HIST 1305 Essay -

Models of Settlement

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2i—:IO CONTENTS English Colonial Societies

1590-1710 i

2.1 The Chesapeake Colonies p. 36

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mlmi Theodore de Bry's 1619 engraving, The Chickahominy Become "New Englishmen," from his book America, portrays treaty negotiations between Virginia Indians and the English. Captain Samuel Argali, the Englishman negotiating the treaty, sits on a mat with a tribal elder. Another tribal leader ™1| addresses his people, informing them about the terms of the treaty, which -% % was meant to promote trade and peace between the English and the Virginia' 5 Indians. As the engraving title, which refers to the Chickahominy as "New 5

Englishmen," suggests, the English insisted that Indian tribes submit to English rule and accept the English king as their lord. By contrast the Indians; - believed that negotiating a treaty with the English did not mean that they had given up control of their own political affairs. These differing visions j of diplomacy led to conflict between Native Americans and English settlers f throughout the seventeenth century.

At the dawn of the 1600s, England trailed far behind Spain and France| in the race to exploit the wealth of the Americas. By 1700, however, England had become a formidable colonial power in both North America i and the Caribbean. In contrast to Spain and France, whose colonization f efforts relied on active support from the monarchy and church, England's .1 first efforts to colonize America relied on joint stock companies, which were privately financed commercial ventures. The two great early Englishÿ experiments in colonization, in Virginia and New England, faced many ’ challenges in their early years, including how to deal with local Indian pop-

2.2 New England p. 42

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Colonies p. 49

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2,4 The Restoration Era and the Proprietary Colonies p. 52

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IS ulations. The solution for the English was not simply rendering the Indians T politically subservient to the king, but also segregating themselves from the Indians whenever possible.

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2.5 The Crises of the Late Seventeenth Century p. 56

Relations between settlers and Indians complicated colonial politics for most of the seventeenth century. Bacon's Rebellion (1676), a popular upris- , ing in Virginia triggered by colonists' conflict over Indian policy, shook jjr the foundations of the colony. In New England persistent conflict between . Indians and settlers exacerbated existing social and economic tensions and contributed to the worst outbreak of witchcraft accusations in colonial 1mmm America, the Salem witchcraft hysteria (1692). The reassertion of political J control by England, whose Glorious Revolution (1688) contributed to the2,8 The Whig Ideal and

the Emergence of emergence of a new, more stable colonial world, helped facilitate the reso- Political Stability p. 61 lution of the witchcraft crisis. In the years to come, colonists would often

invoke the political and constitutional ideas of the Glorious Revolution to

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"Our first work is expulsion of the savages to gain the free range of the country ... for it is infinitely better to have no heathen among us, who at best are but thorns in our side,

than to be at peace and league with them." Virginia Governor FRANCIS WYATT, 1623-1624

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36 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710 mm HHHHHHH

The Chesapeake Colonies2.1 The failure of the Roanoke colony in Virginia (see Chapter 1) between 1585 and 1590 was only a temporary setback for English colonial projects in America. Less than two decades later, a new group of English settlers established a colony, Jamestown, in the Chesapeake Bay area of what is now Virginia. Although the early history of Jamestown was fraught with problems,

the colony eventually began to prosper. Tobacco agriculture provided a strong financial incentive to expand into the wider Chesapeake region. By the 1630s, Lord Baltimore had developed an ambitious plan to found another colony in the region, Maryland.

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2.1 The Founding of Jamestown

the nearby estuary contaminated the wells the colonists dug to supply fresh drinking water. In addition, poor drainage meant the colonists' own waste occasionally contaminated the water supply. Many settlers died within a year of disembarking.

The Virginia Company's promotional pamphlets (2.1) deceptively cast Virginia as an "earthly paradise" that would offer opportunities for the settlers to become rich. Almost one-third of the early settlers were gentlemen who were unprepared for the arduous life in Virginia and who viewed manual labor as undignified. Believing that vast troves of mineral wealth existed in the region, settlers wasted time searching for gold and silver instead of planting crops or repairing fortifications. Dissension and a lack of firm political leadership also undermined the colony.

Relations between the settlers and the powerful Powhatan Indian confederacy began amicably. Chief Powhatan, the ruler of the confederacy, was eager to trade with the English and acquire manufactured goods, especially firearms and metal tomahawks (a type of hatchet). Powhatan had also hoped to use the English as allies against rival Indian tribes. However, once the Indians realized

that the English were not temporary visitors merely interested in trade, but were intending to settle permanently in the region, relations between the two peoples deteriorated.

In dealing with the Indians, Virginians applied the same principles that the English had developed in the conquest of Ireland: expelling the local

population and limiting contact with them as much as possible. The English failed to grasp basic rituals of hospitality and gift giving, essential to

establishing cordial relations with Indian peoples. -• Whereas the French and Spanish encouraged marriage between male settlers and Indian

women, the English discouraged such unions. This

Joint stock companies charted by King James I (r. 1603-1625) funded the English colonial enterprises. Investors bought shares in the company and at the end of a specified period received their investment back plus a percentage of the profits. In April 1606, the king issued a charter to the Virginia Company of London to create a colony in America. In late December 1606, three ships set sail for the Chesapeake, arriving off the coast of Virginia in May 1607. The first settlers were a motley assortment of men; no women traveled on this first voyage. The settlers named the new settlement Jamestown, in honor of King James.

"Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases, as swellings, Fluxes, Burning fevers and by wars, and some departed

suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine."

GEORGE PERCY, colonist, 1607

The colonists scouted a location secure from

possible Spanish attack, but still accessible to the sea. They built a fortified palisade to protect them from possible attacks by hostile Indians and Spanish ships. Unfortunately, the site they chose turned out to be a public health disaster. On the edge of a swamp, Jamestown was a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes and the pathogens

they carried, including malaria. Salt water from

2.1 THE CHESAPEAKE COLONIES 37

his role as a romantic hero who saved Jamestown from disaster.

The events Smith described in his account almost

certainly did not take place as he described them. However,Smith was likely captured and eventually adopted into the tribe, and Pocahontas, then a young girl, may indeed have taken part in the adoption ritual. Among some Eastern Woodland Indian tribes, capture and in some cases ritual torture, followed by adoption into the tribe, was one means of conducting diplomacy. Once adopted into the tribe, prisoners became political intermediaries.

Although prone to inflate his achievements, Smith, an experienced soldier who had fought with the French and Dutch against Spain in the 1590s and then against the Muslim Turks in the early 1600s, played a decisive role in helping the colony avert disaster. In 1608, he negotiated an exchange of goods for food with Indians that helped stave off starvation. Smith's reforms may have staved off immediate catastrophe, but they did not prevent enormous suffering and high mortality during the difficult winter of 1609-1610, known as the "starving time." The colonists were so pressed for food that some even resorted to cannibalism to survive the winter. In his history of Virginia, Smith wrote about the "starving time." Smith reported, with a macabre sense of humor, that one man "did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was knowne," adding "but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of."

In 1609, Smith returned to England. After his departure the hostility between the English and the Indians intensified. In 1613, Captain Samuel Argali led a party of Virginians on a mission to capture Pocahontas, whom Indians and Englishmen now knew by her adult name of Matoaka. The English hoped that by holding her hostage they could force her people to sign a peace treaty. For more on this episode, see Choices and Consequences: The Ordeal of Pocahontas, page 38.

Why did Jamestown turn out to be such a poor choice for a permanent settlement?

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2.1 Virginia Promotional Literature

The Virginia Company produced pamphlets that promoted the riches to be had by settling in Virginia.

marriage taboo not only deprived the colony of a means of establishing friendly relations between the two peoples but also deprived the colonists of cultural go-betweens who could have smoothed out conflicts and misunderstandings.

Among the most enduring myths associated with Jamestown and the English settlers' relations with the Indians is the tale of Pocahontas. Settler- soldier John Smith's tale of how a beautiful Indian girl saved his life is a foundational myth in American history, one that later writers often cast in romantic terms: an American Romeo-

and-Juliet story of love at first sight between a beautiful Indian "princess" (a term straight from

aristocratic culture) and a dashing English officer. Smith's published account of his time in

Virginia helped create this mythology. Smith took considerable liberties with the truth, highlighting

2.1.2 Tobacco Agriculture and Political Reorganization

Jamestown had barely survived the "starving time," when the population dropped from between 500 and 600 to 60. Although the colony held on,

38 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

Choices and Consequences THE ORDEAL OF POCAHONTAS Desperate to force the local Powhatan Indians to negotiate a peace treaty, English settlers embarked on an audacious plan.They abducted a local Powhatan Indian woman they knew as Pocahontas, whose adult Indian name was Matoaka, hoping to force her people to accept a peace treaty. Her kidnappers took her to Henrico, a heavily fortified settlement upriver from Jamestown.The plan was to isolate her from her people.The English placed Matoaka in the household of a minister, who instructed her in the English language and customs and began indoctrinating her in Christianity. At the weekly prayer meetings hosted by the minister, she met John Rolfe, an influential Englishman recently widowed. Within a year of her abduction, Matoaka was baptized a Christian and had adopted a new English name, Rebecca. John Rolfe proposed marriage to the newly Christianized woman. Matoaka now faced three options.

Choices

Remain a captive among the English,until her people negotiated for her freedom.

