions tended to blur, with castas (persons of

mixed background) enjoying considerably more opportu-

nity. Mestizos who acquired land might suddenly be reclas-

sified as espaiioles. Even so, Spanish and French colonial

societies were cut in the style of the Old World, with its

hereditary ranks and titles.

In the British colonies the upper class was made

up of large landowners, merchants, and prosperous pro-

fessionals. Despite the lack of titles, wealthy planters and

merchants of the British colonies lived far more extrav-

agantly than the seigneurs of New France or the dons of

the Spanish borderlands. What separated the culture of

117 CHAPTER 5

1700

Dutch Scots (4%) (3%) African

(11%)

Other (2%)

Scots-Irish (5%)

Irish (3%)

Scots (7%)

Dutch (3%)

German (7%)

1790

African (19%)

Figure 5.2 The Ancestry of the British Colonial Population

The legacy of eighteenth-century immigration to the British colonies was a population of unprecedented ethnic diversity.

Thomas L. Purvis, The European Ancestry of the United States Popu- lation," William and Mary Quarterly 61 (1984): 85-101.

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

class in the British colonies from that of New France or New Mexico was not so much the material conditions of life as the prevailing attitude toward social rank. In the Catholic cultures, the upper class attempted to obscure its origins, claiming descent from European nobility. But British North America celebrated social mobility. The class system was remark- ably open, and the entrance of newly successful planters, commercial farmers, and merchants into the upper ranks was not only possible but also common.

There was also a large and impoverished lower class in the British colonies. Slaves, bound servants, and poor laboring families made up 40 percent or more of the population. For them the standard of living did not rise above bare subsistence. American slaves stood apart from the gains in the standard of living enjoyed by immigrants from Europe. Their lives in America had been degraded beyond measure from the conditions that had prevailed in their native lands.

The feature of the class system most often commented on by eigh- teenth-century observers was not the character or composition of the lower ranks, but rather the size and strength of the middle class, a rank entirely absent in the colonies of France and Spain. More than half the population of the British colonies, and nearly 70 percent of all white set- tlers, might have been so classified. Most were landowning farmers of small to moderate means, but the group also included artisans, craftsmen, and small shopkeepers. Households solidly in the center of this broad ranking enjoyed a standard of living higher than that of the great major- ity of people in England and Europe.

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

One of the most important differences among North American colonial regions in the eighteenth century was the economic stagnation of New France and New Spain compared with the impressive economic growth of the British colonies. Weighed down by royal bureaucracies and regulations, the commu- nities of the French Crescent and New Spain never evidenced much prosperity. In eighteenth-century British North America, by contrast, per capita production grew at an annual rate of 0.5 percent. As economic growth increased the size of the economic pie, most middle- and upper-class British Americans began to enjoy improved living conditions. Improving standards of living and open access to land encouraged British colonists to see theirs as a society where hard work and savings could translate into prosperity.

At the same time, economic growth produced increasing social inequality. In the commercial cities, for example, prosperity was accompanied by a concen- tration of assets in the hands of wealthy families. The general standard of living may have been rising, but the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. The greatest concentrations of wealth occurred in the cities and in regions dominated by commercial farming, whether slave or free, while the greatest economic equal- ity was found in areas of self-sufficient farming.

Another eighteenth-century trend, however, stymied upward economic mobil-

ity in the countryside. As population grew and as generations succeeded one another in older settlements, all the available land eventually was taken up. Under the pressure of increased demand, land prices rose beyond the reach of families of modest means. And as a family's land was divided among the heirs of the sec- ond and third generations, parcels became ever smaller and more intensively

QUICK REVIEW

Poverty in the Colonies

• Gap between rich and poor widened in the eighteenth century.

• Most cities had workhouses or shelters.

• Much smaller percentage of pop- ulation depended on public assis- tance in the colonies than in England.

An eighteenth-century genre painting from New Spain show- ing various racial castas, the result of ethnic mixing.

118 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

farmed. Eventually, the soil was exhausted. There were increases in the number of landless poor, as well as the disturbing appearance of what were called the "strolling poor," homeless people who traveled from town to town looking for work or simply a handout.

COLONIAL POLITICS

The administration of the Spanish and French colonies was highly centralized. Although local communities had informal independence, these highly bureaucratized and centralized governments left little room for the development of vigorous traditions of self-government.

