HIST 1305 Essay -

Growth, Slavery S

__ and Conflict

)

CONTENTS Colonial America, 1 710-1763

3.1 Culture and Society in the Eighteenth Century p. 68 Life in the seventeenth-century American colonies, even for the wealthiest, was crude

and primitive. Beginning in the eighteenth century, however, a more cosmopolitan and refined culture began to emerge. Prosperous colonists sought out the latest British and European consumer goods, such as finely woven Turkish or English carpets, tea sets, and pattern books of English architectural and furniture styles.

Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a fur trader in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, built an elegant new house in 1716, complete with beautifully executed wall murals, signifying his wealth and refinement. One of the most striking murals depicted two Mohawk Indian chiefs. The unknown painter copied these images from an engrav¬ ing of a group of Indians who had traveled to London to meet with Queen Anne (r. 1703-1714). The engraver and the painter included authentic elements, such as the tomahawk wielded by the Indian on the right. Yet the image of the Indians also reflected the conventions of European painting: The position of the Mohawk "Indian Kings'" hands at their hip resembled a common aristocratic pose found in English portraits from this period.

Books, newspapers, and letters all were part of the expanding commerce of the Atlantic world. This economy included a lively exchange of ideas on a wide array of subjects, including architecture, fashion, politics, religion, science, and philosophy. One highly influential set of ideas was associated with the Enlightenment and its ideals of reason and social progress. These ideas fostered new social experiments, such as the founding of the colony of Georgia.

Religious ideas also crossed the Atlantic. The English evangelical minister George Whitefield crisscrossed the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia. His tour helped spread the ideas of the religious revival movement known as the Great Awakening. Enlightenment ideals of liberty, human dignity, and progress and new

religious ideas led some Americans to question the institution of slavery, despite its

growing importance to the colonial economy. The stark contrast between the wealthy planters and wretchedly housed slaves was not the only divide in American life. As

the overall wealth of the colonies increased, so did the disparity between the wealthy and the poor.

Land itself became scarce by the mid-eighteenth century. Expansion westward was hampered by the Appalachian Mountains, and the French and a host of Indian

tribes controlled the rich lands of what is now America's Midwest. Ultimately the balance of power in North America was decided by the French and Indian War.

3.2 Enlightenment and Awakenings p. 74

3.3 African Americans in the Colonial Era p. 80

tgJWtl-7 *

> -1 3.4 Immigration, Regional

Economies, and Inequality p. 86

r. TilW,

3

is

3.5 War and the Contest for Empire p. 90

•: n

"In 1740, 1 don't remember [seeing] such a thing as a [Turkish] carpet in the country. . . . Now nothing are so common as [Turkish] or [English] Carpets,

the whole furniture of the Roomes Elegant & every appearance of opulence."

JOHN WAYLES, future father-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, 1766

.Til ii> ill \\

IJ///SSm’Hi ' 1 \

. i, t MSN ,-. J A?-

M miA :-

"i Wm , ,

If s ‘w ;I11 * itea : m mm

K *a . :I £ 7; i hi

XI Hlg.1 j i -r,7- la Af ;'

: i%

li* I: ;I ?.* s; I

I. *,1I M; ; i -i< !

\ '7fm -

\ % i.

r.

i Ml I *

*ffl f . f/ij

Am, A E -j£ÿAY 1

f1 ; mI *Vi iVt

$ PH!i '•IP ff 3— ; j . r#

v . II ItWpY IESSl

68 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

3. Culture and Society in the Eighteenth Century

As trade expanded with Britain, colonists strove to emulate the culture and sophistication of the mother country. New and grander houses, filled with the latest European-style furnishings, testified to the growing sophistication of the colonies. Yet while the colonies were striving to become more British, they were also developing their own distinctly American political culture

and institutions. A native-born elite emerged, an American gentry class whose wealth, confidence, and education inspired them to become leaders in the colonial assemblies. A distinctive American style of politics had begun to take shape.

3.1 The Refinement of America

eighteenth century. America became more fully integrated into the Atlantic economy, a huge triangle that stretched from Scotland to Africa to the interior of the British mainland colonies (3.2).

Trade in the Atlantic world involved a staggering array of goods. Scottish merchants purchased Virginia tobacco, which was sold throughout Europe. Another side of the triangle tied New England merchants to West Indian sugar planters. West Indian sugar was distilled into rum by New Englanders. Some of this alcohol was traded to Indians in the lucrative beaver trade in upstate New York. These beaver furs were often used in

hats and sometimes ended up in London or on the European continent.

By the early eighteenth century, expanding trade with the British Empire increased the number of wealthy colonists and brought a flood of new luxury goods into affluent American homes.

At the end of the seventeenth century even the homes of the most prosperous families in colonial America had few imported luxury goods. The sparse furnishings of the Hart Room (3.1), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, capture the primitive nature of late seventeenth-century American homes. Thomas Hart, a landowner in Ipswich, Massachusetts, built his house in 1639 and furnished it in the ensuing decades. This parlor, the best room in the house, usually served as both a bedroom and a communal living space. Information from probates, a list of goods assembled as part of a will, suggests that homeowners furnished even the best parlor rooms sparsely, with simple tables and cupboards. The furniture's simplicity and boxy look reflected prevailing styles and the scarcity of skilled craftsmen in the colonies at the time. The walls J were generally whitewashed, m with no ornamentation; the postM and beams used to support the 1 walls and the roof were clearly * visible.

Colonial culture began to change with the expansion of commerce at the start of the

*•

3.1 The Hart Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art The simple whitewashed walls and exposed beams in this

prosperous seventeenth-century room and the simple boxy style of its furniture were typical of the lack of ornamentation in this era.

3.1 CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 69

? ,* &

Acquiring such goods allowed individuals and families to demonstrate that they were not

simple provincials; they were part of a wider cosmopolitan world. Rather than eat with simple earthenware ceramics, as their forebears had,

&

EUROPE

British Isles ;

T' NORTH

AMERICAthe wealthiest Americans now aspired to dine on fine porcelain imported from England or Holland. Refined taste was proof of gentility, a term that became synonymous with the attributes associated with wealth and sophistication. American society underwent a process of Anglicization as colonists emulated English society, including its tastes in furniture, foods,

clothing, and customs. Nothing better captured the rise of gentility

and the increasing Anglicization of colonial America than the rage for imported tea. As the consumption of tea increased dramatically between the end of the seventeenth century and the dawn of the eighteenth, the rituals of serving tea became more refined and complicated. Serving tea to one's guests became essential.

1

*0* 3- AFRICAjfÿATLANTIC0|

IÿOCEAW 0.1

;

:A % SOUTH

AMERICA PACIFIC

OCEAN J>

Verplank Room has painted wood paneling. The elegant card table in the Verplank Room is one of many specialized pieces of furniture likely to have adorned a prosperous home in the mid-eighteenth

3.2 The Triangle Trade

The Atlantic economy can be visualized as a triangle. Goods from Europe were sold or traded in America or Africa. Raw materials from the Americas were

sold in Europe. European goods were sold or traded

for African slaves who were then shipped to the Americas.

Although tea drinking started among the wealthy, it gradually spread to all levels of American society. By the mid-eighteenth century, tea drinking century. The Verplanks, Coldens, and other genteel had evolved from a luxury to a necessity, so much families would each have owned an imported china so that inmates in the Philadelphia poorhouse set and tea table as well. demanded that their meager rations include tea.

The Verplank Room (3.3) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art contains furniture from the New

Changes in furnishing provide insights into deeper changes in colonial society. The rising popularity of writing desks and drop-leaf bookcases

York City townhouse of Samuel Verplank and the with writing surfaces (see detail in 3.3) reflected the country house of Cadwallader Colden Jr. in Orange, expansion of trade networks in the British Empire. New York. In contrast to the simple whitewashed Merchants needed to keep better track of a variety walls of the seventeenth-century Hart Room, the of written documents as they broadened the range

|m • if

. — 3.3 The Verplank Room,Metropolitan Museum of Art The highly specialized furniture reflected the growing wealth of many colonists and the Anglicization of colonial culture. In the inset image of a secretary bookcase, note the drop-leaf writing surface and cubbyholes that made this piece of furniture well adapted to the needs of merchants.

' §1 \

...

i

70 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

of their correspondence on business and political It matters. An insight into the range of this far- l flung commerce comes from the extensive

correspondence of Charleston merchant Robert Pringle with business associates

L throughout the Atlantic world, from Lisbon, Portugal, to London and Barbados to Boston.

I The entrepreneurial Pringle experimented with A a variety of desirable agricultural imports, H including pistachios, Seville oranges, and

olives, hoping that they might be produced in the Carolinas. None of these imports took hold, but South Carolina did provide Europe with two important products, rice and indigo.

For wealthy colonists nothing was more effective at communicating one's

riches and gentility than a formal portrait in the latest English style. Following the conventions of European portraits, men and women struck standard aristocratic poses; elegant ladies dressed in flowing gowns, mimicking the style of their

export crop in the eighteenth century. She eagerly consumed British fashions and ideas, and aspired to create a lifestyle that a visitor from London would have easily recognized. She studied French, was conversant in the ideas of the English philosopher John Locke, and participated in the management of her family's plantation. Her social life was equally busy. She regularly attended teas, dances, and concerts. Eliza's beautiful gold silk dress (3.4) was woven from silk produced on her own plantation. After the silk was harvested, she sent it to England to be dyed and woven into a fabric suitable for a gown that might be worn to the most elegant party in either London or Charleston.

For women the new customs of gentility were a mixed blessing. A wealthy woman might have servants or slaves to help her entertain in a suitable style, but it took additional time and effort to supervise these activities. Most women did not enjoy the luxury of additional help and had to handle these new responsibilities themselves.

What was Anglicization?

1 w

*2 i\u.

,

3.4 Eliza Pinckney’s Dress Silk produced on Pinckney's plantation was sent to England to be spun into fine fabric, dyed, and sewn into monarch, Queen Anne. Men and even young boys a dress that reflected were painted wearing elegant outfits that reflected the latest London

fashions.

3.1.2 More English, Yet More American

their wealth, status, and power. The portrait of the young Henry Darnall III, one of the earliest done in the American South, testifies to the growing wealth and refinement of the colonial elite (see Images as History: A Portrait of Colonial Aspirations).

