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THE

AMERICAN PAGEANT

2

PART ONE

FOUNDING THENEW NATION

��

c. 33,000 B.C.–A.D. 1783

The European explorers who followed Christopher

Columbus to North America inthe sixteenth century had nonotion of founding a new nation.Neither did the first Europeansettlers who peopled the thirteenEnglish colonies on the easternshores of the continent in the sev-enteenth and eighteenth cen-turies. These original colonistsmay have fled poverty or religiouspersecution in the Old World, butthey continued to view them-selves as Europeans, and as sub-jects of the English king. Theyregarded America as but thewestern rim of a transatlanticEuropean world.

Yet life in the New Worldmade the colonists different from their Europeancousins, and eventually, during the American Revo-lution, the Americans came to embrace a vision of

their country as an independentnation. How did this epochaltransformation come about?How did the colonists overcomethe conflicts that divided them,unite against Britain, and declarethemselves at great cost to be an“American” people?

They had much in commonto begin with. Most were English-speaking. Most came determinedto create an agricultural societymodeled on English customs.Conditions in the New Worlddeepened their common bonds.Most learned to live lives unfet-tered by the tyrannies of royalauthority, official religion, andsocial hierarchies that they hadleft behind. They grew to cherish

ideals that became synonymous with Americanlife—reverence for individual liberty, self-govern-ment, religious tolerance, and economic opportu-

3

nity. They also commonly displayed a willingness tosubjugate outsiders—first Indians, who were nearlyannihilated through war and disease, and thenAfricans, who were brought in chains to serve asslave labor, especially on the tobacco, rice, andindigo plantations of the southern colonies.

But if the settlement experience gave people acommon stock of values, both good and bad, it alsodivided them. The thirteen colonies were quite dif-ferent from one another. Puritans carved tight,pious, and relatively democratic communities ofsmall family farms out of rocky-soiled New England.Theirs was a homogeneous world in comparison tomost of the southern colonies, where large land-holders, mostly Anglicans, built plantations alongthe coast from which they lorded over a labor forceof black slaves and looked down upon the poorwhite farmers who settled the backcountry. Differ-ent still were the middle colonies stretching fromNew York to Delaware. There diversity reigned. Well-to-do merchants put their stamp on New York City,as Quakers did on Philadelphia, while out in thecountryside sprawling estates were interspersedwith modest homesteads. Within individualcolonies, conflicts festered over economic interests,ethnic rivalries, and religious practices. All thoseclashes made it difficult for colonists to imagine thatthey were a single people with a common destiny,much less that they ought to break free from Britain.

The American colonists in fact had little reasonto complain about Brit-ain. Each of the thir-teen colonies enjoyeda good deal of self-rule. Many colonistsprofited from tradewithin the BritishEmpire. But by the1760s, this stablearrangement began tocrumble, a victim ofthe imperial rivalrybetween France andBritain. Their strugglefor supremacy inNorth America beganin the late seventeenthcentury and finally

dragged in the colonists during the French andIndian War from 1756 to 1763. That war in one sensestrengthened ties with Britain, since colonial mili-tias fought triumphantly alongside the British armyagainst their mutual French and Indian enemies.But by driving the French from the North Americancontinent, the British made themselves less indis-pensable to the American colonies. More importantstill, after 1763 a financially overstretched Britishgovernment made the fateful choice of imposingtaxes on colonies that had been accustomed toanswering mainly to their own colonial assemblies.By the 1770s issues of taxation, self-rule, and traderestrictions brought the crisis of imperial authorityto a head. Although as late as 1775 most people inthe colonies clung to the hope of some kind ofaccommodation short of outright independence,royal intransigence soon thrust the colonists into awar of independence that neither antagonist couldhave anticipated just a few years before.

Eight years of revolutionary war did more thananything in the colonial past to bring Americanstogether as a nation. Comradeship in arms and thestruggle to shape a national government forcedAmericans to subdue their differences as best theycould. But the spirit of national unity was hardlyuniversal. One in five colonists sided with theBritish as “Loyalists,” and a generation would passbefore the wounds of this first American “civil war”fully healed. Yet in the end, Americans won the Rev-

olution, with no smallmeasure of help fromthe French, because inevery colony peopleshared a firm beliefthat they were fightingfor the “unalienablerights” of “life, liberty,and the pursuit ofhappiness,” in thewords of Thomas Jef-ferson’s magnificentDeclaration of Inde-pendence. Almost twohundred years of liv-ing a new life had pre-pared Americans tofound a new nation.

1

New World Beginnings��

33,000 B.C.–A.D. 1769

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown. . . . Your Highnesses have an Other World here.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, 1498

Several billion years ago, that whirling speck ofdust known as the earth, fifth in size among the

planets, came into being.About six thousand years ago—only a minute

ago in geological time—recorded history of theWestern world began. Certain peoples of the Middle

East, developing a primitive culture, graduallyemerged from the haze of the past.

Five hundred years ago—only a few seconds inthe past, figuratively speaking—European explorersstumbled on the American continents. This dra-matic accident forever altered the future of both

4

RECORDEDHISTORYBEGINS

JESUSBORN

VIRGINIAFOUNDED

BICEN-TENNIAL

4000 B.C. 4–8 B.C. 1607 1976

COLUMBUS'SDISCOVERY

VIRGINIAFOUNDED

INDEPENDENCEDECLARED

WORLD WAR I IENDS

46 years 9 years

COLDWARENDS

NEWMILLENNIUMBEGINS

1492 1607 1776 1991 20001945

115 years 169 years 169 years

the Old World and the New, and of Africa and Asia as well.

The Shaping of North America

Planet earth took on its present form slowly. Some225 million years ago, a single supercontinent con-tained all the world’s dry land. Then enormouschunks of terrain began to drift away from thiscolossal continent, opening the Atlantic and IndianOceans, narrowing the Pacific Ocean, and formingthe great landmasses of Eurasia, Africa, Australia,Antarctica, and the Americas. The existence of a sin-gle original continent has been proved in part by thediscovery of nearly identical species of fish thatswim today in the long-separated freshwater lakesof the various continents.

Continued shifting and folding of the earth’scrust thrust up mountain ranges. The Appalachianswere probably formed even before continental sepa-ration, perhaps 350 million years ago. The majesticranges of western North America—the Rockies, theSierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Ranges—arose much more recently, geologically speaking,some 135 million to 25 million years ago. They aretruly “American” mountains, born after the conti-nent took on its own separate geological identity.

By about 10 million years ago, nature hadsculpted the basic geological shape of North Amer-ica. The continent was anchored in its northeasterncorner by the massive Canadian Shield—a zoneundergirded by ancient rock, probably the first partof what became the North American landmass tohave emerged above sea level. A narrow easterncoastal plain, or “tidewater” region, creased bymany river valleys, sloped gently upward to thetimeworn ridges of the Appalachians. Those ancientmountains slanted away on their western side intothe huge midcontinental basin that rolled down-ward to the Mississippi Valley bottom and then roserelentlessly to the towering peaks of the Rockies.From the Rocky Mountain crest—the “roof of Amer-ica”—the land fell off jaggedly into the intermoun-tain Great Basin, bounded by the Rockies on theeast and the Sierra and Cascade ranges on the west.The valleys of the Sacramento and San JoaquinRivers and the Willamette–Puget Sound troughseamed the interiors of present-day California, Ore-gon, and Washington. The land at last met the foam-

ing Pacific, where the Coast Ranges rose steeplyfrom the sea.

Nature laid a chill hand over much of this ter-rain in the Great Ice Age, beginning about 2 millionyears ago. Two-mile-thick ice sheets crept from thepolar regions to blanket parts of Europe, Asia, andthe Americas. In North America the great glacierscarpeted most of present-day Canada and theUnited States as far southward as a line stretchingfrom Pennsylvania through the Ohio country andthe Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest.

When the glaciers finally retreated about 10,000years ago, they left the North American landscapetransformed, and much as we know it today. Theweight of the gargantuan ice mantle had depressedthe level of the Canadian Shield. The grinding andflushing action of the moving and melting ice hadscoured away the shield’s topsoil, pitting its rockysurface with thousands of shallow depressions intowhich the melting glaciers flowed to form lakes. Thesame glacial action scooped out and filled the GreatLakes. They originally drained southward throughthe Mississippi River system to the Gulf of Mexico.When the melting ice unblocked the Gulf of St.Lawrence, the lake water sought the St. LawrenceRiver outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, lowering theGreat Lakes’ level and leaving the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio system to drain the enormousmidcontinental basin between the Appalachiansand the Rockies. Similarly, in the west, water fromthe melting glaciers filled sprawling Lake Bon-neville, covering much of present-day Utah,Nevada, and Idaho. It drained to the Pacific Oceanthrough the Snake and Columbia River systemsuntil diminishing rainfall from the ebbing ice caplowered the water level, cutting off access to theSnake River outlet. Deprived of both inflow anddrainage, the giant lake became a gradually shrink-ing inland sea. It grew increasingly saline, slowlyevaporated, and left an arid, mineral-rich desert.Only Great Salt Lake remained as a relic of Bon-neville’s former vastness. Today Lake Bonneville’sancient beaches are visible on mountainsides up to1,000 feet above the dry floor of the Great Basin.

Peopling the Americas

The Great Ice Age shaped more than the geologicalhistory of North America. It also contributed to the

The Effects of the Great Ice Age 5

origins of the continent’s human history. Thoughrecent (and still highly controversial) evidence suggests that some early peoples may have reachedthe Americas in crude boats, most probably cameby land. Some 35,000 years ago, the Ice Age con-gealed much of the world oceans into massive ice-pack glaciers, lowering the level of the sea. As thesea level dropped, it exposed a land bridge connect-ing Eurasia with North America in the area of thepresent-day Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska.Across that bridge, probably following migratoryherds of game, ventured small bands of nomadicAsian hunters—the “immigrant” ancestors of theNative Americans. They continued to trek across theBering isthmus for some 250 centuries, slowly peo-pling the American continents.

As the Ice Age ended and the glaciers melted,the sea level rose again, inundating the land bridgeabout 10,000 years ago. Nature thus barred the doorto further immigration for many thousands of years,leaving this part of the human family marooned formillennia on the now-isolated American continents.

Time did not stand still for these original Ameri-cans. The same climatic warming that melted theice and drowned the bridge to Eurasia graduallyopened ice-free valleys through which vanguardbands groped their way southward and eastwardacross the Americas. Roaming slowly through thisawesome wilderness, they eventually reached thefar tip of South America, some 15,000 miles fromSiberia. By the time Europeans arrived in America in1492, perhaps 54 million people inhabited the twoAmerican continents.* Over the centuries they splitinto countless tribes, evolved more than 2,000 sepa-rate languages, and developed many diverse reli-gions, cultures, and ways of life.

Incas in Peru, Mayans in Central America, andAztecs in Mexico shaped stunningly sophisticatedcivilizations. Their advanced agricultural practices,

6 CHAPTER 1 New World Beginnings, 33,000 B.C.–A.D. 1769

*Much controversy surrounds estimates of the pre-ColumbianNative American population. The figures here are from WilliamM. Denevan, ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 1492,rev. ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).

UNITED STATES

MEXICO

CANADA

ALASKA

GREENLAND

SIBERIABering Land Bridge

HudsonBay

ATLANTICOCEAN

PACIFICOCEAN

ARCTICOCEAN

0 500 Miles

0 500 Kilometers

Area of land bridge,c.35,000–10,000 years agoMaximum extent of glaciersPossible migratory pathsEarliest discovered Indian sites

The First Discoverers of AmericaThe origins of the first Americans remainsomething of a mystery. According to the mostplausible theory of how the Americas werepopulated, for some 25,000 years, peoplecrossed the Bering land bridge from Eurasia toNorth America. Gradually they dispersedsouthward down ice-free valleys, populatingboth the American continents.

Examining the Evidence 7

Making Sense of the New World This map from1540 represents one of the earliest efforts to makegeographic sense out of the New World (NovusOrbis on the map). The very phrase New Worldsuggests just how staggering a blow to the Euro-pean imagination was the discovery of the Ameri-cas. Europeans reached instinctively for the mostexpansive of all possible terms—world, not sim-ply places, or even continents—to comprehendColumbus’s startling report that lands and peoplespreviously unimagined lay beyond the horizon ofEurope’s western sea.

Gradually, the immense implications of theNew World’s existence began to impress themselveson Europe, with consequences for literature, art,politics, the economy—and of course for cartogra-

phy. Maps can only be representations of reality,and are therefore necessarily distortions. This mapbears a recognizable resemblance to modern mapmakers’ renderings of the American continents,but it also contains gross geographical inaccuracies(note the location of Japan—Zipangri—relative tothe North American west coast) as well as tellingcommentaries on what sixteenth-century Euro-peans found remarkable (note the Land of Giants—Regio Gigantum—and the indication of cannibals—Cannibali—in present-day Argentina and Brazilrespectively). What further clues to the Europeanmentality of the time does the map offer? In whatways might misconceptions about the geography ofthe Americas have influenced further explorationand settlement patterns?

based primarily on the cultivation of maize, which isIndian corn, fed large populations, perhaps as manyas 20 million in Mexico alone. Although withoutlarge draft animals such as horses and oxen, andlacking even the simple technology of the wheel,these peoples built elaborate cities and carried onfar-flung commerce. Talented mathematicians, theymade strikingly accurate astronomical observations.The Aztecs also routinely sought the favor of theirgods by offering human sacrifices, cutting the heartsout of the chests of living victims, who were oftencaptives conquered in battle. By some accountsmore than 5,000 people were ritually slaughtered tocelebrate the crowning of one Aztec chieftain.

The Earliest Americans

Agriculture, especially corn growing, accounted forthe size and sophistication of the Native Americancivilizations in Mexico and South America. About5000 B.C. hunter-gatherers in highland Mexicodeveloped a wild grass into the staple crop of corn,which became their staff of life and the foundationof the complex, large-scale, centralized Aztec andIncan nation-states that eventually emerged. Culti-vation of corn spread across the Americas from theMexican heartland. Everywhere it was planted, cornbegan to transform nomadic hunting bands intosettled agricultural villagers, but this process wentforward slowly and unevenly.

Corn planting reached the present-day Ameri-can Southwest by about 1200 B.C. and powerfullymolded Pueblo culture. The Pueblo peoples in theRio Grande valley constructed intricate irrigationsystems to water their cornfields. They weredwelling in villages of multistoried, terraced build-ings when Spanish explorers made contact withthem in the sixteenth century. (Pueblo means “vil-lage” in Spanish.)

Corn cultivation reached other parts of NorthAmerica considerably later. The timing of its arrivalin different localities explains much about the relative rates of development of different NativeAmerican peoples. Throughout the continent to thenorth and east of the land of the Pueblos, social lifewas less elaborately developed—indeed “societies”in the modern sense of the word scarcely existed.No dense concentrations of population or complexnation-states comparable to the Aztec empireexisted in North America outside of Mexico at the

time of the Europeans’ arrival—one of the reasonsfor the relative ease with which the European colo-nizers subdued the native North Americans.

The Mound Builders of the Ohio River valley,the Mississippian culture of the lower Midwest, andthe desert-dwelling Anasazi peoples of the South-west did sustain some large settlements after theincorporation of corn planting into their way of life during the first millennium A.D. The Mississip-pian settlement at Cahokia, near present-day EastSt. Louis, was at one time home to as many astwenty-five thousand people. The Anasazis built anelaborate pueblo of more than six hundred inter-connected rooms at Chaco Canyon in modern-dayNew Mexico. But mysteriously, perhaps due to pro-longed drought, all those ancient cultures had falleninto decline by about A.D. 1300.

The cultivation of maize, as well as of high-yielding strains of beans and squash, reached thesoutheastern Atlantic seaboard region of NorthAmerica about A.D. 1000. These plants made possi-ble “three-sister” farming, with beans growing onthe trellis of the cornstalks and squash covering theplanting mounds to retain moisture in the soil. Therich diet provided by this environmentally cleverfarming technique produced some of the highestpopulation densities on the continent, among themthe Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples.

The Iroquois in the northeastern woodlands,inspired by a legendary leader named Hiawatha, inthe sixteenth century created perhaps the closestNorth American approximation to the great nation-states of Mexico and Peru. The Iroquois Confeder-acy developed the political and organizational skillsto sustain a robust military alliance that menacedits neighbors, Native American and European alike,for well over a century (see “Makers of America: TheIroquois,” pp. 40–41).

But for the most part, the native peoples ofNorth America were living in small, scattered, andimpermanent settlements on the eve of the Euro-peans’ arrival. In more settled agricultural groups,women tended the crops while men hunted, fished,gathered fuel, and cleared fields for planting. Thispattern of life frequently conferred substantialauthority on women, and many North Americannative peoples, including the Iroquois, developedmatrilinear cultures, in which power and posses-sions passed down the female side of the family line.

Unlike the Europeans, who would soon arrivewith the presumption that humans had dominionover the earth and with the technologies to alter the


Native American Civilizations 9

North American Indian Peoples at the Time of First Contact with Europeans Because this map depicts the location ofvarious Indian peoples at the time of their first contact with Europeans, and because initial contacts ranged from the sixteenthto the nineteenth centuries, it is necessarily subject to considerable chronological skewing, and is only a crude approximation of the“original” territory of any given group. The map also cannot capture the fluidity and dynamism of Native American life even beforeColumbus’s “discovery.” For example, the Navajo and Apache peoples had migrated from present-day northern Canada only shortlybefore the Spanish first encountered them in the present-day American Southwest in the 1500s. The map also places the Sioux onthe Great Plains, where Europeans met up with them in the early nineteenth century—but the Sioux had spilled onto the Plains notlong before then from the forests surrounding the Great Lakes. The indigenous populations of the southeastern and mid-Atlanticregions are especially difficult to represent accurately in a map like this because pre-Columbian intertribal conflicts had soscrambled the native inhabitants that it is virtually impossible to determine which groups were originally where.

very face of the land, the Native Americans had nei-ther the desire nor the means to manipulate natureaggressively. They revered the physical world andendowed nature with spiritual properties. Yet theydid sometimes ignite massive forest fires, deliber-ately torching thousands of acres of trees to createbetter hunting habitats, especially for deer. Thispractice accounted for the open, parklike appear-ance of the eastern woodlands that so amazed earlyEuropean explorers.

But in a broad sense, the land did not feel thehand of the Native Americans heavy upon it, partlybecause they were so few in number. They were sothinly spread across the continent that vast areaswere virtually untouched by a human presence. In the fateful year 1492, probably no more than 4million Native Americans padded through the whis-pering, primeval forests and paddled across thesparkling, virgin waters of North America. Theywere blissfully unaware that the historic isolation ofthe Americas was about to end forever, as the landand the native peoples alike felt the full shock of theEuropean “discovery.”

Indirect Discoverers of the New World

Europeans, for their part, were equally unaware ofthe existence of the Americas. Blond-bearded Norseseafarers from Scandinavia had chanced upon the

northeastern shoulder of North America about A.D.1000. They landed at a place near L’Anse aux Mead-ows in present-day Newfoundland that aboundedin wild grapes, which led them to name the spotVinland. But no strong nation-state, yearning toexpand, supported these venturesome voyagers.Their flimsy settlements consequently were soonabandoned, and their discovery was forgotten,except in Scandinavian saga and song.

For several centuries thereafter, other restlessEuropeans, with the growing power of ambitiousgovernments behind them, sought contact with awider world, whether for conquest or trade. Theythus set in motion the chain of events that led to adrive toward Asia, the penetration of Africa, and thecompletely accidental discovery of the New World.

Christian crusaders must rank high amongAmerica’s indirect discoverers. Clad in shiningarmor, tens of thousands of these European war-riors tried from the eleventh to the fourteenth cen-tury to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control.Foiled in their military assaults, the crusaders nev-ertheless acquired a taste for the exotic delights ofAsia. Goods that had been virtually unknown inEurope now were craved—silk for clothing, drugsfor aching flesh, perfumes for unbathed bodies, col-orful draperies for gloomy castles, and spices—especially sugar, a rare luxury in Europe before thecrusades—for preserving and flavoring food.Europe’s developing sweet tooth would havemomentous implications for world history.


The luxuries of the East were prohibitivelyexpensive in Europe. They had to be transportedenormous distances from the Spice Islands(Indonesia), China, and India, in creaking ships andon swaying camelback. The journey led across theIndian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea oralong the tortuous caravan routes of Asia or the Ara-bian peninsula, ending at the ports of the easternMediterranean. Muslim middlemen exacted a heavytoll en route. By the time the strange-smelling goodsreached Italian merchants at Venice and Genoa,they were so costly that purchasers and profits alikewere narrowly limited. European consumers anddistributors were naturally eager to find a lessexpensive route to the riches of Asia or to developalternate sources of supply.

Europeans Enter Africa

European appetites were further whetted whenfootloose Marco Polo, an Italian adventurer,returned to Europe in 1295 and began telling tales ofhis nearly twenty-year sojourn in China. Though hemay in fact never have seen China (legend to the

contrary, the hard evidence is sketchy), he must beregarded as an indirect discoverer of the New World,for his book, with its descriptions of rose-tintedpearls and golden pagodas, stimulated Europeandesires for a cheaper route to the treasures of theEast.

These accumulating pressures brought a break-through for European expansion in the fifteenthcentury. Before the middle of that century, Euro-pean sailors refused to sail southward along thecoast of West Africa because they could not beattheir way home against the prevailing northerlywinds and south-flowing currents. About 1450, Por-tuguese mariners overcame those obstacles. Notonly had they developed the caravel, a ship thatcould sail more closely into the wind, but they haddiscovered that they could return to Europe by sail-ing northwesterly from the African coast toward theAzores, where the prevailing westward breezeswould carry them home.

The new world of sub-Saharan Africa now camewithin the grasp of questing Europeans. The north-ern shore of Africa, as part of the Mediterraneanworld, had been known to Europe since antiquity.But because sea travel down the African coast hadbeen virtually impossible, Africa south of the forbid-

Early Explorers 11

ding Sahara Desert barrier had remained remoteand mysterious. African gold, perhaps two-thirds ofEurope’s supply, crossed the Sahara on camelback,and shadowy tales may have reached Europe aboutthe flourishing West African kingdom of Mali in theNiger River valley, with its impressive Islamic uni-versity at Timbuktu. But Europeans had no directaccess to sub-Saharan Africa until the Portuguesenavigators began to creep down the West Africancoast in the middle of the fifteenth century.

The Portuguese promptly set up trading postsalong the African shore for the purchase of gold—and slaves. Arab flesh merchants and Africansthemselves had traded slaves for centuries beforethe Europeans arrived. They routinely chargedhigher prices for slaves from distant sources, whocould not easily flee to their native villages nor beeasily rescued by their kin. Slave brokers also delib-erately separated persons from the same tribes andmixed unlike people together to frustrate organizedresistance. Thus from its earliest days, even beforeEuropeans arrived in Africa, slavery by its verynature fostered the extinction of regional Africancultures and tribal identities.

The Portuguese adopted these Arab and Africanpractices. They built up their own systematic trafficin slaves to work the sugar plantations that Portugal,and later Spain, established on the African coastalislands of Madeira, the Canaries, São Tomé, andPrincipe. The Portuguese appetite for slaves wasenormous and dwarfed the modest scale of the pre-European traffic. Slave trading became a big busi-ness. Some forty thousand Africans were carriedaway to the Atlantic sugar islands in the last half ofthe fifteenth century. Millions more were to be

wrenched from their home continent after the dis-covery of the Americas. In these fifteenth-centuryPortuguese adventures in Africa were to be foundthe origins of the modern plantation system, basedon large-scale commercial agriculture and thewholesale exploitation of slave labor. This kind ofplantation economy would shape the destiny ofmuch of the New World.


The World Known to Europe,1492

The seafaring Portuguese pushed still farthersouthward in search of the water route to Asia. Edg-ing cautiously down the African coast, BartholomeuDías rounded the southernmost tip of the “DarkContinent” in 1488. Ten years later Vasco da Gamafinally reached India (hence the name “Indies,”given by Europeans to all the mysterious lands ofthe Orient), and returned home with a small buttantalizing cargo of jewels and spices.

Meanwhile, the kingdom of Spain becameunited—an event pregnant with destiny—in the latefifteenth century. This new unity resulted primarilyfrom the marriage of two sovereigns, Ferdinand ofAragon and Isabella of Castile, and from the brutalexpulsion of the “infidel” Muslim Moors from Spainafter centuries of Christian-Islamic warfare. Gloryingin their sudden strength, the Spaniards were eager tooutstrip their Portuguese rivals in the race to tap thewealth of the Indies. To the south and east, Portugalcontrolled the African coast and thus controlled the

gateway to the round-Africa water route to India. Of necessity, therefore, Spain looked westward.

Columbus Comes upon a New World

The stage was now set for a cataclysmic shift in thecourse of history—the history not only of Europebut of all the world. Europeans clamored for moreand cheaper products from the lands beyond theMediterranean. Africa had been established as asource of cheap slave labor for plantation agricul-ture. The Portuguese voyages had demonstrated thefeasibility of long-range ocean navigation. In Spaina modern national state was taking shape, with theunity, wealth, and power to shoulder the formidabletasks of discovery, conquest, and colonization. Thedawn of the Renaissance in the fourteenth centurynurtured an ambitious spirit of optimism and

European Trade and Exploration 13

1498

1488

Genoa Venice

Constantinople

Delhi

Peking

Alexandria

Timbuktu

INDIAN OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Northern route

Middle route

Southern route

Díaz (Portuguese), 1488

da Gama (Portuguese), 1498

Prevailing winds

SPICEISLANDS

AFRICA

CHINA

INDIA

PERSIA

SPAIN

PORTUGAL

EAST INDIES

MALI

MADEIRA

CANARY ISLANDS

SAO TOME

PRINCIPE

´˜

MADAGASCAR

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

Red Sea

NigerR.

Mediterranean

Sea

Trade Routes with the East Goods on the early routes passed through so many hands along the way thattheir ultimate source remained mysterious to Europeans.

adventure. Printing presses, introduced about 1450,facilitated the spread of scientific knowledge. Themariner’s compass, possibly borrowed from theArabs, eliminated some of the uncertainties of seatravel. Meanwhile, across the ocean, the unsuspect-ing New World innocently awaited its European “discoverers.”

Onto this stage stepped Christopher Columbus.This skilled Italian seafarer persuaded the Spanishmonarchs to outfit him with three tiny but seawor-thy ships, manned by a motley crew. Daringly, heunfurled the sails of his cockleshell craft and headedwestward. His superstitious sailors, fearful of ven-turing into the oceanic unknown, grew increasinglymutinous. After six weeks at sea, failure loomedwhen, on October 12, 1492, the crew sighted anisland in the Bahamas. A new world thus swamwithin the vision of Europeans.

Columbus’s sensational achievement obscuresthe fact that he was one of the most successful fail-ures in history. Seeking a new water route to thefabled Indies, he in fact had bumped into an enor-mous land barrier blocking the ocean pathway. For

decades thereafter explorers strove to get through itor around it. The truth gradually dawned thatsprawling new continents had been discovered. YetColumbus was at first so certain that he had skirtedthe rim of the “Indies” that he called the native peo-ples Indians, a gross geographical misnomer thatsomehow stuck.