The situation in the British colonies was quite different. During the early eighteenth century the British government of Prime Min- ister Robert Walpole assumed that a decentralized administration would best accomplish the nation's economic goals. With the excep- tion of Connecticut and Rhode Island, both of which retained their charters and continued to choose their own governors, the colonies were administered by royally appointed governors. But taxation and spending continued to be controlled by elected assemblies. The right to vote was restricted to men with property. Yet the proportion of adult white males who qualified approached 50 percent in the British colonies, considerably higher in New England, considerably lower in some southern jurisdictions.

That did not mean that the colonies were democratic. The basic principle of order in eighteenth-century British culture was the ideal of deference to natural hierarchy. The common metaphor for civil order was the well-ordered family, in which children were strictly gov- erned by their parents, wives by their husbands. Members of subor- dinate groups, such as women, non-English immigrants, African American slaves, servants, and Indians, were not allowed to vote or hold public office. Moreover, for the most part, the men who did vote nearly always chose wealthy landowners, planters, or merchants to serve as their leaders. Consequently, provincial assemblies were controlled by colonial elites.

Yet over the century there was an important trend toward stronger institutions of representative government. By midcentury most colonial assemblies in British North America had achieved con- siderable power over provincial affairs, sharing authority with gover- nors. They collected local revenues and allocated funds for government programs, asserted the right to audit the accounts of public officers, and in some cases even acquired the power to approve the appointment of provincial officials. Because the assemblies con- trolled the finances of government—the "purse strings"—most royal governors were unable to resist this trend.

The royal governors who were most successful at realizing their agendas were those who became adept at playing one provincial fac- tion off against another. All this had the important effect of school- ing the colonial elite in the art of politics—not democratic politics, but the politics of patronage, coalition-building, and behind-the- scenes intrigue. This would have important implications for the devel- opment of American institutions.

3-8 Manners and Etiquette in the Eighteenth Century (1748)

4- 1 John Peter Zenger and the Responsibility of the Press (1734)

3-5 Cotton Mather, Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689)

Enlightenment Intellectual movement stressing the importance of reason and the existence of discoverable natural laws.

Almanac A combination calendar, astrological guide, and sourcebook of medical advice and farming tips.

THE CULTURES 'OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700 - 1780 CHAPTER 5 119

THE CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION

OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA

I nspired by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century revolution in scientific thought represented by giants such as Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, intellectuals in Europe and Great Britain became advocates for the

power of human reason rather than spiritual revelation or mystical illumination as the sole way of discovering natural law. They sought to establish an authorita- tive canon of logic, ethics, and aesthetics, as well as political philosophy.

The Catholic Church banned the works of hundreds of rationalist thinkers whose opinions were considered threats to the authority of faith. In New Spain and

New France colonial officials worked diligently to suppress such challenging ideas and writings. Cultural censorship in the French and Spanish colonies was effec- tive because literacy was confined to a tiny minority of elite men. In the British colonies, by contrast, literacy was widespread. British colonial officials made little attempt at cultural censorship, and as a result these new ideas sparked a cultural

transformation in eighteenth-century British North America.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CHALLENGE

The Enlightenment is a simple label for a complex movement encompassing many different thinkers with many different ideas. But Enlightenment writers shared some things in common. They were optimistic about the ability of the rational human mind to discover the natural laws that were thought to govern the physi- cal world and human affairs. Coupled with their commitment to reason was their belief in progress.

Such thinking was most attractive to the British colonial elite, families expe- riencing rising prosperity. This group had good reason to believe in progress. They sent their sons to colonial colleges, the focal point for the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas. The curricula of these colleges, modeled on those of Oxford and Cambridge in England, were designed to train ministers, but grad- ually each institution changed to curricula influenced by Enlightenment thinking.

The tastes of ordinary readers ran to traditional rather than Enlightenment fare. By the mid-eighteenth century there were more than twenty newspapers in the British colonies. These papers did not employ reporters but instead depended on official government announcements, travelers' and correspondents' reports, and articles reprinted from other sources. Most literate people had access to them, and they were often read aloud in local taverns, making their information avail- able to all within hearing.

The best-selling book of the colonial era, not surprisingly, was the Bible. But in second place was a unique American literary form, the captivity narrative. The

genre originated with the appearance of The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682), Mary Rowlandson's tale of her captivity among Indians during King Philip's War.