Attempt to escape. Marry Rolfe, and through that marriage help her peopie forge an alliance with the Virginians.

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Decisionft ftA Matoaka chose to marry John Rolfe. Two years after their marriage, the couple

journeyed to England, where, she became something of a celebrity and was even introduced at court,

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Marrying Rolfe gained Matoaka (Rebecca) her freedom. In her new role as the-Wife. Of a high-status Englishman, ihijbecame a mediator between her peopie and tbs English. Indeed, had she not’become ill and died' within a year after arriving in England, she might have been able to expand this important role,

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Painting of Matoaka/Rebecca done during her stay in England

Continuing Controversies How do Indian conceptions of gender roles help explain Pocahontas’s decision to marry?

Scholars have suggested different explanations for her decision.

Contemporary accounts built on John Smith’s description of his heroic rescue by "the Kings most dear and well- beloved daughter,”

Nineteenth century accounts fit the story into a romantic and somewhat nationalistic tale of early American history, The most [email protected] perhaps most persuasive explanation of ;§ar conversion and marriage to Jiffi Rolfe builds on insights from an ethnocultural or anthropological-understanding of Indian culture, This body of scholarship acknowledges the key role of women as ouityfal intermediaries in Indian diplomacy. By creating ties of km to bind potentially wafting nations in a blood bond, marriage served an important diplomatic function. Withfits .explanation, rather than viewing her decision as a slight to her Indian heritage, one can see her decision as likely having increased her status with her tribe by allowing her to assume an important diplomatic role in relations With the English,

2.1 THE CHESAPEAKE COLONIES 39

colony's economic salvation: Profits from its sale created a boom in the colony, which then led its inhabitants to devote nearly every acre of land to the "sot weed." Exports increased dramatically in the decades following the introduction of the crop. Although tobacco agriculture made some Virginians wealthy, the pursuit of profits diverted time and other resources from basic tasks, such as planting food crops and repairing buildings. As a result of this neglect, settlers in boom-time Virginia continued to die at an alarming rate.

Establishing political order in Virginia proved far more difficult than the founders of the colony had expected. In 1618, Sir Edwin Sandys became the Virginia Company of London's treasurer and instituted reforms to make the government of the colony more effective. A key reform was the creation of a representative body to make laws. The privilege of voting for representatives was

it had not yet found a profitable commodity that " ’ould make it economically viable. John Rolfe

solved this problem by introducing tobacco into the Virginia colony. Experimenting with various strains of tobacco, Rolfe finally settled on a variety that had been successfully cultivated in the Caribbean. Tobacco was all the rage in Europe, a

fact reflected in this humorous painting showing a group of monkeys in a tavern eagerly consuming tobacco (2.2). Playing on the popular notion that monkeys have a great capacity for imitation, the artist ridicules the consumption of tobacco as a bad habit all too easily emulated. Smoking tobacco for pleasure became popular among all classes in European society. Tobacco was also believed to have many medicinal uses; it was recommended as a cure for colds and an aid to digestion.

Rolfe sent his first consignment of tobacco to England in 1613. Tobacco proved to be the

2.2 The Smoking Room with Monkeys

Artist Abraham Teniers mocked the popularity of smoking, substituting monkeys for humans in this raucous tavern scene. In European art, monkeys often symbolized the baser instincts of humankind.

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40 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

extended to free men of property, who were to elect representatives who would then enact laws for the colony. Virginia's new legislative body, the House of Burgesses (representatives), first convened in July 1619. Rather than take orders from company officials, the colonists gained some control over their own political affairs, a milestone in the evolution of representative government in America.

Because laborers continued to be scarce in

Immigrants continued to arrive in Virginia despite the high mortality rates. Approximately two-thirds of the settlers died in the next three years. Deteriorating relations with local Indian communities reached a crisis point in 1622, when Powhatan's successor launched an assault on the colony that killed 347 colonists. The sensational attack inspired this engraving (2.3), which appeared in England six years later. To contrast the imagined civility of the colonists and the alleged barbarism of the Indians, the engraver includedVirginia, Sandys also introduced a new system to

provide incentives to attract settlers. The headright inaccurate details, including tablecloths and a system encouraged additional immigrants by giving 50 acres to anyone who would pay his own fare to Virginia and 50 additional acres for each person he brought with him. The year 1619 also marked the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia. An English pirate vessel flying under a Dutch flag sold the Africans, captured from a Portuguese slaving ship in the Caribbean, to the Virginia colonists.

European-style walled city in the distance. Two years after the attack, King James revoked

the colony's charter. Now the king, not the Virginia Company of London, would appoint the governor. Eventually the king recognized the House of Burgesses, giving his royal sanction to the colonists' efforts at self-rule. Virginia had become England's first royal colony.

What important political reforms did Sir Edwin Sandys implement in 1618?

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2.1 THE CHESAPEAKE COLONIES 41

produced a society that was driven by the profit motive. Tobacco production rose dramatically in the mid-seventeenth century, with exports from Virginia to England growing from over 10,000 pounds in the first years of production and export to well over a million pounds by the end of the 1630s. Attracting laborers to work in the tobacco fields proved difficult. Indentured servants, individuals who contracted to be servants for a specified number of years, usually four to seven years, provided an important source of labor. Employers paid for the voyage of their indentured servants to the colonies and clothed and fed them while they remained bound to their employer. At the end of the term of service, employers usually gave their indentured servants clothes and tools and allowed them to set out on their own. African slaves provided another source of labor, but slavery was not yet the dominant labor system in the region, and slavery had not yet hardened into a fixed status. A few slaves did eventually obtain their freedom.

Most planters preferred men for the arduous work of growing tobacco, so immigrants to the Chesapeake society were overwhelmingly male. Scholars estimate that before 1640, men out¬ numbered women by as much as six to one. The lopsided sex ratio meant that the few women who

migrated to the region and managed to survive the high mortality rates enjoyed considerable control over their decision to marry. Since women often outlived their husbands, a fortunate woman could make several favorable matches during her life and create a sizable estate. By 1700, as food supplies, sanitation, and shelter all improved, more children were bom in the region, more women migrated there, and sex ratios became less lopsided.

Tobacco agriculture shaped the distinctive pattern of settlement in the Chesapeake. Rather than organize themselves into towns, colonists spread out in search of arable land to plant. They prized locations close to navigable rivers that fed into one of the major waterways in the area because that made shipping tobacco easier and cheaper. A few wealthy planters monopolized these choice locations. The demands of tobacco agriculture led to an almost insatiable need for additional land, which exacerbated the tensions with local Indians determined to prevent further encroachments on their territories.

How did the unbalanced sex ratio of the Chesapeake affect gender roles in this colonial region?

2.1.3 Lord Baltimore's Refuge: Maryland

James I died in 1625, and his son, Charles I (r. 1625- 1649), came to the throne. Having married the

French Catholic princess Henrietta Maria, Charles

I resolved to make good on his marriage promise to ease the plight of England's Catholics. Most of England's aristocracy was Protestant, but a few had remained Catholic. One Catholic nobleman, George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, realized that he might be able to help his fellow Catholics and increase his own wealth by obtaining a royal charter for land in Virginia, making it a haven for English Catholics. After Calvert's death in 1632, his son Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore, obtained a charter for a colony from King Charles.

Maryland began as a proprietary colony under the legal authority of Lord Baltimore. The legal title of proprietor gave its possessor almost king-like authority over his domains. Calvert learned an important lesson from Jamestown: The lure of profits from tobacco agriculture could drive colonists to starve themselves to death to get rich quickly. To avoid this danger, he ordered that settlers first obtain i "sufficient quantity of com and other provisions

of victual" before producing tobacco or other commodities for export. Although he envisioned his

colony as a haven for Catholics, Calvert knew that its economic success depended on attracting laborers, so the colony would need to be equally hospitable to Protestants. Maryland therefore afforded religious freedom to all Christians.

From the start the proprietors and the freemen

battled over control of the colony. Colonists challenged Lord Baltimore. The Maryland assembly routinely voted down bills he introduced; Baltimore responded by blocking acts passed by the assembly. Exacerbating the discord was the continuing religious tension between the Catholic proprietor and the overwhelmingly Protestant assembly. Eventually the two sides accommodated each other, and by the 1640s, Maryland had a functional legislature.

What was a proprietor?

2.1.4 Life in the Chesapeake: Tobacco and Society

ihe demands of an expanding tobacco economy in the Chesapeake, an area that included parts of Virginia and Maryland bordering Chesapeake Bay,

42 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

New England2.2 I The same year that the Virginia Company of London obtained a charter to

settle what is now Virginia, another group of investors organized a rival [ company, the Virginia Company of Plymouth, intending to settle north of

IPF; Virginia. Their charter included lands as far north as modern Bangor, Maine. in 1607, the company established a small plantation at the Sagadahoc River

(known now as the Kennebec). The fierce Maine winter, however, proved too much for the colonists, who abandoned the settlement and returned to England.

Although the region's severe winters seemed to have doomed the prospects of settling this region, a group of Protestant religious dissenters known as Puritans expressed interest in migrating to New England. The ascension of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), who had embraced the Protestant faith and supported the ideals of the Reformation, helped further the progress of the English Reformation.

The queen's support for Protestantism stopped well short of what the most zealous reformers had sought. Elizabeth opted to chart a middle path between traditional Catholicism and the most radical wing of the Protestant Reformation. Those who urged further reform earned themselves the name Puritans because of their desire to purify the Church of England of all vestiges of Catholic belief and practice.