Columbus’s discovery would eventually con-vulse four continents—Europe, Africa, and the twoAmericas. Thanks to his epochal voyage, an interde-pendent global economic system emerged on ascale undreamed-of before he set sail. Its workingstouched every shore washed by the Atlantic Ocean.Europe provided the markets, the capital, and thetechnology; Africa furnished the labor; and the NewWorld offered its raw materials, especially its pre-cious metals and its soil for the cultivation of sugarcane. For Europeans as well as for Africans andNative Americans, the world after 1492 would neverbe the same, for better or worse.

When Worlds Collide

Two ecosystems—the fragile, naturally evolved net-works of relations among organisms in a stableenvironment—commingled and clashed whenColumbus waded ashore. The reverberations fromthat historic encounter echoed for centuries after1492. The flora and fauna of the Old and New Worldshad been separated for thousands of years. Euro-pean explorers marveled at the strange sights thatgreeted them, including exotic beasts such as igua-nas and “snakes with castanets” (rattlesnakes).Native New World plants such as tobacco, maize,beans, tomatoes, and especially the lowly potatoeventually revolutionized the international econ-omy as well as the European diet, feeding the rapidpopulation growth of the Old World. These food-stuffs were among the most important Indian giftsto the Europeans and to the rest of the world. Per-haps three-fifths of the crops cultivated around theglobe today originated in the Americas. Ironically,the introduction into Africa of New World foodstuffslike maize, manioc, and sweet potatoes may havefed an African population boom that numerically,though not morally, more than offset the lossesinflicted by the slave trade.

In exchange the Europeans introduced OldWorld crops and animals to the Americas. Colum-bus returned to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola


(present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in1493 with seventeen ships that unloaded twelvehundred men and a virtual Noah’s Ark of cattle,swine, and horses. The horses soon reached theNorth American mainland through Mexico and inless than two centuries had spread as far as Canada.North American Indian tribes like the Apaches,Sioux, and Blackfoot swiftly adopted the horse,transforming their cultures into highly mobile,wide-ranging hunter societies that roamed thegrassy Great Plains in pursuit of the shaggy buffalo.Columbus also brought seedlings of sugar cane,which thrived in the warm Caribbean climate. A“sugar revolution” consequently took place in theEuropean diet, fueled by the forced migration ofmillions of Africans to work the canefields and sugarmills of the New World.

Unwittingly, the Europeans also brought otherorganisms in the dirt on their boots and the dust ontheir clothes, such as the seeds of Kentucky blue-grass, dandelions, and daisies. Most ominous of all,in their bodies they carried the germs that causedsmallpox, yellow fever, and malaria. Indeed Old

World diseases would quickly devastate the NativeAmericans. During the Indians’ millennia of isola-tion in the Americas, most of the Old World’s killermaladies had disappeared from among them. Butgenerations of freedom from those illnesses had alsowiped out protective antibodies. Devoid of naturalresistance to Old World sicknesses, Indians died indroves. Within fifty years of the Spanish arrival, thepopulation of the Taino natives in Hispaniola dwin-dled from some 1 million people to about 200.Enslavement and armed aggression took their toll,but the deadliest killers were microbes, not muskets.The lethal germs spread among the New World peo-ples with the speed and force of a hurricane, swiftlysweeping far ahead of the human invaders; most ofthose afflicted never laid eyes on a European. In thecenturies after Columbus’s landfall, as many as 90percent of the Native Americans perished, a demo-graphic catastrophe without parallel in human his-tory. This depopulation was surely not intended bythe Spanish, but it was nevertheless so severe thatentire cultures and ancient ways of life were extin-guished forever. Baffled, enraged, and vengeful,

The Impact of Discovery 15

The Columbian Exchange Columbus’s discovery initiated the kind of explosion in international commercethat a later age would call “globalization.” (Source: Adapted from Out of Many: A History of the AmericanPeople, Third Edition, Combined Edition by Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom, and Armitage. Copyright © 1999. Bypermission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.)

NEW WORLD

OLD WORLD

Wheat, sugar, rice, coffee

Syphilis

Corn, potatoes, pineapples, tomatoes, tobacco, beans, vanilla, chocolate

Gold, silver

Horses, cows, pigs

Smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever

AFRICASlave labor

Indian slaves sometimes kneaded tainted blood intotheir masters’ bread, to little effect. Perhaps it waspoetic justice that the Indians unintentionally didtake a kind of revenge by infecting the early explorerswith syphilis, injecting that lethal sexually transmit-ted disease for the first time into Europe.

The Spanish Conquistadores

Gradually, Europeans realized that the Americancontinents held rich prizes, especially the gold andsilver of the advanced Indian civilizations in Mexicoand Peru. Spain secured its claim to Columbus’s dis-covery in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), dividingwith Portugal the “heathen lands” of the New World.The lion’s share went to Spain, but Portugal receivedcompensating territory in Africa and Asia, as well astitle to lands that one day would be Brazil.

Spain became the dominant exploring and col-onizing power in the 1500s. In the service of God, aswell as in search of gold and glory, Spanish conquis-tadores (conquerors) fanned out across the Carib-bean and eventually onto the mainland of theAmerican continents (see “Makers of America: TheSpanish Conquistadores,” pp. 18–19). On Spain’slong roster of notable deeds, two spectacularexploits must be headlined. Vasco Nuñez Balboa,hailed as the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, waded

into the foaming waves off Panama in 1513 andboldly claimed for his king all the lands washed bythat sea! Ferdinand Magellan started from Spain in1519 with five tiny ships. After beating through thestorm-lashed strait off the tip of South America thatstill bears his name, he was slain by the inhabitantsof the Philippines. His one remaining vessel creakedhome in 1522, completing the first circumnaviga-tion of the globe.

Other ambitious Spaniards ventured into NorthAmerica. In 1513 and 1521, Juan Ponce de Leónexplored Florida, which he at first thought was an


Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566), areform-minded Dominican friar, wrote The Destruction of the Indies in 1542 tochronicle the awful fate of the NativeAmericans and to protest Spanish policies inthe New World. He was especially horrified at the catastrophic effects of disease on thenative peoples:

“Who of those in future centuries will believethis? I myself who am writing this and saw it and know the most about it can hardlybelieve that such was possible.”

island. Seeking gold—and probably not the mythical“fountain of youth”—he instead met with death byan Indian arrow. In 1540–1542 Francisco Coronado,in quest of fabled golden cities that turned out to beadobe pueblos, wandered with a clanking cavalcadethrough Arizona and New Mexico, penetrating as fareast as Kansas. En route his expedition discoveredtwo awesome natural wonders: the Grand Canyon ofthe Colorado River and enormous herds of buffalo(bison). Hernando de Soto, with six hundred armor-plated men, undertook a fantastic gold-seekingexpedition during 1539–1542. Floundering throughmarshes and pine barrens from Florida westward, hediscovered and crossed the majestic MississippiRiver just north of its junction with the ArkansasRiver. After brutally mistreating the Indians with ironcollars and fierce dogs, he at length died of fever andwounds. His troops secretly disposed of his remainsat night in the Mississippi, lest the Indians exhumeand abuse their abuser’s corpse.

Meanwhile in South America, the ironfistedconqueror Francisco Pizarro crushed the Incas ofPeru in 1532 and added a huge hoard of booty toSpanish coffers. By 1600 Spain was swimming inNew World silver, mostly from the fabulously richmines at Potosí in present-day Bolivia, as well asfrom Mexico. This flood of precious metal touchedoff a price revolution in Europe that increased con-sumer costs by as much as 500 percent in the hun-dred years after the mid-sixteenth century. Somescholars see in this ballooning European money

supply the fuel that fed the growth of the economicsystem known as capitalism. Certainly, New Worldbullion helped transform the world economy. Itswelled the vaults of bankers from Spain to Italy, lay-ing the foundations of the modern commercialbanking system. It clinked in the purses of mer-chants in France and Holland, stimulating thespread of commerce and manufacturing. And itpaid for much of the burgeoning international tradewith Asia, whose sellers had little use for any Euro-pean good except silver.

The islands of the Caribbean Sea—the WestIndies as they came to be called, in yet another per-petuation of Columbus’s geographic confusion—served as offshore bases for the staging of theSpanish invasion of the mainland Americas. Heresupplies could be stored, and men and horses couldbe rested and acclimated, before proceeding to theconquest of the continents. The loosely organizedand vulnerable native communities of the WestIndies also provided laboratories for testing thetechniques that would eventually subdue theadvanced Indian civilizations of Mexico and Peru.The most important such technique was the institu-tion known as the encomienda. It allowed the gov-ernment to “commend,” or give, Indians to certaincolonists in return for the promise to try to Chris-tianize them. In all but name, it was slavery. Spanishmissionary Bartolomé de Las Casas, appalled by theencomienda system in Hispaniola, called it “a moralpestilence invented by Satan.”

Spanish Explorers and Conquerors 17

Principal Early SpanishExplorations and ConquestsNote that Coronado traversednorthern Texas and Oklahoma. In present-day eastern Kansas, hefound, instead of the great goldencity he sought, a drab encamp-ment, probably of Wichita Indians.

The Spanish Conquistadores

In 1492, the same year that Columbus sightedAmerica, the great Moorish city of Granada, in

Spain, fell after a ten-year siege. For five centuriesthe Christian kingdoms of Spain had been trying todrive the North African Muslim Moors (“the DarkOnes,” in Spanish) off the Iberian peninsula, andwith the fall of Granada they succeeded. But thelengthy “Reconquista” had left its mark on Spanishsociety. Centuries of military and religious con-frontation nurtured an obsession with status andhonor, bred religious zealotry and intolerance, andcreated a large class of men who regarded manuallabor and commerce contemptuously. With theReconquista ended, some of these men turned theirrestless gaze to Spain’s New World frontier.

At first Spanish hopes for America focused onthe Caribbean and on finding a sea route to Asia.Gradually, however, word filtered back of rich king-doms on the mainland. Between 1519 and 1540,Spanish conquistadores swept across the Americasin two wide arcs of conquest—one driving fromCuba through Mexico into what is now the south-western United States, the other starting fromPanama and pushing south into Peru. Within half acentury of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, theconquistadores had extinguished the great Aztecand Incan empires and claimed for church andcrown a territory that extended from Colorado toArgentina, including much of what is now the conti-nental United States.

18

The military conquest of this vast region wasachieved by just ten thousand men, organized in aseries of private expeditions. Hernán Cortés, Fran-cisco Pizarro, and other aspiring conquerors signedcontracts with the Spanish monarch, raised moneyfrom investors, and then went about recruiting anarmy. Only a small minority of the conquistadores—leaders or followers—were nobles. About half wereprofessional soldiers and sailors; the rest comprisedpeasants, artisans, and members of the middlingclasses. Most were in their twenties and early thir-ties, and all knew how to wield a sword.

Diverse motives spurred these motley adven-turers. Some hoped to win royal titles and favors bybringing new peoples under the Spanish flag.Others sought to ensure God’s favor by spreadingChristianity to the pagans. Some men hoped toescape dubious pasts, and others sought the kind ofhistorical adventure experienced by heroes of clas-sical antiquity. Nearly all shared a lust for gold. Asone of Cortés’s foot soldiers put it, “We came here toserve God and the king, and also to get rich.” Onehistorian adds that the conquistadores first fell ontheir knees and then fell upon the aborigines.

Armed with horses and gunpowder and pre-ceded by disease, the conquistadores quickly over-

powered the Indians. But most never achieved theirdreams of glory. Few received titles of nobility, andmany of the rank and file remained permanentlyindebted to the absentee investors who paid fortheir equipment. Even when an expedition capturedexceptionally rich booty, the spoils were unevenlydivided: men from the commander’s home regionoften received more, and men on horseback gener-ally got two shares to the infantryman’s one. Theconquistadores lost still more power as the crowngradually tightened its control in the New World. Bythe 1530s in Mexico and the 1550s in Peru, colorlesscolonial administrators had replaced the freeboot-ing conquistadores.

Nevertheless, the conquistadores achieved akind of immortality. Because of a scarcity of Span-ish women in the early days of the conquest, manyof the conquistadores married Indian women. Thesoldiers who conquered Paraguay received threenative women each, and Cortés’s soldiers in Mex-ico—who were forbidden to consort with paganwomen—quickly had their lovers baptized into theCatholic faith. Their offspring, the “new race” ofmestizos, formed a cultural and a biological bridgebetween Latin America’s European and Indianraces.

19

The Conquest of Mexico

In 1519 Hernán Cortés set sail from Cuba with six-teen fresh horses and several hundred men aboardeleven ships, bound for Mexico and for destiny. Onthe island of Cozumel off the Yucatan peninsula, herescued a Spanish castaway who had been enslavedfor several years by the Mayan-speaking Indians. Ashort distance farther on, he picked up the femaleIndian slave Malinche, who knew both Mayan andNahuatl, the language of the powerful Aztec rulersof the great empire in the highlands of central Mex-ico. In addition to his superior firepower, Cortésnow had the advantage, through these two inter-preters, of understanding the speech of the nativepeoples whom he was about to encounter, includ-ing the Aztecs. Malinche eventually learned Spanishand was baptized with the Spanish name of DoñaMarina.

Near present-day Vera Cruz, Cortés made hisfinal landfall. Through his interpreters he learned ofunrest within the Aztec empire among the peoplesfrom whom the Aztecs demanded tribute. He alsoheard alluring tales of the gold and other wealthstored up in the legendary Aztec capital of Tenochti-tlán. He lusted to tear open the coffers of the Aztec

kingdom. To quell his mutinous troops, he boldlyburned his ships, cutting off any hope of retreat.Gathering a force of some twenty thousand Indianallies, he marched on Tenochtitlán and toward oneof history’s most dramatic and fateful encounters.

As Cortés proceeded, the Aztec chieftainMoctezuma sent ambassadors bearing fabulousgifts to welcome the approaching Spaniards. Theseonly whetted the conquistador’s appetite. “We Span-ish suffer from a strange disease of the heart,”Cortés allegedly informed the emissaries, “for whichthe only known remedy is gold.” The ambassadorsreported this comment to Moctezuma, along withthe astonishing fact that the newcomers rode on the backs of “deer” (horses). The superstitiousMoctezuma also believed that Cortés was the godQuetzalcoatl, whose return from the eastern sea waspredicted in Aztec legends. Expectant yet apprehen-sive, Moctezuma allowed the conquistadores toapproach his capital unopposed.

As the Spaniards entered the Valley of Mexico,the sight of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán amazedthem. With 300,000 inhabitants spread over tensquare miles, it rivaled in size and pomp any city incontemporary Europe. The Aztec metropolis rosefrom an island in the center of a lake, surrounded byfloating gardens of extraordinary beauty. It was con-


nected to the mainland by a series of causeways andsupplied with fresh water by an artfully designedaqueduct.

Moctezuma treated Cortés hospitably at first,but soon the Spaniards’ hunger for gold and powerexhausted their welcome. “They thirsted mightilyfor gold; they stuffed themselves with it; theystarved for it; they lusted for it like pigs,” said oneAztec. On the noche triste (sad night) of June 30,1520, the Aztecs attacked, driving the Spanish downthe causeways from Tenochtitlán in a frantic, bloodyretreat. Cortés then laid siege to the city, and itcapitulated on August 13, 1521. That same year asmallpox epidemic burned through the Valley ofMexico. The combination of conquest and diseasetook a grisly toll. The Aztec empire gave way to threecenturies of Spanish rule. The temples of Tenochti-tlán were destroyed to make way for the Christiancathedrals of Mexico City, built on the site of theruined Indian capital. And the native population ofMexico, winnowed mercilessly by the invader’s dis-eases, shrank from some 20 million to 2 million peo-ple in less than a century.

Yet the invader brought more than conquestand death. He brought his crops and his animals,his language and his laws, his customs and his reli-gion, all of which proved adaptable to the peoples ofMexico. He intermarried with the surviving Indians,

creating a distinctive culture of mestizos, people ofmixed Indian and European heritage. To this dayMexican civilization remains a unique blend of theOld World and the New, producing both ambiva-lence and pride among people of Mexican heritage.Cortés’s translator Malinche, for example, has givenher name to the Mexican language in the word mal-inchista, or “traitor.” But Mexicans also celebrateColumbus Day as the Dia de la Raza—the birthdayof a wholly new race of people.

The Spread of Spanish America

Spain’s colonial empire grew swiftly and impres-sively. Within about half a century of Columbus’slandfall, hundreds of Spanish cities and towns flour-ished in the Americas, especially in the great silver-producing centers of Peru and Mexico. Some160,000 Spaniards, mostly men, had subjugatedmillions of Indians. Majestic cathedrals dotted theland, printing presses turned out books, and schol-ars studied at distinguished universities includingthose at Mexico City and Lima, Peru, both foundedin 1551, eighty-five years before Harvard, the firstcollege established in the English colonies.

But how secure were these imperial posses-sions? Other powers were already sniffing aroundthe edges of the Spanish domain, eager to bite offtheir share of the promised wealth of the new lands.The upstart English sent Giovanni Caboto (knownin English as John Cabot) to explore the northeast-ern coast of North America in 1497 and 1498. TheFrench king dispatched another Italian mariner,Giovanni da Verrazano, to probe the easternseaboard in 1524. Ten years later the FrenchmanJacques Cartier journeyed hundreds of miles up theSt. Lawrence River.

To secure the northern periphery of their NewWorld domain against such encroachments and toconvert more Indian souls to Christianity, the Span-ish began to fortify and settle their North Americanborderlands. In a move to block French ambitionsand to protect the sea-lanes to the Caribbean, theSpanish erected a fortress at St. Augustine, Florida,in 1565, thus founding the oldest continually inhab-ited European settlement in the future UnitedStates.

In Mexico the tales of Coronado’s expedition ofthe 1540s to the upper Rio Grande and Colorado

Cortés Conquers Mexico 21

River regions continued to beckon the conquista-dores’ interest northward. A dust-begrimed expedi-tionary column, with eighty-three rumbling wagonsand hundreds of grumbling men, traversed the bareSonora Desert from Mexico into the Rio Grande valley in 1598. Led by Don Juan de Oñate, theSpaniards cruelly abused the Pueblo peoples theyencountered. In the Battle of Acoma in 1599, theSpanish severed one foot of each survivor. They pro-claimed the area to be the province of New Mexicoin 1609 and founded its capital at Santa Fe the fol-lowing year.

The Spanish settlers in New Mexico found a fewfurs and precious little gold, but they did discover awealth of souls to be harvested for the Christian reli-gion. The Roman Catholic mission became the cen-tral institution in colonial New Mexico until themissionaries’ efforts to suppress native religiouscustoms provoked an Indian uprising called Popé’sRebellion in 1680. The Pueblo rebels destroyedevery Catholic church in the province and killed ascore of priests and hundreds of Spanish settlers. In

a reversal of Cortés’s treatment of the Aztec templesmore than a century earlier, the Indians rebuilt akiva, or ceremonial religious chamber, on the ruinsof the Spanish plaza at Santa Fe. It took nearly half acentury for the Spanish fully to reclaim New Mexicofrom the insurrectionary Indians.

Meanwhile, as a further hedge against the ever-threatening French, who had sent an expeditionunder Robert de La Salle down the Mississippi Riverin the 1680s, the Spanish began around 1716 toestablish settlements in Texas. Some refugees fromthe Pueblo uprising trickled into Texas, and a fewmissions were established there, including the oneat San Antonio later known as the Alamo. But for at least another century, the Spanish presenceremained weak in this distant northeastern outpostof Spain’s Mexican empire.

To the west, in California, no serious foreignthreat loomed, and Spain directed its attentionthere only belatedly. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo hadexplored the California coast in 1542, but he failedto find San Francisco Bay or anything else of much


Quivira

Durango

El Paso

Santa FeTaos

Acoma

Tucson

MissionSan Antonio

(1718)

California missions,1769-1823

SonoraDesert

MEXICO

RioG

rande

Color

adoR.

PACIFIC

OCEAN

Cabrillo, 1542

de Oñate, 1598

Present–day New Mexico

Spain’s North American Frontier, 1542–1823

interest. For some two centuries thereafter, Califor-nia slumbered undisturbed by European intruders.Then in 1769 Spanish missionaries led by FatherJunipero Serra founded at San Diego the first of achain of twenty-one missions that wound up thecoast as far as Sonoma, north of San Francisco Bay.Father Serra’s brown-robed Franciscan friars toiledwith zealous devotion to Christianize the threehundred thousand native Californians. They gath-ered the seminomadic Indians into fortified mis-sions and taught them horticulture and basiccrafts. These “mission Indians” did adopt Chris-tianity, but they also lost contact with their nativecultures and often lost their lives as well, as thewhite man’s diseases doomed these biologicallyvulnerable peoples.

The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New Worldobscured their substantial achievements and helpedgive birth to the “Black Legend.” This false conceptheld that the conquerors merely tortured andbutchered the Indians (“killing for Christ”), stoletheir gold, infected them with smallpox, and left lit-tle but misery behind. The Spanish invaders didindeed kill, enslave, and infect countless natives, butthey also erected a colossal empire, sprawling fromCalifornia and Florida to Tierra del Fuego. Theygrafted their culture, laws, religion, and languageonto a wide array of native societies, laying the foun-dations for a score of Spanish-speaking nations.

Clearly, the Spaniards, who had more than acentury’s head start over the English, were genuineempire builders and cultural innovators in the New

Spain’s New World Empire 23

ENGLAND

FRANCE

SPAIN

CUBA

HISPANIOLA

PORTUGUESEBRAZIL

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

E U R O P E

A F R I C A

N O R T HA M E R I C A

S PA N I S HS O U T H

A M E R I C A

Columbus, 1492

Cabot, 1497

Cabot, 1498

Magellan, 1519–1522

Verrazano, 1524

Treaty line of 1494 dividingSpanish and Portuguese lands

Occupied by Spanish, 1492–1743

Occupied by Portuguese 1532–1743

Principal Voyages of DiscoverySpain, Portugal, France, andEngland reaped the greatestadvantages from the New World,but much of the earliestexploration was done by Italians,notably Christopher Columbus ofGenoa. John Cabot, another nativeof Genoa (his original name wasGiovanni Caboto), sailed forEngland’s King Henry VII. Giovannida Verrazano was a Florentineemployed by France.

World. As compared with their Anglo-Saxon rivals,their colonial establishment was larger and richer,and it was destined to endure more than a quarterof a century longer. And in the last analysis, the Spanish paid the Native Americans the high

compliment of fusing with them through mar-riage and incorporating indigenous culture intotheir own, rather than shunning and eventually isolating the Indians as their English adversarieswould do.


Chronology

c. 33,000- First humans cross into Americas 8000 B.C. from Asia

c. 5000 B.C. Corn is developed as a staple crop inhighland Mexico

c. 4000 B.C. First civilized societies develop in the Middle East

c. 1200 B.C. Corn planting reaches present-dayAmerican Southwest

c. A.D. 1000 Norse voyagers discover and briefly settlein northeastern North America

Corn cultivation reaches Midwest andsoutheastern Atlantic seaboard

c. A.D. 1100 Height of Mississippian settlement atCahokia

c. A.D. 1100- Christian crusades arouse European 1300 interest in the East

1295 Marco Polo returns to Europe

late 1400s Spain becomes united

1488 Díaz rounds southern tip of Africa

1492 Columbus lands in the Bahamas

1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain andPortugal

1498 Da Gama reaches IndiaCabot explores northeastern coast of

North America for England

1513 Balboa claims all lands touched by thePacific Ocean for Spain

1513,1521 Ponce de León explores Florida

1519-1521 Cortés conquers Mexico for Spain

1522 Magellan’s vessel completes circumnavigation of the world

1524 Verrazano explores eastern seaboard of North America for France

1532 Pizarro crushes Incas

1534 Cartier journeys up the St. Lawrence River

1539- De Soto explores the Southeast and 1542 discovers the Mississippi River

1540- Coronado explores present-day 1542 Southwest

1542 Cabrillo explores California coast for Spain

1565 Spanish build fortress at St. Augustine

late Iroquois Confederacy founded, according1500s to Iroquois legend

c. 1598- Spanish under Oñate conquer Pueblo 1609 peoples of Rio Grande valley

1609 Spanish found New Mexico

1680 Popé’s Rebellion in New Mexico

1680s French expedition down Mississippi River under La Salle

1769 Serra founds first California mission, at San Diego

For further reading, see page A1 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

silviam

Text Box

Next Chapter

2

The Planting of English America

��

1500–1733

. . . For I shall yet to see it [Virginia] an Inglishe nation.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, 1602

As the seventeenth century dawned, scarcely a hundred years after Columbus’s momentous

landfall, the face of much of the New World hadalready been profoundly transformed. Europeancrops and livestock had begun to alter the very land-scape, touching off an ecological revolution thatwould reverberate for centuries to come. FromTierra del Fuego in the south to Hudson Bay in thenorth, disease and armed conquest had cruelly win-nowed and disrupted the native peoples. Severalhundred thousand enslaved Africans toiled onCaribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations. FromFlorida and New Mexico southward, most of the NewWorld lay firmly within the grip of imperial Spain.

But North America in 1600 remained largelyunexplored and effectively unclaimed by Euro-peans. Then, as if to herald the coming century ofcolonization and conflict in the northern continent,

three European powers planted three primitive out-posts in three distant corners of the continentwithin three years of one another: the Spanish atSanta Fe in 1610, the French at Quebec in 1608, and,most consequentially for the future United States,the English at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

England’s Imperial Stirrings

Feeble indeed were England’s efforts in the 1500s tocompete with the sprawling Spanish Empire. AsSpain’s ally in the first half of the century, Englandtook little interest in establishing its own overseascolonies. Religious conflict, moreover, disruptedEngland in midcentury, after King Henry VIII brokewith the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s,

25

launching the English Protestant Reformation.Catholics battled Protestants for decades, and thereligious balance of power seesawed. But after theProtestant Elizabeth ascended to the English thronein 1558, Protestantism became dominant in Eng-land, and rivalry with Catholic Spain intensified.

Ireland, which nominally had been underEnglish rule since the twelfth century, became anearly scene of that rivalry. The Catholic Irish soughthelp from Catholic Spain to throw off the yoke of thenew Protestant English queen. But Spanish aidnever amounted to much; in the 1570s and 1580s,Elizabeth’s troops crushed the Irish uprising withterrible ferocity, inflicting unspeakable atrocitiesupon the native Irish people. The English crownconfiscated Catholic Irish lands and “planted” themwith new Protestant landlords from Scotland andEngland. This policy also planted the seeds of thecenturies-old religious conflicts that persist in Ire-land to the present day. Many English soldiersdeveloped in Ireland a sneering contempt for the“savage” natives, an attitude that they brought withthem to the New World.

Elizabeth Energizes England

Encouraged by the ambitious Queen Elizabeth,hardy English buccaneers now swarmed out uponthe shipping lanes. They sought to promote the twingoals of Protestantism and plunder by seizing Span-ish treasure ships and raiding Spanish settlements,even though England and Spain were technically atpeace. The most famous of these semipiratical “seadogs” was the courtly Francis Drake. He plunderedhis way around the planet, returning in 1580 withhis ship heavily ballasted with Spanish booty. Theventure netted profits of about 4,600 percent to hisfinancial backers, among whom, in secret, wasQueen Elizabeth. Defying Spanish protest, shebrazenly knighted Drake on the deck of his barna-cled ship.

The bleak coast of Newfoundland was the sceneof the first English attempt at colonization. Thiseffort collapsed when its promoter, Sir HumphreyGilbert, lost his life at sea in 1583. Gilbert’s ill-starreddream inspired his gallant half-brother Sir WalterRaleigh to try again in warmer climes. Raleighorganized an expedition that first landed in 1585 onNorth Carolina’s Roanoke Island, off the coast of

Virginia—a vaguely defined region named in honorof Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.” After several falsestarts, the hapless Roanoke colony mysteriouslyvanished, swallowed up by the wilderness.