Eliza Lucas Pinckney, an affluent South Carolinian, exemplified the new ideal of refined female gentility. Born into a prosperous family of rice planters, Eliza helped introduce the profitable dye plant, indigo, into South Carolina (1738-1744), which became the colonies' second most important

The exteriors of American houses also underwent a process of Anglicization. English-style manor houses, such as William Byrd's Westover (1730-1734), (3.5), borrowed ideas from English pattern books (architectural guidebooks of the latest

styles) (3.6). The main entrance of this elegant red brick mansion took guests through an impressive doorway that Byrd imported from England. The model for the door and its frame came from a

London design. The classical columns and the swan¬ shaped broken pediment at the top of the doorframe include a carved pineapple. This exotic West Indian

fruit created a sensation among the wealthy on both sides of the Atlantic, as both a culinary delicacy and a symbol of affluent hospitality. The pineapple soon became a common architectural motif in the

mansions of wealthy Americans. Anglicization transformed

churches and public architecture as well. Some of the grandest

3.5 Westover Plantation

The doorway of Byrd's mansion was crafted in England and included the latest

architectural details. Note the carved pineapple above the door, • .

mg .

L HI

ill Us m i ill5!

_ I

lifliS " 1

IdiH u3le— k.:, mm

1 -

ismWBmp-hi*

T1 - 4 ;l :li!l

m• :

3.6 English Pattern Book

Byrd used this picture from an influential

London design book when selecting a style for his doorway.

>. .

imEn

3.1 CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 71

Images as History A PORTRAIT OF COLONIAL ASPIRATIONS

nor the stone balcony would have existed anywhere in the colonies at the time. Kuhn's decision to include these imaginary elements in the background reflected the aspirations rather than the realities of life in the colonies.The picture symbolized the wealth, power, and gentility that the Darnalls sought to achieve, not their actual condition.

The work is also the first known painting of an African American in the colonies. DarnalTs slave wears a silver yoke around his neck, a symbol of his inferior status. Although much younger, Darnall towers over his slave.

Justus Engelhardt Kuhn's portrait of the young Henry Darnall III (1710) reveals how the aspirations of colonists continued to exceed the bounds of the possible. Although the Darnalls lived a life of luxury compared with most colonists, surrounding themselves with goods that earlier generations of colonists would have envied, they did not quite live up to the standards of the typical British aristocrat.

The scene behind Darnall is pure fantasy. An elegant stone balustrade overlooking an elaborate formal garden projects an image of wealth, refinement, and power. Yet neither the fancy garden

The imaginary garden in the background represents the Darnalls’ desires, but this level of grandeur was not yet attainable in the colonies.

}ÿ

Hiimi Y:

V r’W1 The classical column shown in the foreground demonstrates the wealth and taste of the Darnalls.

/

1 fim %

- j

i i U 'ÿ%

:i Darnall’s elegant \ suit testifies to his family’s wealth and cosmopolitan taste.

Mm

n Henry Darnall III as a Child by Justus Engelhardt Kuhn

72 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763 M I' 1' WI—WiL

'

III

buildings erected in the colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century were public structures such as the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, where Pennsylvania's assembly met. Constructed between 1732 and 1756, the State

House's two-and-half-story red brick structure dominated the Philadelphia skyline. Built in the Palladian style (also known as Georgian, in honor of the British monarch, King George I [r. 1714-1727]), the Pennsylvania State House captured two seemingly opposing trends in the evolution of American society in the eighteenth century. Its architecture testified to the powerful influence of Anglicization. With its beautiful windows and impressive red brick exterior, the State House visibly symbolized the colonists' esteem for and knowledge of the latest English architectural styles (3.7). The actions inside the State House, however, the debates and votes of the Pennsylvania assembly, were emblematic of the growing power and assertiveness of an American- born colonial elite. The building was later renamed Independence Hall, reflecting its close association with the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.

What does the design of the Pennsylvania i State House reveal about colonial society? I

3.1.3 Strong Assemblies and Weak Governors

The Pennsylvania State House was a potent visual reminder of the power of the colonial assembly. The assemblies had become the preeminent political institutions in the colonies. American ideas about legislative power drew support from seventeenth-century English Whig ideas that triumphed during England's Glorious Revolution in 1688 (see Chapter 2).

Several developments in American colonial history helped reinforce the growth of legislative power. Although voting in America remained restricted to adult white male landholders, the percentage of such individuals in the colonies was larger than it was in Britain. The larger voting population meant that a higher percentage of Americans were politically active than Britons. Additionally, none of the colonies had anything like an upper house comparable to Parliament's House of Lords. The governors' councils, the closest thing to a colonial upper house, had little power. America's native-born elites were not a titled British aristocracy, with a distinct legislative body, the House of Lords, to guard their privileges '

and powers. Ambitious young Americans from good families, like the young Thomas Jefferson, expected to enter politics by election to the lower house of the colonial assembly, not by inheriting a place in an aristocratic upper house.

3.7 Pennsylvania State House

The new Pennsylvania State House reflected the Anglicization of American tastes and the growing wealth of colonial

Pennsylvania.

t

I

im .

A,

1

IL <ÿ - i! A fflESEA A 5m11ÿ i !j -TTL-

- l iij SEVXaiPf

LI l, L.-Ha ift iml i iL X.

•

“T-. 4 -JiMMLgg

3.1 CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 73

In part the actions of colonial assemblies filled a their plans. The royal governors' dependence

void that the structure of the empire had created. In on the assemblies for their salaries weakened an age in which a letter could take months to travel their position with regard to the legislature. from London to the colonies, it was imperative By controlling the power of the purse, colonial that local assemblies have the authority to deal assemblies were able to frustrate the plans of the with a host of governmental responsibilities, from most ambitious royal governors: If they wished organizing the militia to providing for the poor. to collect their salaries, the governors dared Although colonists had gained the right to legislate not anger the assemblies. Colonial assemblies on local matters, they were also part of the larger came to act like and think of themselves as mini- British Empire. Most colonies had agents who represented their interests in London and lobbied Parliament. Apart from these agents the colonies had no actual representation in Parliament: No member of Parliament was elected from the colonies or watched over their interests. In this regard the American colonies were no worse off than were other British colonies, including Barbados and Jamaica. Even within Britain newer cities such as Manchester and Birmingham had no representation in Parliament, and at least one town, Dunwich, continued to send two members to Parliament even though the town had literally crumbled into the North Sea. To cast their votes "legal residents" of Dunwich had to row out to the location of the former town hall, which was submerged.

According to traditional Whig political theory, members of Parliament were expected to represent the whole nation, not a particular locality. Rather than speak for any local interest, representatives were supposed to act in the larger public good. By the 1760s, the differences between American and British

practices had become so great that champions of parliamentary power developed a new theory to justify traditional practices. According to the theory of virtual representation, all Britons, including those in the colonies, were fully represented in Parliament, even if they had no actual representatives to guard their interests. Representatives did not serve any particular local interest, but were supposed to legislate on behalf of the good of the nation. As long as Parliament did not meddle much in colonial affairs, a policy of "salutary neglect," this theory caused few problems. When Parliament began to take a more active role in managing the empire and collecting greater revenues in the 1760s, the colonial

.ÿ—•ÿpractices and British theory collided. ' Royal governors repeatedly complained that the colonial assemblies had exercised authority that did not belong to them and frustrated

parliaments, with full legislative power over local matters. In 1728 the Massachusetts legislature reminded the governor that it was "the undoubted Right of all English men ... to raise and dispose of Moneys for the publick Service of their own free accord without any Compulsion."

"My Lord Combury has and dos still make use of an unfortunate Custom of dressing

himself in Womens Cloaths and of exposing himself in that Garb upon the Ramparts to the view of the public; in that dress he

draws a World of Spectators about him and consequently as many Censures."

Letter spreading rumors of Lord Combury's cross-dressing,1709

Colonial politics could be nasty, and most royal governors lacked the power to tame their legislatures. No governor was more ineffective and despised than Lord Cornbury, Royal Governor of New York and New Jersey (the two colonies shared the same royal governor until 1738). Enemies of Cornbury accused him of parading around the ramparts of New York's forts in women's clothing and used these rumors to undermine his authority, a strategy that was extremely effective. Sir Danvers Osborne, another New York governor, became so despondent over dealings with the colonial assembly that he hanged himself. To avoid the fate of Cornbury or Osborne, savvy royal governors understood the necessity of making strategic alliances with members of the assembly. The give- and-take between the governors and the assembly defined colonial politics for much of the eighteenth century.

Why were colonial governors so weak?

74 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

Enlightenment and Awakenings3.2 By mid-century a British traveler to Philadelphia, the largest city in America, would have been impressed by the fine houses, elegant coaches, and other signs of America's refinement and gentility. The visitor would also have been struck by the signs of Enlightenment in the city: a fine lending library, the American Philosophical Society, and a new college.

The city hosted scientists of international renown, such as Benjamin Franklin, the man who had tamed lightning. A visitor to the colonies might also have encountered the great evangelist George Whitefield on one of his tours. Even if one missed hearing the "peddler in divinity," one could read about his exploits in the expanding press. The religious revival movement known as the Great Awakening attacked traditional styles of worship in favor of a more emotional style of devotion. Communities across America were divided into those who favored the new style of religion and those opposed to it.

3.8 The Gaols Committee of the House of Commons In this image based on William Hogarth's painting, members of Parliament involved in prison reform, including

James Oglethorpe (second from the left), examine

a prisoner. His tattered clothes

and shackles reveal the inhumanity of Britain's prisons.

3.2.1 Georgia's Utopian Experiment

and the poor by transplanting them from England to a more wholesome environment in America.

James Oglethorpe, a spokesman in Parliament for humanitarian causes, secured parliamentary support for his plan to use colonization as an alternative to imprisonment. Georgia, named for

One of the most ambitious Enlightenment endeavors was the new colony of Georgia, founded as an experiment to reform criminals

Jgr- 'ÿ

*i(ii i[? r 4 * ifff § % If • 1,AA

/ iSg

* v4«r m m \ ;wft “ M:v §¥ Ik :JC

i-y,.

M A. 'ÿ>mm-'4 '

i :y

W y Wm ;y.

mM iiiisB* i

1 s .

:

mm

m

3.2 ENLIGHTENMENT AND AWAKENINGS 75 IS

King George II (r. 1727-1760), was strategically located as a buffer between the Carolinas and

Although Enlightenment ideals helped shape the early history of Georgia, defense was never far from Oglethorpe's mind. His plan for the city of Savannah

Life in British prisons in the eighteenth century drew on the ideals of Renaissance city planning that had inspired the design of many other towns in the Americas (see Chapter 1). Reflecting the city's

Spanish Florida.

was harsh. At least half of the prisoners were debtors, whose crime was failing to pay their bills. Oglethorpe became a leading champion for prison position on the frontier of Spanish America, the plan reform and was appointed to a parliamentary committee charged with investigating the nation's jails. The committee's work attracted the interest of artist and social critic William Hogarth. In this painting of Oglethorpe's committee, Hogarth presents a stark contrast between the elegantly dressed members of Parliament and a prisoner in

rags who was "clamped in irons," a painful form of physical restraint commonly used in British prisons (3.8).