Elizabeth never married and produced no heir, so the royal line passed to her cousin King James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England when Elizabeth died in 1603. Although eager to assert his power, James was not particularly interested in pursuing the ideals of the Protestant Reformation. When his son Charles I ascended the throne in 1625 and took a French Catholic woman for his wife, proponents of reform feared the worst—a revival of Catholicism. In response to religious developments in England, two factions emerged within the reformation movement. Puritans continued to believe that reform was possible within the Church of England. Separatists, bent on further reformation, argued for complete separation from the established church.

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"The name Puritan is very aptly given to these men ... because they think themselves ... more

pure than others ... and separate themselves from all other

churches and congregations as spotted and defiled."

JOHN WHITGIFT, Elizabethan clergyman,1573

Leiden, William Bradford recalled "the manifoldPlymouth Plantation2.2.1 temptations of the place" and expressed particular concern that the Separatists' children would be "drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses." Jan Steen, a Dutch painter who explored the theme of corruption in

many of his paintings, captured these fears in his portrayals of Dutch urban life. Images as History:

In 1608, a large group of Separatists fled to Holland, renowned for its religious toleration and a haven for Protestant dissenters, including other Calvinists from France and England. Life there proved difficult for the English Separatists. The problem was not persecution, but rather the

corrupting influences of the affluent urban culture Corruption versus Piety examines one of Steen's

of the Dutch Republic. Describing the Separatists' moralizing paintings about the temptations of

Dutch life.experience in the Dutch university town of

2.2 NEW ENGLAND 43

Images as History CORRUPTION VERSUS PIETY

In his painting The Topsy-Turvy World, Jan Steen conjures up a chaotic household that seems to be the exact opposite of the ideals of domestic tranquility, godliness, and order.The painting depicts a multitude of sins.The seated couple in the middle represents unbridled sensuality.The duck on the shoulder of the piously dressed man mocks his commitment to religion. Neither man nor woman seems aware of the lewd behavior around them. What moral lessons does this painting teach, and how does the artist represent the vices of city life in Holland?

J A small child, unattended, smokes a pipe, f while another unsupervised youth steals a

coin from a purse in the cupboard against the wall.

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The immodestly dressed woman in the center of the painting leers at viewers. She rests a wine glass suggestively in the lap of the drunken man seated next to her.

44 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710 masammm wmsmssaamm

Tolerance for what they considered religious error was inconsistent with the goal of creating a pure form of Christian worship.

The world the Pilgrims encountered in Massachusetts had been inhabited by Indians for millennia, but European contact had already irrevocably altered this world. The Indian population of the area had been largely wiped out by the end of the sixteenth century. Contact with European traders and fishing fleets had exposed the Indians of this region to smallpox and other devastating pathogens.

Life in America was hard for the Pilgrims. Half of their complement of just over one hundred men and women died within the first year. The Pilgrims would have all perished had not Squanto, a local Indian from the Patuxet, a tribe decimated by European diseases, befriended them. English traders had kidnapped Squanto years before and taken him to England, where he lived as a slave. Through harrowing events involving two further kidnappings, Squanto eventually returned to New England. His skills as an interpreter and knowledge of Indian agricultural practices proved to be indispensible to the Pilgrims.

English Separatists living in Leiden decided that life in tolerant, worldly Holland posed too many temptations. A group of the Leiden Separatists, resolving to leave sinful Holland, returned to England briefly before setting out for what they believed to be the unspoiled New World. Later called Pilgrims, a term traditionally used to describe Christians on a spiritual quest for salvation, they set sail for Virginia. After a harrowing two-month journey aboard their ship the Mayflower, the Pilgrims found themselves not off Virginia, but rather off the coast of Cape Cod, in what is now Massachusetts, in late fall 1620. William Bradford, their leader, described the experience of arriving safely in America in emotional terms. "Being thus arrived at safe harbor, and brought safe to land," the Pilgrims then "fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean."

Realizing that their company charter was not legally binding on a settlement outside Virginia, they drew up a new political document, the Mayflower Compact (1620), which stated the principles that would govern their community. The document asserted that its signers did "solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid." The agreement also bound those non-Pilgrims traveling to America, including many servants, who promised to abide by the decisions of the community. The

Pilgrims named their colony Plymouth after the English port they departed from. Their goal was not religious toleration, but rather Protestant purity. The Pilgrims fled England to create a community purged of all taints of unreformed Catholic practice.

Who were the Pilgrims?

A Godly Commonwealth2.2.2 In 1629, Charles I dissolved Parliament and continued his plans to restore elements of Catholic ritual to the English church, a move that alarmed the Puritans. His disregard of Parliament, which included many Puritan leaders, and his elevation of anti-Puritan bishops in the Church of England struck many reformers as ominous. The same year that Charles I dismissed Parliament, John Winthrop, a member of the Puritan gentry, wrote to his wife that "I

am verily persuaded God will bring some heavy affliction upon this land." A year later Winthrop led a group of Puritans to New England where they hoped to create a church and community freed from the corruption Winthrop saw everywhere in England. By the early 1630s, another twenty thousand Puritans would leave

England for America. By 1650, the settlers from

the Massachusetts Bay Colony had spread out

into the Connecticut Valley.

John Winthrop, who became the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, captured the

"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall

deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him

to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word

through the world."

JOHN WINTHROP, Puritan leader,1630

2.2 NEW ENGLAND 45 HBHM

facilitated the enforcement of communal norms and

beliefs. Deviance and misbehavior were easier to control in the small tight-knit towns of New England than in the Chesapeake. In 1630, New England boasted 11 towns. By 1647, the number had tripled to 33 and would rise to more than 100 by 1700.

Puritan law encouraged sobriety and a strong work ethic and discouraged frivolity. Folk customs that had been traditional parts of religious observances were banned from New England worship. Christmas too was purged of all non¬ religious trappings. In this anti-Puritan woodcut (2.4), a Puritan chases away Father Christmas, a cultural figure similar to Santa Claus. Indeed, in the 1650s Puritans outlawed many popular Christmas customs.

The family was another building block of Puritan society. Puritans migrated to New England as families, and their conception of the family was designed to further their religious ideals. John Winthrop expressed this view when he noted that

Puritan vision of the world when he reminded

immigrants to America that they must become "a city upon a hill," an example of true reformation that would guide others toward this holy ideal. Winthrop contrasted the holy purpose of New England's Puritans with earlier colonial efforts in

Virginia, which had been driven more by a lust for gold than by love of God. The hardships and failures of Virginia were, according to Winthrop, a direct result of their goals, which were "Carnal and not Religious." Choosing the right type of colonists was also important. Rather than transport "a multitude of rude and misgoverned persons," the Puritans in New England would ensure their success by selecting godly persons and establishing "a right form of government" that would promote their religious mission.

The settlement of Puritan New England differed significantly from that of the Chesapeake. For one, in contrast to the settlers of Virginia, many immigrants to Puritan New England were married. For another, unlike many first Virginians, who were gentlemen, the Puritans came largely from the middling ranks of society, including farmers. In some cases whole Puritan congregations followed heir ministers to America during the Great

Migration (1630-1642). When these settlers arrived,

they did not scatter in search of better lands or access to navigable waters, as did the colonists in the Chesapeake, but remained clustered in towns.

Putting a premium on building stable communities, Puritans settled in towns and villages so that communities would remain cohesive. Typically a Puritan village included a central meetinghouse and a town green. The geographical distribution of population explored in Envisioning Evidence: Patterns of Settlement in New England and Chesapeake Compared (p. 46) shows the difference between Puritan patterns of settlement and those of the Chesapeake. In New England homes clustered close to the center of town, and fields were arranged at the outskirts of these town centers. The meetinghouse, literally the nucleus of the community, served both a religious and a civic function. A 1635 law required that new houses be built within half a mile of the meetinghouse.

Rather than expand the size of towns and

allow settlers to spread out and weaken the bond -of community, Puritans created new towns and .illages. New England's town structure served two critical functions: It enhanced the colonists' ability to defend themselves against Indian attack, and it

The Vindication of I

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2.4 Puritans Chase Away Father Christmas

This anti-Puritan woodcut pokes fun at the Puritans'

opposition to traditional Christmas celebrations, which included drunkenness and too much "mad mirth."

46 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

Envisioning Evidence PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND AND THE CHESAPEAKE COMPARED Puritan towns were clustered around a meetinghouse.These buildings served as places of worship and as the political center of the community.The strong pull inward toward a town center with the meetinghouse at the core is illustrated in the diagram of a typical New England town and the map of Sudbury, Massachusetts (below left).Town ordinances actually forbade settlers from establishing homesteads too far from the meetinghouse. Settlement in towns helped Puritans preserve their religious mission by enhancing the ability of neighbors to watch one another and report antisocial or religiously disruptive behavior to legal or church authorities. Settlement in the Chesapeake followed a different model. Here the profit motive and the desire to find the most fertile lands and access to navigable rivers pulled settlers outward.The diagram of settlement in the Chesapeake and the map of St. Mary's County in Maryland shows how settlers in the Chesapeake scattered across the area in search of good land and access to waterways they could use to export their cash crops.