These pathetic English failures at colonizationcontrasted embarrassingly with the glories of theSpanish Empire, whose profits were fabulouslyenriching Spain. Philip II of Spain, self-anointed foeof the Protestant Reformation, used part of hisimperial gains to amass an “Invincible Armada” ofships for an invasion of England. The showdowncame in 1588, when the lumbering Spanish flotilla,130 strong, hove into the English Channel. TheEnglish sea dogs fought back. Using craft that wereswifter, more maneuverable, and more ablymanned, they inflicted heavy damage on the cum-bersome, overladen Spanish ships. Then a devastat-ing storm arose (the “Protestant wind”), scatteringthe crippled Spanish fleet.

The rout of the Spanish Armada marked thebeginning of the end of Spanish imperial dreams,though Spain’s New World empire would not fullycollapse for three more centuries. Within a few

26 CHAPTER 2 The Planting of English America, 1500–1733

decades, the Spanish Netherlands (Holland) wouldsecure their independence, and much of the Span-ish Caribbean would slip from Spain’s grasp. Bloatedby Peruvian and Mexican silver and cockily con-vinced of its own invincibility, Spain had over-reached itself, sowing the seeds of its own decline.

England’s victory over the Spanish Armada alsomarked a red-letter day in American history. Itdampened Spain’s fighting spirit and helped ensureEngland’s naval dominance in the North Atlantic. Itstarted England on its way to becoming master of

the world oceans—a fact of enormous importanceto the American people. Indeed England now hadmany of the characteristics that Spain displayed onthe eve of its colonizing adventure a century earlier:a strong, unified national state under a popularmonarch; a measure of religious unity after a pro-tracted struggle between Protestants and Catholics;and a vibrant sense of nationalism and nationaldestiny.

A wondrous flowering of the English nationalspirit bloomed in the wake of the Spanish Armada’sdefeat. A golden age of literature dawned in thisexhilarating atmosphere, with Shakespeare, at itsforefront, making occasional poetical references toEngland’s American colonies. The English wereseized with restlessness, with thirst for adventure,and with curiosity about the unknown. Everywherethere blossomed a new spirit of self-confidence, ofvibrant patriotism, and of boundless faith in thefuture of the English nation. When England andSpain finally signed a treaty of peace in 1604, theEnglish people were poised to plunge headlong intothe planting of their own colonial empire in the NewWorld.

England on the Eve of Empire

England’s scepter’d isle, as Shakespeare called it,throbbed with social and economic change as theseventeenth century opened. Its population wasmushrooming, from some 3 million people in 1550to about 4 million in 1600. In the ever-green Englishcountryside, landlords were “enclosing” croplandsfor sheep grazing, forcing many small farmers intoprecarious tenancy or off the land altogether. It wasno accident that the woolen districts of eastern andwestern England—where Puritanism had takenstrong root—supplied many of the earliest immi-grants to America. When economic depression hitthe woolen trade in the late 1500s, thousands offootloose farmers took to the roads. They driftedabout England, chronically unemployed, often end-ing up as beggars and paupers in cities like Bristoland London.

This remarkably mobile population alarmedmany contemporaries. They concluded that Eng-land was burdened with a “surplus population,”though present-day London holds twice as manypeople as did all of England in 1600.

England Prepares for Colonization 27

At the same time, laws of primogeniture de-creed that only eldest sons were eligible to inheritlanded estates. Landholders’ ambitious youngersons, among them Gilbert, Raleigh, and Drake, wereforced to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Bad luckplagued their early, lone-wolf enterprises. But by theearly 1600s, the joint-stock company, forerunner ofthe modern corporation, was perfected. It enabled aconsiderable number of investors, called “adventur-ers,” to pool their capital.

Peace with a chastened Spain provided theopportunity for English colonization. Populationgrowth provided the workers. Unemployment, aswell as a thirst for adventure, for markets, and forreligious freedom, provided the motives. Joint-stockcompanies provided the financial means. The stagewas now set for a historic effort to establish anEnglish beachhead in the still uncharted NorthAmerican wilderness.

England Plants the Jamestown Seedling

In 1606, two years after peace with Spain, the handof destiny beckoned toward Virginia. A joint-stockcompany, known as the Virginia Company of Lon-

don, received a charter from King James I of Eng-land for a settlement in the New World. The mainattraction was the promise of gold, combined with astrong desire to find a passage through America tothe Indies. Like most joint-stock companies of theday, the Virginia Company was intended to endurefor only a few years, after which its stockholdershoped to liquidate it for a profit. This arrangementput severe pressure on the luckless colonists, whowere threatened with abandonment in the wilder-ness if they did not quickly strike it rich on the com-pany’s behalf. Few of the investors thought in termsof long-term colonization. Apparently no one evenfaintly suspected that the seeds of a mighty nationwere being planted.

The charter of the Virginia Company is a signifi-cant document in American history. It guaranteedto the overseas settlers the same rights of English-men that they would have enjoyed if they hadstayed at home. This precious boon was graduallyextended to subsequent English colonies, helping toreinforce the colonists’ sense that even on the farshores of the Atlantic, they remained comfortablywithin the embrace of traditional English institu-


In the years immediately following the defeatof the Spanish Armada, the English writerRichard Hakluyt (1552?–1616) extravagantlyexhorted his countrymen to cast off their“sluggish security” and undertake thecolonization of the New World:

“There is under our noses the great andample country of Virginia; the inland whereofis found of late to be so sweet andwholesome a climate, so rich and abundantin silver mines, a better and richer countrythan Mexico itself. If it shall please theAlmighty to stir up Her Majesty’s heart tocontinue with transporting one or twothousand of her people, she shall by God’sassistance, in short space, increase herdominions, enrich her coffers, and reducemany pagans to the faith of Christ.”

Sources of the Puritan “Great Migration” to New England,1620–1650 The dark green areas indicate the main sourcesof the migration.

tions. But ironically, a century and a half later, theirinsistence on the “rights of Englishmen” fed the hotresentment of the colonists against an increasinglymeddlesome mother country and nourished theirappetite for independence.

Setting sail in late 1606, the Virginia Company’sthree ships landed near the mouth of ChesapeakeBay, where Indians attacked them. Pushing on upthe bay, the tiny band of colonists eventually chosea location on the wooded and malarial banks of theJames River, named in honor of King James I. Thesite was easy to defend, but it was mosquito-infested and devastatingly unhealthful. There, onMay 24, 1607, about a hundred English settlers, allof them men, disembarked. They called the placeJamestown.

The early years of Jamestown proved a night-mare for all concerned—except the buzzards. Forty

would-be colonists perished during the initial voy-age in 1606–1607. Another expedition in 1609 lost itsleaders and many of its precious supplies in a ship-wreck off Bermuda. Once ashore in Virginia, the set-tlers died by the dozens from disease, malnutrition,and starvation. Ironically, the woods rustled withgame and the rivers flopped with fish, but the green-horn settlers, many of them self-styled “gentlemen”unaccustomed to fending for themselves, wastedvaluable time grubbing for nonexistent gold whenthey should have been gathering provisions.

Virginia was saved from utter collapse at thestart largely by the leadership and resourcefulnessof an intrepid young adventurer, Captain JohnSmith. Taking over in 1608, he whipped the gold-hungry colonists into line with the rule, “He whoshall not work shall not eat.” He had been kid-napped in December 1607 and subjected to a mockexecution by the Indian chieftain Powhatan, whosedaughter Pocahontas had “saved” Smith by dramat-ically interposing her head between his and the warclubs of his captors. The symbolism of this ritualwas apparently intended to impress Smith withPowhatan’s power and with the Indians’ desire forpeaceful relations with the Virginians. Pocahontasbecame an intermediary between the Indians andthe settlers, helping to preserve a shaky peace andto provide needed foodstuffs.

Still, the colonists died in droves, and livingskeletons were driven to desperate acts. They werereduced to eating “dogges, Catts, Ratts, and Myce”and even to digging up corpses for food. One hun-gry man killed, salted, and ate his wife, for whichmisbehavior he was executed. Of the four hundredsettlers who managed to make it to Virginia by 1609,only sixty survived the “starving time” winter of1609–1610.

Virginia’s Beginnings 29

King James I (1566–1625) had scantenthusiasm for the Virginia experiment,partly because of his hatred of tobaccosmoking, which had been introduced into the Old World by the Spanish discoverers.In 1604 he published the pamphlet ACounterblast to Tobacco:

“A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful tothe nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous tothe lungs, and in the black stinking fumethereof, nearest resembling the horribleStygian smoke of the pit [Hades] that isbottomless.”

The Tudor Rulers of England*

Name, Reign Relation to America

Henry VII, 1485–1509 Cabot voyages, 1497, 1498Henry VIII, 1509–1547 English Reformation beganEdward VI, 1547–1553 Strong Protestant tendencies“Bloody” Mary, 1553–1558 Catholic reactionElizabeth I, 1558–1603 Break with Roman Catholic Church final;

Drake; Spanish Armada defeated

*See p. 53 for a continuation of the table.

Diseased and despairing, the remainingcolonists dragged themselves aboard homeward-bound ships in the spring of 1610, only to be met atthe mouth of the James River by a long-awaitedrelief party headed by a new governor, Lord De LaWarr. He ordered the settlers back to Jamestown,

imposed a harsh military regime on the colony, andsoon undertook aggressive military action againstthe Indians.

Disease continued to reap a gruesome harvestamong the Virginians. By 1625 Virginia containedonly some twelve hundred hard-bitten survivors ofthe nearly eight thousand adventurers who hadtried to start life anew in the ill-fated colony.

Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake

When the English landed in 1607, the chieftainPowhatan dominated the native peoples living inthe James River area. He had asserted supremacyover a few dozen small tribes, loosely affiliated inwhat somewhat grandly came to be called Pow-hatan’s Confederacy. The English colonists dubbedall the local Indians, somewhat inaccurately, thePowhatans. Powhatan at first may have consideredthe English potential allies in his struggle to extendhis power still further over his Indian rivals, and hetried to be conciliatory. But relations between theIndians and the English remained tense, especiallyas the starving colonists took to raiding Indian foodsupplies.

The atmosphere grew even more strained afterLord De La Warr arrived in 1610. He carried ordersfrom the Virginia Company that amounted to a dec-laration of war against the Indians in the Jamestownregion. A veteran of the vicious campaigns againstthe Irish, De La Warr now introduced “Irish tactics”against the Indians. His troops raided Indian vil-lages, burned houses, confiscated provisions, andtorched cornfields. A peace settlement ended thisFirst Anglo-Powhatan War in 1614, sealed by themarriage of Pocahontas to the colonist John Rolfe—the first known interracial union in Virginia.

A fragile respite followed, which endured eightyears. But the Indians, pressed by the land-hungrywhites and ravaged by European diseases, struckback in 1622. A series of Indian attacks left 347 set-tlers dead, including John Rolfe. In response the Vir-ginia Company issued new orders calling for “aperpetual war without peace or truce,” one thatwould prevent the Indians “from being any longer a people.” Periodic punitive raids systematicallyreduced the native population and drove the sur-vivors ever farther westward.

In the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in 1644, theIndians made one last effort to dislodge the Virgini-


The authorities meted out harsh discipline inthe young Virginia colony. One Jamestownsettler who publicly criticized the governorwas sentenced to

“be disarmed [and] have his arms broken andhis tongue bored through with an awl [and]shall pass through a guard of 40 men andshall be butted [with muskets] by every oneof them and at the head of the troop kickeddown and footed out of the fort.”

ans. They were again defeated. The peace treaty of1646 repudiated any hope of assimilating the nativepeoples into Virginian society or of peacefully coex-isting with them. Instead it effectively banished theChesapeake Indians from their ancestral lands andformally separated Indian from white areas of set-tlement—the origins of the later reservation system.By 1669 an official census revealed that only abouttwo thousand Indians remained in Virginia, perhaps10 percent of the population the original Englishsettlers had encountered in 1607. By 1685 theEnglish considered the Powhatan peoples extinct.

It had been the Powhatans’ calamitous misfor-tune to fall victim to three Ds: disease, disorganiza-tion, and disposability. Like native peoples through-out the New World, they were extremely susceptibleto European-borne maladies. Epidemics of small-

pox and measles raced mercilessly through their vil-lages. The Powhatans also—despite the apparentcohesiveness of “Powhatan’s Confederacy”—lackedthe unity with which to make effective opposition tothe comparatively well-organized and militarily dis-ciplined whites. Finally, unlike the Indians whomthe Spaniards had encountered to the south, whocould be put to work in the mines and had gold andsilver to trade, the Powhatans served no economicfunction for the Virginia colonists. They provided noreliable labor source and, after the Virginians begangrowing their own food crops, had no valuable com-modities to offer in commerce. The natives there-fore could be disposed of without harm to thecolonial economy. Indeed the Indian presence frus-trated the colonists’ desire for a local commoditythe Europeans desperately wanted: land.

The Indians’ New World

The fate of the Powhatans foreshadowed the des-tinies of indigenous peoples throughout the conti-nent as the process of European settlement wentforward. Native Americans, of course, had a historywell before Columbus’s arrival. They were nostrangers to change, adaptation, and even catastro-phe, as the rise and decline of civilizations such asthe Mississippians and the Anasazis demonstrated.But the shock of large-scale European colonizationdisrupted Native American life on a vast scale,inducing unprecedented demographic and culturaltransformations.

Some changes were fairly benign. Horses—stolen, strayed, or purchased from Spanishinvaders—catalyzed a substantial Indian migrationonto the Great Plains in the eighteenth century. Peo-ples such as the Lakotas (Sioux), who had previouslybeen sedentary forest dwellers, now moved onto thewide-open plains. There they thrived impressively,adopting an entirely new way of life as mountednomadic hunters. But the effects of contact withEuropeans proved less salutary for most other nativepeoples.

Disease was by far the biggest disrupter, as OldWorld pathogens licked lethally through biologicallydefenseless Indian populations. Disease took morethan human life; it extinguished entire cultures andoccasionally helped shape new ones. Epidemicsoften robbed native peoples of the elders who pre-served the oral traditions that held clans together.

Virginians and Native Americans 31

Devastated Indian bands then faced the dauntingtask of literally reinventing themselves without ben-efit of accumulated wisdom or kin networks. Thedecimation and forced migration of native peoplessometimes scrambled them together in wholly newways. The Catawba nation of the southern piedmontregion, for example, was formed from splinteredremnants of several different groups uprooted by theshock of the Europeans’ arrival.

Trade also transformed Indian life, as traditionalbarter-and-exchange networks gave way to thetemptations of European commerce. Firearms, forexample, conferred enormous advantages on thosewho could purchase them from Europeans. Thedesire for firearms thus intensified competitionamong the tribes for access to prime huntinggrounds that could supply the skins and pelts thatthe European arms traders wanted. The result wasan escalating cycle of Indian-on-Indian violence,fueled by the lure and demands of European tradegoods.

Native Americans were swept up in the expand-ing Atlantic economy, but they usually struggled invain to control their own place in it. One desperate

band of Virginia Indians, resentful at the pricesoffered by British traders for their deerskins, loadeda fleet of canoes with hides and tried to paddle toEngland to sell their goods directly. Not far from theVirginia shore, a storm swamped their frail craft.Their cargo lost, the few survivors were picked up byan English ship and sold into slavery in the WestIndies.

Indians along the Atlantic seaboard felt the mostferocious effects of European contact. Fartherinland, native peoples had the advantages of time,space, and numbers as they sought to adapt to theEuropean incursion. The Algonquians in the GreatLakes area, for instance, became a substantialregional power. They bolstered their population byabsorbing various surrounding bands and dealtfrom a position of strength with the few Europeanswho managed to penetrate the interior. As a result, aBritish or French trader wanting to do business withthe inland tribes had little choice but to conform toIndian ways, often taking an Indian wife. Thus wascreated a middle ground, a zone where both Euro-peans and Native Americans were compelled toaccommodate to one another—at least until theEuropeans began to arrive in large numbers.

Virginia: Child of Tobacco

John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, becamefather of the tobacco industry and an economic sav-ior of the Virginia colony. By 1612 he had perfectedmethods of raising and curing the pungent weed,eliminating much of the bitter tang. Soon the Euro-pean demand for tobacco was nearly insatiable. Atobacco rush swept over Virginia, as crops wereplanted in the streets of Jamestown and evenbetween the numerous graves. So exclusively didthe colonists concentrate on planting the yellow leafthat at first they had to import some of their food-stuffs. Colonists who had once hungered for foodnow hungered for land, ever more land on which toplant ever more tobacco. Relentlessly, they pressedthe frontier of settlement up the river valleys to thewest, abrasively edging against the Indians.

Virginia’s prosperity was finally built on tobaccosmoke. This “bewitching weed” played a vital role inputting the colony on firm economic foundations.But tobacco—King Nicotine—was something of a


Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) in a 1753letter to Peter Collinson commented on theattractiveness of Indian life to Europeans:

“When an Indian child has been brought upamong us, taught our language andhabituated to our customs, yet if he goes tosee his relations and make one Indian ramblewith them, there is no persuading him everto return. [But] when white persons of eithersex have been taken prisoners by theIndians, and lived awhile among them,though ransomed by their friends, andtreated with all imaginable tenderness toprevail with them to stay among the English,yet in a short time they become disgustedwith our manner of life, and the care andpains that are necessary to support it, andtake the first good opportunity of escapingagain into the woods, from whence there isno reclaiming them.”

tyrant. It was ruinous to the soil when greedilyplanted in successive years, and it enchained thefortunes of Virginia to the fluctuating price of a single crop. Fatefully, tobacco also promoted thebroad-acred plantation system and with it a briskdemand for fresh labor.

In 1619, the year before the Plymouth Pilgrimslanded in New England, what was described as aDutch warship appeared off Jamestown and soldsome twenty Africans. The scanty record does notreveal whether they were purchased as lifelongslaves or as servants committed to limited years ofservitude. However it transpired, this simple com-

mercial transaction planted the seeds of the NorthAmerican slave system. Yet blacks were too costlyfor most of the hard-pinched white colonists toacquire, and for decades few were brought to Vir-ginia. In 1650 Virginia counted but three hundredblacks, although by the end of the century blacks,most of them enslaved, made up approximately 14percent of the colony’s population.

Representative self-government was also bornin primitive Virginia, in the same cradle with slaveryand in the same year—1619. The London Companyauthorized the settlers to summon an assembly,known as the House of Burgesses. A momentousprecedent was thus feebly established, for thisassemblage was the first of many miniature parlia-ments to flourish in the soil of America.

As time passed, James I grew increasingly hos-tile to Virginia. He detested tobacco, and he dis-trusted the representative House of Burgesses,which he branded a “seminary of sedition.” In 1624he revoked the charter of the bankrupt and belea-guered Virginia Company, thus making Virginia aroyal colony directly under his control.

Maryland: Catholic Haven

Maryland—the second plantation colony but thefourth English colony to be planted—was foundedin 1634 by Lord Baltimore, of a prominent EnglishCatholic family. He embarked upon the venturepartly to reap financial profits and partly to create arefuge for his fellow Catholics. Protestant England

Slavery and Democracy in Early Virginia 33

The wife of a Virginia governor wrote to hersister in England in 1623 of her voyage:

“For our Shippe was so pestered with peopleand goods that we were so full of infectionthat after a while we saw little but throwingfolkes over board: It pleased god to send memy helth till I came to shoare and 3 dayesafter I fell sick but I thank god I am wellrecovered. Few else are left alive that camein that Shippe. . . .”

was still persecuting Roman Catholics; amongnumerous discriminations, a couple seeking wed-lock could not be legally married by a Catholicpriest.

Absentee proprietor Lord Baltimore hoped thatthe two hundred settlers who founded Maryland atSt. Marys, on Chesapeake Bay, would be the van-guard of a vast new feudal domain. Huge estateswere to be awarded to his largely Catholic relatives,and gracious manor houses, modeled on those ofEngland’s aristocracy, were intended to arise amidstthe fertile forests. As in Virginia, colonists provedwilling to come only if offered the opportunity toacquire land of their own. Soon they were dispersedaround the Chesapeake region on modest farms,and the haughty land barons, mostly Catholic, weresurrounded by resentful backcountry planters,mostly Protestant. Resentment flared into openrebellion near the end of the century, and the Balti-more family for a time lost its proprietary rights.

Despite these tensions Maryland prospered.Like Virginia, it blossomed forth in acres of tobacco.Also like Virginia, it depended for labor in its earlyyears mainly on white indentured servants—penni-less persons who bound themselves to work for anumber of years to pay their passage. In both

colonies it was only in the later years of the seven-teenth century that black slaves began to beimported in large numbers.

Lord Baltimore, a canny soul, permitted unusualfreedom of worship at the outset. He hoped that hewould thus purchase toleration for his own fellowworshipers. But the heavy tide of Protestants threat-ened to submerge the Catholics and place severerestrictions on them, as in England. Faced withdisaster, the Catholics of Maryland threw their sup-port behind the famed Act of Toleration, which waspassed in 1649 by the local representative assembly.

Maryland’s new religious statute guaranteedtoleration to all Christians. But, less liberally, itdecreed the death penalty for those, like Jews andatheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus. The lawthus sanctioned less toleration than had previouslyexisted in the settlement, but it did extend a tempo-rary cloak of protection to the uneasy Catholicminority. One result was that when the colonial eraended, Maryland probably sheltered more RomanCatholics than any other English-speaking colony inthe New World.

The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America

While the English were planting the first frail colo-nial shoots in the Chesapeake, they also were busilycolonizing the West Indies. Spain, weakened by mil-itary overextension and distracted by its rebelliousDutch provinces, relaxed its grip on much of theCaribbean in the early 1600s. By the mid-seven-teenth century, England had secured its claim toseveral West Indian islands, including the large prizeof Jamaica in 1655.

Sugar formed the foundation of the West Indianeconomy. What tobacco was to the Chesapeake,sugar cane was to the Caribbean—with one crucialdifference. Tobacco was a poor man’s crop. It couldbe planted easily, it produced commercially mar-ketable leaves within a year, and it required only sim-ple processing. Sugar cane, in contrast, was a richman’s crop. It had to be planted extensively to yieldcommercially viable quantities of sugar. Extensiveplanting, in turn, required extensive and arduousland clearing. And the cane stalks yielded their sugaronly after an elaborate process of refining in a sugar


Early Maryland and Virginia

Jamestown(1607)

St. Marys(1634)

V I R G I N I A

M A R Y L A N DDelawar

e R.

SusquehannaR.

York R.James R.

Chesapeake

Bay

Delaware Bay

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Potomac R.

RoanokeIsland(1580s)

Limit of original grant to Lord Baltimore

Present boundary of Maryland

mill. The need for land and for the labor to clear itand to run the mills made sugar cultivation a capital-intensive business. Only wealthy growers with abun-dant capital to invest could succeed in sugar.

The sugar lords extended their dominion overthe West Indies in the seventeenth century. To worktheir sprawling plantations, they imported enor-mous numbers of African slaves—more than aquarter of a million in the five decades after 1640. Byabout 1700, black slaves outnumbered white settlersin the English West Indies by nearly four to one, andthe region’s population has remained predomi-nantly black ever since. West Indians thus take theirplace among the numerous children of the African

diaspora—the vast scattering of African peoplesthroughout the New World in the three and a halfcenturies following Columbus’s discovery.

To control this large and potentially restive pop-ulation of slaves, English authorities devised formal“codes” that defined the slaves’ legal status and

English Colonization in the Caribbean 35

African slaves destined for the West Indiansugar plantations were bound and brandedon West African beaches and ferried out incanoes to the waiting slave ships. An Englishsailor described the scene:

“The Negroes are so wilful and loth to leavetheir own country, that have often leap’d outof the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea,and kept under water till they were drowned,to avoid being taken up and saved by ourboats, which pursued them; they having amore dreadful apprehension of Barbadoesthan we can have of hell.”

masters’ prerogatives. The notorious Barbados slavecode of 1661 denied even the most fundamentalrights to slaves and gave masters virtually completecontrol over their laborers, including the right to inflict vicious punishments for even slight infractions.

The profitable sugar-plantation system sooncrowded out almost all other forms of Caribbeanagriculture. The West Indies increasingly dependedon the North American mainland for foodstuffs andother basic supplies. And smaller English farmers,squeezed out by the greedy sugar barons, began tomigrate to the newly founded southern mainlandcolonies. A group of displaced English settlers fromBarbados arrived in Carolina in 1670. They broughtwith them a few African slaves, as well as the modelof the Barbados slave code, which eventuallyinspired statutes governing slavery throughout themainland colonies. Carolina officially adopted aversion of the Barbados slave code in 1696. Just asthe West Indies had been a testing ground for theencomienda system that the Spanish had brought toMexico and South America, so the Caribbean

islands now served as a staging area for the slavesystem that would take root elsewhere in EnglishNorth America.

Colonizing the Carolinas

Civil war convulsed England in the 1640s. KingCharles I had dismissed Parliament in 1629, andwhen he eventually recalled it in 1640, the memberswere mutinous. Finding their great champion in thePuritan-soldier Oliver Cromwell, they ultimatelybeheaded Charles in 1649, and Cromwell ruled Eng-land for nearly a decade. Finally, Charles II, son of thedecapitated king, was restored to the throne in 1660.

Colonization had been interrupted during thisperiod of bloody unrest. Now, in the so-calledRestoration period, empire building resumed witheven greater intensity—and royal involvement. Car-olina, named for Charles II, was formally created in1670, after the king granted to eight of his courtfavorites, the Lords Proprietors, an expanse ofwilderness ribboning across the continent to thePacific. These aristocratic founders hoped to growfoodstuffs to provision the sugar plantations in Bar-bados and to export non-English products like wine,silk, and olive oil.

Carolina prospered by developing close eco-nomic ties with the flourishing sugar islands of theEnglish West Indies. In a broad sense, the mainlandcolony was but the most northerly of those out-


The Barbados slave code (1661) declared,

“If any Negro or slave whatsoever shall offerany violence to any Christian by striking orthe like, such Negro or slave shall for his orher first offence be severely whipped by theConstable. For his second offence of thatnature he shall be severely whipped, his noseslit, and be burned in some part of his facewith a hot iron. And being brutish slaves,[they] deserve not, for the baseness of theircondition, to be tried by the legal trial oftwelve men of their peers, as the subjects ofEngland are. And it is further enacted andordained that if any Negro or other slaveunder punishment by his masterunfortunately shall suffer in life or member,which seldom happens, no personwhatsoever shall be liable to any finetherefore.”

posts. Many original Carolina settlers in fact hademigrated from Barbados, bringing that island’sslave system with them. They also established a vig-orous slave trade in Carolina itself. Enlisting the aidof the coastal Savannah Indians, they forayed intothe interior in search of captives. The Lords Propri-etors in London protested against Indian slave trad-ing in their colony, but to no avail. ManacledIndians soon were among the young colony’s majorexports. As many as ten thousand Indians were dis-patched to lifelong labor in the West Indian cane-fields and sugar mills. Others were sent to New

England. One Rhode Island town in 1730 countedmore than two hundred Indian slaves from Carolinain its midst.