For Oglethorpe, removing prisoners from debtors' prison and sending them to a colony in America meshed perfectly with his vision for dealing with crime and poverty in Britain. In America the poor would have a fresh opportunity to earn a living and avoid the impoverishment they faced in England. Oglethorpe's vision for Georgia reflected the views of Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, who rejected the notion that humans were born depraved and could not be rehabilitated if placed in a healthier environment.

The 1732 charter granted Oglethorpe and the trustees of the colony of Georgia enormous power. To prevent the colony from becoming just another slave society in which a few enjoyed great wealth and the majority were poor, the trustees banned slavery. To promote sobriety, the trustees also prohibited the

looked like a design for a military encampment, a model stretching back to ancient Rome (3.9). Oglethorpe had dreamed of using Georgia as the launching point for the conquest of Spanish America, but his attack on the Spanish town of St. Augustine in Florida in 1740 failed. Two years later when the Spanish retaliated, Oglethorpe repelled them. Georgia did not become a staging ground to root out the Spanish, but it was an effective barrier, protecting the colonies from Spanish attack.

How did the founding of Georgia reflect Enlightenment ideals?

3.2.2 American Champions of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment championed the work of Sir Isaac Newton, the great English scientist and mathematician who explored the laws of motion, optics, and gravity. The Newtonian universe was radically different from the world that had produced the Salem witchcraft accusations (see Chapter 2). Rather than looking primarily to the invisible world of the supernatural, Newtonianism focused on the visible world of nature, which functioned according to the rules discerned by observation and interpreted by

3.9 Savannah, Georgia

The layout of Savannah resembled

a Roman military garrison, reflecting its strategic

importance as a frontier outpost protecting the British colonies from

Spanish America.

importation of rum. Oglethorpe and the trustees soon confronted

BFr the same types of problems that earlier proprietary colonies had

experienced (see Chapter 2). Settlers demanded a greater say in their affairs, including the right to import slaves. By 1738, the colony had abandoned much of its original vision, including its ban on importing both slaves and rum. Having begun as something of a utopian experiment, Georgia

-.ÿbecame another slave society in the lower South. (See Competing Visions: Georgia Settlers Battle James Oglethorpe over Slavery, on page 76.)

- :.g l ...' -a -Tr;

.: - ;J.r:~-

'

fmypib

KJL T

m

' r- A.

... J '

ffiw :\- •- Sjg

76 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

Competing Visions GEORGIA SETTLERS BATTLE JAMES OGLETHORPE OVER SLAVERY

James Oglethorpe viewed Georgia as an Enlightenment experiment that would demonstrate that the poor and debt-ridden of England could be rehabilitated if provided with the right environment. The desire of some colonists to import slaves threatened this vision. If Georgia turned to slave labor, it would become more like Carolina and Virginia. Escaped slaves might also trigger clashes with Spanish-held Florida to the south. The profit motive would lead to the creation of the same types of inequalities that had led to the impoverishment of the debtors who had been the colony's first settlers.

The Earl of Egmont, one of the leading trustees of the colony,

made the following observations about the debate over

introducing slavery into Georgia in his diary. In this first

selection, Egmont recounts the desires of colonists to import

slaves into the colony.

In this second extract from Egmont's diary, he details

Oglethorpe's response to the demand that slavery be introduced

into the colony.

Col. Oglethorpe wrote again to the Trustees, to show further

inconveniences arising from allowing the use of Negroes, viz. Wednesday, 3 [September 1735]. The Scots settled at

Joseph's Town having applied for the liberty of making use of negro slaves, we acquainted one of their number, who came over to solicit this and other requests made by them to us, that it could not be allowed, the King having passed an Act against it, of which we read

part to him. . . . Monday, 17 [November 1735], A letter was read from Mr.

Samuel Eveleigh that he had quitted his purpose of settling in

Georgia, and was returned to Carolina, because we allow not the use of negro slaves, without which he pretends our Colony will never prove considerable by reason the heat of the climate will not permit white men to labour as the negroes do, especially in raising rice, nor can they endure the wet season when rice is to be gathered in, . . ,

1 . That it is against the principles by which the Trustees associ¬ ated together, which was to relieve the distressed, whereas we should occasion the misery of thousands in Africa, by setting

Men upon using arts to buy and bring into perpetual slavery the

poor people, who now live free there.

2. Instead of strengthening, we should weaken the Frontiers of

America.

3. Give away to the Owners of slaves that land which was design'd

as a Refuge to persecuted Protestants.

4. Prevent all improvements of silk and wine.

5. And glut the Markets with more of the American Commodi¬ ties, which do already but too much interfere with the English

produce.

. ’ fi ir

L3

illAl

0-*C >ÿ* 1

3 v

Manacles used to bind slaves in the international slave trade

3.2 ENLIGHTENMENT AND AWAKENINGS 77

reason. Newtonianism was not antithetical to

.religion, but the God of the Newtonian universe was different from the traditional Christian

notion of God as a patriarch or king. In the Newtonian vision God was the great clockmaker who fashioned the universe to run according to predictable natural laws.

In contrast to Newton's grand theorizing, the Enlightenment in America took a distinctly practical approach. No figure in America more closely approximated this ideal than Benjamin Franklin. Printer, scientist, reformer, and statesman, Franklin became a symbol of the American Enlightenment on both sides of the Atlantic. His international fame derived from his scientific

•ft X

experiments with lightning and electricity, which he published in 1751. Franklin coined the terms positive and negative to describe the nature of electrical current and theorized the possibility of creating a battery to store an electrical charge. Franklin also demonstrated that lightning was a form of electrical discharge. This insight led the practical-minded Franklin to develop the lightning rod. The device was designed to attract lightning and then conduct the current safely away from a building. American homes were generally built of wood, a plentiful material in most parts of the colonies that was extremely susceptible to damage by lightning. In a tribute to Franklin, John Adams wrote, "Nothing, perhaps, that ever occurred upon this earth was so well calculated to give any man an extensive and universal celebrity as the discovery of . . . lightning rods." Franklin's close association with electricity in general and the lightning rod in particular was captured in this 1762 painting (3.10), which depicts Franklin at his desk with a lightning storm raging in the background and a lightning rod prominently positioned on a building visible through a window.

Franklin helped found the American Philosophical Society (1743), a learned society committed to the advancement of knowledge; the Publick Academy of Philadelphia (1751) (later the University of Pennsylvania); and the Library Company, a private lending library. In addition to

1 is

3.10 Benjamin

Franklin and Electricity

This contemporary painting of Franklin links him with his work on electricity. In the background, lightning destroys one building while another, to which

Franklin's lightning rod is attached, survives a strike.

came to regard slavery as a great evil and vigorously opposed it.

What was the Newtonian view of the universe?

3.2.3 Awakening, Revivalism, and American Society

From 1730 to 1770, the colonies experienced a series of religious revivals that historians group together as the Great Awakening. The resulting religious conflict divided families, split churches, and fragmented communities, forever altering the religious landscape of colonial America.

One of the early leaders of the revival these institutions that reflected the Enlightenment s movement, Gilbert Tennent, a New Jersey minister, emphasis on education and the spread of attacked ministers for preaching an empty, "dead

form of religion." Only by accepting the reality dedicated to improving the lives of Philadelphians, of sin and opening one's heart to grace could one including a fire company and the first public

knowledge, Franklin helped found organizations

hope to achieve salvation. Tennent also took aim at America's expanding consumer society and the "covetousness" that society had encouraged.

hospital in the colonies. Although Franklin owned slaves, as did many in Philadelphia, he eventually

78 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

The leading intellectual champion of the Awakening was New England minister Jonathan Edwards, who captured the spirit of this movement when he wrote that "Our people do not so much need to have their heads" filled, as much as "have their hearts touched." Edwards's fiery sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741), offered his parishioners a vision of the eternal fires of hell that awaited the unconverted. To shake his parishioners out of their complacency and remind them of the necessity of grace for salvation, Edwards compared their fate to that of a spider dangling above the pit of eternal damnation, with only God's mercy preventing them from falling in.

In 1757, Edwards became the president of the College of New Jersey (which became Princeton University), one of several new colleges founded

him and other evangelical ministers as "Peddlers in Divinity." Whitefield attracted such large crowds that much of his preaching was outdoors because few churches were big enough to hold his audience.

The Great Awakening changed American society. The evangelical methods employed by gifted preachers implicitly challenged the hierarchical assumptions of colonial society about gender, race, and social status. Individuals exercised greater choice, many choosing to leave their own congregations and find one that better suited their spiritual needs. For some the Awakening provided opportunities to step forward as lay preachers. For the first time in American religious history, ordinary people were given a significant public voice. For those whose voices were seldom heard in public—women, blacks, artisans, or poor folk— the opportunity to testify about their spiritual life, often to mixed crowds that included people like themselves or even their social betters, challenged traditional ideas about hierarchy. Mary Cooper, a resident of Long Island, noted in her diary that she heard an astonishing assortment of individuals preach, including a Quaker woman, a "Black man," and even two Indian preachers. By giving a voice to many groups previously excluded from traditional preaching, the Great Awakening contributed to the growth of a more democratic culture.

In a few cases women touched by the spirit began preaching, an action that prompted their own ministers to denounce them for flouting the

accepted roles assigned to women in colonial society. Testifying to one's religious experiences was one thing, but assuming the role of preacher, a role traditionally reserved for men, was simply too radical. After Bathsheba Kingsley stole a horse and rode from community to community preaching the gospel, Jonathan Edwards denounced her for perverting the spirit of revival. Edwards, wed to

traditional ideas about women's roles, was horrified that Kingsley interpreted the Awakening's message as an invitation to become a gospel preacher.

Not all ministers approved of the ideas and methods of the revivalist preachers. Opponents of the revival, dubbed Old Lights, attacked the

revivalists, or New Lights, for their excessive emotionalism. Old Light ministers ridiculed the revivalists for telling their congregants that "they were damned! damned! damned!" Rather than adopt the new, more emotional style, Old Lights

continued to favor sermons based on learned

explications of biblical texts. In response to this

'The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome

insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you bums like fire;he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire/'

JONATHAN EDWARDS,1741

by supporters of the Awakening to train a new generation of ministers. Princeton, allied to the Presbyterian Church, also had close ties to Scottish universities that were leading centers of Enlightenment thought. Rhode Island College (Brown University) was founded by the Baptists in 1764; Queens College (later Rutgers), by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1766. Dartmouth College was founded by the Congregationalist Eleazar Wheelock in 1769, originally as an Indian mission school.