The pursuit of wealth pushed Chesapeake settlers outward :n search of fertile lands and access to navigable waterways.which made it easier to get tobacco to market

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of church and state. Whereas many modem supporters of the separation of church and state seek to prevent government from being influenced by religion, Williams sought the opposite—to protect religion from possible corruption by government. Williams also attacked the colonists for unjustly seizing Indian lands, a position that proved almost as unpopular as his novel religious views.

Although Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts greatly respected Williams for his intellect and piety, Massachusetts Bay could not tolerate his direct challenge to the state's authority to enforce religious orthodoxy. Before he could be arrested, Williams fled the colony and headed south. He purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and settled in what is now Rhode Island. Thankful that God had rescued him from his enemies, Williams named his new settlement

"Providence." Eventually he returned to England and in 1644 obtained a parliamentary charter for a new colony, Rhode Island.

While the Massachusetts Bay Colony was still reeling from the Williams controversy, a new challenge to orthodoxy emerged. In 1634, Anne Hutchinson, the wife of a prominent merchant, began holding religious meetings in her home. A dynamic speaker and forceful personality, Hutchinson was also a gifted thinker who did not accept the inferior status that Puritan theology accorded women. Although she did not directly question the role prescribed for women, her actions implicitly challenged accepted ideas about gender roles in Puritan society. Hutchinson also openly questioned the theological purity of the colony's leading ministers. In her view, only one minister,

John Cotton, was preaching the true Calvinist idea that only God's grace alone could bring about salvation. Hutchinson charged the other ministers with sliding backward toward the notion that good works could contribute to salvation. Attacking the religious views of the ministry was bad enough, but for a woman to do so, especially one who attracted a following among both sexes, was too much.

The colony's leaders feared that Hutchinson and her followers had succumbed to the Antinomian heresy. Antinomians took the logic of Calvinism to its extreme: The elect, if possessed of true saving grace, need not follow earthly laws. If good works really had no connection to salvation, then why follow earthly laws? Most Puritans feared that the Antinomian heresy would lead to moral anarchy. The Puritans also

"A family is a little common wealth, and a common

wealth is a greate family." The foundation for this ,et of beliefs was the Fifth Commandment, which

enjoined believers to honor their father and mother.

Puritans saw this commandment extending well

beyond the requirement of honoring parents. Minister John Cotton reminded his parishioners that the Fifth Commandment applied to "all our Superiors, whether in Family, School, Church, and Commonwealth." In Cotton's view honor meant more than reverence; it also mandated obedience. Taking these words to heart, in 1648

the Massachusetts colonists made disobedience

to parents a crime punishable by death. Although this penalty was never applied, it signaled the seriousness with which the Puritans took the idea

of patriarchal authority. The government of the Massachusetts colony

evolved out of the joint-stock company used to raise money to fund the Puritans' voyage to the New World. The charter for the company did not require the governing body to remain in England, so Puritan leaders simply set up their own governing body in America. In contrast to England, where property determined the right to vote, 'lassachusetts allowed all male church members this privilege. Since many of the first generation of settlers were church members, the franchise in

Massachusetts was much more inclusive than that in England. Historians estimate that 40 percent of men may have qualified to vote in the 1630s.

Why did John Winthrop describe New England as “a city upon a hill?”

2.2.3 Challenges to Puritan Orthodoxy

Massachusetts sought to enforce orthodoxy through its laws, the layout of its towns, and the messages preached by its clergy. Yet, despite these efforts to enforce conformity, the Reformation vision that animated Puritanism contained radical ideas that

threatened the survival of the city upon a hill. The first great challenge to orthodoxy in Massachusetts came in 1635 from the devout Separatist minister Roger Williams. He attacked the government of

Massachusetts Bay for using the power of the state To enforce religious orthodoxy. For Williams the goal

A creating a purified church led to the conclusion that government ought not to meddle in religious affairs. Williams advocated the complete separation

48 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710......................................"."nTHWIII'' — • •• -I charged Hutchinson with violating the Fifth Commandment by refusing to honor and obey the ministers who were the colony's patriarchs.

In 1637 Hutchinson was hauled before a special court and subjected to a grueling examination. During this ordeal she brilliantly parried virtually all of the questions posed. At the end of her examination, however, she made a serious mistake. When asked how she could be so sure of her actions, she claimed that God spoke directly to her by an immediate revelation. Puritans believed that God spoke to his chosen people only by his revealed word—the Bible—not by direct revelations. For Winthrop and others, the claim that God spoke directly to Hutchinson exposed the dangerous Antinomian strain in her thinking. If this was true, anyone, including those who acted immorally, could simply claim to be acting according to a prophetic voice from God. Hutchinson was convicted and banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony. She headed south to Rhode Island, where she and several of her followers sought refuge before eventually settling on what is now Long Island, near the Dutch town of New Amsterdam in the

colony of New Netherland. While Puritans in New England continued

striving to build their city upon a hill and protect it from heresy, Puritans on the other side of the Atlantic had been locked in a protracted political struggle with King Charles I. This led to civil war in 1642. Emerging victorious, Parliament tried the king for crimes against his people and executed him in 1649. The commander of parliamentary forces, Oliver Cromwell, assumed the title of Lord Protector of England with nearly monarchical powers.

While raising an army against the king, Parliament had decided to lift censorship and allow freedom of the press for the first time in English history. To gain popular support and recruit soldiers for their army, Parliament also inaugurated a new policy of religious toleration for all Protestants. With censorship lifted, a host of sectarian religious groups emerged during the Civil War. One of these sects, the Society of Friends, or Quakers, believed each individual possessed a divine spark of grace, an inner light that could lead him or her to salvation. The origin of the word Quaker is complex. The leader of the Quakers, George Fox, had earned this name when he reminded a magistrate that the righteous ought to "tremble at the word of the

Lord." The name stuck because of the nature of

Quaker worship. As one contemporary noted, men,

women, and children would "fall into quaking fits" in response to the workings of grace within themselves. Quakers rejected the need for any ministry at all. At their meetings, anyone who felt the spirit move within them was entitled to preach.

What do New England’s laws reveal about its culture?

2.2.4 Expansion and Conflict In contrast to the disease-ridden Chesapeake, New England's environment was reasonably healthy. Infant mortality in New England was lower than in England. Although exact figures are difficult to obtain, historians estimate that just over 10 percent of the children bom in colonial New England died before their first birthday. The comparable figure in England was about 15 percent. While few people in England lived past middle age, about 50 percent of New Englanders who survived to age 20 would have lived until their late 60s. Relatively low mortality rates combined with the longevity of New England's inhabitants led to population increase. A higher percentage of the population lived long enough to have children, and more of those children survived into adulthood. The expanding '

population of the region created enormous pressure - to acquire additional land so that children could start their own families. Religious leaders played a prominent role in New England's early expansion. The Puritan minister Thomas Hooker led a group of Massachusetts settlers in 1636 and founded the town of Hartford, Connecticut; the Reverend John Davenport left Massachusetts and established the town of New Haven, Connecticut, a year later. In 1638, representatives from Connecticut towns

drafted a frame of government, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.

Expansion into the Connecticut Valley brought New Englanders into direct conflict with the local Pequot Indians, who refused to submit to English authority. In the resulting fierce war against the Pequots, New Englanders exploited intertribal rivalries to gain an advantage over the Pequots. New Englanders aligned with tribes that sought to take advantage of the colonists' firearms to destroy a rival tribe. The ferocity of English warfare horrified the Narragansett and Mohegan Indians, traditional enemies of the Pequots, who joined forces with the

English in the war against the Pequots.

How did the relatively low mortality rate in New England impact its early history?

2.3 THE CARIBBEAN COLONIES 49

The Caribbean Colonies2.3 From England's point of view, the economic jewel in the Atlantic world was not the American mainland, but the Caribbean "sugar islands." Not long after Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, the Spanish established a firm colonial presence in the Caribbean. By the early 1600s, Spain, France, England, and Holland had colonies in the area. The enormous wealth of

the "sugar islands" encouraged warfare among these rival colonial powers that resulted in a continuous redrawing of the map, as islands traded hands between different colonial powers (2.5). During Cromwell's rule Admiral Sir William Penn seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655, and France took part of Hispaniola (Haiti) in 1664. France and England traded islands such as St. Kitts back and forth for much of the century. Spain conquered the English colony of Providence Island in 1641. The most profitable English sugar colonies were St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627), Nevis (1628), Montserrat (1632), Providence Island (1630), Antigua (1632), and eventually Jamaica.

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>2.5 Caribbean Colonies The sugar islands of the Caribbean became the most profitable region of the Atlantic economy. Barbados became a major producer of sugar and

an example for how slavery could be accommodated to English law.

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developed an appetite for sugar that seemed limitless. Besides its use in desserts, sugar was sprinkled on cooked food as a condiment, used to preserve food, and used as medicine to treat afflictions. The use of sugar could also broadcast wealth, social status, or power. Wealthy Europeans displayed lavish sugar sculptures with intricately carved figurines and scenes on banquet tables for guests to admire.

Producing sugar and preparing it for export required a labor force capable of surviving the brutal heat of the Caribbean. Sugar production also entailed backbreaking and dangerous agricultural labor. The multistage process that followed the cutting of the cane required additional labor at every phase. This French

2.3.1 Power Is Sweet Although the amount of land that the English cultivated in the Caribbean was small, the region became the richest in the English Atlantic

empire. Sugar generated enormous profits for Caribbean planters, exceeding the value of all exports from the mainland colonies. Because of the enormous wealth of the West Indies, roughly two-thirds of all English migrants headed for the Caribbean. By the mid-seventeenth century, the population of this region had reached approximately 44,000, while the population

the Chesapeake was about 12,000 and New England around 23,000.