Another popular literary genre was the almanac, a combination calendar, astro-

logical guide, sourcebook of medical advice, and farming tips that largely reflected

the concerns of traditional folk culture. A mixture of traditional and Enlightenment views characterized the thinking of

many colonial intellectuals. Boston minister Cotton Mather offers a good example. A conservative defender of the old order, Mather wrote of the existence of witches and supported the executions during the Salem witchcraft crisis (see Chapter 3). Yet he

=11111.1111.....111.11= TO WHAT extent did North

America participate in the

Enlightenment?

myhist6 lab Review Summary

120 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

was also a member of the Royal Society (Great Britain's national academy of science),

a defender of the Copernican sun-centered model of the universe, and an early sup-

porter of inoculation against smallpox.

A DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS DEVOTION

As Enlightenment thinking gradually gained in popularity, religious commitment seemed to decline. In the South, by the 1730s, only one adult in fifteen was affil- iated with a church. The Anglican establishment in the Chesapeake and the Lower South was institutionally feeble, its ministers uninspiring, and many families

"unchurched." Puritan churches in New England also suffered declining membership and

falling attendance. By the second decade of the eighteenth century only one in five New Englanders belonged to an established congregation. And among the

churched, an increasing number began to question the Calvinist theology of election, the belief that salvation was the result of God's sovereign decree, that only a small number of men and women would be the recipients of God's grace. Many turned instead to the view that people had a natural ability to accept God's grace by developing their faith and doing good works. It became a force at Har- vard and Yale in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and soon a generation of ministers with more liberal ideas were taking positions in New England churches. Their ideas appealed to the same men and women attracted to Enlightenment thinking, those experiencing rising prosperity and social improvement. Among ordinary people in the countryside, however, especially among those in commu- nities with narrowing opportunities, there was a good deal of opposition to these unorthodox ideas.

THE GREAT AWAKENING

• The first stirrings of a movement challenging the rationalist approach to reli- gion occurred during the 1730s, most notably in the revival sparked by Rev. Jonathan Edwards in the community of Northampton. Similar revivals soon broke out in other New England communities, as well as among German Luther- ans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians in Pennsylvania. Not all the revivalists were Calvinists. Some promoted a theology that emphasized human choice. But the common thread was a complaint of "spiritual coldness," of ministers whose ser- mons read like rational dissertations. People clamored for preaching that was

more emotional. These local revivals became an intercolonial phenomenon thanks to the

preaching of George Whitefield, an evangelical Anglican minister from England, who in 1738 made the first of several tours of the colonies. By all accounts, his preaching had a powerful effect. Even Benjamin Franklin, a religious skeptic, wrote of the "extraordinary influence of his oratory" after attending an outdoor service in Philadelphia where 30,000 people crowded the streets to hear him preach. Whitefield began as Edwards did, chastising his listeners as "half animals and half devils," but he parted company from Edwards by leaving them with the hope that God would be responsive to their desire for salvation. Whitefield avoided sectarian differences. "God help us to forget party names and become Christians

in deed and truth," he declared. This widespread colonial revival of religion, which later generations called

the Great Awakening, was an American version of the second phase of the Protestant Reformation (see Chapter 2). Religious leaders condemned the lax-

04 3-16 Jonathan Edwards, A Puritan

Preacher Admonishes His Flocks (1741)

myhistsiiylab Exploring America: The Great Awakening

QUICK REVIEW

The Great Awakening

♦ Opposition to rationalist approach to religion grew in the 1730s.

♦ Jonathan Edwards focused his atten- tion on inspiring young people.

▪ Movement spread throughout the colonies.

Calvinist theology of election Belief that salvation was the result of God's sovereign decree and that few people would receive God's grace.

Great Awakening North American religious revival in the middle of the eighteenth century.

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTER 5 121

ity, decadence, and bureaucracy of established Protestantism and sought to reinvigorate it with renewed piety and purity. People undergoing the economic and social stresses of the age, unsure about their ability to find land, marry, and partic- ipate in the promise of a growing economy—like those in Northampton—found relief in religious enthusiasm.

Among Presbyterians, open conflict broke out between the revivalists and the old guard, and in some regions the church hierarchy divided into separate organizations. In New England, where these factions were known as the New Lights and the Old Lights, the two sides accused each other of heresy. New Lights railed against liberal theol- ogy as a "rationalist heresy" and called for a revival of Calvinism. Old Lights condemned emotional enthusiasm as a "lawless heresy," the belief in a personal and direct relationship with God outside the order of the church. Itinerant preachers appeared in the countryside, stirring up trouble. Many congregations split into feuding factions, and ministers found themselves challenged by their newly awakened parishioners. Never had there been such turmoil in New England churches.