In 1707 the Savannah Indians decided to endtheir alliance with the Carolinians and to migrate tothe backcountry of Maryland and Pennsylvania,where a new colony founded by Quakers underWilliam Penn promised better relations betweenwhites and Indians. But the Carolinians determinedto “thin” the Savannahs before they could depart. Aseries of bloody raids all but annihilated the Indiantribes of coastal Carolina by 1710.

The “Restoration Colonies” 37

The Thirteen Original Colonies

Name Founded by Year Charter Made Royal 1775 Status

1606 Royal (under the crown)1. Virginia London Co. 1607 1609 1624

16122. New Hampshire John Mason 1623 1679 1679 Royal (absorbed by Mass.,

and others 1641–1679)3. Massachusetts Puritans c. 1628 1629 1691 Royal

Plymouth Separatists 1620 None (Merged with Mass., 1691)Maine F. Gorges 1623 1639 (Bought by Mass., 1677)

4. Maryland Lord Baltimore 1634 1632 ——— Proprietary (controlled byproprietor)

5. Connecticut Mass. emigrants 1635 1662 ——— Self-governing (underlocal control)

New Haven Mass. emigrants 1638 None (Merged with Conn.,1662)

6. Rhode Island R. Williams 1636 1644 ——— Self-governing1663

7. Delaware Swedes 1638 None ——— Proprietary (merged withPa., 1682; same governor,but separate assembly, granted 1703)

8. N. Carolina Virginians 1653 1663 1729 Royal (separated informallyfrom S.C., 1691)

9. New York Dutch c. 1613Duke of York 1664 1664 1685 Royal

10. New Jersey Berkeley and 1664 None 1702 RoyalCarteret

11. Carolina Eight nobles 1670 1663 1729 Royal (separated formallyfrom N.C., 1712)

12. Pennsylvania William Penn 1681 1681 ——— Proprietary13. Georgia Oglethorpe and 1733 1732 1752 Royal

others

{

{

After much experimentation, rice emerged asthe principal export crop in Carolina. Rice was thenan exotic food in England; no rice seeds were sentout from London in the first supply ships to Car-olina. But rice was grown in Africa, and the Carolini-ans were soon paying premium prices for WestAfrican slaves experienced in rice cultivation. TheAfricans’ agricultural skill and their relative immu-nity to malaria (thanks to a genetic trait that also,unfortunately, made them and their descendantssusceptible to sickle-cell anemia) made them ideallaborers on the hot and swampy rice plantations. By1710 they constituted a majority of Carolinians.

Moss-festooned Charles Town—also named forthe king—rapidly became the busiest seaport in theSouth. Many high-spirited sons of English landedfamilies, deprived of an inheritance, came to theCharleston area and gave it a rich aristocratic flavor.The village became a colorfully diverse community,to which French Protestant refugees and otherswere attracted by religious toleration.

Nearby, in Florida, the Catholic Spaniardsabhorred the intrusion of these Protestant heretics.Carolina’s frontier was often aflame. Spanish-incited Indians brandished their tomahawks, andarmor-clad warriors of Spain frequently unsheathedtheir swords during the successive Anglo-Spanishwars. But by 1700 Carolina was too strong to bewiped out.

The Emergence of North Carolina

The wild northern expanse of the huge Carolinagrant bordered on Virginia. From the older colonythere drifted down a ragtag group of poverty-stricken outcasts and religious dissenters. Many ofthem had been repelled by the rarefied atmosphereof Virginia, dominated as it was by big-plantationgentry belonging to the Church of England. NorthCarolinians, as a result, have been called “the quin-tessence of Virginia’s discontent.” The newcomers,who frequently were “squatters” without legal rightto the soil, raised their tobacco and other crops onsmall farms, with little need for slaves.

Distinctive traits developed rapidly in NorthCarolina. The poor but sturdy inhabitants, regardedas riffraff by their snobbish neighbors, earned a rep-utation for being irreligious and hospitable topirates. Isolated from neighbors by raw wildernessand stormy Cape Hatteras, “graveyard of theAtlantic,” the North Carolinians developed a strongspirit of resistance to authority. Their locationbetween aristocratic Virginia and aristocratic SouthCarolina caused the area to be dubbed “a vale ofhumility between two mountains of conceit.” Fol-lowing much friction with governors, North Car-olina was officially separated from South Carolina in1712, and subsequently each segment became aroyal colony.

North Carolina shares with tiny Rhode Islandseveral distinctions. These two outposts were themost democratic, the most independent-minded,and the least aristocratic of the original thirteenEnglish colonies.

Although northern Carolina, unlike the colony’ssouthern reaches, did not at first import large num-bers of African slaves, both regions shared in theongoing tragedy of bloody relations between Indi-ans and Europeans. Tuscarora Indians fell upon thefledgling settlement at Newbern in 1711. The NorthCarolinians, aided by their heavily armed brothersfrom the south, retaliated by crushing the Tuscaro-ras in battle, selling hundreds of them into slaveryand leaving the survivors to wander northward toseek the protection of the Iroquois. The Tuscaroraseventually became the Sixth Nation of the IroquoisConfederacy. In another ferocious encounter fouryears later, the South Carolinians defeated and dis-persed the Yamasee Indians.


RoanokeIsland1585

Cape Hatteras

Jamestown1607

Newbern1710

Charleston1670

Savannah1733

SPANISH �FLORIDA

VIRGINIA

NORTH �CAROLINA �

1712

SOUTH �CAROLINA �

1670

GEORGIA �1733

James R.

Added to Georgia 1763

Early Carolina and Georgia Settlements

With the conquest of the Yamasees, virtually allthe coastal Indian tribes in the southern colonieshad been utterly devastated by about 1720. Yet in the interior, in the hills and valleys of theAppalachian Mountains, the powerful Cherokees,Creeks, and Iroquois (see “Makers of America: TheIroquois,” pp. 40–41) remained. Stronger and morenumerous than their coastal cousins, they managedfor half a century more to contain British settlementto the coastal plain east of the mountains.

Late-Coming Georgia:The Buffer Colony

Pine-forested Georgia, with the harbor of Savannahnourishing its chief settlement, was formallyfounded in 1733. It proved to be the last of the thir-teen colonies to be planted—126 years after thefirst, Virginia, and 52 years after the twelfth, Penn-sylvania. Chronologically Georgia belongs else-where, but geographically it may be grouped with itssouthern neighbors.

The English crown intended Georgia to servechiefly as a buffer. It would protect the more valu-able Carolinas against vengeful Spaniards fromFlorida and against the hostile French fromLouisiana. Georgia indeed suffered much buffeting,especially when wars broke out between Spain andEngland in the European arena. As a vital link inimperial defense, the exposed colony received mon-etary subsidies from the British government at theoutset—the only one of the “original thirteen” toenjoy this benefit in its founding stage.

Named in honor of King George II of England,Georgia was launched by a high-minded group ofphilanthropists. In addition to protecting theirneighboring northern colonies and producing silkand wine, they were determined to carve out a havenfor wretched souls imprisoned for debt. They werealso determined, at least at first, to keep slavery outof Georgia. The ablest of the founders was thedynamic soldier-statesman James Oglethorpe, whobecame keenly interested in prison reform after oneof his friends died in a debtors’ jail. As an able mili-tary leader, Oglethorpe repelled Spanish attacks. Asan imperialist and a philanthropist, he saved “theCharity Colony” by his energetic leadership and byheavily mortgaging his own personal fortune.

The hamlet of Savannah, like Charleston, was amelting-pot community. German Lutherans andkilted Scots Highlanders, among others, added colorto the pattern. All Christian worshipers exceptCatholics enjoyed religious toleration. Many mis-sionaries armed with Bibles and hope arrived inSavannah to work among debtors and Indians.Prominent among them was young John Wesley,who later returned to England and founded theMethodist Church.

Georgia grew with painful slowness and at theend of the colonial era was perhaps the least popu-lous of the colonies. The development of a planta-tion economy was thwarted by an unhealthfulclimate, by early restrictions on black slavery, andby demoralizing Spanish attacks.

The Plantation Colonies

Certain distinctive features were shared by Eng-land’s southern mainland colonies: Maryland, Vir-ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.Broad-acred, these outposts of empire were all insome degree devoted to exporting commercialagricultural products. Profitable staple crops werethe rule, notably tobacco and rice, though to alesser extent in small-farm North Carolina. Slaverywas found in all the plantation colonies, thoughonly after 1750 in reform-minded Georgia. Im-mense acreage in the hands of a favored few fos-tered a strong aristocratic atmosphere, except inNorth Carolina and to some extent in debtor-tingedGeorgia. The wide scattering of plantations andfarms, often along stately rivers, retarded thegrowth of cities and made the establishment ofchurches and schools both difficult and expensive.In 1671 the governor of Virginia thanked God thatno free schools or printing presses existed in hiscolony.

All the plantation colonies permitted some reli-gious toleration. The tax-supported Church of Eng-land became the dominant faith, though weakest ofall in nonconformist North Carolina.

These colonies were in some degree expansion-ary. “Soil butchery” by excessive tobacco growingdrove settlers westward, and the long, lazy riversinvited penetration of the continent—and continu-ing confrontation with Native Americans.

The Colonial South 39

The Iroquois

Well before the crowned heads of Europe turnedtheir eyes and their dreams of empire toward

North America, a great military power had emergedin the Mohawk Valley of what is now New York State.The Iroquois Confederacy, dubbed by whites the“League of the Iroquois,” bound together five Indiannations—the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Ononda-gas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. According to Iro-quois legend, it was founded in the late 1500s by twoleaders, Deganawidah and Hiawatha. This proudand potent league vied initially with neighboringIndians for territorial supremacy, then with theFrench, English, and Dutch for control of the furtrade. Ultimately, infected by the white man’s dis-eases, intoxicated by his whiskey, and intimidatedby his muskets, the Iroquois struggled for their verysurvival as a people.

The building block of Iroquois society was thelonghouse (see photo p. 41). This wooden structuredeserved its descriptive name. Only twenty-five feetin breadth, the longhouse stretched from eight totwo hundred feet in length. Each building containedthree to five fireplaces around which gathered twonuclear families, consisting of parents and children.All families residing in the longhouse were related,

their connections of blood running exclusivelythrough the maternal line. A single longhouse mightshelter a woman’s family and those of her mother,sisters, and daughters—with the oldest woman

40

Lake Ontario

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Iroquois Lands and European Trade Centers, c. 1590–1650

being the honored matriarch. When a man married,he left his childhood hearth in the home of his mother to join the longhouse of his wife. Men dominated in Iroquois society, but they owedtheir positions of prominence to their mothers’families.

As if sharing one great longhouse, the fivenations joined in the Iroquois Confederacy but kepttheir own separate fires. Although they celebratedtogether and shared a common policy toward out-siders, they remained essentially independent ofone another. On the eastern flank of the league, theMohawks, known as the Keepers of the Eastern Fire,specialized as middlemen with European traders,whereas the outlying Senecas, the Keepers of theWestern Fire, became fur suppliers.

After banding together to end generations ofviolent warfare among themselves, the Five Nationsvanquished their rivals, the neighboring Hurons,Eries, and Petuns. Some other tribes, such as theTuscaroras from the Carolina region, sought peace-ful absorption into the Iroquois Confederacy. TheIroquois further expanded their numbers by meansof periodic “mourning wars,” whose objective wasthe large-scale adoption of captives and refugees.But the arrival of gun-toting Europeans threatenedIroquois supremacy and enmeshed the confederacyin a tangled web of diplomatic intrigues. Through-

out the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, theyallied alternately with the English against theFrench and vice versa, for a time successfully work-ing this perpetual rivalry to their own advantage.But when the American Revolution broke out, theconfederacy could reach no consensus on whichside to support. Each tribe was left to decide inde-pendently; most, though not all, sided with theBritish. The ultimate British defeat left the confed-eracy in tatters. Many Iroquois, especially theMohawks, moved to new lands in British Canada;others were relegated to reservations in westernNew York.

Reservation life proved unbearable for a proudpeople accustomed to domination over a vast terri-tory. Morale sank; brawling, feuding, and alco-holism became rampant. Out of this morass arose aprophet, an Iroquois called Handsome Lake. In 1799angelic figures clothed in traditional Iroquois garbappeared to Handsome Lake in a vision and warnedhim that the moral decline of his people must end ifthey were to endure. He awoke from his vision towarn his tribespeople to mend their ways. Hissocially oriented gospel inspired many Iroquois toforsake alcohol, to affirm family values, and torevive old Iroquois customs. Handsome Lake diedin 1815, but his teachings, in the form of the Long-house religion, survive to this day.

41


Chronology

1558 Elizabeth I becomes queen of England

c. 1565-1590 English crush Irish uprising

1577 Drake circumnavigates the globe

1585 Raleigh founds Roanoke colony

1588 England defeats Spanish Armada

1603 James I becomes king of England

1604 Spain and England sign peace treaty

1607 Virginia colony founded at Jamestown

1612 Rolfe perfects tobacco culture in Virginia

1614 First Anglo-Powhatan War ends

1619 First Africans arrive in Jamestown Virginia House of Burgesses established

1624 Virginia becomes royal colony

1634 Maryland colony founded

1640s Large-scale slave-labor system established in English West Indies

1644 Second Anglo-Powhatan War

1649 Act of Toleration in MarylandCharles I beheaded; Cromwell rules

England

1660 Charles II restored to English throne

1661 Barbados slave code adopted

1670 Carolina colony created

1711-1713 Tuscarora War in North Carolina

1712 North Carolina formally separates from South Carolina

1715-1716 Yamasee War in South Carolina

1733 Georgia colony founded


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3

Settling the Northern Colonies

��

1619–1700

God hath sifted a nation that he might send Choice Grain into this Wilderness.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON [OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY], 1699

Although colonists both north and south werebound together by a common language and a

common allegiance to Mother England, they estab-lished different patterns of settlement, differenteconomies, different political systems, and even dif-ferent sets of values—defining distinctive regionalcharacteristics that would persist for generations.The promise of riches—especially from golden-leaved tobacco—drew the first settlers to the south-ern colonies. But to the north, in the fertile valleys ofthe middle Atlantic region and especially along therocky shores of New England, it was not worldlywealth but religious devotion that principallyshaped the earliest settlements.

The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism

Little did the German friar Martin Luther suspect,when he nailed his protests against Catholic doc-trines to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral in 1517,

that he was shaping the destiny of a yet unknownnation. Denouncing the authority of priests andpopes, Luther declared that the Bible alone was thesource of God’s word. He ignited a fire of religiousreform (the “Protestant Reformation”) that licked itsway across Europe for more than a century, dividingpeoples, toppling sovereigns, and kindling the spiri-tual fervor of millions of men and women—some ofwhom helped to found America.

The reforming flame burned especially brightlyin the bosom of John Calvin of Geneva. This somberand severe religious leader elaborated MartinLuther’s ideas in ways that profoundly affected thethought and character of generations of Americansyet unborn. Calvinism became the dominant theological credo not only of the New England Puritans but of other American settlers as well, including the Scottish Presbyterians, FrenchHuguenots, and communicants of the Dutch Re-formed Church.

Calvin spelled out his basic doctrine in alearned Latin tome of 1536, entitled Institutes of theChristian Religion. God, Calvin argued, was all-

43

powerful and all-good. Humans, because of thecorrupting effect of original sin, were weak andwicked. God was also all-knowing—and he knewwho was going to heaven and who was going tohell. Since the first moment of creation, somesouls—the elect—had been destined for eternalbliss and others for eternal torment. Good workscould not save those whom “predestination” hadmarked for the infernal fires.

But neither could the elect count on their pre-determined salvation and lead lives of wild,immoral abandon. For one thing, no one could becertain of his or her status in the heavenly ledger.Gnawing doubts about their eternal fate plaguedCalvinists. They constantly sought, in themselvesand others, signs of “conversion,” or the receipt ofGod’s free gift of saving grace. Conversion wasthought to be an intense, identifiable personalexperience in which God revealed to the elect theirheavenly destiny. Thereafter they were expected to lead “sanctified” lives, demonstrating by theirholy behavior that they were among the “visiblesaints.”

These doctrines swept into England just as KingHenry VIII was breaking his ties with the RomanCatholic Church in the 1530s, making himself thehead of the Church of England. Henry would havebeen content to retain Roman rituals and creeds,but his action powerfully stimulated some Englishreligious reformers to undertake a total purificationof English Christianity. Many of these “Puritans,” asit happened, came from the commercially de-pressed woolen districts (see p. 28). Calvinism, withits message of stark but reassuring order in thedivine plan, fed on this social unrest and providedspiritual comfort to the economically disadvan-taged. As time went on, Puritans grew increasinglyunhappy over the snail-like progress of the Protes-tant Reformation in England. They burned withpious zeal to see the Church of England wholly de-catholicized.

The most devout Puritans, including those whoeventually settled New England, believed that only“visible saints” (that is, persons who felt the stir-rings of grace in their souls and could demonstrateits presence to their fellow Puritans) should beadmitted to church membership. But the Church ofEngland enrolled all the king’s subjects, whichmeant that the “saints” had to share pews and com-munion rails with the “damned.” Appalled by thisunholy fraternizing, a tiny group of dedicated Puri-

tans, known as Separatists, vowed to break awayentirely from the Church of England.

King James I, a shrewd Scotsman, was head ofboth the state and the church in England from 1603to 1625. He quickly perceived that if his subjectscould defy him as their spiritual leader, they mightone day defy him as their political leader (as in factthey would later defy and behead his son, Charles I).He therefore threatened to harass the more bother-some Separatists out of the land.

The Pilgrims End TheirPilgrimage at Plymouth

The most famous congregation of Separatists, flee-ing royal wrath, departed for Holland in 1608. Dur-ing the ensuing twelve years of toil and poverty, theywere increasingly distressed by the “Dutchification”of their children. They longed to find a haven wherethey could live and die as English men andwomen—and as purified Protestants. America wasthe logical refuge, despite the early ordeals ofJamestown, and despite tales of New World canni-bals roasting steaks from their white victims overopen fires.

A group of the Separatists in Holland, afternegotiating with the Virginia Company, at lengthsecured rights to settle under its jurisdiction. Buttheir crowded Mayflower, sixty-five days at sea,missed its destination and arrived off the stonycoast of New England in 1620, with a total of 102persons. One had died en route—an unusually shortcasualty list—and one had been born and appropri-ately named Oceanus. Fewer than half of the entireparty were Separatists. Prominent among the non-belongers was a peppery and stocky soldier of for-tune, Captain Myles Standish, dubbed by one of hiscritics “Captain Shrimp.” He later rendered indis-pensable service as an Indian fighter and negotiator.

The Pilgrims did not make their initial landingat Plymouth Rock, as commonly supposed, butundertook a number of preliminary surveys. Theyfinally chose for their site the shore of inhospitablePlymouth Bay. This area was outside the domain ofthe Virginia Company, and consequently the settlersbecame squatters. They were without legal right tothe land and without specific authority to establisha government.

44 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619–1700

Before disembarking, the Pilgrim leaders drewup and signed the brief Mayflower Compact.Although setting an invaluable precedent for laterwritten constitutions, this document was not a con-stitution at all. It was a simple agreement to form acrude government and to submit to the will of themajority under the regulations agreed upon. Thecompact was signed by forty-one adult males, elevenof them with the exalted rank of “mister,” though notby the servants and two seamen. The pact was apromising step toward genuine self-government, for soon the adult male settlers were assembling tomake their own laws in open-discussion town meet-ings—a great laboratory of liberty.

The Pilgrims’ first winter of 1620–1621 took agrisly toll. Only 44 out of the 102 survived. At onetime only 7 were well enough to lay the dead in theirfrosty graves. Yet when the Mayflower sailed back toEngland in the spring, not a single one of the coura-geous band of Separatists left. As one of them wrote,“It is not with us as with other men, whom smallthings can discourage.”

God made his children prosperous, so the Pil-grims believed. The next autumn, that of 1621,brought bountiful harvests and with them the firstThanksgiving Day in New England. In time the frailcolony found sound economic legs in fur, fish, andlumber. The beaver and the Bible were the early

mainstays: the one for the sustenance of the body,the other for the sustenance of the soul. Plymouthproved that the English could maintain themselvesin this uninviting region.

The Pilgrims were extremely fortunate in theirleaders. Prominent among them was the culturedWilliam Bradford, a self-taught scholar who readHebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Dutch. He waschosen governor thirty times in the annual elec-tions. Among his major worries was his fear thatindependent, non-Puritan settlers “on their particu-lar” might corrupt his godly experiment in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony 45

William Bradford (1590–1657) wrote in OfPlymouth Plantation,

“Thus out of small beginnings greater thingshave been produced by His hand that madeall things of nothing, and gives being to allthings that are; and, as one small candlemay light a thousand, so the light herekindled hath shone unto many, yea in somesort to our whole nation.”

wilderness. Bustling fishing villages and other set-tlements did sprout to the north of Plymouth, onthe storm-lashed shores of Massachusetts Bay,where many people were as much interested in codas God.

Quiet and quaint, the little colony of Plymouthwas never important economically or numerically.Its population numbered only seven thousand by1691, when, still charterless, it merged with its giantneighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But thetiny settlement of Pilgrims was big both morally andspiritually.

The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth

The Separatist Pilgrims were dedicated extremists—the purest Puritans. More moderate Puritans soughtto reform the Church of England from within.Though resented by bishops and monarchs, theyslowly gathered support, especially in Parliament.But when Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1629and sanctioned the anti-Puritan persecutions of thereactionary Archbishop William Laud, many Puri-tans saw catastrophe in the making.

In 1629 an energetic group of non-SeparatistPuritans, fearing for their faith and for England’sfuture, secured a royal charter to form the Massa-chusetts Bay Company. They proposed to establisha sizable settlement in the infertile Massachusettsarea, with Boston soon becoming its hub. Stealing amarch on both king and church, the newcomersbrought their charter with them. For many yearsthey used it as a kind of constitution, out of easyreach of royal authority. They steadfastly deniedthat they wanted to separate from the Church ofEngland, only from its impurities. But back in Eng-land, the highly orthodox Archbishop Laud snortedthat the Bay Colony Puritans were “swine whichrooted in God’s vineyard.”

The Massachusetts Bay enterprise was singu-larly blessed. The well-equipped expedition of 1630,with eleven vessels carrying nearly a thousandimmigrants, started the colony off on a larger scalethan any of the other English settlements. Continu-ing turmoil in England tossed up additional enriching waves of Puritans on the shores of Massa-chusetts in the following decade (see “Makers ofAmerica: The English,” pp. 50–51). During the “GreatMigration” of the 1630s, about seventy thousand

refugees left England. But not all of them were Puri-tans, and only about twenty thousand came toMassachusetts. Many were attracted to the warmand fertile West Indies, especially the sugar-richisland of Barbados. More Puritans came to thisCaribbean islet than to all of Massachusetts.

Many fairly prosperous, educated personsimmigrated to the Bay Colony, including JohnWinthrop, a well-to-do pillar of English society, whobecame the colony’s first governor. A successfulattorney and manor lord in England, Winthropeagerly accepted the offer to become governor ofthe Massachusetts Bay Colony, believing that he hada “calling” from God to lead the new religious exper-iment. He served as governor or deputy governor fornineteen years. The resources and skills of talentedsettlers like Winthrop helped Massachusetts pros-per, as fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding blos-somed into important industries, especially fish andships. Massachusetts Bay Colony rapidly shot to thefore as both the biggest and the most influential ofthe New England outposts.

Massachusetts also benefited from a sharedsense of purpose among most of the first settlers.


C a r i b b e a n S e a

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,000

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The Great English Migration, c. 1630–1642 Much of the early history of the United States was written byNew Englanders, who were not disposed to emphasize thelarger exodus of English migrants to the Caribbean islands.When the mainland colonists declared independence in 1776,they hoped that these island outposts would join them, but theexistence of the British navy had a dissuading effect.

“We shall be as a city upon a hill,” a beacon tohumanity, declared Governor Winthrop. The Puritanbay colonists believed that they had a covenant withGod, an agreement to build a holy society thatwould be a model for humankind.

Building the Bay Colony

These common convictions deeply shaped theinfant colony’s life. Soon after the colonists’ arrival,the franchise was extended to all “freemen”—adultmales who belonged to the Puritan congregations,which in time came to be called collectively the Congregational Church. Unchurched menremained voteless in provincial elections, as didwomen. On this basis about two-fifths of adultmales enjoyed the franchise in provincial affairs, afar larger proportion than in contemporary Eng-land. Town governments, which conducted muchimportant business, were even more inclusive.There all male property holders, and in some casesother residents as well, enjoyed the priceless boonof publicly discussing local issues, often with muchheat, and of voting on them by a majority-rule showof hands.

Yet the provincial government, liberal by thestandards of the time, was not a democracy. Theable Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted the“commons” as the “meaner sort” and thought thatdemocracy was the “meanest and worst” of all formsof government. “If the people be governors,” askedone Puritan clergyman, “who shall be governed?”True, the freemen annually elected the governorand his assistants, as well as a representative assem-bly called the General Court. But only Puritans—the“visible saints” who alone were eligible for churchmembership—could be freemen. And according tothe doctrine of the covenant, the whole purpose ofgovernment was to enforce God’s laws—whichapplied to believers and nonbelievers alike. More-over, nonbelievers as well as believers paid taxes forthe government-supported church.

Religious leaders thus wielded enormous influ-ence in the Massachusetts “Bible Commonwealth.”They powerfully influenced admission to churchmembership by conducting public interrogations ofpersons claiming to have experienced conversion.Prominent among the early clergy was fiery John

Cotton. Educated at England’s Cambridge Univer-sity, a Puritan citadel, he emigrated to Massachu-setts to avoid persecution for his criticism of theChurch of England. In the Bay Colony he devotedhis considerable learning to defending the govern-ment’s duty to enforce religious rules. Profoundlypious, he sometimes preached and prayed up to sixhours in a single day.

But the power of the preachers was notabsolute. A congregation had the right to hire andfire its minister and to set his salary. Clergymenwere also barred from holding formal politicaloffice. Puritans in England had suffered too much atthe hands of a “political” Anglican clergy to permitin the New World another unholy union of religiousand government power. In a limited way, the baycolonists thus endorsed the idea of the separation ofchurch and state.

The Puritans were a worldly lot, despite—oreven because of—their spiritual intensity. Like JohnWinthrop, they believed in the doctrine of a “calling”to do God’s work on earth. They shared in what waslater called the “Protestant ethic,” which involvedserious commitment to work and to engagement inworldly pursuits. Legend to the contrary, they alsoenjoyed simple pleasures: they ate plentifully, drankheartily, sang songs occasionally, and made lovemonogamously. Like other peoples of their time inboth America and Europe, they passed laws aimedat making sure these pleasures stayed simple byrepressing certain human instincts. In New Haven,for example, a young married couple was finedtwenty shillings for the crime of kissing in public,and in later years Connecticut came to be dubbed“the Blue Law State.” (It was so named for the bluepaper on which the repressive laws—also known as“sumptuary laws”—were printed.)

Yet life was serious business, and hellfire wasreal—a hell where sinners shriveled and shrieked invain for divine mercy. An immensely popular poemin New England, selling one copy for every twentypeople, was clergyman Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom” (1662). Especially horrifying werehis descriptions of the fate of the damned:

They cry, they roar for anguish sore,and gnaw their tongues for horrour.

But get away without delay,Christ pitties not your cry:

Depart to Hell, there may you yell,and roar Eternally.