The wealth produced by sugar could be substantial. Seventeenth-century Europe

50 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710 MMHMMMI

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engraving (2.6) shows the multiple stages of sugar production, including milling and boiling.

Because of the harsh conditions for laborers on Barbados and the high mortality of workers in the sugar fields, maintaining an adequate labor force was a serious problem. During the first decade of colonization, planters in Barbados emulated their countrymen in Virginia, relying heavily on indentured servants as a labor source. Some unfortunate individuals were actually "barbadosed," to use the seventeenth-century phrase that became a synonym for "kidnapped" but originally meant being abducted and transported to the Caribbean to work in the sugar fields. Desperate for workers, planters even tried convict labor. The harsh labor conditions of sugar production, high rates of mortality among workers in the cane fields, and the growing demand for sugar increased the need for

agricultural labor, which eventually led English

Why did the Caribbean become the jewel in the crown of England’s colonial empire?

2.3.2 Barbados: The Emergence of a Slave Society

The key island economically in the English Caribbean was Barbados. Far from the sea routes plied by Spanish fleets, Barbados avoided the European rivalry and warfare that embroiled other parts of the Caribbean. Visitors to the island often found it "more healthful than any of her neighbors." By 1660, 26,000 English immigrants had settled there, drawn by the promise of wealth through the sugar trade.

2.3 THE CARIBBEAN COLONIES 51

"l consider the laws concerning Negroes to be reasonable, for by reason of their numbers they become dangerous, being a brutish sort of

people and reckoned as goods and chattels [property] in the Island." Colonial English official, 1680

Population Growth in Barbados, 1630-1690 WhitesYear Blacks Total

1630 1.8 1.8

14.01640 14.0

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2.7 Estimated Population of Barbados, 1630-1690 (in thousands)

By 1660 the black population of the island surpassed the white population. The introduction of slave labor radically transformed the island's economy, culture, and society. SOURCE: Based on data gathered in John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British North America, 1607-1789 (1985), page 153.

planters to emulate the Portuguese and Spanish and turn to slavery. As Chart 2.7 shows, the importation of African slaves rose dramatically in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Indeed, within the English Atlantic world, Barbados became the primary destination for African slaves, who outnumbered whites on the small island by 1660.

Spanish and Portuguese law had easily accommodated the institution of slavery. But

English law had no precedent upon which to draw in framing a law for slavery. The first efforts to deal with slavery occurred in a piecemeal fashion. Early laws dealt with slave theft and other practical problems, such as slaves wandering off their plantations. By

1661, Barbados had enacted a comprehensive set of laws to govern relations between masters and slaves. The Barbadian slave code created a system of legalized segregation in which race defined servitude. Harsh penalties prevented slaves from challenging the authority of their masters. The legal code also minimized penalties for masters' mistreatment of slaves. Murdering a slave incurred a modest fine, while accidentally killing a slave during punishment carried no legal penalty at all. The Barbadian slave code would provide a model for other areas of the English Atlantic where slavery took hold, including Virginia.

Why did Barbados turn to slavery as its primary source of labor?

52 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

2, The Restoration Era and the Proprietary Colonies

In 1660, Charles II (r. 1660-1685) reestablished the English monarchy. The Restoration, as this period was known, inaugurated a new phase in the evolution of English colonial America. The driving force behind colonization now came from a small group of courtiers, aristocrats close to the king who used their influence to secure colonial charters. In America, building on the

model pioneered by Lord Baltimore, these new Restoration-era proprietors sought to increase their wealth while advancing their own particular political and religious ideals. The new colonies also experienced the same type of conflicts that had plagued Maryland. Proprietors struggled to impose their vision of government on settlers who demanded representation. Nevertheless, by 1700, England had cemented its control of the eastern seaboard of America from the Carolinas to northern New England (2.8).

%

2.4 The English Conquest of the Dutch Colony of New Netherland

2.8 Seventeenth-Century English Mainland Colonies This map shows the Restoration colonies of Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. By 1700, England had established its dominance on the eastern seaboard of North America. English control extended from northern New England to the Carolinas.

Along with England the other great Protestant nation in Europe was Holland (the Netherlands), which also engaged in trans-Atlantic trade, including sugar and slaves. Although Dutch merchants traveled the entire Atlantic world, the Dutch had established only a modest presence in North America. The Dutch exploration of the Hudson River (1609) laid the foundation for the colony of New Netherland. The Dutch East India Company established fur¬ trading outposts in present-day Albany (New York) in 1614. About a decade later the Dutch established a settlement at the tip of Manhattan Island that they called New Amsterdam in honor of Holland's most important city. The Dutch welcomed traders from across Europe and embraced religious toleration. The small but thriving city of New Amsterdam included Dutch, English, Scandinavians, Germans, and Portuguese. By the mid-century, a few Sephardic

Jews (Portuguese and Spanish Jews), who had fled persecution in Portuguese Brazil, had also joined the

community. The Hudson River made it easy to ship beaver

pelts downriver to New Amsterdam from the area

around Albany. Merchants shipped these pelts to Europe, where their fur was prized for hats. Jealous of the wealth generated by the Dutch fur trade in

New Netherland, English merchants urged the crown

to seize the Dutch stronghold. Additional pressure came from English settlers from New England who had moved into the New Amsterdam region and were eager to cast off Dutch rule. A number of

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2.4 THE RESTORATION ERA AND THE PROPRIETARY COLONIES 53

worship without priests. The group also refused to abide by social customs that demanded individuals show deference to those who stood above them in

society. Thus Quakers refused to doff their hats and refrained from using any form of honorific address, such as sir, lord, or lady. Quakers simply addressed each other as thee and thou, terms that sound odd to the modern ear but that signified their belief that everyone was equal before God.

Penn intended Pennsylvania to be a "holy experiment" in which Quakers would live in harmony with those of other faiths. Penn's "peaceable kingdom" also embraced Indians. True to his Quaker principles, Penn resolved to negotiate for Indian lands and submit disputes to arbitration by a committee composed of Indians and Quakers.

Penn desired to live beside the Indians as "Neighbors and Friends." Penn praised the local Leni- Lenape people for their eloquence and honor and tried to learn their language and customs. During the first generation of settlement, when land was plentiful and the immigrant population small, Pennsylvania upheld Penn's promise to treat the Indians with respect. Although no contemporary image of Penn's Treaty with the Indians exists, later artists found the subject fascinating. The most famous depiction of the treaty was created by the Pennsylvania artist, Benjamin West, almost a century later. This painting was also turned into a popular engraving (2.9). Versions of the image appeared on ceramics and textiles.

splinter communities from New England had sprung

ip in Connecticut and as far south as Long Island,

just southeast of New Amsterdam. The expansion of

English settlers into the region claimed by the Dutch

increased friction between England and Holland. The prospect of eliminating the Dutch corridor

between English settlements in the Chesapeake and New England also appealed to Charles II, and particularly to his brother, James, Duke of York. Charles II gave his brother a charter for the area and dispatched a fleet to seize New Netherland in 1664. Although Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor, tried to rally opposition to the English invasion, Dutch merchants in the city decided that it was better to secure favorable terms from the superior English forces than fight. After their conquest of the Dutch, the English divided the region into two new colonies, New York and New Jersey.

James intended to take firm control of New York. He believed that his role as proprietor gave him almost absolute power over his dominions. Protesting their lack of adequate representation, New Yorkers refused to pay taxes. Eventually James relented, and the first New York assembly convened in 1683.

Why did the English wish to wrest control of New Netherland from the Dutch?

2.4.2 A Peaceable Kingdom: Quakers in Pennsylvania

After the capture of New Netherland, James granted land that would become New Jersey to courtiers who attracted settlers by promising representation and religious toleration for all Protestants. One of these men, the Quaker William Penn, saw

an unprecedented opportunity for creating a religious refuge for members of his faith and others persecuted for their religious beliefs. Penn's father, Admiral Sir William Penn, had helped wrest

Jamaica from the Spanish. The king also owed him a large debt. The king paid this debt with a grant for a large tract of land near New Jersey that became known as Pennsylvania (Penn's woods). As a result of this enormous gift of land, Penn's ambitious plans for Pennsylvania, a colony inspired by his Quaker

vision of religious toleration, soon overshadowed f his involvement in New Jersey.

One of the few radical sects to survive the

English Civil War, Quakers had been persecuted for their beliefs in the Restoration era. Quakers believed individual congregations could conduct their own

: j

2.9 William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians

This engraving, based on a painting by Benjamin West, commemorates William Penn's Treaty with the Indians. Although the treaty was negotiated in the seventeenth century, the artist shows Penn dressed as a typical prospei eighteenth-century Quaker. Other anachronistic details include buildings placed in the background, which would not have existed until after the treaty had been negotiated.

54 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

In formulating a government for his colony, Penn drew on a number of new ideas in English politics, including the writings of the English political philosopher James Harrington, who believed that a stable society depended on a relatively broad distribution of property. In Harrington's view owning property gave individuals a permanent stake in society and also allowed men to be independent, voting for representatives without being manipulated or intimidated.