Edwards's account of his own Massachusetts revival inspired the English Anglican minister George Whitefield to take his evangelical crusade to the colonies. Whitefield's 1739-1740 tour was America's first genuinely intercolonial event. The energetic English preacher traversed most of the eastern seaboard from New Hampshire to Georgia. His tour took advantage of improved roads and

the expansion of intercolonial shipping routes. He traveled the same routes as the merchants who

hawked the latest English wares, and his gift for

selling the gospel prompted one critic to describe

3.2 ENLIGHTENMENT AND AWAKENINGS 79 M

backlash against the Awakening, Gilbert Tennent accused his opponents of lacking "the Courage, or Honesty, to thrust the Nail of Terror into sleeping Souls."

One New Light preacher, James Davenport, took the emphasis on emotionalism to an extreme, urging that books and sermons written

by Old Light ministers be burned. As congregations divided between New Lights and Old Lights, many communities were pulled apart.

What aspects of the Great Awakening encouraged democratization?

if]

*

1 __

3.2,4 Indian Revivals a?

The Great Awakening also spilled over into Indian country. Indians won over by evangelical efforts often served as cultural mediators between their communities and the colonists. The Moravians,

German-speaking evangelical Protestants, were particularly effective at evangelizing among Indian the endurance of pain and suffering. tribes. In 1740, many German Moravians migrated Although the Great Awakening touched a to Pennsylvania, where they settled in a town they small but influential group of Indians, a different named Bethlehem. Moravians also established communities in the Carolinas and Georgia.

Unlike the Calvinist faith of many English colonists, which shunned the use of images in their churches, the Moravians were Lutherans and embraced art as a means of promoting the

gospels (see Chapters1and 2). In particular Moravians focused on the redemptive power of Christ's suffering as the foundation for religious salvation. Their most renowned artist in America,

John Valentine Haidt, was well schooled in European styles of religious painting and used these championed the revival of traditional beliefs and techniques to translate the Moravians' Christian vision into visually rich images (3.11). The idea of Christ's suffering resonated with Indian converts, and the Moravians displayed images of the crucifixion to bring the gospel to the Indians. After viewing such pictures in the home of a Moravian

missionary, two visiting Indians commented on "how many wounds he has, how much blood flows preaching their message. Indian revivalists attacked forth!" For American Indians Moravian religious Indian involvement with and dependence on the imagery of Jesus suggested a brave spiritual warrior, world of trade and commerce with Europeans. an ideal that resonated in the minds of young male Indians, whose conception of masculinity was based interested in converting American Indians?

%/ I

on a martial ideal of physical strength, bravery, and 3.11 Lamentation, Moravian Painting of Christ

Depictions of the "blood of the savior"

in images such as this made them

highly effective tools for Moravian missionaries. Here

type of native religious renewal movement had an even greater impact on American Indians. As early as 1737, reports began filtering back from Indian country, the broad swath of territory from western Pennsylvania to French-controlled land in Illinois, that Indian religious leaders were preaching the need for a return to traditional ways and a complete separation from colonists. The alcohol that traits that appealed Europeans traded with Indians had contributed to rising levels of alcoholism among Indians. In the 1760s, the Delaware Indian prophet Neolin

the artist highlights physical pain and stoic endurance, two

strongly to American Indian men.

the rejection of European influences. He urged his people to "learn to live without any Trade or Connections with White people." In place of dependency and trade, he counseled "Clothing and Supporting themselves as their forefathers did." Neolin and other prophets of Indian revitalization traveled as itinerants through Indian territory

Why was Moravian art so helpful to missionaries

80 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

3.s African Americans in the Colonial Era

* « I By the eighteenth century, racial slavery had become a central feature of the Atlantic world, with firm roots in British North America. The greatest demand for slaves came from the sugar-producing regions of Brazil and the Caribbean. An additional 300,000 slaves arrived in the British mainland colonies, with the greatest demand for their labor in the upper and lower

South. The highest proportion of slaves lived in the lower South, where Africans actually outnumbered Europeans. Slavery in British North America was not an exclusively southern phenomenon. Slaves were an important part of urban life in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Slavery was also significant in the economies of the mid-Atlantic and New England.

Slavery was a brutal and exploitative labor system, but the experience of individual slaves varied greatly from region to region. Regardless of where they were and under what circumstances they lived, slaves found ways to resist their masters' domination. Occasionally they turned to violent resistance, but more often they used economic sabotage—pretending sickness, destroying tools, mutilating livestock, or running away—to undermine the profitability of slavery. Perhaps even more significant were the slaves' attempts to assert their humanity and create lives beyond the reach of the master's dominion. Establishing families despite the ever-present threat of being torn from one's loved ones and sold, building a viable community, and practicing their own religion gave slaves the cultural resources to survive and denied their masters complete control over their lives.

k

ended up in one of the sugar colonies. Portuguese sugar production was centered in Brazil, while Dutch, French, and British sugar production was centered in the Caribbean. Less than 10 percent of the slaves imported from Africa were transported

3.3.1 The Atlantic Slave Trade Slaves had been traded internally within Africa for centuries; indeed, it took hundreds of years for the Atlantic slave trade to surpass the internal African slave trade. The demand for agricultural labor in the Atlantic world created a strong market slavery to the British mainland American colonies for African slaves and led to a dramatic increase

to the American colonies, but the significance of

was enormous. The brutality of slavery began far from the

Atlantic coast of Africa in the inland regions, where slave catchers acquired most slaves. The captive slaves were then bound by ropes or wooden yokes and marched to the coast, where they were housed in

pens. To prevent communication among captives and reduce the chances of slaves organizing themselves

Envisioning Evidence: The Eighteenth-Century Atlantic to escape or challenge their captors, the slave catchers Slave Trade show, most slaves in the Atlantic trade often separated individuals from the same ethnic

in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 1600s. The leading participants in the international slave trade in the seventeenth century had been Spain, Portugal, and Holland, but by the eighteenth century, Britain had become the preeminent slave¬ trading nation in the Atlantic world.

As the graphs and figures presented in

"The stench of the hold . . . became pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn

himself, almost suffocated us."

OLAUDAH EQUIANO, The Life of Olaudah Equiano (London,1789)

3.3 AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE COLONIAL ERA 81

Envisioning Evidence THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE In the eighteenth century, the slave trade was the economic cornerstone of the Atlantic economy. It supplied indispensable labor necessary to produce plantation cash crops such as sugar and tobacco in the New World,

and transporting slaves provided huge profits for those engaged in the brutal, forced migration of Africans to the Americas.

The data presented in this map and the accompanying graph bring into focus an important fact about the Atlantic slave trade: Most of the slaves transported to the Americas ended up in the sugar islands of the Caribbean or in Brazil. Less than 10 percent of the slaves went to British North America.

The experience of the Middle Passage was horrific, a fact underscored by the mortality rates depicted in the pie chart.

Where did most slaves end up and how high were mortality rates during the Middle Passage?

.V

V X* }

14% %* EUROPESr i-:S~ 86%

NORTH

"A

£A- CXrv

rrrr. Percent of slaves who died en route to the Americas 14%

Mortality Rates for Atlantic Slave Trade, 1701-1800XAMERICA

IXX-N\\ TXlfV Percent of slaves who

I 1 disembarked in Americas 86%

the A1 \\ 7/ ,xA

c &nbbean o

1 AFRICA

7 V

M BRAZIL w*

h)if WestCentral Africa/ 0 ,SOUTH

AMERICA ATLANTIC OCEANPACIFIC :

OCEAN

§ il / Destinations of Slaves Imported to the New World, 1701-1800

ip 68'6°8Danish Caribbean 295,215

• I 295,482 Dutch Americas

British North America

995,133_French Caribbean Spanish America 145,533

I_... _ _ 1,989,017 (jPortuguese Brazil '' ...... f 813,323|British Caribbean

Looo.ooo500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 Number of Slaves

0

SOURCE: Adapted from estimates in Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, available at http://www.slavevoyages.org

82 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763 HHHi

3.12 Tight Packing

This abolitionist depiction of tight packing shows the

cramped conditions on slave ships, which maximized the number of bodies carried with no concern for the health of the slaves

transported.

century when the demand for slave labor increased dramatically, and many traders chose to bypass the seasoning process. Thus most slaves arriving in British North America in the eighteenth century were "saltwater slaves," coming directly from Africa. Most slaves arrived at Sullivan's Island in Charleston harbor, leading scholars to describe it as Black America's Ellis Island.

After being unloaded and quarantined on Sullivan's Island, slaves were typically transported for sale in the slave markets of the major ports and cities. This was often the last time family members would see each other. After being subjected to a humiliating inspection, similar to that used by livestock buyers, slaves were auctioned off to their new masters. Even if family members had managed to remain together, they now faced permanent separation from their loved ones. Thus the experience of the auction block further traumatized slaves who had already suffered a multitude of horrors on their perilous journey from Africa to America.

Which regions of the Atlantic world imported the greatest number of slaves?

A QjO

r-g- P

4

% H ; nr

©

43 j i >ÿ!.

in

W Southern Slaveryi 3.3.2IT \4 The two regional subcultures in the colonial

South—the lower and upper South—had distinctive slave labor systems and cultures. Slavery in the lower South (parts of the Carolina and Georgia low country) had evolved as the region evolved from a frontier settlement to an integrated part of the Atlantic slave economy. In the upper South slavery had gradually replaced indentured servitude (p. 86) as the main source of labor by 1700.

Carolina was first conceived as a base for

supplying food to the Caribbean sugar islands. The colony also traded captured Indian slaves and deer hides. In the 1690s, rice was introduced into this

region and eventually became its most profitable export. Many slaves had learned to cultivate rice in Africa, and their knowledge contributed to the increase in rice production from 10,000 pounds in 1698 to 20 million pounds in 1730.

In the 1740s, another important cash crop— indigo—was introduced into the region. By the 1730s, when the Carolinas had been divided

into North and South Carolina, two-thirds of the

region's population were African slaves. Most . blacks worked under a task system that gave themt / considerable autonomy over their work. Once

their tasks were completed, slaves might use the

dj j-j

or language groups. They also routinely separated family members. Slaves might remain housed in these inhumane conditions for months before being boarded on slave ships bound for the Americas.

The voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas, known as the Middle Passage, was horrific. The cramped conditions on these voyages depicted in this antislavery petition barely convey the ordeal (3.12). Typically their captors forced the slaves to remain in shackles during the voyage. Slaves endured meager rations and unsanitary conditions, a situation that led those who preferred "death to such a life of misery" to drown themselves. Mortality rates during the Middle

Passage exceeded 10 percent. In the seventeenth century most slaves bound

for the British mainland colonies in America came first to the Caribbean, where they were "seasoned,"

a process of physical and psychological adjustment to the rigors of slavery. Afterward they would make the final leg of the voyage to the American mainland. This pattern changed in the eighteenth

3.3 AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE COLONIAL ERA 83

in this region preserved elements of traditional African culture, their smaller numbers and wider distribution made it more difficult to preserve their African cultural heritage.

What was the task system?

remaining time to hunt, fish, or tend their own

gardens to supplement their meager diets. The swampy regions of the Carolina low

country were fertile breeding grounds for tropical diseases, including malaria. Africans had developed partial immunity to this disease,

but whites of European descent were extremely susceptible. Given the unhealthy environment of the coastal lowlands, wealthy planters preferred to spend much of the year at their Charleston homes. The absence of slave owners and the continuous

3.3.3 Northern Slavery and Free Blacks

Although slavery was less vital to the colonial economy outside of the South, it was important in some areas. For example, in parts of New York andinflux of slaves from Africa helped blacks living in

this region preserve aspects of their African heritage New Jersey, the slave population might range from 15 to 30 percent. Typically slaves in the rural Northdespite the deprivations of slave life. The conical-

shaped, thatched-roofed huts in the slave quarters on Mulberry plantation (3.13), South Carolina, reflect the influence of African architectural styles.

Slavery in the upper South, the Chesapeake region, differed markedly from its practice in the low country Carolinas. While the task system

worked as field hands on small family farms. There were also many urban slaves in the North, who generally worked as domestics in wealthier homes. In seaports, slaves worked in maritime occupations. In Pennsylvania slaves were so essential to iron manufacturing that their masters petitioned the assembly to lower tariffs on slave imports so thatworked for rice cultivation, growing tobacco, the

dominant crop in the Chesapeake, demanded more they could continue to produce iron. A small community of free blacks emergedoversight. The plants were easily damaged if not

properly tended, so planters preferred to organize their slaves into gangs that worked together under New York, and Boston. Slaves gained their

freedom by several means. Some were freed by

and settled in northern cities such as Philadelphia,

he watchful eye of a white overseer or a black slave driver chosen by the master.

Slaves in the Chesapeake were a minority, and they lived on plantations typically smaller than those in the lower South. Although slaves

masters who recognized the evil of slavery. One of the earliest groups to condemn slavery was the Quakers. Other slaves, particularly those who had learned a skill such as carpentry, might be able to strike a bargain with their owners and gain

the right to work for themselves part time, eventually saving enough money to buy their freedom. Although a few freed slaves became farmers, many ended up in one of the thriving seaports where economic

opportunities were greater. Urban settings also provided African

Americans in the North with many cultural

3.13 Slave Quarters, Mulberry

Plantation, South Carolina

The conical design of these slave cabins, including their thatched roofs, drew on West African architectural influences.

% .

Wk w

:

itl:

m u

•A M.

.AJiff2d*W r:-. Sg

84 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1 710-1763 1

opportunities. In both New York City and Albany, the African American communities adapted the Dutch religious holiday of "Pentecost" and turned it that were always on the lookout for runaways into a carnival-like festival they named "Pinkster." The holiday was presided over by an African American figure, "King Charles," who acted as the

seeking refuge with a family on nearby plantations in the slave quarters. Avoiding the white patrols

made this a risky option. In those parts of the South closer to Indian country or Spanish territory, including parts of the Carolinas and Georgia,

political leader of his community during the holiday, slaves might try to find refuge in a territory beyond During Pinkster African Americans participated in the control of the English colonists. music, dancing, and festive meals; they also paraded Slaves who took part in South Carolina's Stono as part of their African "different nations," an explicit demonstration of their African roots.

Rebellion of 1739 took advantage of the colonies' proximity to Spanish Florida. The rebels broke into a storehouse and seized arms, murderedThe Great Awakening helped spread

Christianity to slaves across America and among free blacks in the North. The

whites, and torched the homes of slave owners. The rebels hoped that other slaves would rally to their standard, and some slaves from the surrounding countryside did join the rebellion, whose numbers rose to around 150. The slave rebels hoped to find

refuge in Spanish Florida, but the Carolina militia intercepted the rebels before they could reach it. The better organized and armed militia routed the Stono rebels, slaughtering them by the dozens and executing those who survived. In response to the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passed harsher slave codes and temporarily blocked importation of slaves into the region, a ban that was soon lifted because of the economic importance of slave labor. The Stono Rebellion was the largest African American uprising in the colonial era, but it would not be the last in the history of American slavery.

How did slaves resist the authority of their masters?

"Many of the white people in these provinces take little or no care of Negro marriages ... they often part men from their wives

by selling them far asunder/' JOHN WOOLMAN, journal,1774

Moravians were particularly aggressive in preaching the gospel to slaves in North Carolina.

Jonathan Edwards, himself a slave owner, reported that slaves in his own community had embraced the revival. Evangelical groups such as the Methodists encouraged free blacks to attend their revival meetings. The new more emotional style favored by so many Awakening preachers appealed to African Americans because it more closely resembled traditional African styles of religious practice.

What was Pinkster?

3.3,4 Slave Resistance and Rebellion

The growth of slavery in the late 1600s led colonial governments to ensure that African slaves remained subservient to their white masters (see

Chapter 2). Slave codes gave masters almost unlimited authority over their slaves. The codes also legally defined as slaves children born to slave mothers, even when fathered by free whites.

Although deprived of any legal means to protect themselves, slaves developed strategies for coping with the horrors of slavery and escaping the domination of their masters. Stealing, shirking responsibility, feigning illness, or breaking tools: all of these actions deliberately slowed the pace of their work and provided temporary relief. Some

slaves ran away, simply hiding in the woods,

3.3.5 An African American Culture Emerges under Slavery

Most slaves did not adopt rebellion as their primary strategy for challenging the authority of their masters. Simply establishing families,

building an African American community, and

practicing their own religion were more realistic

goals for most slaves—but all were difficult to achieve given the constraints imposed by slavery.

Forming a family under slavery was not easy. For one thing, the sex ratio among slaves during much

of the colonial period was sharply skewed, with

c

3.3 AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE COLONIAL ERA 85

Plantation records commonly show West African

names like Cudjo (Monday) for boys or Cuba (Wednesday) for girls, evidence that slaves continued to honor their ancestral practices.

Slaves also drew on African traditions in

shaping distinctive music and dance forms, which provided an outlet for cultural expression. Using African techniques they constructed musical instruments, including drums and stringed instruments. Masters typically found African styles of dancing and singing exotic and alien to their European sensibilities. One British visitor to Maryland noted that on Sundays, the one day that masters generally allowed slaves to rest, blacks met "to amuse themselves with Dancing," which was a "most violent exercise." This rare colonial-era

painting of slaves dancing not only illustrates the intensity of African-inspired dance but also shows the importance of an African-style instrument that would become a fixture in American music—the banjo (3.14). Music could serve ulterior purposes as well. Shortly after the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina banned drumming, fearing that slaves could drum and communicate secret messages from one plantation to another.

What evidence exists for the persistence of African cultural traits among American slaves?

many more males than females. During the early Tears of the slave trade, slave owners preferred males for the backbreaking agricultural work required to produce rice, tobacco, or sugarcane. So most slaves imported into the Americas were male; the odds of a male slave finding a wife were slim. During the eighteenth century, as more slaves were born in America, the sex ratio became more balanced because roughly comparable numbers of boys and girls were born. But even if the chances of a man finding a mate increased, slavery made family formation difficult. Slave marriages had no legal standing. So slaves faced the constant threat of separation from their spouses. The decision to break up slave families rested entirely with the master, and many children were sold from their families. On relatively small plantations slaves usually sought a spouse on a neighboring plantation, which left couples at the mercy of masters who could withhold visiting privileges and prevent husbands and wives from seeing one another. Nevertheless, many slaves did manage to find partners and create stable families.

One of the many aspects of traditional African culture preserved by slaves was naming practices. As was customary in many parts of West Africa, slave parents might name their children after the day of the week on which they were bom.

3.14 Slaves Dancing and Playing Banjo

This image of slaves dancing in the slave quarters

prominently features a banjo. The instrument was modeled on an instrument that

well known in Africa.

||

f w yjjS

V

1 2& •* Vr

m i fi

!

Ii\ ¥ ,|/j

;

4 v

, j i

Srii 00* \' . i

1 /wf pf // / gUg *Av

86 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

3. Immigration, Regional Economies,and Inequality

UTSTJ a*

fjll Although distinctions of wealth emerged almost immediately in American

L society, especially in the cities, the relative abundance of land in the || seventeenth century allowed many rural colonists to own their own land, a H goal almost unattainable in Europe, where the aristocracy owned most land. « Even in cities, those without a farmstead generally earned higher wages

than they would have in Europe because labor commanded a higher price in the colonies, where skilled craftsmen were rarer. Although all of these facts contributed to the prosperity of the colonists, population growth (natural increase and immigration) and the dwindling availability of land became serious problems by the mid-eighteenth century. In the colonies' expanding cities, the gulf between the rich and poor widened, and in rural areas young people faced the prospect that they might not be able to obtain land for their own farms.

3.4.1 Immigration and Regionalism

and Wales. Immigration from the European continent also included many Dutch and Germans.

The decision to immigrate to America was a momentous one. The financial and personal costs of immigration could demand heavy sacrifices. The trans-Atlantic crossing, which

could take four months, meant enduring cramped conditions on a ship with few amenities Additionally, the cost of the trans-Atlantic passage was well beyond the yearly wages of the average Englishman and even more expensive for those from the European continent. To finance their passage, many immigrants, men and women alike, contracted to work as indentured servants. In exchange for having their passage paid, indentured servants agreed to work for a

specified number of years, usually seven. In some cases the indenture system separated family members, with husband and wife indenturing themselves to different families.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the British had settled the eastern seaboard, from Georgia to New Hampshire. Although each of the thirteen colonies functioned as its own separate political unit, historians have grouped the colonies into five regions—New England, the mid-Atlantic, the upper South, the lower South, and the backcountry reflecting their unique histories, distinctive patterns of settlement, and diverse economies (3.16). Race, ethnicity, and religious

composition also lent a distinctive quality to each

of the major regions of colonial America.

How did the ethnic composition of America change

in the eighteenth century?