Religion in the Bay Colony 47

Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth

The Bay Colony enjoyed a high degree of social har-mony, stemming from common beliefs, in its earlyyears. But even in this tightly knit community, dis-sension soon appeared. Quakers, who flouted theauthority of the Puritan clergy, were persecutedwith fines, floggings, and banishment. In oneextreme case, four Quakers who defied expulsion,one of them a woman, were hanged on the BostonCommon.

A sharp challenge to Puritan orthodoxy camefrom Anne Hutchinson. She was an exceptionallyintelligent, strong-willed, and talkative woman, ulti-mately the mother of fourteen children. Swift andsharp in theological argument, she carried to logical

extremes the Puritan doctrine of predestination.She claimed that a holy life was no sure sign of sal-vation and that the truly saved need not bother toobey the law of either God or man. This assertion,known as antinomianism (from the Greek, “againstthe law”), was high heresy.

Brought to trial in 1638, the quick-wittedHutchinson bamboozled her clerical inquisitors fordays, until she eventually boasted that she hadcome by her beliefs through a direct revelation fromGod. This was even higher heresy. The Puritan mag-istrates had little choice but to banish her, lest shepollute the entire Puritan experiment. With her fam-ily, she set out on foot for Rhode Island, thoughpregnant. She finally moved to New York, where sheand all but one of her household were killed by Indi-ans. Back in the Bay Colony, the pious JohnWinthrop saw “God’s hand” in her fate.

More threatening to the Puritan leaders was apersonable and popular Salem minister, RogerWilliams. Williams was a young man with radicalideas and an unrestrained tongue. An extreme Sepa-ratist, he hounded his fellow clergymen to make aclean break with the corrupt Church of England. Healso challenged the legality of the Bay Colony’s char-ter, which he condemned for expropriating the landfrom the Indians without fair compensation. As if allthis were not enough, he went on to deny theauthority of civil government to regulate religiousbehavior—a seditious blow at the Puritan idea ofgovernment’s very purpose.

Their patience exhausted by 1635, the BayColony authorities found Williams guilty of dissemi-nating “newe & dangerous opinions” and orderedhim banished. He was permitted to remain severalmonths longer because of illness, but he kept up hiscriticisms. The outraged magistrates, fearing that hemight organize a rival colony of malcontents, madeplans to exile him to England. But Williams foiledthem.

The Rhode Island “Sewer”

Aided by friendly Indians, Roger Williams fled to theRhode Island area in 1636, in the midst of a bitterwinter. At Providence the courageous and far-visioned Williams built a Baptist church, probably thefirst in America. He established complete freedom ofreligion, even for Jews and Catholics. He demanded


no oaths regarding religious beliefs, no compulsoryattendance at worship, no taxes to support a statechurch. He even sheltered the abused Quakers,although disagreeing sharply with their views.Williams’s endorsement of religious tolerance madeRhode Island more liberal than any of the otherEnglish settlements in the New World, and moreadvanced than most Old World communities as well.

Those outcasts who clustered about RogerWilliams enjoyed additional blessings. They exer-cised simple manhood suffrage from the start,though this broad-minded practice was later nar-rowed by a property qualification. Opposed to spe-cial privilege of any sort, the doughty RhodeIslanders managed to achieve remarkable freedomof opportunity.

Other scattered settlements soon dotted RhodeIsland. They consisted largely of malcontents andexiles, some of whom could not bear the stifling the-ological atmosphere of the Bay Colony. Many ofthese restless souls in “Rogues’ Island,” includingAnne Hutchinson, had little in common with RogerWilliams—except being unwelcome anywhere else.The Puritan clergy back in Boston sneered at RhodeIsland as “that sewer” in which the “Lord’s debris”had collected and rotted.

Planted by dissenters and exiles, Rhode Islandbecame strongly individualistic and stubbornlyindependent. With good reason “Little Rhody” waslater known as “the traditional home of the other-wise minded.” Begun as a squatter colony in 1636without legal standing, it finally established rights tothe soil when it secured a charter from Parliamentin 1644. A huge bronze statue of the “IndependentMan” appropriately stands today on the dome of thestatehouse in Providence.

New England Spreads Out

The smiling valley of the Connecticut River, one ofthe few highly fertile expanses of any size in all NewEngland, had meanwhile attracted a sprinkling ofDutch and English settlers. Hartford was founded in1635. The next year witnessed a spectacular begin-ning of the centuries-long westward movementacross the continent. An energetic group of BostonPuritans, led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker,swarmed as a body into the Hartford area, with theailing Mrs. Hooker carried on a horse litter.

Three years later, in 1639, the settlers of the newConnecticut River colony drafted in open meeting atrailblazing document known as the FundamentalOrders. It was in effect a modern constitution,which established a regime democratically con-trolled by the “substantial” citizens. Essential fea-tures of the Fundamental Orders were laterborrowed by Connecticut for its colonial charterand ultimately for its state constitution.

Another flourishing Connecticut settlementbegan to spring up at New Haven in 1638. It was a prosperous community, founded by Puritanswho contrived to set up an even closer church-government alliance than in Massachusetts. Al-though only squatters without a charter, thecolonists dreamed of making New Haven a bustlingseaport. But they fell into disfavor with Charles II asa result of having sheltered two of the judges whohad condemned his father, Charles I, to death. In1662, to the acute distress of the New Havenites, thecrown granted a charter to Connecticut that mergedNew Haven with the more democratic settlementsin the Connecticut Valley.

The Expansion of New England 49

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LONG ISLAND

Seventeenth-Century New England Settlements The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the hub of New England.All earlier colonies grew into it; all later colonies grew out of it.

The English

During the late Middle Ages, the Black Death andother epidemics that ravaged England kept the

island’s population in check. But by 1500 increasedresistance to such diseases allowed the populationto soar, and a century later the island nation wasbursting at the seams. This population explosion,combined with economic depression and religiousrepression, sparked the first major European migra-tion to England’s New World colonies.

Some of those who voyaged to Virginia andMaryland in the seventeenth century were independ-ent artisans or younger members of English gentryfamilies. But roughly three-quarters of the Englishmigrants to the Chesapeake during this periodcame as servants, signed to “indentures” rangingfrom four to seven years. One English observer

described such indentured servants as “idle, lazie,simple people,” and another complained that manyof those taking ship for the colonies “have been pur-sued by hue-and-cry for robberies, burglaries, orbreaking prison.”

In fact, most indentured servants were youngmen drawn from England’s “middling classes.”Some fled the disastrous slump in the cloth trade inthe early seventeenth century. Many others hadbeen forced off the land as the dawning nationaleconomy prompted landowners in southwesternEngland to convert from crop fields to pasture andto “enclose” the land for sheep grazing. Making theirway from town to town in search of work, they even-tually drifted into port cities such as Bristol andLondon. There they boarded ship for America,where they provided the labor necessary to cultivatethe Chesapeake’s staple crop, tobacco.

Some 40 percent of these immigrants of themid-seventeenth century died before they finishedtheir terms of indenture. (Because of the high deathrate and the shortage of women, Chesapeake soci-ety was unable to reproduce itself naturally until thelast quarter of the seventeenth century.) The sur-vivors entered Chesapeake society with only their“freedom dues”—usually clothing, an ax and hoe,and a few barrels of corn.

Nevertheless, many of those who arrived earlyin the century eventually acquired land and movedinto the mainstream of Chesapeake society. After1660, however, opportunities for the “freemen”declined. In England the population spurt ended,and the great London fire of 1666 sparked a buildingboom that soaked up job seekers. As the supply ofEnglish indentured servants dried up in the late seventeenth century, southern planters looking forlaborers turned increasingly to black slaves.

Whereas English immigration to the Chesa-peake was spread over nearly a century, most

50

English voyagers to New England arrived within asingle decade. In the twelve years between 1629 and1642, some twenty thousand Puritans swarmed tothe Massachusetts Bay Colony. Fleeing a sustainedeconomic depression and the cruel religious repres-sion of Charles I, the Puritans came to plant a godlycommonwealth in New England’s rocky soil.

In contrast to the single indentured servants of the Chesapeake, the New England Puritansmigrated in family groups, and in many cases wholecommunities were transplanted from England toAmerica. Although they remained united by thecommon language and common Puritan faith theycarried to New England, their English baggage wasby no means uniform. As in England, most NewEngland settlements were farming communities.But some New England towns re-created the spe-cialized economies of particular localities in Eng-land. Marblehead, Massachusetts, for example,became a fishing village because most of its settlershad been fishermen in Old England. The townsfolkof Rowley, Massachusetts, brought from Yorkshire innorthern England not only their town name but alsotheir distinctive way of life, revolving around textilemanufacturing.

Political practices, too, reflected the towns’ var-iegated English roots. In Ipswich, Massachusetts,

settled by East Anglian Puritans, the ruling select-men served long terms and ruled with an iron hand.By contrast, local politics in the town of Newburywere bitter and contentious, and officeholders werehard pressed to win reelection; the town’s founderscame from western England, a region with little tra-dition of local government. Although the Puritans’imperial masters in London eventually circum-scribed such precious local autonomy, this diverseheritage of fiercely independent New Englandtowns endured, reasserting itself during the Ameri-can Revolution.

51

Land Use in Rowley, Massachusetts, c. 1650 The settlers of Rowley brought from their native Yorkshire thepractice of granting families very small farming plots andreserving large common fields for use by the entirecommunity. On the map, the yellow areas show private land;the green areas show land held in common.

Far to the north, enterprising fishermen and furtraders had been active on the coast of Maine for adozen or so years before the founding of Plymouth.After disheartening attempts at colonization in1623 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, this land of lakesand forests was absorbed by Massachusetts Bayafter a formal purchase in 1677 from the Gorgesheirs. It remained a part of Massachusetts fornearly a century and a half before becoming a sepa-rate state.

Granite-ribbed New Hampshire also sprangfrom the fishing and trading activities along its nar-row coast. It was absorbed in 1641 by the graspingBay Colony, under a strained interpretation of theMassachusetts charter. The king, annoyed by thisdisplay of greed, arbitrarily separated New Hamp-shire from Massachusetts in 1679 and made it aroyal colony.

Puritans Versus Indians

The spread of English settlements inevitably led toclashes with the Indians, who were particularlyweak in New England. Shortly before the Pilgrimshad arrived at Plymouth in 1620, an epidemic, prob-ably triggered by contact with English fishermen,had swept through the coastal tribes and killedmore than three-quarters of the native people.Deserted Indian fields, ready for tillage, greeted thePlymouth settlers and scattered skulls and bonesprovided grim evidence of the impact of the disease.

In no position to resist the English incursion,the local Wampanoag Indians at first befriended thesettlers. Cultural accommodation was facilitated bySquanto, a Wampanoag who had learned Englishfrom a ship’s captain who had kidnapped him someyears earlier. The Wampanoag chieftain Massasoitsigned a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgivingafter the autumn harvests that same year.

As more English settlers arrived and pushedinland into the Connecticut River valley, confronta-tions between Indians and whites ruptured thesepeaceful relations. Hostilities exploded in 1637between the English settlers and the powerfulPequot tribe. Besieging a Pequot village on Con-necticut’s Mystic River, English militiamen and theirNarragansett Indian allies set fire to the Indian wig-wams and shot the fleeing survivors. The slaughter

wrote a brutal finish to the Pequot War, virtuallyannihilated the Pequot tribe, and inaugurated fourdecades of uneasy peace between Puritans andIndians.

Lashed by critics in England, the Puritans madesome feeble efforts at converting the remainingIndians to Christianity, although Puritan missionaryzeal never equaled that of the Catholic Spanish andFrench. A mere handful of Indians were gatheredinto Puritan “praying towns” to make the acquain-tance of the English God and to learn the ways ofEnglish culture.

The Indians’ only hope for resisting Englishencroachment lay in intertribal unity—a pan-Indianalliance against the swiftly spreading English settle-


ments. In 1675 Massasoit’s son, Metacom, calledKing Philip by the English, forged such an allianceand mounted a series of coordinated assaults onEnglish villages throughout New England. Frontiersettlements were especially hard hit, and refugeesfell back toward the relative safety of Boston. Whenthe war ended in 1676, fifty-two Puritan towns hadbeen attacked, and twelve destroyed entirely. Hun-dreds of colonists and many more Indians lay dead.Metacom’s wife and son were sold into slavery; hehimself was captured, beheaded, and drawn andquartered. His head was carried on a pike back toPlymouth, where it was mounted on grisly displayfor years.

King Philip’s War slowed the westward march ofEnglish settlement in New England for severaldecades. But the war inflicted a lasting defeat on NewEngland’s Indians. Drastically reduced in numbers,dispirited, and disbanded, they thereafter posed onlysporadic threats to the New England colonists.

Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence

A path-breaking experiment in union was launchedin 1643, when four colonies banded together toform the New England Confederation. Old Englandwas then deeply involved in civil wars, and hencethe colonists were thrown upon their own re-sources. The primary purpose of the confederationwas defense against foes or potential foes, notablythe Indians, the French, and the Dutch. Purely inter-colonial problems, such as runaway servants andcriminals who had fled from one colony to another,

also came within the jurisdiction of the confedera-tion. Each member colony, regardless of size,wielded two votes—an arrangement highly dis-pleasing to the most populous colony, Massachu-setts Bay.

The confederation was essentially an exclusivePuritan club. It consisted of the two Massachusettscolonies (the Bay Colony and bantam-sized Ply-mouth) and the two Connecticut colonies (NewHaven and the scattered valley settlements). ThePuritan leaders blackballed Rhode Island as well asthe Maine outposts. These places, it was charged,harbored too many heretical or otherwise undesir-able characters. Shockingly, one of the Maine townshad made a tailor its mayor and had even shelteredan excommunicated minister of the gospel.

Weak though it was, the confederation was thefirst notable milestone on the long and rocky roadtoward colonial unity. The delegates took totteringbut long-overdue steps toward acting together onmatters of intercolonial importance. Rank-and-filecolonists, for their part, received valuable experi-ence in delegating their votes to properly chosenrepresentatives.

Back in England the king had paid little atten-tion to the American colonies during the early yearsof their planting. They were allowed, in effect, tobecome semiautonomous commonwealths. Thisera of benign neglect was prolonged when thecrown, struggling to retain its power, becameenmeshed during the 1640s in civil wars with theparliamentarians.

But when Charles II was restored to the Englishthrone in 1660, the royalists and their Church ofEngland allies were once more firmly in the saddle.Puritan hopes of eventually purifying the old

Indians and Colonists in New England 53

The Stuart Dynasty in England*


James I, 1603–1625 Va., Plymouth founded; Separatists persecutedCharles I, 1625–1649 Civil wars, 1642–1649; Mass., Md. founded(Interregnum, 1649–1660) Commonwealth; Protectorate (Oliver Cromwell)Charles II, 1660–1685 The Restoration; Carolinas, Pa., N.Y. founded; Conn. charteredJames II, 1685–1688 Catholic trend; Glorious Revolution, 1688William & Mary, 1689–1702 King William’s War, 1689–1697(Mary died 1694)

*See p. 29 for predecessors; p. 110 for successors.

English church withered. Worse, Charles II wasdetermined to take an active, aggressive hand in themanagement of the colonies. His plans ran head-long against the habits that decades of relative inde-pendence had bred in the colonists.

Deepening colonial defiance was nowhere moreglaringly revealed than in Massachusetts. One of theking’s agents in Boston was mortified to find thatroyal orders had no more effect than old issues ofthe London Gazette. Punishment was soon forth-coming. As a slap at Massachusetts, Charles II gaverival Connecticut in 1662 a sea-to-sea charter grant,which legalized the squatter settlements. The verynext year the outcasts in Rhode Island received anew charter, which gave kingly sanction to the mostreligiously tolerant government yet devised in

America. A final and crushing blow fell on the stiff-necked Bay Colony in 1684, when its precious char-ter was revoked by the London authorities.

Andros Promotes the First American Revolution

Massachusetts suffered further humiliation in 1686,when the Dominion of New England was created byroyal authority. Unlike the homegrown New Eng-land Confederation, it was imposed from London.Embracing at first all New England, it was expandedtwo years later to include New York and East andWest Jersey. The dominion also aimed at bolstering


colonial defense in the event of war with the Indiansand hence, from the imperial viewpoint of Parlia-ment, was a statesmanlike move.

More importantly, the Dominion of New Eng-land was designed to promote urgently needed effi-ciency in the administration of the EnglishNavigation Laws. Those laws reflected the intensify-ing colonial rivalries of the seventeenth century.They sought to stitch England’s overseas posses-sions more tightly to the motherland by throttlingAmerican trade with countries not ruled by theEnglish crown. Like colonial peoples everywhere,the Americans chafed at such confinements, andsmuggling became an increasingly common andhonorable occupation.

At the head of the new dominion stood auto-cratic Sir Edmund Andros, an able English militaryman, conscientious but tactless. Establishing head-quarters in Puritanical Boston, he generated muchhostility by his open affiliation with the despisedChurch of England. The colonists were also out-raged by his noisy and Sabbath-profaning soldiers,who were accused of teaching the people “to drink,blaspheme, curse, and damn.”

Andros was prompt to use the mailed fist. Heruthlessly curbed the cherished town meetings; laidheavy restrictions on the courts, the press, and theschools; and revoked all land titles. Dispensing withthe popular assemblies, he taxed the people withoutthe consent of their duly elected representatives. Healso strove to enforce the unpopular NavigationLaws and suppress smuggling. Liberty-lovingcolonists, accustomed to unusual privileges duringlong decades of neglect, were goaded to the verge ofrevolt.

The people of old England, likewise resistingoppression, stole a march on the people of NewEngland. In 1688–1689 they engineered the memo-rable Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution. Dethron-ing the despotic and unpopular Catholic James II,they enthroned the Protestant rulers of the Nether-lands, the Dutch-born William III and his Englishwife, Mary, daughter of James II.

When the news of the Glorious Revolutionreached America, the ramshackle Dominion of NewEngland collapsed like a house of cards. A Bostonmob, catching the fever, rose against the existingregime. Sir Edmund Andros attempted to flee inwoman’s clothing but was betrayed by boots pro-truding beneath his dress. He was hastily shippedoff to England.

Massachusetts, though rid of the despoticAndros, did not gain as much from the upheaval asit had hoped. In 1691 it was arbitrarily made a royalcolony, with a new charter and a new royal gover-nor. The permanent loss of the ancient charter was astaggering blow to the proud Puritans, who neverfully recovered. Worst of all, the privilege of voting,once a monopoly of church members, was now tobe enjoyed by all qualified male property holders.

England’s Glorious Revolution reverberatedthroughout the colonies from New England to theChesapeake. Inspired by the challenge to the crownin old England, many colonists seized the occasionto strike against royal authority in America. Unrestrocked both New York and Maryland from 1689 to1691, until newly appointed royal governorsrestored a semblance of order. Most importantly,the new monarchs relaxed the royal grip on colonialtrade, inaugurating a period of “salutary neglect”when the much-resented Navigation Laws wereonly weakly enforced.

Yet residues remained of Charles II’s effort toassert tighter administrative control over his

Confederation and Dominion in New England 55

Early Settlements in the Middle Colonies, with FoundingDates

empire. More English officials—judges, clerks, cus-toms officials—now staffed the courts and strolledthe wharves of English America. Many were incom-petent, corrupt hacks who knew little and cared lessabout American affairs. Appointed by influentialpatrons in far-off England, by their very presencethey blocked the rise of local leaders to positions ofpolitical power. Aggrieved Americans viewed themwith mounting contempt and resentment as theeighteenth century wore on.

Old Netherlanders at New Netherland

Late in the sixteenth century, the oppressed peopleof the Netherlands unfurled the standard of rebel-lion against Catholic Spain. After bloody and protracted fighting, they finally succeeded, with the aid of Protestant England, in winning theirindependence.

The seventeenth century—the era of Rem-brandt and other famous artists—was a golden agein Dutch history. This vigorous little lowland nationfinally emerged as a major commercial and navalpower, and then it ungratefully challenged the

supremacy of its former benefactor, England. Threegreat Anglo-Dutch naval wars were fought in theseventeenth century, with as many as a hundredships on each side. The sturdy Dutch dealt blowsabout as heavy as they received.

The Dutch Republic also became a leadingcolonial power, with by far its greatest activity in theEast Indies. There it maintained an enormous andprofitable empire for over three hundred years. TheDutch East India Company was virtually a statewithin a state and at one time supported an army of10,000 men and a fleet of 190 ships, 40 of them men-of-war.

Seeking greater riches, this enterprising com-pany employed an English explorer, Henry Hudson.Disregarding orders to sail northeast, he venturedinto Delaware Bay and New York Bay in 1609 andthen ascended the Hudson River, hoping that at lasthe had chanced upon the coveted shortcut throughthe continent. But, as the event proved, he merelyfiled a Dutch claim to a magnificently wooded andwatered area.

Much less powerful than the mighty Dutch EastIndia Company was the Dutch West India Company,which maintained profitable enterprises in theCaribbean. At times it was less interested in trading


than in raiding and at one fell swoop in 1628 cap-tured a fleet of Spanish treasure ships laden withloot worth $15 million. The company also estab-lished outposts in Africa and a thriving sugar indus-try in Brazil, which for several decades was itsprincipal center of activity in the New World.

New Netherland, in the beautiful Hudson Riverarea, was planted in 1623–1624 on a permanentbasis. Established by the Dutch West India Com-pany for its quick-profit fur trade, it was never morethan a secondary interest of the founders. The com-pany’s most brilliant stroke was to buy ManhattanIsland from the Indians (who did not actually “own”it) for virtually worthless trinkets—twenty-twothousand acres of what is now perhaps the mostvaluable real estate in the world for pennies peracre.

New Amsterdam—later New York City—was acompany town. It was run by and for the Dutchcompany, in the interests of the stockholders. Theinvestors had no enthusiasm for religious tolera-tion, free speech, or democratic practices; and thegovernors appointed by the company as directors-general were usually harsh and despotic. Religiousdissenters who opposed the official DutchReformed Church were regarded with suspicion,and for a while Quakers were savagely abused. In

response to repeated protests by the aggravatedcolonists, a local body with limited lawmakingpower was finally established.

This picturesque Dutch colony took on astrongly aristocratic tinge and retained it for genera-tions. Vast feudal estates fronting the Hudson River,known as patroonships, were granted to promoterswho agreed to settle fifty people on them. Onepatroonship in the Albany area was slightly largerthan the later state of Rhode Island.

Colorful little New Amsterdam attracted a cos-mopolitan population, as is common in seaporttowns. A French Jesuit missionary, visiting in the1640s, noted that eighteen different languages werebeing spoken in the streets. New York’s later babel ofimmigrant tongues was thus foreshadowed.

Friction with Englishand Swedish Neighbors

Vexations beset the Dutch company-colony fromthe beginning. The directors-general were largelyincompetent. Company shareholders demandedtheir dividends, even at the expense of the colony’swelfare. The Indians, infuriated by Dutch cruelties,

The Dutch Plant New York 57

retaliated with horrible massacres. As a defensemeasure, the hard-pressed settlers on ManhattanIsland erected a stout wall, from which Wall Streetderives its name.

New England was hostile to the growth of itsDutch neighbor, and the people of Connecticutfinally ejected intruding Hollanders from their ver-dant valley. Three of the four member colonies ofthe New England Confederation were eager to wipeout New Netherland with military force. But Massa-chusetts, which would have had to provide most ofthe troops, vetoed the proposed foray.

The Swedes in turn trespassed on Dutch pre-serves, from 1638 to 1655, by planting the anemiccolony of New Sweden on the Delaware River. This

was the golden age of Sweden, during and followingthe Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648, in which its bril-liant King Gustavus Adolphus had carried the torchfor Protestantism. This outburst of energy in Swe-den caused it to enter the costly colonial game inAmerica, though on something of a shoestring.

Resenting the Swedish intrusion on theDelaware, the Dutch dispatched a small militaryexpedition in 1655. It was led by the ablest of thedirectors-general, Peter Stuyvesant, who had lost aleg while soldiering in the West Indies and wasdubbed “Father Wooden Leg” by the Indians. Themain fort fell after a bloodless siege, whereuponSwedish rule came to an abrupt end. The colonistswere absorbed by New Netherland.

New Sweden, never important, soon fadedaway, leaving behind in later Delaware a sprinklingof Swedish place names and Swedish log cabins (thefirst in America), as well as an admixture of Swedishblood.

Dutch Residues in New York

Lacking vitality, and representing only a secondarycommercial interest of the Dutch, New Netherlandlay under the menacing shadow of the vigorousEnglish colonies to the north. In addition, it washoneycombed with New England immigrants.Numbering about one-half of New Netherland’s tenthousand souls in 1664, they might in time haveseized control from within.

The days of the Dutch on the Hudson werenumbered, for the English regarded them as intrud-ers. In 1664, after the imperially ambitious CharlesII had granted the area to his brother, the Duke ofYork, a strong English squadron appeared off thedecrepit defenses of New Amsterdam. A fumingPeter Stuyvesant, short of all munitions exceptcourage, was forced to surrender without firing ashot. New Amsterdam was thereupon renamed NewYork, in honor of the Duke of York. England won asplendid harbor, strategically located in the middleof the mainland colonies, and a stately HudsonRiver penetrating the interior. With the removal ofthis foreign wedge, the English banner now wavedtriumphantly over a solid stretch of territory fromMaine to the Carolinas.


The conquered Dutch province tenaciouslyretained many of the illiberal features of earlierdays. An autocratic spirit survived, and the aristo-cratic element gained strength when certain corruptEnglish governors granted immense acreage to theirfavorites. Influential landowning families—such asthe Livingstons and the De Lanceys—wielded dis-proportionate power in the affairs of colonial NewYork. These monopolistic land policies, combinedwith the lordly atmosphere, discouraged manyEuropean immigrants from coming. The physicalgrowth of New York was correspondingly retarded.

The Dutch peppered place names over the land,including Harlem (Haarlem), Brooklyn (Breucke-len), and Hell Gate (Hellegat). They likewise lefttheir imprint on the gambrel-roofed architecture. Asfor social customs and folkways, no other foreigngroup of comparable size has made so colorful acontribution. Noteworthy were Easter eggs, SantaClaus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skat-ing, and kolf (golf)—a dangerous game played withheavy clubs and forbidden in settled areas.

Penn’s Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania

A remarkable group of dissenters, commonly knownas Quakers, arose in England during the mid-1600s.Their name derived from the report that they“quaked” when under deep religious emotion. Offi-cially they were known as the Religious Society ofFriends.

Quakers were especially offensive to the author-ities, both religious and civil. They refused to sup-port the established Church of England with taxes.They built simple meetinghouses, congregatedwithout a paid clergy, and “spoke up” themselves inmeetings when moved. Believing that they were allchildren in the sight of God, they kept their broad-brimmed hats on in the presence of their “betters”and addressed others with simple “thee”s and“thou”s, rather than with conventional titles. Theywould take no oaths because Jesus had com-

The Quakers in Pennsylvania 59

manded, “Swear not at all.” This peculiarity oftenembroiled them with government officials, for “testoaths” were still required to establish the fact that aperson was not a Roman Catholic.

The Quakers, beyond a doubt, were a people ofdeep conviction. They abhorred strife and warfareand refused military service. As advocates of passiveresistance, they would turn the other cheek andrebuild their meetinghouse on the site where theirenemies had torn it down. Their courage and devo-tion to principle finally triumphed. Although attimes they seemed stubborn and unreasonable,they were a simple, devoted, democratic people,contending in their own high-minded way for reli-gious and civic freedom.