Pennsylvania also expanded the idea of religious toleration beyond earlier experiments such as Lord Baltimore's (see Competing Visions: Lord Baltimore and William Penn: Two Visions of Religious Toleration).

How did Pennsylvania embody Quaker ideals?

available, access to navigable waterways. In 1712, the proprietors divided their holdings into two colonies, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The crown took over South Carolina in 1719 and North Carolina a decade later.

The close economic ties between Carolina and Barbados meant that its early settlers were well acquainted with slavery. But the settlers who tried to impose the West Indies' slave system on the frontier environment of Carolina discovered problems they had not anticipated. The rude conditions of early Carolina history, its small population and simple economy, made it harder to maintain social distance between slaves and their masters. The Carolinas were at the edge of English America. Their proximity to Spanish-controlled Florida and hostile Indian tribes meant that slaves and masters had to work closely together, including defending settlements against attack. The location of the Carolinas also encouraged a less exploitive form of slavery, as slaves in the Carolinas had more opportunities to run away and might find refuge with Indian tribes. By contrast, apart from a few mountainous regions on islands such as Jamaica, the West Indies afforded few sanctuaries for runaway slaves.

2.4.3 The Carolinas Influential English courtiers, the Lords Proprietors, founded Carolina as a joint effort, hoping to make money and create a buffer between Spanish Florida and other English settlements on the eastern seaboard. Although the Lords Proprietors sought to shape their dominion according to their own vision, the settlers who migrated there had other ideas. From the outset Carolina's fortunes were closely tied to those of the West Indies, Barbados in particular. Many of the colony's first settlers emigrated from the West Indies. Rather than produce goods for export to England, Carolina began providing naval stores such as pine tar resins to waterproof ships and food for the West Indian islands.

The Lords Proprietors had studied New England and Virginia and had concluded that

New England-style towns were superior to the "inconvenience and Barbarisme of scattered Dwellings" that characterized settlement in the

Chesapeake. The visions of Lords Proprietors and the interests and aspirations of the colonists clashed. Rather than settle in the New England- style nucleated villages (villages with a town center) as the proprietors had hoped, settlers followed the Chesapeake model, scattering to find the most productive land and, when

Relations with local Indian tribes were

complex. Conflicts among Indian tribes provided early Carolina colonists with an unexpected economic boon: The sale of Indian slaves became a lucrative enterprise. Indians sold prisoners they had taken during intertribal warfare to the

English, who then exported them to other British colonies. Carolinians also traded with Indian tribes for deer hides, which were exported to

England. At the start of the eighteenth century these exports were surpassed by a new crop, rice, which was developed with help from

agricultural knowledge brought to America by African slaves. Carolina began as a colony of a colony but soon became an integral part of the Atlantic economy, exporting slaves, deer hides, and eventually rice.

What sorts of resources did early Carolina provide for the colonies of the West Indies?

2.4 THE RESTORATION ERA AND THE PROPRIETARY COLONIES 55

Competing Visions LORD BALTIMORE AND WILLIAM PENN: TWO VISIONS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION Lord Baltimore envisioned Maryland as a means of both enriching himself and providing a refuge for English Catholics, who were persecuted by the Protestant majority in England. William Penn's plan for religious toleration went well beyond Baltimore's narrower vision. In Pennsylvania, Penn sought to welcome anyone who believed in God.

Maryland passed its Toleration Act in 1649 in the midst of

the English Civil War, when Puritans, who were intensely

anti-Catholic, were in charge of Parliament. A number of

Puritans had migrated to the Chesapeake region. Catholics in

the region feared that the English Parliament, dominated by

Puritans, might persecute Catholics. Lord Baltimore's vision

of toleration reflected his

position as a Catholic in a

largely Protestant society.

Penn's Charter of Liberties extended the ideas of religious

toleration beyond Christians, to include Jews, Muslims, and

other monotheists—believers in one God—a definition that Penn believed included Indians as well. Penn's policy of

toleration made Pennsylvania a haven for a variety of different

religious groups.

M That all persons living in this province, who confess and

acknowledge the one Almighty

and eternal God, to be the

Creator, Upholder and Ruler

of the world; and that hold

themselves obliged in conscience

to live peaceably and justly in

civil society, shall, in no ways, be

molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice,

in matters of faith and worship nor

shall they be compelled, at any

time, to frequent or maintain any

religious worship, place or ministry

whatever.

*IAll -m% I#No person or persons whatsoever

within this Province, or the islands,

ports, harbors, creeks, or havens

thereunto belonging professing to

believe in Jesus Christ, shall from

henceforth be any ways troubled,

molested or discountenanced for

or in respect of his or her religion

nor in the free exercise thereof

within this Province or the islands

thereunto belonging nor any way

compelled to the belief or exercise

of any other religion against his

or her consent, so as they be not unfaithful to the Lord Proprietary,

or molest or conspire against the

civil government established or

to be established in this Province

under him or his heirs. Maryland Toleration Act

(1649), Lord Baltimore

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56 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

2.s The Crises of the Late Seventeenth Century

S3 The last quarter of the seventeenth century was a period of unrest in iK colonial North America. Religious and ethnic tensions sometimes produced IIP political volatility. In Spanish New Mexico, and in English New England fjl and Virginia, Europeans were pitted against indigenous populations.

In Maryland animosities between the Catholic proprietor and a largely Protestant population caused friction. In New York divisions between the Dutch and the English kept old wounds open. In New York and Maryland, the tensions triggered a crisis that led to government reorganization. Other forces were at work as well. Relations between the English and the Indians had settled into a pattern of mutual suspicion and antagonism. Colonial governors became entangled in mediating disputes between land-hungry settlers and tribes eager to fend them off. Seeing the brutality of Anglo-Indian warfare, many witnesses who testified at the Salem witchcraft trials envisioned the devil as a tawny-skinned tormentor whose tortures resembled those used by Indians on their enemies. Finally at the end of the seventeenth century, the political realignment associated with the Glorious Revolution in England helped usher in a new era of political stability in the colonies.

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In the Chesapeake tensions between colonists and Indians also led to violence. In Virginia, Bacon's Rebellion, a popular uprising named after its leader, Nathaniel Bacon, erupted in 1676. The royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, had long played favorites, dealing out lucrative patronage positions and generous land grants to his cronies. The governor had also made a handsome profit from the fur trade with Indians. Frustrated by Berkeley's policies, Bacon, a relative newcomer to the colony and a distant relative of the governor, decided to challenge Berkeley's corruption and favoritism. Taking advantage of popular animosity to the area's Indians and frustration with the lack of cheap land, Bacon's Rebellion attracted a broad range of Virginians to his cause.

He drew some support from planters frustrated with Berkeley's favoritism and landowners frustrated by the governor's refusal to adopt a more expansionist policy and acquire additional Indian land for settlement. He drew the

bulk of his supporters, however, from the bottom ranks of Virginia society, including indentured servants and slaves. Promising to exterminate

Indians and distribute land to all, Bacon exploited the deep class resentments that had smoldered for

a long time in the Chesapeake region. The success of Bacon forced Berkeley to flee to the eastern

shore of the Chesapeake. Buoyed by popular

2.5 War and Rebellion In New England relations with the Wampanoag Indians, who had helped the Pilgrims, had deteriorated since both groups sat down for their harvest feast in 1621. The Wampanoag leader, Metacom, whom the colonists sometimes called King Philip, grew frustrated with English expansion and eventually led the Wampanoags in King Philip's War against New Englanders. The fierce fighting spread across New England, with hardly a town escaping the conflict. Nearly 3,000 Indians died in the conflict and almost 1,000 colonists. This map shows the devastating impact of the war, which ravaged dozens of towns in New England (2.10).

Puritans interpreted the ferocity as a sign of God's displeasure. Increase Mather, a leading Puritan minister, reported that after the war ended, the government of Massachusetts appointed a committee to promote "a Reformation of those Evils which hath provoked the Lord to bring the sword upon us." Among the causes of God's displeasure, Mather listed drunkenness; the presence of "heretical" sects,

such as the Quakers; an obsession with material

profit; and a loss of modesty demonstrated by attention to fashion, especially "excesses in

Apparel and hair."

2.5 THE CRISES OF THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 57

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2.10 King Philip’s War This map suggests the scale of the conflict

between Indians and Slavery in Virginia began as a legally

amorphous category. Earlier in the century some Philip's War. slaves had managed to acquire their freedom,

either through grants from their master or through their own resourcefulness. One slave who took

advantage of the earlier laxity in the law was Anthony Johnson, who became a planter himself. By the eve of Bacon's Rebellion, Virginia's laws

regarding slavery had hardened into an almost

impenetrable barrier preventing slaves from

achieving what Anthony Johnson had attained— freedom. Bacon's Rebellion accelerated these

changes, driving Virginia to invest more heavily in slaves. The danger posed by a "giddy multitude"

of landless laborers, whose frustration so-called rabble-rousers such as Nathaniel Bacon could

support, Bacon torched the colony's capital,

Jamestown. Bacon's rising star faded almost as quickly as it rose when he died from fever, leaving the rebellion leaderless. Berkeley, returning with reinforcements, easily defeated the remnants of

Bacon's followers.