The population of British North America expanded rapidly in the eighteenth century. Between 1700 and 1750, the white population of the colonies rose from around 250,000 to more than a million. In contrast to America's first predominantly English colonists who arrived in the early 1600s,

eighteenth-century immigrants varied in national origin and ethnic identity. As the chart (3.15) illustrates, the colonies attracted settlers from elsewhere in Britain, including Scotland, Ireland,

3.15 Ancestry of the Population of the British Main¬ land Colonies in the Eighteenth Century

During the eighteenth century, the number of non-English immigrants increased. Immigrants from other parts of the British Empire, including Scotland and Ireland, Another major source of immigration was continental Europe, especially Germany and Holland.

SOURCE: Adapted from Thomas L, Purvis, “The Eu of the United States 3d series, 41 (1984), p. 98.

as well.

iropean Ancestry Population, 1790,” William and Mary Quarterly.

English and Welsh 51%

fell Other—

European 2%

African 20% wDutch 3%

Scots-lrish 8% German 7%Scottish 4%

Irish 5%

3.4 IMMIGRATION, REGIONAL ECONOMIES, AND INEQUALITY 87

New England .4-%3.4.2 New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New S’X'' \ Hampshire, and Rhode Island) was the most

ethnically homogenous region in colonial British America (overwhelmingly white and English). The Congregational Church, the heir of the Puritan tradition, was the dominant religion. New England also included other Protestant churches— Anglicans (Church of England), Presbyterians, Quakers, and Baptists. This lent some religious diversity to the region, particularly in Rhode Island, which had embraced religious toleration

from its founding. The sea had always been central to the New

England economy, but in the eighteenth century, its maritime economy expanded dramatically. New England continued to supply fish and whale

products (whale bone and whale oil) to domestic and foreign markets. It also became a major center of shipbuilding, and its merchants carried on a

lively trade in a variety of commodities. Yankee trade in spirits—including the amber-colored dessert wine of Madeira, a Portuguese island group off the coast of Africa, and rum, distilled rom molasses procured in the Caribbean—was vital to New England's commercial economy.

The ministerial elite continued to shape the affairs of the region, but the rising merchant

class became increasingly powerful during the eighteenth century. Many of the region's leaders were educated at Harvard (1636), the oldest college in the colonies, or Yale (1701).

<T.

SS2*

/ 1 l

sSTA ft) ;ÿ ;Mssc % XLX- -= NEINEW

ENGLAND /X W lINDIAN MIDDLE ATLANTIC%

ACKCOUNTR' -AJSI

LEAKE

R: ATLANTIC

OCEAN

m SPAINPACIFICgM NEW NEW SPAIN

* *OCEAN Gulf ofMexico d

T mm

3.16 Map of Colonial Regions

By the mid-eighteenth century, colonial America had evolved into five distinctive regions: New England, mid-Atlantic,

upper South, lower South, and the backcountry.

Delaware were sold in the markets of Philadelphia. New York's Hudson River carried agricultural products from upriver farms and furs from northern New York. The mid-Atlantic region also

had small manufacturing enterprises, including flour milling, lumbering, mining, and metal foundries. The region depended on indentured servants for much of its labor. Between 1700 and 1775, about 100,000 servants came from the British Isles and another 35,000 from German-speaking regions on the European continent.

Although Quakers were powerful in Pennsylvania politics, the region's merchant class was even more influential. The mid-

Atlantic region was slower to create colleges than either Massachusetts or Virginia, but by the mid-eighteenth century it boasted several new institutions of higher learning. The following colleges were created in this region: the College of Philadelphia was established in 1755 (now the

University of Pennsylvania); in New York George II chartered Kings College (now Columbia University) in 1754; the College of New Jersey was founded in 1746 (now Princeton); and Queens College (now Rutgers) was established in New Jersey in 1766.

What role did the sea play in the New England economy?

3.4.3 The Mid-Atlantic The mid-Atlantic (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware) was the most ethnically diverse region in the colonies, and its hubs, New York and Philadelphia, were home to a wide range of ethnic and religious groups (see 3.16). Indeed, as this engraving (3.17 on page 88) of the eighteenth- century New York skyline illustrates, the spires and

bell towers of the city's churches and lone synagogue proclaimed its religious diversity for miles around.

Philadelphia and New York became centers ~''')f commerce and finance. Each city boasted a

thriving port, facilitating trade with Europe and coastal trade with other ports in the Atlantic world. What role did New York and Philadelphia play in the Agricultural products from rural Pennsylvania and economies of the middle-Atlantic?

88 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

3.17 Engraving of New York Skyline

This engraving

of New York's skyline lists a score of churches and one synagogue whose spires dominated the

skyline of the colonial town.

ms,

Pr°iPeÿ of the City of NEW-YORK

1 i.4!JklrMMIM? M

fSh 12 i 6“„ !m •Ai

SSMmzg&kJii V;

~ '

r5S5rla'<Jj

icm Jw

ii Old Dutch Church \z Jew’s Synagogue i $ Lutherian Church 14 The French Church

16 Quaker’s Meeting 17 Calvinift Church 18 Anabaptift Meeting 19 Moravian. Meeting

1 Fort George 6 The Prifon. % Trinity Church 7 New Brick Meeting 3 Presbyter. Meeting 8 King’s College 4. North D. Church 9 St. Paul’s Church K St. George’s Chapel 10N.Dutch Cal,Church 15 New Scot’s Meeting 26 N. Lutheran Church3 6 r

ii Methodih Meeting

3.4.4 The Upper and Lower South

The damp, hot climate of the low country bred diseases. To avoid these conditions, for much of the year the wealthiest planters preferred their second homes in Charleston, which became a major cultural and economic center of the region. Nevertheless, Charleston lacked an educational institution comparable to William and Mary, so the wealthiest Carolinians typically headed to England for their education.

What were the main exports of the Upper and Lower South?

The South was most closely tied to slave labor. Actually it was two distinct regions: the upper South, or Chesapeake Region, and the lower South, including parts of South Carolina and the Georgia low country (see 3.16). Each produced different cash crops and employed slave labor in different ways. The upper South produced tobacco and grains. The lower South's most lucrative export was rice, but the region also produced indigo, deerskins, and naval stores (pine resins were used to make tar and pitch, which were necessary for shipbuilding). Immigration into the two regions varied, and the ethnic composition of the upper and lower South was also different.

The Backcountry3.4.5 In the early seventeenth century, colonists had hugged the coastline. By the eighteenth century they began pushing westward to areas such as the interior of the Carolinas, westernAlthough more ethnically diverse than New

England, the upper South, those areas of Virginia and Maryland tied to the Chesapeake, drew immigrants largely from England and Scotland. The The Scots-Irish were particularly attracted to the planter elite who dominated this region built great fortunes from tobacco grown on plantations with slave labor. Many of the area's wealthiest citizens were educated at the College of William and Mary (1693) in Virginia, the nation's second-oldest college, leading travelers to compare backcountry colonists

with Indians and describe both as savages. Whatever their similarities, relations between

backcountry whites and Indians were generally V—Vstrained. Rather than seek to trade with Indians and

Pennsylvania, and Virginia (see 3.16). Many new

immigrants headed directly for the backcountry.

backcountry of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas,

where they settled in large numbers. The backcountry lacked many of the refinements

of the older, more settled regions of the colonies,

The lower South was settled later than the

Chesapeake, and it benefited more from the growth of immigration and was more religiously diverse than the upper South. In addition to Anglicans the

region included Presbyterians, German Moravians, Baptists, and Quakers.

learn their ways, the Scots-Irish wanted to create farmsteads, which required displacing Indians.

3.4 IMMIGRATION, REGIONAL ECONOMIES, AND INEQUALITY 89

The simmering tensions between residents of the

backcountry region and the local Indians erupted into violence throughout the eighteenth century.

Backcountry settlers farmed, hunted, and raised

livestock for their own consumption and local

trade and were less connected to the burgeoning Atlantic economy. The economic realities of life in the backcountry encouraged independence and a strongly egalitarian culture. Courts were rare, and so were tax officials or other representatives of either the colonial or the British governments. A visitor to this region would also have noted a lack of churches, primary schools, and institutions of higher education.

How did the conditions of the backcountry shape the region’s culture?

"They were as rude in their Manners as the Common Savages, and hardly a degree removed from them. Their Dresses almost

as loose and Naked as the Indians, and differing in Nothing save Complexion."

Minister CHARLES WOODMASON, observations on the backcountry,1766

merchants, who lived in fine new mansions and traveled around the city in elegant coaches, grew more pronounced, especially by the 1770s.

By the mid-eighteenth century, many Americans living in the countryside or in small towns in most of the settled regions of the colonies confronted a scarcity of land. The problem Connecticut's colonists faced illustrates the interconnected issues of population growth and land scarcity. Between 1720 and 1760, Connecticut's population more than doubled, from 59,000 to 142,000. Beginning in the 1740s, children faced the prospect that their parents would not have enough land to help them establish their own farms when they became adults.

Many sons and daughters delayed marriage until they could acquire a farmstead and establish their own independent household. Others moved to nearby towns. Many of Connecticut's young adults went as far as northern New Hampshire, and others headed to the most western parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or the Carolinas. Finally, some families simply postponed their dreams of independence, working as tenants on another farmer's land as they struggled to save enough money to purchase their own farm.

How was American society becoming more unequal toward the end of the eighteenth century?

3.4,6 Growth, Inequality, and Land Scarcity

Although most Americans lived in the countryside during the eighteenth century, cities were growing. Philadelphia boasted 23,000 residents by 1760,

, making it the largest city in the colonies. Still, unerica was far less urban than either Europe

or the Spanish colonies to the south. Compared to London, with more than 700,000 people,

Philadelphia was tiny, and Spanish America had half a dozen cities larger than Philadelphia. Mexico City, for example, had more than 100,000 inhabitants by the mid-eighteenth century.

But the growth rates of the cities of colonial British America were impressive. Boston, for example, doubled in size between 1700 and 1760. Larger towns, including Albany (New York), Newport (Rhode Island), and Baltimore (Maryland), became regional centers.

Throughout these urban areas eighteenth- century society became polarized along economic lines. The percentage of wealth owned by the richest Americans increased. In Boston and Philadelphia 5 percent of the population had amassed almost half of their city's wealth by the last quarter of the

eighteenth century. At the same time the number of the urban poor also rose dramatically in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The graph (3.18) illustrates the dramatic climb in the amount of money Boston '

devoted to poor relief from the mid-century onward. During this same period many trades and crafts established their own mutual benefit societies to help the poor. The stark inequality between the lives of the destitute and those of Boston's wealthiest

3.18 Poor Relief, Boston Poverty increased in colonial Boston in the late

eighteenth century, as did the poor relief needed to

deal with this

problem.