William Penn, a wellborn and athletic youngEnglishman, was attracted to the Quaker faith in1660, when only sixteen years old. His father, disap-proving, administered a sound flogging. After vari-ous adventures in the army (the best portrait of thepeaceful Quaker has him in armor), the youth firmlyembraced the despised faith and suffered muchpersecution. The courts branded him a “saucy” and“impertinent” fellow. Several hundred of his less for-tunate fellow Quakers died of cruel treatment, and

thousands more were fined, flogged, or cast intodank prisons.

Penn’s thoughts naturally turned to the NewWorld, where a sprinkling of Quakers had alreadyfled, notably to Rhode Island, North Carolina, andNew Jersey. Eager to establish an asylum for his peo-ple, he also hoped to experiment with liberal ideasin government and at the same time make a profit.Finally, in 1681, he managed to secure from the kingan immense grant of fertile land, in consideration ofa monetary debt owed to his deceased father by thecrown. The king called the area Pennsylvania(“Penn’s Woodland”) in honor of the sire. The mod-est son, fearing that critics would accuse him ofnaming it after himself, sought unsuccessfully tochange the name.

Pennsylvania was by far the best advertised ofall the colonies. Its founder—the “first Americanadvertising man”—sent out paid agents and distrib-uted countless pamphlets printed in English,Dutch, French, and German. Unlike the lures ofmany other American real estate promoters, thenand later, Penn’s inducements were generally truth-ful. He especially welcomed forward-looking spiritsand substantial citizens, including industrious car-


penters, masons, shoemakers, and other manualworkers. His liberal land policy, which encouragedsubstantial holdings, was instrumental in attractinga heavy inflow of immigrants.

Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors

Penn formally launched his colony in 1681. His taskwas simplified by the presence of several thousand“squatters”—Dutch, Swedish, English, Welsh—whowere already scattered along the banks of theDelaware River. Philadelphia, meaning “brotherlylove” in Greek, was more carefully planned thanmost colonial cities and consequently enjoyed wideand attractive streets.

Penn farsightedly bought land from the Indians,including Chief Tammany, later patron saint of NewYork’s political Tammany Hall. His treatment of thenative peoples was so fair that the Quaker “broadbrims” went among them unarmed and evenemployed them as baby-sitters. For a brief period,Pennsylvania seemed the promised land of amica-ble Indian-white relations. Some southern tribeseven migrated to Pennsylvania, seeking the Quakerhaven. But ironically, Quaker tolerance proved theundoing of Quaker Indian policy. As non-QuakerEuropean immigrants flooded into the province,they undermined the Quakers’ own benevolent pol-icy toward the Indians. The feisty Scots-Irish wereparticularly unpersuaded by Quaker idealism.

Penn’s new proprietary regime was unusuallyliberal and included a representative assemblyelected by the landowners. No tax-supported statechurch drained coffers or demanded allegiance.

Freedom of worship was guaranteed to all residents,although Penn, under pressure from London, wasforced to deny Catholics and Jews the privilege ofvoting or holding office. The death penalty wasimposed only for treason and murder, as comparedwith some two hundred capital crimes in England.

Among other noteworthy features, no provisionwas made by the peace-loving Quakers of Pennsyl-vania for a military defense. No restrictions wereplaced on immigration, and naturalization wasmade easy. The humane Quakers early developed astrong dislike of black slavery, and in the genial glowof Pennsylvania some progress was made towardsocial reform.

With its many liberal features, Pennsylvaniaattracted a rich mix of ethnic groups. They includednumerous religious misfits who were repelled by theharsh practices of neighboring colonies. ThisQuaker refuge boasted a surprisingly modernatmosphere in an unmodern age and to an unusualdegree afforded economic opportunity, civil liberty,and religious freedom. Even so, “blue laws” prohib-ited “ungodly revelers,” stage plays, playing cards,dice, games, and excessive hilarity.

Under such generally happy auspices, Penn’sbrainchild grew lustily. The Quakers were shrewdbusinesspeople, and in a short time the settlers wereexporting grain and other foodstuffs. Within twoyears Philadelphia claimed three hundred housesand twenty-five hundred people. Within nineteenyears—by 1700—the colony was surpassed in popu-lation and wealth only by long-established Virginiaand Massachusetts.

William Penn, who altogether spent about fouryears in Pennsylvania, was never fully appreciatedby his colonists. His governors, some of themincompetent and tactless, quarreled bitterly withthe people, who were constantly demanding greaterpolitical control. Penn himself became too friendlywith James II, the deposed Catholic king. Thricearrested for treason, thrust for a time into a debtors’prison, and afflicted by a paralytic stroke, he diedfull of sorrows. His enduring monument was notonly a noble experiment in government but also anew commonwealth. Based on civil and religiousliberty, and dedicated to freedom of conscience andworship, it held aloft a hopeful torch in a world ofsemidarkness.

Small Quaker settlements flourished next doorto Pennsylvania. New Jersey was started in 1664,when two noble proprietors received the area from

Colonial Pennsylvania 61

In a Boston lecture in 1869, Ralph WaldoEmerson (1803–1882) declared,

“The sect of the Quakers in their bestrepresentatives appear to me to have comenearer to the sublime history and genius ofChrist than any other of the sects.”

the Duke of York. A substantial number of New Eng-landers, including many whose weary soil hadpetered out, flocked to the new colony. One of theproprietors sold West New Jersey in 1674 to a groupof Quakers, who here set up a sanctuary even beforePennsylvania was launched. East New Jersey wasalso acquired in later years by the Quakers, whosewings were clipped in 1702 when the crown com-bined the two Jerseys in a royal colony.

Swedish-tinged Delaware consisted of onlythree counties—two at high tide, the witticismgoes—and was named after Lord De La Warr, theharsh military governor who had arrived in Virginiain 1610. Harboring some Quakers, and closely asso-ciated with Penn’s prosperous colony, Delaware wasgranted its own assembly in 1703. But until theAmerican Revolution, it remained under the gover-nor of Pennsylvania.

The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies

The middle colonies—New York, New Jersey,Delaware, and Pennsylvania—enjoyed certain fea-tures in common.

In general, the soil was fertile and the expanseof land was broad, unlike rock-bestrewn New Eng-land. Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey cameto be known as the “bread colonies,” by virtue oftheir heavy exports of grain.

Rivers also played a vital role. Broad, languidstreams—notably the Susquehanna, the Delaware,and the Hudson—tapped the fur trade of the inte-rior and beckoned adventuresome spirits into thebackcountry. The rivers had few cascading water-falls, unlike New England’s, and hence presented lit-tle inducement to milling or manufacturing withwater-wheel power.

A surprising amount of industry nonethelesshummed in the middle colonies. Virginal forestsabounded for lumbering and shipbuilding. Thepresence of deep river estuaries and landlockedharbors stimulated both commerce and the growthof seaports, such as New York and Philadelphia.Even Albany, more than a hundred miles up theHudson, was a port of some consequence in colo-nial days.

The middle colonies were in many respectsmidway between New England and the southernplantation group. Except in aristocratic New York,the landholdings were generally intermediate insize—smaller than in the big-acreage South butlarger than in small-farm New England. Local government lay somewhere between the personal-ized town meeting of New England and the diffusedcounty government of the South. There were fewerindustries in the middle colonies than in New Eng-land, more than in the South.

Yet the middle colonies, which in some wayswere the most American part of America, couldclaim certain distinctions in their own right. Gener-ally speaking, the population was more ethnicallymixed than that of other settlements. The peoplewere blessed with an unusual degree of religious tol-eration and democratic control. Earnest and devoutQuakers, in particular, made a compassionate con-tribution to human freedom out of all proportion totheir numbers. Desirable land was more easilyacquired in the middle colonies than in New Eng-land or in the tidewater South. One result was that aconsiderable amount of economic and socialdemocracy prevailed, though less so in aristocraticNew York.

Modern-minded Benjamin Franklin, oftenregarded as the most representative American per-sonality of his era, was a child of the middlecolonies. Although it is true that Franklin was born aYankee in puritanical Boston, he entered Philadel-phia as a seventeen-year-old in 1720 with a loaf ofbread under each arm and immediately found acongenial home in the urbane, open atmosphere ofwhat was then North America’s biggest city. OnePennsylvanian later boasted that Franklin “came tolife at seventeen, in Philadelphia.”

By the time Franklin arrived in the City of Broth-erly Love, the American colonies were themselves“coming to life.” Population was growing robustly.Transportation and communication were graduallyimproving. The British, for the most part, continuedtheir hands-off policies, leaving the colonists tofashion their own local governments, run their ownchurches, and develop networks of intercolonialtrade. As people and products crisscrossed thecolonies with increasing frequency and in increas-ing volume, Americans began to realize that—farremoved from Mother England—they were notmerely surviving, but truly thriving.



A Seventeenth-Century Valuables Cabinet In1999 a boatyard worker on Cape Cod and his sister,a New Hampshire teacher, inherited a small(twenty-pound, sixteen and a half inch high) chestthat had always stood on their grandmother’s halltable, known in the family as the “Franklin Chest.”Eager to learn more about it, they set out to dis-cover the original owner, tracing their familygenealogy and consulting with furniture experts.In January 2000 this rare seventeenth-century cab-inetry, its full provenance now known, appearedon the auction block and sold for a record $2.4 mil-lion to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass-achusetts. No less extraordinary than the price wasthe history of its creator and its owners embodiedin the piece. Salem cabinetmaker James Symonds(1636–1726) had made the chest for his relatives,Joseph Pope (1650–1712) and Bathsheba Folger(1652–1726), to commemorate their 1679 mar-

riage. Symonds carved the Popes’ initials and thedate on the door of the cabinet. He also put elabo-rate S curves on the sides remarkably similar to theMannerist carved oak paneling produced in Nor-folk, England, from where his own cabinetmakerfather had emigrated. Behind the chest’s door areten drawers where the Popes would have kept jew-elry, money, deeds, and writing materials. Surelythey prized the chest as a sign of refinement to beshown off in their best room, a sentiment passeddown through the next thirteen generations evenas the Popes’ identities were lost. The chest mayhave become known as the “Franklin Chest”because Bathsheba was Benjamin Franklin’s aunt,but also because that identification appealed moreto descendants ashamed that the Quaker Popes,whose own parents had been persecuted for theirfaith, were virulent accusers during the Salemwitch trials of 1692.


Chronology

1517 Martin Luther begins Protestant Reformation

1536 John Calvin of Geneva publishes Institutes ofthe Christian Religion

1620 Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower to PlymouthBay

1624 Dutch found New Netherland

1629 Charles I dismisses Parliament and persecutes Puritans

1630 Puritans found Massachusetts Bay Colony

1635- Roger Williams convicted of heresy and 1636 founds Rhode Island colony

1635- Connecticut and New Haven colonies 1638 founded

1637 Pequot War

1638 Anne Hutchinson banished fromMassachusetts colony

1639 Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders drafted

1642-1648 English Civil War

1643 New England Confederation formed

1655 New Netherland conquers New Sweden

1664 England seizes New Netherland from DutchEast and West Jersey colonies founded

1675-1676 King Philip’s War

1681 William Penn founds Pennsylvania colony

1686 Royal authority creates Dominion of NewEngland

1688- Glorious Revolution overthrows Stuarts and 1689 Dominion of New England

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Europeanizing America or Americanizing Europe?

The history of discovery and colonization raisesperhaps the most fundamental question about

all American history. Should it be understood as theextension of European civilization into the NewWorld or as the gradual development of a uniquely“American” culture? An older school of thoughttended to emphasize the Europeanization of Amer-ica. Historians of that persuasion paid close atten-tion to the situation in Europe, particularly Englandand Spain, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.They also focused on the exportation of the valuesand institutions of the mother countries to the newlands in the western sea. Although some historiansalso examined the transforming effect of Americaon Europe, this approach, too, remained essentiallyEurocentric.

More recently, historians have concentrated onthe distinctiveness of America. The concern withEuropean origins has evolved into a comparativetreatment of European settlements in the NewWorld. England, Spain, Holland, and France nowattract more attention for the divergent kinds ofsocieties they fostered in America than for the waythey commonly pursued Old World ambitions in theNew. The newest trend to emerge is a transatlantichistory that views European empires and theirAmerican colonies as part of a process of culturalcross-fertilization affecting not only the coloniesbut Europe and Africa as well.

This less Eurocentric approach has alsochanged the way historians explain the colonialdevelopment of America. Rather than telling the

story of colonization as the imposition of European ways of life through “discovery” and “con-quest,” historians increasingly view the colonialperiod as one of “contact” and “adaptation”between European, African, and Native Americanways of life. Scholars including Richard White,Alfred Crosby, William Cronon, Karen Kupperman,and Timothy Silver have enhanced understandingof the cultural as well as the physical transforma-tions that resulted from contact. An environment offorests and meadows, for example, gave way to alandscape of fields and fences as Europeans soughtto replicate the agricultural villages they had knownin Europe. Aggressive deforestation even producedclimatic changes, as treeless tracts made for colderwinters, hotter summers, and earth-gouging floods.Ramon Gutierrez’s When Jesus Came, the CornMothers Went Away (1991) has expanded the colo-nial stage to include interactions between Spanishsettlers and Native Americans in the Southwest.

The variety of American societies that emergedout of the interaction of Europeans and NativeAmericans has also become better appreciated.Early histories by esteemed historians like PerryMiller exaggerated the extent to which the New Eng-land Puritan experience defined the essence ofAmerica. Not only did these historians overlooknon-English experiences, they failed to recognizethe diversity in motives, methods, and conse-quences that existed even within English coloniza-tion. The numbers alone tell an interesting story. By1700 about 220,000 English colonists had emigratedto the Caribbean, about 120,000 to the southernmainland colonies, and only about 40,000 to themiddle Atlantic and New England colonies(although by the mid-eighteenth century, thoseheaded for the latter destination would account formore than half the total). Studies such as Richard S.

Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves (1972) emphasize theimportance of the Caribbean in early English colo-nization efforts and make clear that the desire foreconomic gain, more than the quest for religiousfreedom, fueled the migration to the Caribbeanislands. Similarly, Edmund S. Morgan’s AmericanSlavery, American Freedom (1975) stresses the role ofeconomic ambition in explaining the English peo-pling of the Chesapeake and the eventual importa-tion of African slaves to that region. Studies byBernard Bailyn and David Hackett Fisher demon-strate that there was scarcely a “typical” Englishmigrant to the New World. English colonistsmigrated both singly and in families, and for eco-nomic, social, political, and religious reasons.

Recent studies have also paid more attention tothe conflicts that emerged out of this diversity insettler populations and colonial societies. This per-spective emphasizes the contests for economic andpolitical supremacy within the colonies, such as theefforts of the Massachusetts Bay elite to ward off thechallenges of religious “heretics” and the pressuresthat an increasingly restless lower class put onwealthy merchants and large landowners. Nowherewas internal conflict so prevalent as in the ethni-cally diverse middle colonies, where factionalantagonisms became the defining feature of publiclife.

The picture of colonial America that is emergingfrom all this new scholarship is of a societyunique—and diverse—from inception. No longersimply Europe transplanted, American colonialsociety by 1700 is now viewed as an outgrowth of many intertwining roots—of different Europeanand African heritages, of varied encounters withnative peoples and a wilderness environment, andof complicated mixtures of settler populations, eachwith its own distinctive set of ambitions.

Varying Viewpoints 65


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4

American Life in theSeventeenth Century

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1607–1692

Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before intheir preparation . . . , they had now no friends to wellcome them,

nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, nohouses or much less towns to repaire too, to seeke for succore.

WILLIAM BRADFORD, OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION, C. 1630

As the seventeenth century wore on, the crudeencampments of the first colonists slowly gave

way to permanent settlements. Durable and distinc-tive ways of life emerged, as Europeans and Africansadapted to the New World, and as Native Americansadapted to the newcomers. Even the rigid doctrinesof Puritanism softened somewhat in response to thecircumstances of life in America. And though all thecolonies remained tied to England, and all werestitched tightly into the fabric of an Atlantic econ-omy, regional differences continued to crystallize,notably the increasing importance of slave labor tothe southern way of life.

The Unhealthy Chesapeake

Life in the American wilderness was nasty, brutish,and short for the earliest Chesapeake settlers.Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid took a cruel toll,

cutting ten years off the life expectancy of newcom-ers from England. Half the people born in early Vir-ginia and Maryland did not survive to celebratetheir twentieth birthdays. Few of the remaining halflived to see their fiftieth—or even their fortieth, ifthey were women.

The disease-ravaged settlements of the Chesa-peake grew only slowly in the seventeenth century,mostly through fresh immigration from England.The great majority of immigrants were single men intheir late teens and early twenties, and most per-ished soon after arrival. Surviving males competedfor the affections of the extremely scarce women,whom they outnumbered nearly six to one in 1650and still outnumbered by three to two at the end ofthe century. Eligible women did not remain singlefor long.

Families were both few and fragile in this fero-cious environment. Most men could not find mates.Most marriages were destroyed by the death of a

66

partner within seven years. Scarcely any childrenreached adulthood under the care of two parents,and almost no one knew a grandparent. Weak familyties were reflected in the many pregnancies amongunmarried young girls. In one Maryland county,more than a third of all brides were already preg-nant when they wed.

Yet despite these hardships, the Chesapeakecolonies struggled on. The native-born inhabitantseventually acquired immunity to the killer diseasesthat had ravaged the original immigrants. The pres-ence of more women allowed more families to form,and by the end of the seventeenth century the whitepopulation of the Chesapeake was growing on thebasis of its own birthrate. As the eighteenth centuryopened, Virginia, with some fifty-nine thousandpeople, was the most populous colony. Maryland,with about thirty thousand, was the third largest(after Massachusetts).

The Tobacco Economy

Although unhealthy for human life, the Chesapeakewas immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation.Profit-hungry settlers often planted tobacco to sellbefore they planted corn to eat. But intense tobaccocultivation quickly exhausted the soil, creating anearly insatiable demand for virgin land. Relent-lessly seeking fresh fields to plant in tobacco, com-mercial growers plunged ever farther up the rivervalleys, provoking ever more Indian attacks.

Leaf-laden ships annually hauled some 1.5 mil-lion pounds of tobacco out of Chesapeake Bay by

the 1630s and almost 40 million pounds a year bythe end of the century. This enormous productiondepressed prices, but colonial Chesapeake tobaccogrowers responded to falling prices in the familiarway of farmers: by planting still more acres totobacco and bringing still more product to market.

More tobacco meant more labor, but where wasit to come from? Families procreated too slowly toprovide it by natural population increase. Indiansdied too quickly on contact with whites to be a reli-able labor force. African slaves cost too muchmoney. But England still had a “surplus” of dis-placed farmers, desperate for employment. Many ofthem, as “indentured servants,” voluntarily mort-gaged the sweat of their bodies for several years toChesapeake masters. In exchange they receivedtransatlantic passage and eventual “freedom dues,”including a few barrels of corn, a suit of clothes, andperhaps a small parcel of land.

Both Virginia and Maryland employed the“headright” system to encourage the importation ofservant workers. Under its terms, whoever paid thepassage of a laborer received the right to acquirefifty acres of land. Masters—not the servants them-selves—thus reaped the benefits of landownershipfrom the headright system. Some masters, men whoalready had at least modest financial means, soon

The Importance of Tobacco 67

An agent for the Virginia Company inLondon submitted the following descriptionof the Virginia colony in 1622:

“I found the plantations generally seated uponmere salt marshes full of infectious bogs andmuddy creeks and lakes, and therebysubjected to all those inconveniences anddiseases which are so commonly found in themost unsound and most unhealthy parts ofEngland.”

parlayed their investments in servants into vastholdings in real estate. They became the great mer-chant-planters, lords of sprawling riverfront estatesthat came to dominate the agriculture and com-merce of the southern colonies. Ravenous for bothlabor and land, Chesapeake planters brought some100,000 indentured servants to the region by 1700.These “white slaves” represented more than three-quarters of all European immigrants to Virginia andMaryland in the seventeenth century.

Indentured servants led a hard but hopeful lifein the early days of the Chesapeake settlements.They looked forward to becoming free and acquir-ing land of their own after completing their term ofservitude. But as prime land became scarcer, mas-ters became increasingly resistant to including landgrants in “freedom dues.” The servants’ lot grewharsher as the seventeenth century wore on. Misbe-having servants, such as a housemaid who becamepregnant or a laborer who killed a hog, might bepunished with an extended term of service. Evenafter formal freedom was granted, penniless freedworkers often had little choice but to hire them-selves out for pitifully low wages to their formermasters.

Frustrated Freemen and Bacon’s Rebellion

An accumulating mass of footloose, impoverishedfreemen was drifting discontentedly about theChesapeake region by the late seventeenth century.Mostly single young men, they were frustrated bytheir broken hopes of acquiring land, as well as bytheir gnawing failure to find single women to marry.

The swelling numbers of these wretched bache-lors rattled the established planters. The Virginiaassembly in 1670 disfranchised most of the landlessknockabouts, accusing them of “having little inter-est in the country” and causing “tumults at the elec-tion to the disturbance of his majesty’s peace.”Virginia’s Governor William Berkeley lamented hislot as ruler of this rabble: “How miserable that manis that governs a people where six parts of seven atleast are poor, endebted, discontented, and armed.”

Berkeley’s misery soon increased. About a thou-sand Virginians broke out of control in 1676, led by a twenty-nine-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon.Many of the rebels were frontiersmen who had beenforced into the untamed backcountry in search of

arable land. They fiercely resented Berkeley’sfriendly policies toward the Indians, whose thrivingfur trade the governor monopolized. When Berkeleyrefused to retaliate for a series of savage Indianattacks on frontier settlements, Bacon and his fol-lowers took matters into their own hands. They fellmurderously upon the Indians, friendly and hostilealike, chased Berkeley from Jamestown, and put thetorch to the capital. Chaos swept the raw colony, as frustrated freemen and resentful servants—described as “a rabble of the basest sort of people”—went on a rampage of plundering and pilfering.

As this civil war in Virginia ground on, Baconsuddenly died of disease, like so many of his fellowcolonists. Berkeley thereupon crushed the uprisingwith brutal cruelty, hanging more than twentyrebels. Back in England Charles II complained,“That old fool has put to death more people in thatnaked country than I did here for the murder of myfather.”

The distant English king could scarcely imaginethe depths of passion and fear that Bacon’s Rebel-lion excited in Virginia. Bacon had ignited the smol-dering unhappiness of landless former servants,and he had pitted the hardscrabble backcountryfrontiersmen against the haughty gentry of the

68 CHAPTER 4 American Life in the Seventeenth Century, 1607–1692

Nathaniel Bacon assailed Virginia’s GovernorWilliam Berkeley in 1676

“for having protected, favored, andemboldened the Indians against HisMajesty’s loyal subjects, never contriving,requiring, or appointing any due or propermeans of satisfaction for their manyinvasions, robberies, and murderscommitted upon us.”

For his part, Governor Berkeley declared,

“I have lived thirty-four years amongst you[Virginians], as uncorrupt and diligent asever [a] Governor was, [while] Bacon is a manof two years amongst you, his person andqualities unknown to most of you, and to allmen else, by any virtuous act that ever Iheard of. . . . I will take counsel of wiser menthan myself, but Mr. Bacon has none abouthim but the lowest of the people.”

An Indentured Servant’s Contract, 1746 Legaldocuments, such as this contract signed in Virginia in 1746, not only provide evidence aboutthe ever-changing rules by which societies haveregulated their affairs, but also furnish rich infor-mation about the conditions of life and the termsof human relationships in the past. This agree-ment between Thomas Clayton and James Griffinprovides a reminder that not all indentured ser-vants in early America came from abroad. Indentured servitude could be equivalent to anapprenticeship, in which a young person tradedseveral years of service to a master in exchange forinstruction in the master’s craft. Here Claytonpledges himself to five years in Griffin’s employ inreturn for a promise to initiate the young man intothe "Mystery" of the master’s craft. Why might themaster’s trade be described as a "mystery"? Fromthe evidence of this contract, what are the princi-pal objectives of each of the parties to it? Whatproblems does each anticipate? What obligationsdoes each assume? What does the consent of Clayton’s mother to the contract suggest about theyoung man’s situation?


tidewater plantations. The rebellion was now sup-pressed, but these tensions remained. Lordlyplanters, surrounded by a still-seething sea of malcontents, anxiously looked about for less trou-blesome laborers to toil in the restless tobacco kingdom. Their eyes soon lit on Africa.

Colonial Slavery

Perhaps 10 million Africans were carried in chainsto the New World in the three centuries or so follow-ing Columbus’s landing. Only about 400,000 of themended up in North America, the great majority arriv-ing after 1700. Most of the early human cargoes

were hauled to Spanish and Portuguese SouthAmerica or to the sugar-rich West Indies.

Africans had been brought to Jamestown asearly as 1619, but as late as 1670 they numberedonly about 2,000 in Virginia (out of a total popula-tion of some 35,000 persons) and about 7 percent of the 50,000 people in the southern plantationcolonies as a whole. Hard-pinched white colonists,struggling to stay alive and to hack crude clearingsout of the forests, could not afford to pay high pricesfor slaves who might die soon after arrival. Whiteservants might die, too, but they were far less costly.

Drastic change came in the 1680s. Rising wagesin England shrank the pool of penniless folk willing togamble on a new life or an early death as indenturedservants in America. At the same time, the large


Estimated Slave Imports to the New World, 1601–1810

17th Century 18th Century Total Percent

Spanish America 292,500 578,600 871,100 11.7Brazil 560,000 1,891,400 2,451,400 33British Caribbean 263,700 1,401,000 1,664,700 22.5Dutch Caribbean 40,000 460,000 500,000 6.7French Caribbean 155,800 1,348,400 1,504,200 20.3Danish Caribbean 4,000 24,000 28,000 .4British North America 10,000 390,000 400,000 5.4

and future United StatesTOTAL 7,419,400 100

This table clearly shows the huge concentration of the slave system in the Caribbean and South America. British North America’s southern colonies constituted the extreme northern periphery of this system.[Source: Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969)]

planters were growing increasingly fearful of the mul-titudes of potentially mutinous former servants intheir midst. By the mid-1680s, for the first time, blackslaves outnumbered white servants among the plan-tation colonies’ new arrivals. In 1698 the Royal African

Company, first chartered in 1672, lost its crown-granted monopoly on carrying slaves to the colonies.Enterprising Americans, especially Rhode Islanders,rushed to cash in on the lucrative slave trade, and thesupply of slaves rose steeply. More than ten thousandAfricans were pushed ashore in America in thedecade after 1700, and tens of thousands more in thenext half-century. Blacks accounted for nearly halfthe population of Virginia by 1750. In South Carolinathey outnumbered whites two to one.

Most of the slaves who reached North Americacame from the west coast of Africa, especially thearea stretching from present-day Senegal to Angola.They were originally captured by African coastaltribes, who traded them in crude markets on theshimmering tropical beaches to itinerant Euro-pean—and American—flesh merchants. Usuallybranded and bound, the captives were herdedaboard sweltering ships for the gruesome “middlepassage,” on which death rates ran as high as 20 per-cent. Terrified survivors were eventually shovedonto auction blocks in New World ports like New-port, Rhode Island, or Charleston, South Carolina,

The Origins of American Slavery 71

The Mennonites of Germantown,Pennsylvania, recorded the earliest knownprotest against slavery in America in 1688:

“There is a saying, that we should do to allmen like as we will be done ourselves. . . .But to bring men hither, or to rob and sellthem against their will, we stand against. . . .Pray, what thing in the world can be doneworse towards us, than if men should rob orsteal us away, and sell us for slaves tostrange countries, separating husbands fromtheir wives and children?”