The revivals began somewhat later in the South, first developing in the mid-1740s, reaching full impact in the 1760s. They affected not only white Southerners but also for the first time introduced many slaves to Christianity. Bap- tist churches of the South in the era of the American Revolution included mem- bers of both races and featured spontaneous preaching by slaves as well as masters. In the nineteenth century white and black Christians would go their separate ways, but the joint experience of the eighteenth-century Awakening shaped the religious cultures of both groups.

Many other "unchurched" colonists were brought back to Protestantism by revivalism. But a careful examination of statistics suggests that the propor- tion of church members in the general population did not increase during the middle decades of the century. While the number of churches more than doubled from 1740 to 1780, the colonial population grew even faster, increas- ing threefold. The greatest impact was on families already associated with con- gregations. Before the Awakening, attendance at church had been mostly an adult affair, but throughout the colonies the revival of religion had its deep- est effects on young people, who flocked to church in greater numbers than ever before. For years the number of people experiencing conversion had been steadily falling but now full membership surged. Church membership previously had been concentrated among women, leading Cotton Mather, for one, to speculate that perhaps women were indeed more godly. But men were particularly affected by the revival of religion, and their attendance and mem- bership rose.

George Whitefield (who, contemporaries noted, was cross-eyed) enjoyed a remarkable career as a powerful preacher on both sides of the Atlantic. This portrait shows him preaching indoors to a rapt audience. During his tour of the colonies, Whitefield reportedly had a similar effect on crowds of thousands who gathered outdoors to hear his sermons.

John Wollaston, "George Whitefield" ca. 1770. By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

New Lights People who experienced conversion during the revivals of the Great Awakening.

Old Lights Religious faction that condemned emotional enthusiasm as part of the heresy of believing in a personal and direct relationship with God outside the order of the church.

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122 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

THE POLITICS OF REVIVALISM

Revivalism appealed most of all to groups that felt bypassed by the economic and cul- tural development of the British colonies during the first half of the eighteenth cen- tury. The New Lights tended to draw their greatest strength from small farmers and less prosperous craftsmen. Many members of the upper class and the comfortable "middling sort" viewed the excesses of revivalism as indications of anarchy, and they became even more committed to rational religion.

Revivalism sometimes had political implications. In Connecticut, for exam- ple, Old Lights politicized the religious dispute by passing a series of laws in the General Assembly designed to suppress revivalism. In one town, revivalists refused to pay taxes supporting the established church and were jailed. Judges sympathetic to New light views were thrown off the bench, and others were denied their elected

seats in the assembly. The arrogance of these actions was met with popular outrage: by the 1760s the Connecticut New lights had organized themselves politically and, in what amounted to a political rebellion, succeeded in turning the Old Lights out of office. New Light politicians would provide the leadership for the American Rev-

olution in Connecticut. Such direct connections between religion and politics were rare. There can

be little doubt, however, that for many people revivalism offered the first oppor- tunity to participate actively in public debate and public action that affected the direction of their lives. Choices about religious styles, ministers, and doctrine were thrown open for public discourse, and ordinary people began to believe that their

Baptism by Full Immersion in the Schuylkill River of Pennsylvania, an engraving by Henry Dawkins

illustrating events in the history of American Baptists, was published in Philadelphia in 1770.

With calls for renewed piety and purity, the Great Awakening reinvigorated American Protestantism. The Baptists preached an egalitarian message, and their congregations in the

South often included both white and black Protestants.

Henry Dawkins, "Baptismal Ceremony Beside the Schuykill." Engraving, 1770. John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTERS 123

CHRONOLOGY

1636 Harvard College founded 1732 Franklin begins publishing Poor Richard's Almanac 1674 Bishopric of Quebec established 1738 George Whitefield first tours the colonies 1680s William Penn begins recruiting settlers from the 1740s Great Awakening gets under way in the Northeast

European continent 1740 Parliament passes a naturalization law for the 1682 Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness colonies

of God 1746 College of New Jersey (Princeton University) Toleration Act passed by Parliament 1689 founded

1690s Beginnings of Jesuit missions in Arizona 1760s Great Awakening achieves full impact in the South 1693 College of William and Mary founded 1769 Spanish colonization of California begins 1700s Plains Indians begin adoption of the horse 1775 Indian revolt at San Diego 1701 Yale College founded; Iroquois sign treaty of

neutrality with France 1781 Los Angeles founded

1716 Spanish begin construction of Texas missions

opinions actually counted for something. Underlying the debate over these issues were insecurities about warfare, economic growth, and the development of colo- nial society. Revivalism empowered ordinary people to question their leaders, an experience that would prove critical in the political struggles to come.