Poor Relief in Boston 1710-1775 Expenditure in Pounds per 1,000 Population

160

140

120

100

80

60 f f40 "r

'

20 10

1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1775

90 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1 710-1763 HHBSBBSgHSBB

War and the Contest for Empire3.5 By mid-century, nearly 1.2 million people lived in the British mainland colonies, making it far more densely populated than New France, which numbered well under 100,000. Britain and France had been almost constantly at war since the late seventeenth century. Although these wars generally originated in Europe, control of North America became

important to both nations. The British were keen to eliminate French influence in Canada and the Great Lakes. Eliminating France also appealed to American colonists, who viewed the rich agricultural lands controlled by France as a means of alleviating the land shortage they faced. The struggle between the British and the French for control of North America would dramatically alter the map of North America.

The relatively small population of New France was spread across a vast territory, from Quebec in the north to New Orleans in the south, and as far west as Illinois (see map 3.19). In the Great Lakes region, French traders lived and worked among the Indians, often marrying Indian women. Unlike the British, who sought to displace the tribes and resettle the land with small farms, the French developed a complex multiracial society that included Indians.

3.5.1 The Rise and Fall of the Middle Ground

Further west in the Great Lakes region, France, not Britain, was the dominant power. Here the French and Indians created a middle ground, a cultural and geographical region in which Indiana and the French negotiated with each other for goods, and neither side could impose its will on the other by force. Indians traded furs for guns, metal tools, and cloth.

Although the French colonial government had hoped to regulate and tax this lucrative trade by establishing a series of forts, or outposts, young, fiercely independent French traders, known as coureurs des bois ("runners of the woods"), established their own trading networks beyond the direct control of the French government. Many married Indian women, producing children who became a distinctive group called metis, or people of mixed French and Indian descent. Familiar with both Indian and French customs, and fluent in both Indian languages and French, the metis became critical intermediaries between Indian and French cultures, even when the gulf was

difficult to bridge. Like other European societies, French culture was patriarchal: Inheritance passed from father to son, a practice that gave fathers enormous power over their sons. Thus it was natural for the French to cast themselves

as fathers to their Indian children in the Great

Lakes region. Indians accepted the notion of

the French as fathers, but they understood the

In 1600, more than two million Indians lived in communities east of the Mississippi River. Lacking immunity to diseases brought by the Europeans, Indian populations who came into contact with Europeans were extremely vulnerable to infection. Tribes east of the Mississippi were repeatedly devastated by epidemics that reduced their numbers to less than 250,000 by 1700. One response to this dramatic decrease in population was "mourning wars," in which rival tribes raided each other's villages and took prisoners to bolster their own populations. In these wars men were often tortured and executed, but women and children were typically adopted into the conquering tribes.

Indians were also increasingly drawn into the trans-Atlantic economy, exchanging furs for European goods, including beads, fabric, alcohol,

metal tools, and even firearms. The growing European demand for furs, and increased Indian desires for European goods, led to conflict among tribes for access to prime hunting and trapping grounds. Intertribal warfare changed as limited

mourning wars evolved into "beaver wars," in which tribes fought one another for control of

territory.

3.5 WAR AND THE CONTEST FOR EMPIRE 91

"Go and see the forts our [French] Father has created, and you will see that the land beneath their walls is still hunting ground .. . whilst the English, on the contrary, no sooner get possession of a country than the game is forced to leave; the

trees fall down before them, the earth becomes bare."

Contemporary Indian account of the French and English settlement, late eighteenth century

Jenkins testified before Parliament that after capturing his ship, the Spanish placed him in custody and cut off his ear as punishment for his alleged smuggling. Jenkins presented his ear in a pickle jar to an outraged Parliament. The resulting conflict between Britain and Spain was dubbed the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1748).

King George's War (1744-1748), a conflict in which France joined with Spain against Britain and the American colonies, soon overshadowed the War of Jenkins' Ear. The most important military victory from the colonists' point of view occurred at Louisbourg, where New England's militias achieved a stunning triumph over the French and seized the mighty fortress on Cape Breton Island that guarded Atlantic access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and French Canada. Although the fortress was returned to the French as part of the peace treaty ending the conflict, the victory became a source of colonial pride.

The conflict between France and Britain occurred during a period when colonists were particularly eager to settle in the Ohio Valley, a region controlled by the French. The formation of the Ohio Company of Virginia in 1747 facilitated the exploration and settlement of this region, a development that prompted the French to solidify their hold on it by establishing a string of forts. The most important of these was Fort Duquesne, erected at a fork in the Ohio River at what is now Pittsburgh. In 1754, the royal governor of Virginia dispatched militiamen under the command of an ambitious young officer, George Washington, to seize the strategic fort. Overwhelmed by French and Indian warriors, Washington was forced to surrender.

Washington's defeat proved to be only the first skirmish in a protracted battle to control the Ohio territory. In 1755, the British dispatched General Edward Braddock with a larger force,

concept of fatherhood in radically different terms than Europeans. In the Indian cultures of the middle ground region, fathers were not powerful patriarchs. Indeed, one chief tried in vain to

explain to a French colonial official the different views of paternal authority in their respective cultures: "When you command, all the French obey and go to war. But I shall not be heeded and obeyed by my nation in such a manner." Although a gulf continued to exist between the two cultures,

intermarriage between French traders and Indian women nevertheless promoted cultural exchange and mutual understanding.

The expansion of British settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains threatened the middle ground created in the Great Lakes region. Rather than seek to preserve a middle ground, the British hoped to incorporate this region into their colonial empire. As had been true for so much of British colonization, the idea was to eliminate indigenous populations, transplant British agricultural practices, and establish permanent settlements.

What made the middle ground a distinctive region of North America?

3.5.2 The Struggle for North America

The great military powers of Atlantic Europe— Britain, France, and Spain—remained locked in a struggle for political supremacy. In 1739, European conflicts once more spilled over into North America when Britain again went to war, this time with Spain. British ships smuggled goods into Spanish America, depriving Spain of 'valuable trade and tax revenues. Spain responded 6y capturing British ships, seizing their crews and cargos. British outrage over Spanish policy reached a critical moment when Captain Robert

92 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

Choices and Consequences BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE QUAKERS, AND THE RIGHT NOTJO BEAR ARMS (1755) The year 1755 was a major turning point in Pennsylvania history. During the early days of the colony's history Indians and Quakers lived side by side in harmony (see Chapter 2).Thus, by the dawn of the eighteenth century Pennsylvania was the only colony in British North America without a well-regulated militia. In each of the other colonies, the law required each white man able to bear arms (generally speaking, most white men between 16 and 65 with some exceptions for particular occupations such as clergy) to contribute to public defense by participating in the militia. Quakers were pacifists, which meant they refused to bear arms because of their religious scruples (beliefs about nonviolence).

Aggrieved Indian tribes used the defeat of General Braddock to intensify their attacks on western settlers. The non-Quaker numerical majority in the colony pressured the assembly to create a militia to defend against possible Indian attack. Although Quakers had become a numerical minority in Pennsylvania by the mid¬ eighteenth century, their wealth and connections allowed them to dominate politics, including the assembly. In the past Quaker pacifists had supported general taxation for public defense, but with an increase in tensions, a radical group of Quakers emerged and persuaded their brethren to refuse any support for public defense, including the purchase of such non-military items as wagons and blankets, if such items were to be used for military purposes.The Pennsylvania legislature faced three options:

Choices I

Create a militia without exemptions, which would penalize Quakers and other pacifists who refused to bear arms.

Create a voluntary militia inoo by thestate in which naperson religiously scrupulous of bearing . : arms wouid.be foroed-ta paUcipate, but anyone was free to join,

Continue to seek peaceful relations with Indian peoples and create a commission to investigate Indian complaints and resolve all conflicts peacefully.

I \

DecisionM The assembly voted to create a volunteer militia, Im

ConsequencesD The chief architect of a volunteer militia was Benjamin Franklin, whose adept handling of this crisis helped him become a key power broker in Pennsylvania politics. Ironically, the law drafted by Franklin and passed by the assembly was never implemented because the British govern¬ ment in London opposed a provision of the bill that would have allowed

militia companies to elect their own officers, a proposal deemed too democratic for its time, (After independence in 1776 Pennsylvania created a well-regulated militia that also provided an exemption for Quakers and other pacifists scrupulous about bearing arms. The new militia also implemented the idea of having local units elect their own leaders (see Chapter 4).

£

Paxton Uprising cartoon

Continuing Controversies Why did Pennsylvania Quakers assert a right not to bear arms?

One seldom hears muoh about the right not to bear arms in modem America. By contrast, the exact meaning and scope of the right to bear arms is one of the most contentious issues in contemporary American politics and law. When Pennsylvanians drafted their own declaration of rights in 1776, they embraced both rights: the right to bear arms and the right not to be forced to bear arms. Although pacifists, including Quakers, were exempt from the state's new arms bearing require¬ ment, the law required that conscientious objectors pay a fine instead, a provision which made this law unacceptable to Quakers.

3.5 WAR AND THE CONTEST FOR EMPIRE 93

'I * &• Gulf Of CAPE

?ÿ*#St. Lawrence BRETON IS. 3

f:

" I £/¥*?

<4 ' v Louisbourg-1~<3NEW FRANCE

Quebec?-ÿ NOVA

SCOTIA (

o“» „ X f \% Halifax;ÿ '** hiPort Royal%: ' w

\ , i f# A

u Mo

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

impiain

Crown Point fpy A gaMHHBj

Ft. Ticonderoga 3jp ||T Ft. Oswego - #

Henry c °Albany

Ft. Frontenac « Portsmouth

I' © Boston

4Ft. Niagara Ft. Presque Isle

4|p Ft. Venango VB,

Ft. Duquesne,

° New York ' I French settlements h I British settlements I I Iroquois settlements---Land claimed by theOhio Company of Virginia

French victories

British victories

<S§p French forts

British forts

o Philadelphia

"> Ft. Necessity f*’

*/ l %'/ Cumberland

«5' ; -

// 3.19 British Conquest of New France

The British and French battled one another

across a huge arc of territory, fighting pivotal battles at Louisbourg, Quebec, and Montreal.

® Williamsburg

/

comprising British regular troops and colonial volunteers, again including Washington, to take Fort Duquesne (3.19). The French and their Indian allies routed Braddock's forces.