Equator

ATLANTIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

CaribbeanSea

PACIFICOCEAN

UNITED STATES

BRAZIL

SENEGALGAMBIA

GUINEA BISSAU SIERRALEONE

GUINEA

LIBERIA

BURKINAFASO

NIGERIA

CAMEROONEQUITORIALGUINEA

GABONCONGO

ANGOLA

GHANA TOGO

CÔTED'IVOIRE

BENIN

WESTINDIES WEST AFRICA

A F R I C A

S O U T HA M E R I C A

Charleston

Sources of Slaves

Present-day boundariesof African countries

Main Sources of African Slaves, c. 1500–1800 The three centuries of the “African diaspora” scatteredblacks all over the New World, with about 400,000 coming to North America.

where a giant slave market traded in human miseryfor more than a century.

A few of the earliest African immigrants gainedtheir freedom, and some even became slaveownersthemselves. But as the number of Africans in theirmidst increased dramatically toward the end of theseventeenth century, white colonists reacted re-morselessly to this supposed racial threat.

Earlier in the century the legal differencebetween a slave and a servant was unclear. But nowthe law began to make sharp distinctions betweenthe two—largely on the basis of race. Beginning inVirginia in 1662, statutes appeared that formallydecreed the iron conditions of slavery for blacks.These earliest “slave codes” made blacks and theirchildren the property (or “chattels”) for life of theirwhite masters. Some colonies made it a crime toteach a slave to read or write. Not even conversion toChristianity could qualify a slave for freedom. Thusdid the God-fearing whites put the fear of God intotheir hapless black laborers. Slavery might havebegun in America for economic reasons, but by theend of the seventeenth century, it was clear thatracial discrimination also powerfully molded theAmerican slave system.

Africans in America

In the deepest South, slave life was especiallysevere. The climate was hostile to health, and thelabor was life-draining. The widely scattered SouthCarolina rice and indigo plantations were lonelyhells on earth where gangs of mostly male Africanstoiled and perished. Only fresh imports could sus-tain the slave population under these loathsomeconditions.

Blacks in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake re-gion had a somewhat easier lot. Tobacco was a lessphysically demanding crop than those of the deeperSouth. Tobacco plantations were larger and closer toone another than rice plantations. The size and prox-imity of these plantations permitted the slaves morefrequent contact with friends and relatives. By about1720 the proportion of females in the Chesapeakeslave population had begun to rise, making family lifepossible. The captive black population of the Chesa-peake area soon began to grow not only through newimports but also through its own fertility—making itone of the few slave societies in history to perpetuateitself by its own natural reproduction.


Native-born African-Americans contributed tothe growth of a stable and distinctive slave culture, amixture of African and American elements ofspeech, religion, and folkways (see “Makers ofAmerica: From African to African-American,” pp. 74–75). On the sea islands off South Carolina’scoast, blacks evolved a unique language, Gullah(probably a corruption of Angola, the African regionfrom which many of them had come). It blendedEnglish with several African languages, includingYoruba, Ibo, and Hausa. Through it many Africanwords have passed into American speech—such asgoober (peanut), gumbo (okra), and voodoo (witch-craft). The ringshout, a West African religious danceperformed by shuffling in a circle while answering apreacher’s shouts, was brought to colonial Americaby slaves and eventually contributed to the develop-ment of jazz. The banjo and the bongo drum wereother African contributions to American culture.

Slaves also helped mightily to build the countrywith their labor. A few became skilled artisans—car-penters, bricklayers, and tanners. But chiefly theyperformed the sweaty toil of clearing swamps, grub-bing out trees, and other menial tasks. Condemnedto life under the lash, slaves naturally pined for free-dom. A slave revolt erupted in New York City in 1712that cost the lives of a dozen whites and caused theexecution of twenty-one blacks, some of themburned at the stake over a slow fire. More than fiftyresentful South Carolina blacks along the StonoRiver exploded in revolt in 1739 and tried to marchto Spanish Florida, only to be stopped by the localmilitia. But in the end the slaves in the South provedto be a more manageable labor force than the white

indentured servants they gradually replaced. Noslave uprising in American history matched thescale of Bacon’s Rebellion.

Southern Society

As slavery spread, the gaps in the South’s socialstructure widened. The rough equality of povertyand disease of the early days was giving way to adefined hierarchy of wealth and status in the earlyeighteenth century. At the top of this southern socialladder perched a small but powerful covey of greatplanters. Owning gangs of slaves and vast domainsof land, the planters ruled the region’s economy andvirtually monopolized political power. A clutch ofextended clans—such as the Fitzhughs, the Lees,and the Washingtons—possessed among them hori-zonless tracts of Virginia real estate, and togetherthey dominated the House of Burgesses. Just beforethe Revolutionary War, 70 percent of the leaders ofthe Virginia legislature came from families estab-lished in Virginia before 1690—the famed “first fam-ilies of Virginia,” or “FFVs.”

Yet, legend to the contrary, these great seven-teenth-century merchant planters were not silk-swathed cavaliers gallantly imitating the ways ofEnglish country gentlemen. They did eventuallybuild stately riverfront manors, occasionally rode tothe hounds, and some of them even cultivated thearts and accumulated distinguished libraries. Butfor the most part, they were a hard-working, busi-nesslike lot, laboring long hours over the problems

African-American Culture 73

From African to African-American

Dragged in chains from West African shores, thefirst African-Americans struggled to preserve

their diverse heritages from the ravages of slavery.Their children, the first generation of American-bornslaves, melded these various African traditions—Guinean, Ibo, Yoruba, Angolan—into a distinctiveAfrican-American culture. Their achievement sus-tained them during the cruelties of enslavement andhas endured to enrich American life to this day.

With the arrival of the first Africans in the seven-teenth century, a cornucopia of African traditionspoured into the New World: handicrafts and skills innumerous trades; a plethora of languages, musics,and cuisines; even rice-planting techniques thatconquered the inhospitable soil of South Carolina. Itwas North America’s rice paddies, tilled by experi-enced West Africans, that introduced rice into the

English diet and furnished so many English tableswith the sticky staple.

These first American slaves were mostly males.Upon arrival they were sent off to small isolatedfarms, where social contact with other Africans, espe-cially women, was an unheard-of luxury. Yet theirlegal status was at first uncertain. A few slaves wereable to buy their freedom in the seventeenth century.One, Anthony Johnson of Northampton County, Vir-ginia, actually became a slaveholder himself.

But by the beginning of the eighteenth century,a settled slave society was emerging in the southerncolonies. Laws tightened; slave traders stepped uptheir deliveries of human cargo; large plantationsformed. Most significantly, a new generation ofAmerican-born slaves joined their forebears at laborin the fields. By 1740 large groups of slaves livedtogether on sprawling plantations, the American-born outnumbered the African-born, and theimportation of African slaves slowed.

74

Forging a common culture and finding a psy-chological weapon with which to resist their mas-ters and preserve their dignity were dauntingchallenges for American-born slaves. Plantation lifewas beastly, an endless cycle of miserable toil in thefield or foundry from sunup to sundown. Femaleslaves were forced to perform double duty. After aday’s backbreaking work, women were expected tosit up for hours spinning, weaving, or sewing toclothe themselves and their families. Enslavedwomen also lived in constant fear of sexual exploita-tion by conscienceless masters.

Yet eventually a vibrant slave culture began toflower. And precisely because of the diversity ofAfrican peoples represented in America, the culturethat emerged was a uniquely New World creation. Itderived from no single African model and incorpo-rated many Western elements, though often withsignificant modifications.

Slave religion illustrates this pattern. Cut offfrom their native African religions, most slavesbecame Christians but fused elements of Africanand Western traditions and drew their own conclu-sions from Scripture. White Christians might pointto Christ’s teachings of humility and obedience toencourage slaves to “stay in their place,” but blackChristians emphasized God’s role in freeing theHebrews from slavery and saw Jesus as the Messiahwho would deliver them from bondage. They alsooften retained an African definition of heaven as

a place where they would be reunited with theirancestors.

At their Sunday and evening-time prayer meet-ings, slaves also patched African remnants ontoconventional Christian ritual. Black Methodists, forexample, ingeniously evaded the traditionalMethodist ban on dancing as sinful: three or fourpeople would stand still in a ring, clapping handsand beating time with their feet (but never crossingtheir legs, thus not officially “dancing”), while otherswalked around the ring, singing in unison. This“ringshout” derived from African practices; modernAmerican dances, including the Charleston, in turnderived from this African-American hybrid.

Christian slaves also often used outwardly reli-gious songs as encoded messages about escape orrebellion. “Good News, the Chariot’s Comin’” mightsound like an innocent hymn about divine deliver-ance, but it could also announce the arrival of aguide to lead fugitives safely to the North. Similarly,“Wade in the Water” taught fleeing slaves one way ofcovering their trail. The “Negro spirituals” that tookshape as a distinctive form of American music thushad their origins in both Christianity and slavery.

Indeed, much American music was born in theslave quarters from African importations. Jazz, withits meandering improvisations and complex synco-pations and rhythms, constitutes the most famousexample. But this rich cultural harvest came at thecost of generations of human agony.

75

of plantation management. Few problems weremore vexatious than the unruly, often surly, ser-vants. One Virginia governor had such difficultykeeping his servants sober that he struck a dealallowing them to get drunk the next day if theywould only lay off the liquor long enough to lookafter his guests at a celebration of the queen’s birth-day in 1711.

Beneath the planters—far beneath them inwealth, prestige, and political power—were the smallfarmers, the largest social group. They tilled theirmodest plots and might own one or two slaves, butthey lived a ragged, hand-to-mouth existence. Stilllower on the social scale were the landless whites,most of them luckless former indentured servants.Under them were those persons still serving out theterm of their indenture. Their numbers graduallydiminished as black slaves increasingly replacedwhite indentured servants toward the end of the seventeenth century. The oppressed black slaves, ofcourse, remained enchained in society’s basement.

Few cities sprouted in the colonial South, andconsequently an urban professional class, includinglawyers and financiers, was slow to emerge. South-ern life revolved around the great plantations, dis-

tantly isolated from one another. Waterways pro-vided the principal means of transportation. Roadswere so wretched that in bad weather funeral par-ties could not reach church burial grounds—anobstacle that accounts for the development of fam-ily burial plots in the South, a practice unlike any-thing in old England or New England.

The New England Family

Nature smiled more benignly on pioneer New Eng-landers than on their disease-plagued fellowcolonists to the south. Clean water and cool temper-atures retarded the spread of killer microbes. Instark contrast to the fate of Chesapeake immigrants,settlers in seventeenth-century New England addedten years to their life spans by migrating from theOld World. One settler claimed that “a sip of NewEngland’s air is better than a whole draft of old Eng-land’s ale.” The first generations of Puritan colonistsenjoyed, on the average, about seventy years on thisearth—not very different from the life expectancy ofpresent-day Americans.


In further contrast with the Chesapeake, NewEnglanders tended to migrate not as single individ-uals but as families, and the family remained at thecenter of New England life. Almost from the outset,New England’s population grew from natural repro-ductive increase. The people were remarkably fer-tile, even if the soil was not.

Early marriage encouraged the booming birth-rate. Women typically wed by their early twentiesand produced babies about every two years there-after until menopause. Ceaseless childbearingdrained the vitality of many pioneer women, as theweather-eroded colonial tombstones eloquentlyreveal. A number of the largest families were borneby several mothers, though claims about the fre-quency of death in childbirth have probably beenexaggerated. But the dread of death in the birthingbed haunted many women, and it was small wonderthat they came to fear pregnancy. A married womancould expect to experience up to ten pregnanciesand rear as many as eight surviving children. Massachusetts governor William Phips was one oftwenty-seven children, all by the same mother. ANew England woman might well have dependentchildren living in her household from the earliestdays of her marriage up until the day of her death,and child raising became in essence her full-timeoccupation.

The longevity of the New Englanders con-tributed to family stability. Children grew up in nur-turing environments where they were expected tolearn habits of obedience, above all. They receivedguidance not only from their parents but from theirgrandparents as well. This novel intergenerationalcontinuity has inspired the observation that NewEngland “invented” grandparents. Family stabilitywas reflected in low premarital pregnancy rates(again in contrast with the Chesapeake) and in thegenerally strong, tranquil social structure character-istic of colonial New England.

Still other contrasts came to differentiate thesouthern and New England ways of life. Oddlyenough, the fragility of southern families advancedthe economic security of southern women, especiallyof women’s property rights. Because southern menfrequently died young, leaving widows with smallchildren to support, the southern colonies generallyallowed married women to retain separate title to

Pioneering New Englanders 77

New England early acquired a reputation asa healthful environment. Urging his fellowEnglishmen to emigrate to MassachusettsBay Colony in 1630, the Reverend John Whitedescribed New England (somewhatfancifully) as follows:

“No country yields a more propitious air forour temper than New England. . . . Many ofour people that have found themselvesalways weak and sickly at home, havebecome strong and healthy there: perhapsby the dryness of the air and constanttemper[ature] of it, which seldom variesfrom cold to heat, as it does with us. . . .Neither are the natives at any time troubledwith pain of teeth, soreness of eyes, or achein their limbs.”

their property and gave widows the right to inherittheir husband’s estates. But in New England, Puritanlawmakers worried that recognizing women’s separate property rights would undercut the unity ofmarried persons by acknowledging conflicting inter-ests between husband and wife. New England womenusually gave up their property rights, therefore, whenthey married. Yet in contrast to old England, the lawsof New England made secure provision for the prop-erty rights of widows—and even extended importantprotections to women within marriage.

“A true wife accounts subjection her honor,”one Massachusetts Puritan leader declared, ex-pressing a sentiment then common in Europe aswell as America. But in the New World, a rudimen-tary conception of women’s rights as individualswas beginning to appear in the seventeenth century.Women still could not vote, and the popular attitudepersisted that they were morally weaker than men—a belief rooted in the biblical tale of Eve’s treacheryin the Garden of Eden. But a husband’s power overhis wife was not absolute. The New England author-ities could and did intervene to restrain abusivespouses. One man was punished for kicking his wifeoff a stool; another was disciplined for drawing an“uncivil” portrait of his mate in the snow. Womenalso had some spheres of autonomy. Midwifery—assisting with childbirths—was a virtual female

monopoly, and midwives often fostered networks ofwomen bonded by the common travails of mother-hood. One Boston midwife alone delivered overthree thousand babies.

Above all, the laws of Puritan New Englandsought to defend the integrity of marriages. Divorcewas exceedingly rare, and the authorities commonlyordered separated couples to reunite. Outrightabandonment was among the very few permissiblegrounds for divorce. Adultery was another. Con-victed adulterers—especially if they were women—were whipped in public and forced forever after towear the capital letter “A” cut out in cloth and sewedon their outer garment—the basis for NathanielHawthorne’s famous 1850 tale, The Scarlet Letter.

Life in the New England Towns

Sturdy New Englanders evolved a tightly knit soci-ety, the basis of which was small villages and farms.This development was natural in a people anchoredby geography and hemmed in by the Indians, theFrench, and the Dutch. Puritanism likewise madefor unity of purpose—and for concern about themoral health of the whole community. It was noaccident that the nineteenth-century crusade for


abolishing black slavery—with Massachusetts agita-tors at the forefront—sprang in some degree fromthe New England conscience, with its Puritan roots.

In the Chesapeake region, the expansion of set-tlement was somewhat random and was usuallyundertaken by lone-wolf planters on their own ini-tiative, but New England society grew in a moreorderly fashion. New towns were legally charteredby the colonial authorities, and the distribution ofland was entrusted to the steady hands of sober-minded town fathers, or “proprietors.” After receiv-ing a grant of land from the colonial legislature, theproprietors moved themselves and their families tothe designated place and laid out their town. It usu-ally consisted of a meetinghouse, which served asboth the place of worship and the town hall, sur-rounded by houses. Also marked out was a villagegreen, where the militia could drill. Each familyreceived several parcels of land, including a woodlot

for fuel, a tract suitable for growing crops, andanother for pasturing animals.

Towns of more than fifty families were requiredto provide elementary education, and a majority ofthe adults knew how to read and write. As early as1636, just eight years after the colony’s founding, theMassachusetts Puritans established Harvard Col-lege, today the oldest corporation in America, totrain local boys for the ministry. Only in 1693, eighty-six years after staking out Jamestown, did the Virgini-ans establish their first college, William and Mary.

Puritans ran their own churches, and democ-racy in Congregational Church government led logi-cally to democracy in political government. Thetown meeting, in which the adult males mettogether and each man voted, was a showcase and aclassroom for democracy. New England villagersfrom the outset gathered regularly in their meeting-houses to elect their officials, appoint schoolmas-ters, and discuss such mundane matters as roadrepairs. The town meeting, observed Thomas Jeffer-son, was “the best school of political liberty theworld ever saw.”

The Half-Way Covenant and the Salem Witch Trials

Yet worries plagued the God-fearing pioneers ofthese tidy New England settlements. The pressure of a growing population was gradually dispersing

The New England Character 79

The Massachusetts School Law of 1647stated,

“It being one chief project of the old deluder,Satan, to keep men from the knowledge ofthe Scriptures, as in former times by keepingthem in an unknown tongue, it is thereforeordered that every township in thisjurisdiction, after the Lord has increasedthem [in] number to fifty householders, shallthen forthwith appoint one within their townto teach all such children as shall resort tohim to write and read, whose wages shall bepaid either by the parents or masters of suchchildren, or by the inhabitants in general.”

the Puritans onto outlying farms, far from the con-trol of church and neighbors. And although the coreof Puritan belief still burned brightly, the passage oftime was dampening the first generation’s flamingreligious zeal. About the middle of the seventeenthcentury, a new form of sermon began to be heardfrom Puritan pulpits—the “jeremiad.” Taking theircue from the doom-saying Old Testament prophetJeremiah, earnest preachers scolded parishionersfor their waning piety. Especially alarming was theapparent decline in conversions—testimonials byindividuals that they had received God’s grace andtherefore deserved to be admitted to the church asmembers of the elect. Troubled ministers in 1662announced a new formula for church membership,

the Half-Way Covenant. This new arrangementmodified the “covenant,” or the agreement betweenthe church and its adherents, to admit to baptism—but not “full communion”—the unconverted chil-dren of existing members. By conferring partialmembership rights in the once-exclusive Puritancongregations, the Half-Way Covenant weakenedthe distinction between the “elect” and others, fur-ther diluting the spiritual purity of the original set-tlers’ godly community.

The Half-Way Covenant dramatized the diffi-culty of maintaining at fever pitch the religiousdevotion of the founding generation. Jeremiadscontinued to thunder from the pulpits, but as timewent on, the doors of the Puritan churches swungfully open to all comers, whether converted or not.This widening of church membership graduallyerased the distinction between the “elect” and othermembers of society. In effect, strict religious puritywas sacrificed somewhat to the cause of wider reli-gious participation. Interestingly, from about thistime onward, women were in the majority in thePuritan congregations.

Women also played a prominent role in one of New England’s most frightening religious episodes.A group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts,claimed to have been bewitched by certain olderwomen. A hysterical “witch hunt” ensued, leading tothe legal lynching in 1692 of twenty individuals, nine-teen of whom were hanged and one of whom waspressed to death. Two dogs were also hanged.

Larger-scale witchcraft persecutions were thencommon in Europe, and several outbreaks hadalready flared forth in the colonies—often directed atproperty-owning women. But the reign of horror inSalem grew not only from the superstitions and prej-udices of the age but also from the unsettled socialand religious conditions of the rapidly evolving Mas-sachusetts village. Most of the accused witches camefrom families associated with Salem’s burgeoningmarket economy; their accusers came largely fromsubsistence farming families in Salem’s hinterland.The episode thus reflected the widening social strati-fication of New England, as well as the fear of manyreligious traditionalists that the Puritan heritage wasbeing eclipsed by Yankee commercialism.

The witchcraft hysteria eventually ended in 1693when the governor, alarmed by an accusation againsthis own wife and supported by the more responsiblemembers of the clergy, prohibited any further trialsand pardoned those already convicted. Twenty yearslater a penitent Massachusetts legislature annulled


the “convictions” of the “witches” and made repara-tions to their heirs. The Salem witchcraft delusionmarked an all-time high in the American experienceof popular passions run wild. “Witch-hunting”passed into the American vocabulary as a metaphorfor the often dangerously irrational urge to find ascapegoat for social resentments.

The New England Way of Life

Oddly enough, the story of New England was largelywritten by rocks. The heavily glaciated soil wasstrewn with countless stones, many of which wereforced to the surface after a winter freeze. In a sensethe Puritans did not possess the soil; it possessedthem by shaping their character. Scratching a livingfrom the protesting earth was an early Americansuccess story. Back-bending toil put a premium onindustry and penny-pinching frugality, for whichNew Englanders became famous. Traditionallysharp Yankee traders, some of them palming offwooden nutmegs, made their mark. Connecticutcame in time to be called good-humoredly “the Nut-meg State.” Cynics exaggerated when they said thatthe three stages of progress in New England were “toget on, to get honor, to get honest.”

The grudging land also left colonial New Englandless ethnically mixed than its southern neighbors.European immigrants were not attracted in greatnumbers to a site where the soil was so stony—andthe sermons so sulfurous.

Climate likewise molded New England, wherethe summers were often uncomfortably hot and thewinters cruelly cold. Many early immigrants com-plained of the region’s extremes of weather. Yet thesoil and climate of New England eventually encour-aged a diversified agriculture and industry. Stapleproducts like tobacco did not flourish, as in theSouth. Black slavery, although attempted, could notexist profitably on small farms, especially where thesurest crop was stones. No broad, fertile expansescomparable to those in the tidewater South beck-oned people inland. The mountains ran fairly closeto the shore, and the rivers were generally short andrapid.

And just as the land shaped New Englanders, sothey shaped the land. The Native Americans had left an early imprint on the New England earth.They traditionally beat trails through the woods asthey migrated seasonally for hunting and fishing.

They periodically burned the woodlands to restoreleafy first-growth forests that would sustain the deerpopulation. The Indians recognized the right to usethe land, but the concept of exclusive, individualownership of the land was alien to them.

The English settlers had a different philosophy.They condemned the Indians for “wasting” theearth by underutilizing its bounty and used thislogic to justify their own expropriation of the landfrom the native inhabitants. Consistent with thisoutlook, the Europeans felt a virtual duty to“improve” the land by clearing woodlands for pas-turage and tillage, building roads and fences, andlaying out permanent settlements.

Some of the greatest changes resulted from theintroduction of livestock. The English brought pigs,horses, sheep, and cattle from Europe to the settle-ments. Because the growing herds needed evermore pastureland, the colonists were continuallyclearing forests. The animals’ voracious appetitesand heavy hooves compacted the soil, speeding ero-sion and flooding. In some cases the combinedeffect of these developments actually may havechanged local climates and made some areas evenmore susceptible to extremes of heat and cold.

Repelled by the rocks, the hardy New Englandersturned instinctively to their fine natural harbors.Hacking timber from their dense forests, theybecame experts in shipbuilding and commerce.They also ceaselessly exploited the self-perpetuatingcodfish lode off the coast of Newfoundland—thefishy “gold mines of New England,” which haveyielded more wealth than all the treasure chests ofthe Aztecs. During colonial days the wayfarer seldomgot far from the sound of the ax and hammer, or theswift rush of the ship down the ways to the sea, orthe smell of rotting fish. As a reminder of the impor-tance of fishing, a handsome replica of the “sacredcod” is proudly displayed to this day in the Massa-chusetts Statehouse in Boston.

The combination of Calvinism, soil, and climatein New England made for energy, purposefulness,sternness, stubbornness, self-reliance, and resource-fulness. Righteous New Englanders prided them-selves on being God’s chosen people. They longboasted that Boston was “the hub of the universe”—at least in spirit. A famous jingle of later days ran

I come from the city of BostonThe home of the bean and the codWhere the Cabots speak only to Lowells And the Lowells speak only to God.

Lifestyles of the Early Settlers 81

New England has had an incalculable impact onthe rest of the nation. Ousted by their sterile soil,thousands of New Englanders scattered from Ohioto Oregon and even Hawaii. They sprinkled the landwith new communities modeled on the orderly NewEngland town, with its central green and tidyschoolhouse, and its simple town-meeting democ-racy. “Yankee ingenuity,” originally fostered by theflinty fields and comfortless climate of New Eng-land, came to be claimed by all Americans as aproud national trait. And the fabled “New Englandconscience,” born of the steadfast Puritan heritage,left a legacy of high idealism in the national charac-ter and inspired many later reformers.

The Early Settlers’ Days and Ways

The cycles of the seasons and the sun set the sched-ules of all the earliest American colonists, men aswell as women, blacks as well as whites. The over-whelming majority of colonists were farmers. Theyplanted in the spring, tended their crops in the sum-mer, harvested in the fall, and prepared in the winterto begin the cycle anew. They usually rose at dawnand went to bed at dusk. Chores might be performedafter nightfall only if they were “worth the candle,” aphrase that has persisted in American speech.

Women, slave or free, on southern plantationsor northern farms, wove, cooked, cleaned, andcared for children. Men cleared land; fenced,planted, and cropped it; cut firewood; andbutchered livestock as needed. Children helpedwith all these tasks, while picking up such schoolingas they could.

Life was humble but comfortable by contempo-rary standards. Compared to most seventeenth-century Europeans, Americans lived in affluentabundance. Land was relatively cheap, thoughsomewhat less available in the planter-dominatedSouth than elsewhere. In the northern and middlecolonies, an acre of virgin soil cost about what Amer-ican carpenters could earn in one day as wages,which were roughly three times those of theirEnglish counterparts.

“Dukes don’t emigrate,” the saying goes, for ifpeople enjoy wealth and security, they are not likelyto risk exposing their lives in the wilderness. Simi-larly, the very poorest members of a society may notpossess even the modest means needed to pull upstakes and seek a fresh start in life. Accordingly,most white migrants to early colonial America cameneither from the aristocracy nor from the dregs ofEuropean society—with the partial exception of theimpoverished indentured servants.

Crude frontier life did not in any case permit theflagrant display of class distinctions, and seven-


teenth-century society in all the colonies had a cer-tain simple sameness to it, especially in the moreegalitarian New England and middle colonies. Yetmany settlers, who considered themselves to be ofthe “better sort,” tried to re-create on a modifiedscale the social structure they had known in the OldWorld. To some extent they succeeded, thoughyeasty democratic forces frustrated their full tri-umph. Resentment against upper-class pretensionshelped to spark outbursts like Bacon’s Rebellion of1676 in Virginia and the uprising of Maryland’sProtestants toward the end of the seventeenth cen-tury. In New York animosity between lordly land-holders and aspiring merchants fueled Leisler’s

Rebellion, an ill-starred and bloody insurgence thatrocked New York City from 1689 to 1691.

For their part, would-be American blue bloodsresented the pretensions of the “meaner sort” andpassed laws to try to keep them in their place. Mas-sachusetts in 1651 prohibited poorer folk from“wearing gold or silver lace,” and in eighteenth-century Virginia a tailor was fined and jailed forarranging to race his horse—“a sport only for gen-tlemen.” But these efforts to reproduce the finelystratified societies of Europe proved feeble in theearly American wilderness, where equality anddemocracy found fertile soil—at least for white people.