A commission investigating the causes of

the uprising concluded that the "giddy headed multitude" attracted to Bacon's Rebellion was

largely composed of men "lately crept out of the condition of servants." For the colony's leaders an

especially troubling aspect of the rebellion was the "interracial solidarity among servants, including whites serving temporary indentures and African

slaves. Indeed, one group of rebels was composed of 80 blacks and 20 whites.

Puritans during King

58 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710 HÿÿBaaaaaB

exploit, hastened the shift away from use of indentured servants to African slaves, who would remain a permanent underclass.

Economic and demographic forces also pushed Virginia toward a slave-based economy. Among these the number of immigrants into the Chesapeake declined during the late seventeenth century, reducing the available workforce. As the price of slaves decreased and the high levels of mortality in the region, including of slaves, dropped, purchasing slaves became more economical. Previously there had been little incentive to purchase a slave for almost twice the price of an indentured servant if the slave was unlikely to live long enough to make the difference in price economically advantageous. At mid-century a mere 300 slaves resided in the Chesapeake. By 1700, there were 13,000.

England's colonies were not the only ones rocked by unrest at the end of the seventeenth

century. Other parts of the Atlantic colonial world experienced similar unrest. In Spanish New Mexico disputes culminated in the Pueblo Revolt (1680). In New Spain Indians were pitted against the Roman Catholic Church. Dispirited by droughts and attacks by Apache and Navajo war parties, the Pueblo people sought solace in their traditional religious practices and turned away from the Catholicism of their Spanish conquerors. Fearing a challenge to their authority, the Spanish Catholic missionaries in New Mexico brought the full force of church and state power against these "heretics." Rather than accept the new wave of repression, Indians rose up against Spanish authority, killing most of the missionaries and more than 400 settlers. The rebellion drove the Spanish from New Mexico for more than a decade. However, divisions within the Pueblo community and continuing drought hampered the ability of the Pueblo

people to resist Spanish power indefinitely. When the Spanish returned 13 years later, they easily reconquered New Mexico.

The Pueblo revolt forced the Spanish to be more tolerant, at least to Indians who accepted Christianity. They could retain elements of

their traditional religious practices and culture,

including the use of Shamans, or religious healers.

The Spanish also reformed the system of forced labor, which improved the Indians' economic situation.

2.5.2 The Dominion of New England and the Glorious Revolution

Although the Pueblo Revolt demonstrated that even Spain's hierarchical colonial empire was not free from strife, many close to King Charles II of England, including his brother James, envied the Spanish model of empire. In 1685, Charles died without a legitimate son, and James II became England's first Catholic monarch in 127 years. As Duke of York, James had been closely involved in colonial affairs in New York, and he hoped to consolidate the English colonies into larger administrative units with powerful governors similar to those in New Spain. He therefore revoked the colonial charters of New York and New Jersey, folding them into New England as a single new administrative and political entity, the Dominion of New England. A powerful English governor and a council appointed by the king would rule this Spanish-style dominion.

Representative assemblies were abolished, and a reorganized legal system made it more difficult for colonists to have access to the courts. To extract additional wealth from the colonists, the colonial

government raised taxes dramatically and revoked land deeds. To regain title to their own land, colonists would have to obtain new deeds and pay new taxes on land.

James II had a bold agenda to strengthen royal power at home as well. He sought to ally England with Catholic France. James supported religious toleration for Catholics and Dissenters, but

sought to impose this policy by royal decree, thus

alienating potential support among Dissenters who were sympathetic to these policies. Even more troubling was his attempt to weaken the

militia and raise a standing army, which included appointing Catholic officers loyal to the crown. Finally, James attempted to bypass Parliament and raise revenues through taxation. When Parliament refused to accept his agenda, James dissolved it. In the autumn of 1688, English opponents of the king allied with the Protestant Dutch Prince

William of Orange and ousted James from the throne. William, whose English wife, Mary, was

James's daughter, reestablished a Protestant monarchy. The relatively bloodless revolution that

led to the ascension of William III and Mary II

was proclaimed a Glorious Revolution and

{

What were the main causes of Bacon’s Rebellion?

2.5 THE CRISES OF THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 59 HHHH

representative government, and the notion that a well-regulated militia under local control was the best protection for liberty.

a vindication of English liberty. Indeed, the

Association between the Glorious Revolution and English liberty was literally cast in metal. The commemorative medallion (2.11) produced for the occasion depicts Britannia, symbol of England. Britannia grasps a liberty pole and has her hand on the Bible. The Latin inscription announces that "the Prince of Orange restores the law to us."

William and Mary accepted Parliament's "Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown," more generally known as the English Bill of Rights. This act excluded Catholics from the monarchy, affirmed the supremacy of Parliament, protected basic rights, and asserted "That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." It also affirmed that "the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their condition and as allowed by law." Restricted to Protestants, this particular right was further limited by social class and ultimately subject to Parliament's right to regulate arms. Taken together the various provisions became an important rallying point for those seeking to limit government power and protect liberty.

While official word of the Glorious Revolution

took time to reach the colonies, rumors about the

ascension of William and Mary arrived in spring 1689. In the colonies the right to have arms for self-defense was an absolute necessity and the militia was an important local institution. In April 1689, 2,000 militiamen, mostly from country towns, marched on Boston, arrested the

governor, and restored their old charter. In late May New York's militia took control of that

colony. In Maryland

John Coode marched with 700 militiamen to "vindicate and assert the

Sovereign Dominion and right of King William and Mary." Protestant resentment against the

power of the Catholic proprietary government also fueled Coode's rebellion. The Glorious Revolution

in America was a victory for

What was the Glorious Revolution?

2.5.3 The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria

Within a decade of the close of King Philip's War (1675), New Englanders were again at war with their Indian neighbors, this time in Maine along the northern border of Massachusetts. Fighting was fierce, and Maine's proximity to French Quebec led English colonists to see their latest troubles as part of a French Catholic plot against Protestant New England. Colonists in Massachusetts even accused the Indians of using witchcraft against them. Complicating matters, the recent upheavals of the Glorious Revolution had not yet produced a stable government, and a new royal governor had yet to be appointed in Massachusetts.

Amid this heightened anxiety came the most serious outbreak of witchcraft accusations in colonial America. The center of the witchcraft hysteria was Salem, Massachusetts, but the accusations spread throughout Essex, the coastal county closest to Maine. Before the witchcraft prosecutions ended, 19 innocent men and women would be executed, and one man who refused to plead either innocent or guilty suffered an archaic penalty, heavy stones were piled on his chest to force him to plead. Rather than enter a plea, he was

crushed to death. The Puritans who inhabited this

region thought themselves an especially attractive target for

2.11 Glorious Revolution Commemorative Medal In this medal commissioned

to commemorate the ascension of William and

Mary to England's throne and the Glorious Revolution,

Britannia, symbol of England, sits under an orange tree, which

was the symbol of William of Orange. She grasps a liberty pole

firmly in her hand, a reminder that William restored English liberty.

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60 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

The scope of the witch hunt changed dramatically when the accusations spread to another local minister, George Burroughs, who had recently returned from Maine. Much of the testimony from that point forward concerned the Devil taking the shape of an American Indian, creating another theme in the

witchcraft hysteria. The Puritans even compared the suffering they believed that Satan inflicted on them with how Indians tortured settlers in the brutal frontier war in Maine.

Historians have identified a number of patterns in the web of accusations. Witches in New

England were more likely to be women, particularly older women who did not live in male¬ headed households. Women who failed to fit the model of the

pious, submissive female, ruled by a benevolent patriarch, an ideal that Puritans esteemed, were particularly at risk.

Pressure to stop the trials mounted, particularly after accusations were leveled at more prominent individuals from outside Salem. At the start of the trials, ministers had approved the use of spectral evidence—testimony that witches were using magic to torture victims. But as Rebecca Nurse argued during her trial, verifying such evidence was impossible. How, she asked the court, could one know if spectral evidence was genuine? Could not Satan appear at a trial to confound the court and trick them into accusing the wrong person? Doubts began to trouble leading ministers in the

colony, including Increase Mather, who had been an early supporter of the prosecutions. Mather delivered a sermon stating a principle that became a bedrock of Anglo-American law: "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned." The new royal governor, William Phips, replaced the court that had handled the witchcraft trials with a

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2.12 Signing Satan’s Book In this rough woodcut image, Satan presents his book to a witch. Puritans believed that the devil required individuals to renounce their covenant with God and sign a new contract with Satan.

Satan, who would, they believed, have been eager to upset their effort to build a city upon a hill. New England's covenant with God was mirrored in Satan's own demonic contracts with witches. To seal these contracts, New Englanders believed, Satan made his disciples sign his book, a belief reflected in this seventeenth-century woodcut, which shows the devil offering his disciples his book to sign (2.12).

The witchcraft hysteria began in Salem Village, the outlying part of the port of Salem town. The first purported occurrence of witchcraft occurred in the home of Minister Samuel Parris, whose

daughter and her cousin, Abigail Williams, began acting strangely. After consulting a physician, who could find no explanation for his daughter's illness,

Parris concluded that the girls were victims of witchcraft. When questioned, the girls accused two new court whose guidelines followed more recent

Salem women and Tituba, a Caribbean Indian slave English law and disallowed convictions based on

whom Parris owned, of practicing witchcraft. Parris spectral evidence.

forced a confession from Tituba. The accusations What was spectral evidence?eventually engulfed the whole community.