Washington escaped, but Braddock was killed, and his troops suffered a 70 percent casualty rate. It was a shocking and ignominious defeat for the British and their colonial allies. The Quaker-

dominated colony of Pennsylvania was the only colony without a militia. The events of 1756-1758

put enormous pressure on Pennsylvania's Quaker communities to abandon their pacifist ideals and allow the colony to create a well-regulated militia. (See Choices and Consequences: Benjamin Franklin, the Quakers and the Right Not to Bear Arms [1755-1758].)

The final phase of the great war for empire, the Seven Years War, what came to be known as the French and Indian War in the American

colonies, lasted from 1756 to 1763. In England William Pitt, the ambitious secretary of state

appointed by George II to oversee the war effort, '"’’believed that the balance of power in Europe

hinged on control of America. In 1758, the British embarked on a bold new policy: to root out the French and make a direct assault on the

strongholds of Quebec City and Montreal. Pitt promoted young, talented officers including Jeffery Amherst and James Wolfe to lead the campaign against Canada. An army of 10,000 regulars and a sizable fleet were dispatched to North America. Defeating the French also meant taking on their Indian allies as well, so the conflict was known as the French and Indian War.

The British suffered an early setback when the French General Louis de Montcalm seized Fort William Henry on Lake George in northern New York. Although Montcalm had negotiated a traditional surrender that allowed the British to retreat honorably, his Indian allies refused to accept these terms and sought scalps and other trophies of war. "The Massacre of Fort William Henry" alienated Montcalm from his Indian allies and stiffened the resolve of both the British and the colonists to defeat the French.

British fortunes began to turn when Jeffery Amherst captured Louisbourg again in 1758. A year later British forces captured the city of Quebec. General Wolfe, the British commander,

searched for a weakness in the city's formidable defenses and finally settled on a daring attack. Wolfe approached the city from its poorly

94 CHAPTER 3 GROWTH, SLAVERY, AND CONFLICT: COLONIAL AMERICA, 1710-1763

guarded rear flank. Rather than risk a frontal assault on the heavily fortified city, Wolfe's men scaled the heights behind the city and overpowered the small detachment of troops guarding the cliffs. In the battle that followed, Wolfe and Montcalm were both killed.

Pennsylvania painter Benjamin West commemorated the assault on Quebec in The Death of General Wolfe (1771) (3.20). West shows the dying general cradled in the arms of one of his officers. Contemporary viewers would have recognized this arrangement from European painting and sculpture: the Pieta, or the image of the dead Jesus sprawled across the Virgin Mary's lap after the crucifixion. An American Indian, a symbol of the noble warrior, looks on respectfully in tribute to the heroism of the general. Next to the Indian warrior, West placed a figure whose clothes include elements of Indian and British dress. The figure, Sir William Johnson, played a

vital role in helping the British forge and preserve their alliances with Indians in the region.

The other important population center in French Canada, Montreal, fell to the British in late 1760, ending French domination in Canada. In 1763, France and Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, permanently altering the map of North America. Quebec remained French culturally, but Britain now controlled Canada. Although the British had defeated the French in Canada,

relations with Indians along the frontier, particularly in Ohio, remained tense. In 1762, the Indian revivalist prophet Neolin developed a pan-Indian movement that rallied the tribes of the Midwest against British colonial expansion. A year later the Ottawa Indian chief, Pontiac, led a pan-Indian force against the British garrison at Fort Detroit. In what the colonists called Pontiac's Rebellion, Indian peoples across the Midwest attacked weakly defended frontier garrisons in

3.20 The Death of General Wolfe

Benjamin West cast the dying Wolfe in the same pose artists used to depict Jesus after the crucifixion. The group of soldiers, including a lone Indian warrior, assembled around Wolfe gaze at the fallen hero reverently. §m

Vi fTj

Jf F <*ÿ

f

> I

SHL I

* <

3.5 WAR AND THE CONTEST FOR EMPIRE 95

Hudson Bay Company

No\ )tia v'

I . ME g (part of Mass.)r/ Quebec

Ft. Edward Augusl _'• ! NH::

Ft.

= Avfe— Ft. Presque Isle

CT

Ft. Detroit ± J PA o New York "“""".Si,.,.,,.,.

Ft. St. Joseph Ft.Sandu8ky o Baltimore Ft. Miami f H DE

5gr Ft. Ouiatenon

% I

ATLANTIC

OCEAN h VA o Williamsburg

Indian reserve

; - (by proclamation 1763) NC

Spanish Louisiana )

SCI L-J Acquired by Britain from France1111 Acquired by Britain from Spain m Prior British colonies, as of 1763 ISHl Acquired by Britain but still controlled by Indians SliSl Spanish Louisiana

-Proclamation line 1763 British forts seized during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763

Charleston

V Savannahafter 1764Boundary

Wesf Florida Boundary >m 763

•New Orleans East

Gulf of wHfi Mexico 1

3.21 Proclamation of 1763

The French and Indian War shifted the balance of power in North America. The Proclamation of 1763 banned colonial settlement west of the

Appalachian Mountains.

r

m -

the balance of power in the vast region of the middle ground that had been a French sphere of influence for generations.

Before the defeat of the French in Canada,

western Indians could count on a reliable supply of arms and ammunition from Britain's traditional rival, France. Without this vital support the pan- Indian alliance collapsed. Still, Pontiac's Rebellion persuaded the British to be conciliatory toward the more powerful tribes along the frontier. The peace treaty that was signed to end hostilities with Indians not only included favorable terms for trade but also placed severe restrictions on westward expansion by colonists. The Proclamation of 1763 (3.21) established a fixed line beyond which colonial expansion westward was prohibited, effectively restricting colonists to territory east of the Appalachian Mountains.

what is now Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio and settler communities in western Pennsylvania.

Anger over the failure of the colonial governments to protect them led to protests by western settlers. In Pennsylvania settlers from the frontier settlement of Paxton sought revenge by attacking friendly Indians and marching against the city of

Philadelphia demanding the creation of a militia to fight Indians. The march of the "Paxton Boys" might have plunged Pennsylvania into widespread bloodshed, but violence was averted after leading Philadelphia citizens agreed to present the protesters' grievances to the colonial assembly.

The global struggle between Britain and France, the Seven Years War, not only transformed the political map of North America, it irrevocably altered the history of the region, establishing British supremacy once and for all.

Colonists described this conflict as the French

/'"‘'md Indian War for good reason. For colonists, N—British victory meant an end to French politicalinfluence in Canada and a reconfiguration of What role does the Indian figure play in West’spainting The Death of General Wolfe?

Chapter Review

TIMELINE

1728 9 Massachusetts battles

Crown over salary for the royal governor

Massachusetts House and the royal I governor disagree over salary, an j important indicator of the growing j

power of colonial legislatures |

t

• 1730The first synagogue in British North America is built New York’s pluralistic society

I expands to include Jews

• as well as Christians

-1 ~~i —u is 3 wj]% itTm > T

JllPmam IS©7

1732 2Uiti w-*- * ... 1ppÿsssr * -

LG Q>

James Oglethorpe founds Georgia

A utopian experiment and a buffer j between Carolina and Spanish }

Florida, Georgia eventually j accepted slavery and became a j

plantation society I

| Benjamin Franklin founds Library Company

America's first circulating library i

. m \

'ۥs > r # 1735

First Moravian community established in America

| Moravians, an evangelical I Protestant sect from Germany,

bring their message to America

: *

1739 t Eliza Pinckney introduces indigo to South Carolina

The sought-after dye produced by j indigo became Carolina's second j

most important export |

English preacher George Whitefield arrives

in America

«*•i f-vs-j m

• 1741-1751Academy of Philadelphia founded

j ; Franklin helps found the University | j of Pennsylvania

Benjamin Franklin publishes his experiments on electricity

! Earns Franklin fame and symbolizes j America's contribution to the

Enlightenment

79;f <sY AThe great evangelical preacher |

creates an intercolonial sensation | and extends the reach of the Great I

Awakening i

fl*

j

1759 Quebec falls

The decisive battle in the French and Indian War signals the defeat of

the French in Canada • 1763Proclamation of 1763 To prevent further encroachment on Indian lands and avoid future

I conflicts, Britain forbids colonial j l settlement beyond the Appalachian

; Mountains

Treaty of Paris between Britain and France ends French and Indian War

: The formal end of hostilities legally j acknowledges British domination in

i ; North America

Ft. Presquei Isle letroit / PA

Ft. Le BoeufÿÿFti Venango NJ X e Philadelphia

Ft. Sandusky 0 Baltimore

Ft- Miami . Ouiatenon

rÿ

® New York

DE MD

VA © Williamsburg

Indian reserve clamation 1763)

NC

J

96

Why It Matters This period in American history matters because . . .

•The emergence of different regions during the colonial period laid the foundation for the role of regionalism in American history.

•Slavery not only grew enormously during the eighteenth-century part of the colonial period, it became absolutely essential to the American economy.

•The defeat of the French allowed Great Britain to become the preeminent European power in North America.

Learning Outcomes Historical Literacy Demonstrate knowledge of the key events, people, institutions, and chronology in Colonial in the Atlantic world. America, 1710-1763.

Images as History Understand how to analyze and interpret visual historical

Competing Visions Use primary sources to recognize the essential competing visions that shaped the decision of Georgians to turn to slavery as a source of labor.

Choices and Consequences Explore human agency through the choices and consequences of the decision to immigrate to British North America in the eighteenth century.

Historical Argument Formulate historical arguments about the impact of the Enlightenment on politics and society in colonial America.

evidence about slavery

Review Questions

1. How did changes in architecture and home furnishings reflect Anglicization and the rise of gentility' in colonial America?

2. What were the leading Enlightenment ideals, and what was the significance of America's role in that movement? In what ways did the colony of Georgia strive to embody Enlightenment ideals?

3. Where did slavery have the greatest impact in the mid- Atlantic and New England?

4. How did scarcity of land affect Americans before the French and Indian War?

Key Terms Virtual representation A theory of representation in which legislators do not serve their localities but rather the whole nation. 73

Old Lights Opponents of the Great Awakening who favored traditional forms of religious worship. 78

New Lights Supporters of the Great Awakening and its more emotional style of worship. 78

Middle Passage The harrowing voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the

Americas during which slaves endured meager rations and horrendously unsanitary conditions. 82

Indentured servants Men and women who took on a form of bound labor in which a number of years of service were specified as payment for passage to America. 86

Middle ground A cultural and geographical region of the Great Lakes in which Indians and the French negotiated with each other for goods and neither side could impose its will on the other. 90

Enlightenment An international

philosophical movement that extolled the virtues of reason and science and applied these new insights to politics and social reform. 66

Great Awakening A religious revival movement that emphasized a more emotional style of religious practice. 66

Anglicization The colonial American desire to emulate English society, including English taste in foods, customs, and architecture. 69

97