CONCLUSION

B y the middle of the eighteenth century a number of distinct colonial re- gions had emerged in North America, all of them with rising populations demanding that more land be seized from the Indians. Some colonies at-

tempted to ensure homogeneity, whereas others embraced diversity. Within the British colonies, New England in particular seemed bound to the past, whereas the

middle colonies and the backcountry pointed the way toward pluralism and ex- pansion. These developments placed them in direct competition with the expan- sionist plans of the French and at odds with Indian peoples committed to the

defense of their homelands. The economic development of the British colonies introduced new social and

cultural tensions that led to the Great Awakening, a massive revival of religion

that was the first transcolonial event in American history. Beginning in small com- munities like Northampton, Massachusetts, the revivals affected thousands of peo- ple, leading to a renewal of religious passions. Rather than resuscitating old traditions, however, the Awakening seemed to point people toward a more active

role in their own political futures. Those transformations added to the differences between the British colonies, on the one hand, and New Spain and the French Cres-

cent on the other.

124 CHAPTER 5 THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780

REVIEW QUES IONS 1. What were the principal colonial regions of North America? Discuss their

similarities and their differences. Contrast the development of their politi-

cal systems.

2. Why did the Spanish and the French close their colonies to immigration? Why did the British open their colonies? How do you explain the ethnic homogeneity of New England and the ethnic pluralism of New York and Pennsylvania?

3. What were the principal trends in the history of Indian America in the

eighteenth century?

4. Discuss the development of class differences inthe Spanish, French, and British colonies in the eighteenth century.

5. Discuss the effects of the Great Awakening on the subsequent history of the British colonies.

KEY TERMS myhistckylab Flashcard Review

The Act of Toleration (p. 109) Almanac (p. 119) Calvinist theology of election (p. 120) Encomienda (p. 116) Engages (p. 116)

Enlightenment (p. 119) Great Awakening (p. 120) New Lights (p. 121) Old Lights (p. 121)

](COMMENDED READING Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1 776 (2000). A history that

emphasizes the diversity, economic prosperity, participatory politics, and religious pluralism of the eighteenth-century British colonies.

Edward Countryman, Americans: A Collision of Histories (1996). An important syn- thesis that includes the many peoples and cultures of North America.

W. J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (1983). An introduction to the history of French America by a leading scholar of colonial Canada.

David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1990) . An engaging history with fascinating details on the regions of New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the backcountry.

Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1986). A distillation of a tremendous amount of historical material on community life in British North America.

Frank Lambert, Inventing the "Great Awakening" (1999). Argues that the revivialists themselves created the idea of the Great Awakening to further their evangeli- cal work.

m hist lab yWhere Its a good time to connect 'to the past!

THE CULTURES OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA, 1700-1780 CHAPTER 5 125

Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (1965). A clas- sic study of colonial social structure, with statistics, tables, and enlighten- ing interpretations.

George Marsden, onathan Edwards: A Life (2005). A new and comprehensive biog- raphy that emphasizes Edwards's work as both a pastor and an intellectual.

Martha McCollough, Three Nations, One Place: A Comparative Ethnohistory of Social Change Among the Comanches and Hasinais During Spain's Colonial Era,

1689-1821 (2004). A detailed study of change and innovation among na- tive peoples of the Great Plains during the eighteenth century.

Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Hods, and Mining in the

Western Great I nkes, 1737-1832 (2000). Demonstrates the success of Indian communities in adapting to colonialism through the diversification of their economies, intermarriage, and constructing multiethnic communities.

James A. Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (2004). A balanced treatment of missionaries and natives in eighteenth-

and nineteenth-century California.

David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992). A magnificent

treatment of the entire Spanish borderlands from Florida to California. Includes important chapters on colonial government and social life.

Marianne S. Wokeck, Trade in Strangers: The Beginning of Mass Migration to

North America (1999). The first important study of immigration in the eighteenth century, arguing that these migrations served as models for European mass migration of the next century.

For study resources for this chapter, go to www.myhistorylab.com and choose Out of Many, Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition. You will fmd a wealth of study and review material for this chapter, including pretests and posttests, customized study plan, key-term review

flash cards, interactive map and document activities, and documents for analysis.