2.6 THE WHIG IDEAL AND THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL STABILITY 61 >

The Whig Ideal and the Emergence of Political Stability

-s2.6

The Massachusetts legal system that produced the Salem witchcraft trials was out of step with legal developments in England, and even more so in

HMBM light of the events of the Glorious Revolution (1688). The English Bill of Rights adopted by Parliament (1689) not only weakened royal power but

KEHH also provided stronger protections for individual liberty, including explicit prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishments and a more robust affirmation of the right to a jury trial.

In the long struggle between Parliament and the monarchy, Parliament had finally emerged as preeminent in the English political and constitutional system. The group that supported Parliamentary power after the Glorious Revolution became known as Whigs. Their opponents, the Tories, were proponents of monarchical authority. The period after the Glorious Revolution ushered in relative political stability in Anglo-American politics. This new era of stability did not end political debate, but it marked clear boundaries for future discussions.

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outside a tavern. The fear of corruption became an important feature of Whig political culture,

underscoring the need for a virtuous elite and an electorate that could not be manipulated by unscrupulous politicians.

The Glorious Revolution also affected English law. England had no written constitution, but the common law, the unwritten rules of law worked out over centuries by English courts, embodied many of the essential liberties esteemed by Englishmen. To these protections Parliament had added the Bill of Rights of 1689, which would strongly influence the worldview of colonists in America. By asserting the ideal of the rule of law, the Glorious Revolution established the principle that no one, not even the king, was above the law. The revolution also lodged the right to tax firmly in the representative branch of government, Parliament, and it rejected the practice of raising a standing army, which was considered a serious threat to liberty, without the consent of the legislature. Among the other provisions protected by the Bill of Rights were the rights to petition government for redress of grievances, trial by jury, and bail, and a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. A century later, the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights codified and expanded these ideals.

2.6.1 The Whig Vision of Politics

Whig theory, put into place after the Glorious Revolution, put a premium on the ideal of civic virtue, placing the public good above personal interest. To promote such virtue, one needed a society in which property ownership was widespread. An agricultural nation, where farming was thought to encourage honesty, frugality, and independence, was less likely to become corrupt than a society dependent on commerce and manufacturing. In an agrarian society politics would be less fractious because everyone's interest would be similar. In such a society representatives would be equally affected by whatever laws they passed. This would prevent them from tyrannizing over the people by passing oppressive laws.

The Whig view of politics was not democratic. It assumed that only men who owned property had a sufficient permanent stake in society to be trusted with the vote. (The few women who

owned property, mostly widows, were not allowed to vote.) According to Whig thought, only the best—most virtuous—men would serve as representatives. The notion of frequent elections

-x became a cornerstone of Whig politics. The great danger, however, lay in the potential for electoral corruption, as reflected in this political cartoon (2.13 on page 62), which shows voters being bribed

Which rights expressly protected by the English Declaration of Rights were later included in the American Bill of Rights?

62 CHAPTER 2 MODELS OF SETTLEMENT: ENGLISH COLONIAL SOCIETIES, 1590-1710

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2.13 English Whig Cartoon on Electoral Corruption In this early political satire of an English election, the electorate mill about waiting to be bribed by a candidate. The text below the scene warned of the dangers of "flattery and gold" which cause men to be corrupted and "liberty sold."

2.6.2 Mercantilism, Federalism, and the Structure of Empire

required that all goods be transported on American or English carriers, which meant goods from other parts of Europe had to transit through English ports before arriving in the colonies. In 1696, Parliament also created the Board of Trade to help coordinate policy toward the colonies. Three years later Parliament passed the Woolens Act, to protect the English woolen industry from competition from Ireland and the colonies. The act did not ban Americans from making and selling woolens within the colonies, but it prohibited them from exporting woolens to England.

The great eighteenth-centuryScottish economist Adam Smith called this economic system mercantilism.

In 1651, the Parliament passed the first navigation act designed to limit the profitable Dutch trade with the English colonies. The act required that all goods entering or leaving colonial ports be carried on English or colonial ships and that non- English goods be carried on English ships or ships of the country from which the goods originated. Parliament passed even more restrictive navigation acts in 1660, 1663, 1673, and 1696. These acts

2.6 THE WHIG IDEAL AND THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL STABILITY 63 mmmm

"The encouragement of exportation and the discouragement of importation [of manufactured goods] are the two great

engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country."

ADAM SMITH, The Wealth of Nations,1776

According to mercantilist theory the wealth of the "mother" country England would be increased by heavy governmental regulation of imports and exports to the colonies. Colonies existed to generate wealth for their mother country by supplying it with raw materials and purchasing consumer goods from it. To enforce its mercantile policies, Parliament used legislation such as the navigation acts to control colonial behavior. It also created admiralty courts to try violations of the laws governing commerce.

The lucrative trade in beaver pelts illustrates the way the mercantile system worked. Beavers were sought after for their fur and their wool. The latter, which was especially water resistant, was used to make felt for hats. As the painting in Images as History: Corruption versus Piety shows (see page 43), hats were an important fashion accessory for European men. Beavers were over¬ hunted in Europe, so hat makers turned to the cool climates and forests of the Eastern United States. English merchants depended on Indians to track and trap beaver, a process depicted somewhat fancifully in (2.14). Beavers exported to England were used to make hats or were

re-exported to hat makers on the continent. Some of the hats made with American beaver were sold to colonists. Eager to protect their domestic hat manufacturers, Parliament eventually passed the Hat Act (1732), which prohibited Americans from exporting any hats.

In 1707, the Act of Union united the kingdoms of Scotland and England, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The act also divided

power in the new British Empire between local and imperial authority. Colonial assemblies continued to legislate on local matters, and Parliament exercised powers over the whole empire. In essence British government had created a federal system that divided power between a distant central authority and local governments. This system of divided authority paved the way for the modern U.S. division between national authority (seated in Washington, D.C.) and the individual state governments.

What was the theory of mercantilism?

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Beaver fur and wool were essential to hat manufacturing. This image, created by an artist with little knowledge of 'beavers or their habitats, shows a group of Indian hunters approaching a huge and wholly unrealistic artistic rendering of a beaver dam.

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Chapter Review

TIMELINE

1607 Founding of Jamestown

First successful English colony in America

1613 John Rolfe exports first tobacco crop fromVirginia j-fejj The struggling Jamestown colony finally finds a cash crop for export

Se,

.. ... 11

if 1620 Mayflower Compact signed

Pilgrims arrive in Massachusetts without a legal title to the land and

frame their own government

i, ; m

1634-1638 Colony of Maryland established First proprietary colony

Roger Williams founds Providence First colony founded on religious toleration established in colonial America

Anne Hutchinson banished to Rhode Island Antinomian controversy ends

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if'1642 English Civil War

English Puritans under Oliver Cromwell take up arms against

Charles I

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1664-1681e : England captures New Netherland, which is renamed NewYork

j James, Duke of York, gains control i of New York and New Jersey

William Penn obtains royal charter for Pennsylvania

i Quaker William Penn founds | Pennsylvania1688

Glorious Revolution in England

William and Mary ascend to the throne, and Whig political I

ideals triumph

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j A witchcraft hysteria engulfs Salem j Village and Salem town

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64

Why It Matters

This period in American history matters because . . .

•By the end of the seventeenth century England had cemented its control of much of the eastern seaboard from the Carolinas to what is now Maine.

•Each of the colonies had its own distinctive history, but all of them experienced “growing pains" as they confronted a series of political crises at the end of the century.

•Rebellions and conflicts with Indians were among the most important forces contributing to these crises.

Learning Outcomes Images as History Contextualize and evaluate visual evidence in understanding Puritanism.

Competing Visions Analyze the role of religion in colonial society through primary sources.

Choices and Consequences Explore the choices that arguments about the English settlers made impact of the crises of in creating permanent the late seventeenth settlements in North century on the

evolution of colonial American society.

Historical Argument Formulate historical

Historical Literacy Demonstrate knowledge of the key events, people, and chronology in English colonial societies, 1590-1710. America.

Review Questions

1. How do you account for the early failures of Jamestown and its eventual successes?

2. Why was the term Puritan an apt characterization of the Calvinists within the English church seeking further reformation?

3. Why did the English sugar islands turn to slavery as their primary labor source? How did early Carolina function as a colony of a colony?

4. What ideas and values were most closely associated with the different English settlements in North America?

Key Terms Restoration In 1660 Charles II became king of England, restoring the monarchy to power after the Civil War and Cromwellian rule. 52

Bacon's Rebellion A popular uprising in Virginia in 1676 named after its leader, Nathaniel Bacon. 56

Glorious Revolution The relatively bloodless revolution that led to the ascension of William and Mary, which was widely seen as a vindication for English liberty. 58

Whigs (English, seventeenth century) The group that supported parliamentary power after the Glorious Revolution. 61

Mercantilism Theory of empire that advocated strict regulation of trade between colonies and the mother country to benefit the latter. 62

Headright An incentive system to encourage additional immigrants by giving 50 acres to any man who would pay his own fare to Virginia and 50 additional acres for each person brought with him. 40

Proprietor This English legal title carried with it enormous political power, giving its possessor almost king-like authority over his domains. Colonial proprietors carried similar powers. 41

Quakers The Society of Friends, who believed each individual possessed a divine spark of grace, an inner light that could lead to salvation. 48

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