Chronology 83

Chronology

1619 First Africans arrive in Virginia

1636 Harvard College founded

1662 Half-Way Covenant for Congregational Church membership established

1670 Virginia assembly disfranchises landless freeman

1676 Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia

1680s Mass expansion of slavery in colonies

1689-1691 Leisler’s Rebellion in New York

1692 Salem witch trials in Massachusetts

1693 College of William and Mary founded

1698 Royal African Company slave trade monopoly ended

1712 New York City slave revolt

1739 South Carolina slave revolt


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84

5

Colonial Society onthe Eve of Revolution

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1700–1775

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought andthe right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their

course to this happy country as their last asylum.

SAMUEL ADAMS, 1776

The common term thirteen original colonies ismisleading. Britain ruled thirty-two colonies in

North America by 1775, including Canada, the Flori-das, and various Caribbean islands. But only thir-teen of them unfurled the standard of rebellion. Afew of the nonrebels, such as Canada and Jamaica,were larger, wealthier, or more populous than someof the revolting thirteen. Why, then, did some Britishcolonies eventually strike for their independence,while others did not? Part of the answer is to befound in the distinctive social, economic, and politi-cal structures of the thirteen Atlantic seaboardcolonies—and in the halting, gradual appearance ofa recognizably American way of life.

Conquest by the Cradle

Among the distinguishing characteristics that theeventually rebellious settlements shared was lustypopulation growth. In 1700 they contained fewer

than 300,000 souls, about 20,000 of whom were black.By 1775, 2.5 million people inhabited the thirteencolonies, of whom about half a million were black.White immigrants made up nearly 400,000 of theincreased number, and black “forced immigrants”accounted for almost as many again. But most of thespurt stemmed from the remarkable natural fertilityof all Americans, white and black. To the amazementand dismay of Europeans, the colonists were doubling their numbers every twenty-five years.Unfriendly Dr. Samuel Johnson, back in England,growled that the Americans were multiplying liketheir own rattlesnakes. They were also a youthfulpeople, whose average age in 1775 was about sixteen.

This population boom had political conse-quences. In 1700 there were twenty English subjectsfor each American colonist. By 1775 the Englishadvantage in numbers had fallen to three to one—setting the stage for a momentous shift in the bal-ance of power between the colonies and Britain.

The bulk of the population was cooped up eastof the Alleghenies, although by 1775 a vanguard of

pioneers had trickled into the stump-studded clear-ings of Tennessee and Kentucky. The most populouscolonies in 1775 were Virginia, Massachusetts,Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Maryland—inthat order. Only four communities could properlybe called cities: Philadelphia, including suburbs,was first with about 34,000 residents, trailed by NewYork, Boston, and Charleston. About 90 percent ofthe people lived in rural areas.

A Mingling of the Races

Colonial America was a melting pot and had beenfrom the outset. The population, although basicallyEnglish in stock and language, was picturesquelymottled with numerous foreign groups.

Heavy-accented Germans constituted about 6percent of the total population, or 150,000, by 1775.Fleeing religious persecution, economic oppres-sion, and the ravages of war, they had flocked toAmerica in the early 1700s and had settled chiefly inPennsylvania. They belonged to several differentProtestant sects—primarily Lutheran—and thusfurther enhanced the religious diversity of thecolony. Known popularly but erroneously as thePennsylvania Dutch (a corruption of the Germanword Deutsch, for “German”), they totaled aboutone-third of the colony’s population. In parts ofPhiladelphia, the street signs were painted in bothGerman and English.

These German newcomers moved into thebackcountry of Pennsylvania, where their splendidstone barns gave—and still give—mute evidence ofindustry and prosperity. Not having been broughtup English, they had no deep-rooted loyalty to theBritish crown, and they clung tenaciously to theirGerman language and customs.

The Scots-Irish (see “Makers of America: TheScots-Irish,” pp. 88–89), who in 1775 numbered about175,000, or 7 percent of the population, were animportant non-English group, although they spokeEnglish. They were not Irish at all, but turbulent ScotsLowlanders. Over many decades, though, they hadbeen transplanted to Northern Ireland, where theyhad not prospered. The Irish Catholics already there,hating Scottish Presbyterianism, resented the intrud-ers and still do. The economic life of the Scots-Irishwas severely hampered, especially when the Englishgovernment placed burdensome restrictions on theirproduction of linens and woolens.

Early in the 1700s, tens of thousands of embit-tered Scots-Irish finally abandoned Ireland andcame to America, chiefly to tolerant and deep-soiled Pennsylvania. Finding the best acres alreadytaken by Germans and Quakers, they pushed out

Immigration to the Colonies 85

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Immigrant Groups in 1775America was already a nation of diverse nationalities in thecolonial period. This map shows the great variety ofimmigrant groups, especially in Pennsylvania and New York. Italso illustrates the tendency of later arrivals, particularly the Scots-Irish, to push into the backcountry.

onto the frontier. There many of them illegally butdefiantly squatted on the unoccupied lands andquarreled with both Indian and white owners. Whenthe westward-flowing Scots-Irish tide lapped upagainst the Allegheny barrier, it was deflectedsouthward into the backcountry of Maryland, downVirginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and into the westernCarolinas. Already experienced colonizers and agi-tators in Ireland, the Scots-Irish proved to be superb

frontiersmen, though their readiness to visit vio-lence on the Indians repeatedly inflamed the west-ern districts. By the mid-eighteenth century, a chainof Scots-Irish settlements lay scattered along the“great wagon road,” which hugged the easternAppalachian foothills from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

It was said, somewhat unfairly, that the Scots-Irish kept the Sabbath—and all else they could laytheir hands on. Pugnacious, lawless, and individual-istic, they brought with them the Scottish secrets ofwhiskey distilling and dotted the Appalachian hillsand hollows with their stills. They cherished no lovefor the British government that had uprooted themand still lorded over them—or for any other govern-ment, it seemed. They led the armed march of thePaxton Boys on Philadelphia in 1764, protesting theQuaker oligarchy’s lenient policy toward the Indi-ans, and a few years later spearheaded the Regulatormovement in North Carolina, a small but nastyinsurrection against eastern domination of thecolony’s affairs. Many of these hotheads—includingthe young Andrew Jackson—eventually joined theembattled American revolutionists. All told, about adozen future presidents were of Scots-Irish descent.

Approximately 5 percent of the multicoloredcolonial population consisted of other Europeangroups. These embraced French Huguenots, Welsh,Dutch, Swedes, Jews, Irish, Swiss, and Scots High-landers—as distinguished from the Scots-Irish. Ex-cept for the Scots Highlanders, such hodgepodgeelements felt little loyalty to the British crown. By farthe largest single non-English group was African,accounting for nearly 20 percent of the colonial popu-lation in 1775 and heavily concentrated in the South.

The population of the thirteen colonies, thoughmainly Anglo-Saxon, was perhaps the most mixedto be found anywhere in the world. The South, hold-ing about 90 percent of the slaves, already displayedits historic black-and-white racial composition.New England, mostly staked out by the originalPuritan migrants, showed the least ethnic diversity.The middle colonies, especially Pennsylvania,received the bulk of later white immigrants andboasted an astonishing variety of peoples. Outsideof New England, about one-half the population wasnon-English in 1775. Of the fifty-six signers of theDeclaration of Independence in 1776, eighteen werenon-English and eight had not been born in thecolonies.

As these various immigrant groups mingled andintermarried, they laid the foundations for a new

86 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775

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Ethnic and Racial Composition of the American People,1790 Based on surnames. (Source: Adapted from theAmerican Council of Learned Societies, “Report of Committeeon Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of theUnited States,” 1932. Percentages total more than 100percent due to rounding.)

The young Frenchman Michel-GuillaumeJean de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813) wrote of thediverse population in about 1770:

“They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish,French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. Fromthis promiscuous breed, that race now calledAmericans have arisen. . . . I could point outto you a family whose grandfather was anEnglishman, whose wife was Dutch, whoseson married a French woman, and whosepresent four sons have now four wives ofdifferent nations.’’

multicultural American national identity unlikeanything known in Europe. The French settlerMichel-Guillaume de Crèvecoeur saw in America inthe 1770s a “strange mixture of blood, which youwill find in no other country,” and he posed his clas-sic question, “What then is the American, this newman?” Nor were white colonists alone in creatingnew societies out of diverse ethnic groups. TheAfrican slave trade long had mixed peoples frommany different tribal backgrounds, giving birth toan African-American community far more varie-gated in its cultural origins than anything to befound in Africa itself. Similarly, in the New England“praying towns,” where Indians were gathered to beChristianized, and in Great Lakes villages such asDetroit, home to dozens of different displacedindigenous peoples, polyglot Native American com-munities emerged, blurring the boundaries of indi-vidual tribal identities.

The Structure of Colonial Society

In contrast with contemporary Europe, eighteenth-century America was a shining land of equality andopportunity—with the notorious exception of slav-ery. No titled nobility dominated society from onhigh, and no pauperized underclass threatened itfrom below. Most white Americans, and even somefree blacks, were small farmers. Clad in buckskinbreeches, they owned modest holdings and tilledthem with their own hands and horses. The citiescontained a small class of skilled artisans, with theirwell-greased leather aprons, as well as a few shop-keepers and tradespeople, and a handful ofunskilled casual laborers. The most remarkable fea-ture of the social ladder was the rags-to-riches easewith which an ambitious colonist, even a formerindentured servant, might rise from a lower rung toa higher one, a rare step in old England.

Yet in contrast with seventeenth-century Amer-ica, colonial society on the eve of the Revolution was beginning to show signs of stratification andbarriers to mobility that raised worries about the“Europeanization” of America. The gods of war con-tributed to these developments. The armed con-flicts of the 1690s and early 1700s had enriched anumber of merchant princes in the New Englandand middle colonies. They laid the foundations oftheir fortunes with profits made as military suppli-ers. Roosting regally atop the social ladder, theseelites now feathered their nests more finely. Theysported imported clothing and dined at tables laidwith English china and gleaming silverware. Promi-nent individuals came to be seated in churches andschools according to their social rank. By midcen-tury the richest 10 percent of Bostonians andPhiladelphians owned nearly two-thirds of the tax-able wealth in their cities.

The plague of war also created a class of widowsand orphans, who became dependent for their sur-vival on charity. Both Philadelphia and New York builtalmshouses in the 1730s to care for the destitute. Yetthe numbers of poor people remained tiny comparedto the numbers in England, where about a third of thepopulation lived in impoverished squalor.

In the New England countryside, the descen-dants of the original settlers faced more limitedprospects than had their pioneering forebears. As the supply of unclaimed soil dwindled and fami-lies grew, existing landholdings were repeatedly

Colonial Social Classes 87

The Scots-Irish

As the British Empire spread its dominion acrossthe seas in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-

turies, great masses of people poured forth to popu-late its ever-widening realms. Their migrationunfolded in stages. They journeyed from farms totowns, from towns to great cities like London andBristol, and eventually from the seaports to Ireland,the Caribbean, and North America. Among theseintrepid wanderers, few were more restless than theScots-Irish, the settlers of the first American West.Never feeling at home in the British Empire, theseperennial outsiders always headed for its most dis-tant outposts. They migrated first from their nativeScottish lowlands to Northern Ireland and then onto the New World. And even in North America, theScots-Irish remained on the periphery, ever distanc-ing themselves from the reach of the English crownand the Anglican Church.

Poverty weighed heavily on the Scottish Low-lands in the 1600s; one observer winced at the sightof the Scots, with “their hovels most miserable,made of poles, wattled and covered with thin sods,”their bodies shrunken yet swollen with hunger. ButScotland had long been an unyielding land, and itwas not simply nature’s stinginess that drove theLowlanders to the ports. The spread of commercialfarming forced many Scots from the land and sub-jected others to merciless rent increases at thehands of the landowning lairds (lords)—a practicecalled rack-renting. Adding insult to injury, theBritish authorities persecuted the PresbyterianScots, squeezing taxes from their barren purses tosupport the hated Anglican Church.

Not surprisingly, then, some 200,000 Scotsimmigrated to neighboring Ireland in the 1600s. Sogreat was the exodus that Protestant Scots eventu-ally outnumbered Catholic natives in the severalnorthern Irish counties that compose the provinceof Ulster. Still, Ireland offered only slender and tem-porary relief to many Scots. Although the north was

prosperous compared with the rest of that unhappynation, making a living was still devilishly hard inIreland. Soon the Scots discovered that their migra-tion had not freed them from their ancient woes.Their Irish landlords, with British connivance,racked rents just as ferociously as their Scottishlairds had done. Under such punishing pressure,waves of these already once-transplanted Scots,now called Scots-Irish, fled yet again across the seathroughout the 1700s. This time their destinationwas America.

Most debarked in Pennsylvania, seeking thereligious tolerance and abundant land of WilliamPenn’s commonwealth. But these unquiet peopledid not stay put for long. They fanned out fromPhiladelphia into the farmlands of western Pennsyl-vania. Blocked temporarily by the Allegheny Moun-tains, these early pioneers then trickled south alongthe backbone of the Appalachian range, slowly fill-

88

ing the backcountry of Virginia, the Carolinas, andGeorgia. There they built farms and towns, andthese rickety settlements bore the marks of Scots-Irish restlessness. Whereas their German neighborstypically erected sturdy homes and cleared theirfields meticulously, the Scots-Irish satisfied them-selves with floorless, flimsy log cabins; theychopped down trees, planted crops between thestumps, exhausted the soil fast, and moved on.

Almost every Scots-Irish community, howeverisolated or impermanent, maintained a Presbyter-ian church. Religion was the bond that yoked theseotherwise fiercely independent folk. In backcountrytowns, churches were erected before law courts, and

clerics were pounding their pulpits before civilauthorities had the chance to raise their gavels. Inmany such cases, the local religious court, known asthe session, passed judgment on crimes like bur-glary and trespassing as well as on moral and theo-logical questions. But the Scots-Irish, despite theirintense faith, were no theocrats, no advocates ofreligious rule. Their bitter struggles with the Angli-can Church made them stubborn opponents ofestablished churches in the United States, just astheir seething resentment against the king of Eng-land ensured that the Scots-Irish would be well rep-resented among the Patriots in the AmericanRevolution.

89

subdivided. The average size of farms shrank drasti-cally. Younger sons, as well as daughters, wereforced to hire out as wage laborers, or eventually toseek virgin tracts of land beyond the Alleghenies. By1750 Boston contained a large number of homelesspoor, who were supported by public charity andcompelled to wear a large red “P” on their clothing.

In the South the power of the great planterscontinued to be bolstered by their disproportionateownership of slaves. The riches created by the grow-ing slave population in the eighteenth century werenot distributed evenly among the whites. Wealthwas concentrated in the hands of the largest slave-owners, widening the gap between the prosperousgentry and the “poor whites,” who were more andmore likely to become tenant farmers.

In all the colonies, the ranks of the lower classeswere further swelled by the continuing stream ofindentured servants, many of whom ultimatelyachieved prosperity and prestige. Two became sign-ers of the Declaration of Independence.

Far less fortunate than the voluntary inden-tured servants were the paupers and convicts invol-untarily shipped to America. Altogether, about fiftythousand “jayle birds” were dumped on thecolonies by the London authorities. This riffraffcrowd—including robbers, rapists, and murderers—was generally sullen and undesirable, and not bub-bling over with goodwill for the king’s government.But many convicts were the unfortunate victims ofcircumstances and of a viciously unfair Englishpenal code that included about two hundred capitalcrimes. Some of the deportees, in fact, came to behighly respectable citizens.

Least fortunate of all, of course, were the blackslaves. They enjoyed no equality with whites anddared not even dream of ascending, or evenapproaching, the ladder of opportunity. Oppressedand downtrodden, the slaves were America’s closestapproximation to Europe’s volatile lower classes,and fears of black rebellion plagued the whitecolonists. Some colonial legislatures, notably SouthCarolina’s in 1760, sensed the dangers present in aheavy concentration of resentful slaves andattempted to restrict or halt their importation. Butthe British authorities, seeking to preserve the sup-ply of cheap labor for the colonies, especially theWest Indies sugar plantations, repeatedly vetoed allefforts to stem the transatlantic traffic in slaves.Many North American colonists condemned thesevetoes as morally callous, although New Englandslave traders benefited handsomely from the British

policy. The cruel complexity of the slavery issue wasfurther revealed when Thomas Jefferson, himself aslaveholder, assailed the British vetoes in an earlydraft of the Declaration of Independence, but wasforced to withdraw the proposed clause by a torrentof protest from southern slavemasters.

Clerics, Physicians, and Jurists

Most honored of the professions was the Christianministry. In 1775 the clergy wielded less influencethan in the early days of Massachusetts, when pietyhad burned more warmly. But they still occupied aposition of high prestige.

Most physicians, on the other hand, were poorlytrained and not highly esteemed. Not until 1765 wasthe first medical school established, although Euro-pean centers attracted some students. Aspiringyoung doctors served for a while as apprentices toolder practitioners and were then turned loose ontheir “victims.” Bleeding was a favorite and fre-quently fatal remedy; when the physician was notavailable, a barber was often summoned.

Epidemics were a constant nightmare. Espe-cially dreaded was smallpox, which afflicted one outof five persons, including the heavily pockmarkedGeorge Washington. A crude form of inoculationwas introduced in 1721, despite the objections ofmany physicians and some of the clergy, whoopposed tampering with the will of God. Powdereddried toad was a favorite prescription for smallpox.Diphtheria was also a deadly killer, especially ofyoung people. One epidemic in the 1730s took the


On doctors and medicine, Poor Richard’sAlmanack by Benjamin Franklin(1706–1790) offered some homely advice:

“God heals and the doctor takes the fee.’’

“He’s the best physician that knows theworthlessness of most medicines.’’

“Don’t go to the doctor with every distemper,nor to the lawyer with every quarrel, nor tothe pot for every thirst.’’

lives of thousands. This grim reminder of their mor-tality may have helped to prepare many colonists intheir hearts and minds for the religious revival thatwas soon to sweep them up.

At first the law profession was not favorablyregarded. In this pioneering society, which requiredmuch honest manual labor, the parties to a disputeoften presented their own cases in court. Lawyerswere commonly regarded as noisy windbags ortroublemaking rogues; an early Connecticut lawclassed them with drunkards and brothel keepers.When future president John Adams was a young lawstudent, the father of his wife-to-be frowned uponhim as a suitor.

Workaday America

Agriculture was the leading industry, involvingabout 90 percent of the people. Tobacco continuedto be the staple crop in Maryland and Virginia,though wheat cultivation also spread through theChesapeake, often on lands depleted by the over-growth of tobacco. The fertile middle (“bread”)colonies produced large quantities of grain, and by1759 New York alone was exporting eighty thousandbarrels of flour a year. Seemingly the farmer hadonly to tickle the soil with a hoe, and it would laughwith a harvest. Overall, Americans probably enjoyeda higher standard of living than the masses of anycountry in history up to that time.

Fishing (including whaling), though ranking farbelow agriculture, was rewarding. Pursued in all the American colonies, this harvesting of the seawas a major industry in New England, whichexported smelly shiploads of dried cod to theCatholic countries of Europe. The fishing fleet alsostimulated shipbuilding and served as a nursery for the seamen who manned the navy and mer-chant marine.

A bustling commerce, both coastwise and over-seas, enriched all the colonies, especially the NewEngland group, New York, and Pennsylvania. Com-mercial ventures and land speculation, in theabsence of later get-rich-quick schemes, were thesurest avenues to speedy wealth. Yankee seamenwere famous in many climes not only as skilledmariners but as tightfisted traders. They provi-sioned the Caribbean sugar islands with food andforest products. They hauled Spanish and Por-tuguese gold, wine, and oranges to London, to be

exchanged for industrial goods, which were thensold for a juicy profit in America.

The so-called triangular trade was infamouslyprofitable, though small in relation to total colonial

The Colonial Economy 91

ATLANTICOCEAN

W

N

N

N

RR

S

S

S

S

S

S

S

Portsmouth

Boston

AlbanyNewport

New London

New York

Philadelphia

Baltimore

Norfolk

Charleston

Savannah

New Bern

ProclamationLine of 1763

Ft. Augusta

Sea Industries Fishing Whaling

Forest Industries Lumber and timber Shipbuilding Naval stores

General Industries Iron works Rum distilleries Trading and shipping

Agriculture and Trapping Cattle and grain Tobacco Rice and indigo Furs and skins

W

R

N

S

The Colonial Economy By the eighteenth century, thevarious colonial regions had distinct economic identities. Thenorthern colonies grew grain and raised cattle, harvestedtimber and fish, and built ships. The Chesapeake colonies andNorth Carolina were still heavily dependent on tobacco,whereas the southernmost colonies grew mostly rice andindigo. Cotton, so important to the southern economy in thenineteenth century, had not yet emerged as a major crop.

commerce. A skipper, for example, would leave aNew England port with a cargo of rum and sail tothe Gold Coast of Africa. Bartering the fiery liquorwith African chiefs for captured African slaves, hewould proceed to the West Indies with his sobbingand suffocating cargo sardined below deck. Therehe would exchange the survivors for molasses,which he would then carry to New England, where itwould be distilled into rum. He would then repeatthe trip, making a handsome profit on each leg ofthe triangle.

Manufacturing in the colonies was of only sec-ondary importance, although there was a surprisingvariety of small enterprises. As a rule, workers couldget ahead faster in soil-rich America by tilling theland. Huge quantities of “kill devil” rum were dis-tilled in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and even

some of the “elect of the Lord” developed an over-fondness for it. Handsome beaver hats were manu-factured in quantity, despite British restrictions.Smoking iron forges, including Pennsylvania’s ValleyForge, likewise dotted the land and in fact weremore numerous in 1775, though generally smaller,than those of England. In addition, household man-ufacturing, including spinning and weaving bywomen, added up to an impressive output. As in allpioneering countries, strong-backed laborers andskilled craftspeople were scarce and highly prized.In early Virginia a carpenter who had committed amurder was freed because his woodworking skillswere needed.

Lumbering was perhaps the most importantsingle manufacturing activity. Countless cartloadsof virgin timber were consumed by shipbuilders, at


first chiefly in New England and then elsewhere inthe colonies. By 1770 about four hundred vessels ofassorted sizes were splashing down the ways eachyear, and about one-third of the British merchantmarine was American-built.

Colonial naval stores—such as tar, pitch, rosin,and turpentine—were highly valued, for Britain wasanxious to gain and retain a mastery of the seas. Lon-don offered generous bounties to stimulate produc-tion of these items; otherwise Britain would havehad to turn to the uncertain and possibly hostileBaltic areas. Towering trees, ideal as masts for HisMajesty’s navy, were marked with the king’s broadarrow for future use. The luckless colonist who wascaught cutting down this reserved timber was sub-ject to a fine. Even though there were countless unre-served trees and the blazed ones were being savedfor the common defense, this shackle on free enter-prise engendered considerable bitterness.

Americans held an important flank of a thriving,many-sided Atlantic economy by the dawn of theeighteenth century. Yet strains appeared in this com-plex network as early as the 1730s. Fast-breedingAmericans demanded more and more British prod-ucts—yet the slow-growing British population earlyreached the saturation point for absorbing importsfrom America. This trade imbalance raised a ques-tion: how could the colonists sell the goods to makethe money to buy what they wanted in Britain? Theanswer was obvious: by seeking foreign (non-British) markets.

By the eve of the Revolution, the bulk of Chesa-peake tobacco was filling pipes in France and inother European countries, though it passed throughthe hands of British re-exporters, who took a slice ofthe profits for themselves. More important was thetrade with the West Indies, especially the Frenchislands. West Indian purchases of North Americantimber and foodstuffs provided the crucial cash forthe colonists to continue to make their own pur-chases in Britain. But in 1733, bowing to pressurefrom influential British West Indian planters, Parlia-ment passed the Molasses Act, aimed at squelchingNorth American trade with the French West Indies.If successful, this scheme would have struck a crip-pling blow to American international trade and tothe colonists’ standard of living. American mer-chants responded to the act by bribing and smug-gling their way around the law. Thus wasforeshadowed the impending imperial crisis, whenheadstrong Americans would revolt rather thansubmit to the dictates of the far-off Parliament,apparently bent on destroying their very livelihood.

Horsepower and Sailpower

All sprawling and sparsely populated pioneer com-munities are cursed with oppressive problems oftransportation. America, with a scarcity of bothmoney and workers, was no exception.

Colonial Commerce 93

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Gulfof Guinea

Tobacco, fish, lumber, flour for English textiles, etc.

RumSlaves

Slaves

Tim

ber, foodstuffsSugar, m

olasses

ENGLAND

EUROPE

AFRICA

NORTH AMERICAN�COLONIES�

�

WEST INDIES

SOUTH AMERICAGold Coast

Colonial Trade Patterns, c. 1770 Future president John Adamsnoted about this time that “thecommerce of the West Indies is apart of the American system ofcommerce. They can neither dowithout us, nor we without them.The Creator has placed us uponthe globe in such a situation thatwe have occasion for each other.”

Not until the 1700s did roads connect even themajor cities, and these dirt thoroughfares weretreacherously deficient. A wayfarer could have rum-bled along more rapidly over the Roman highways inthe days of Julius Caesar, nearly two thousand yearsearlier. It took young Benjamin Franklin nine long,rain-drenched days in 1720 to journey from Bostonto Philadelphia, traveling by sailing sloop, rowboat,and foot. News of the Declaration of Independencein 1776 reached Charleston from Philadelphiatwenty-nine days after the Fourth of July.

Roads were often clouds of dust in the summerand quagmires of mud in the winter. Stagecoachtravelers braved such additional dangers as tree-strewn roads, rickety bridges, carriage overturns,and runaway horses. A traveler venturesomeenough to journey from Philadelphia to New York,for example, would not think it amiss to make a willand pray with the family before departing.

Where man-made roads were wretched, heavyreliance was placed on God-grooved waterways.Population tended to cluster along the banks of nav-igable rivers. There was also much coastwise traffic,and although it was slow and undependable, it wasrelatively cheap and pleasant.

Taverns sprang up along the main routes of travel,as well as in the cities. Their attractions customarilyincluded such amusements as bowling alleys, pooltables, bars, and gambling equipment. Before a cheer-ful, roaring log fire, all social classes would mingle,including the village loafers and drunks. The tavernwas yet another cradle of democracy.

Gossips also gathered at the taverns, whichwere clearinghouses of information, misinforma-tion, and rumor—frequently stimulated by alco-holic refreshment and impassioned political talk. Asuccessful politician, like the wire-pulling SamuelAdams, was often a man who had a large alehousefraternity in places like Boston’s Green Dragon Tav-ern. Taverns were important in crystallizing publicopinion and proved to be hotbeds of agitation as theRevolutionary movement gathered momentum.

An intercolonial postal system was establishedby the mid-1700s, although private couriersremained. Some mail was handled on credit. Servicewas slow and infrequent, and secrecy was problem-atic. Mail carriers, serving long routes, would some-times pass the time by reading the letters entrustedto their care.

Dominant Denominations

Two “established,” or tax-supported, churches wereconspicuous in 1775: the Anglican and the Congre-gational. A considerable segment of the population,surprisingly enough, did not worship in any church.And in those colonies that maintained an “estab-lished” religion, only a minority of the peoplebelonged to it.

The Church of England, whose members werecommonly called Anglicans, became the officialfaith in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia,Maryland, and a part of New York. Established alsoin England, it served in America as a major prop ofkingly authority. British officials naturally made vig-orous attempts to impose it on additional colonies,but they ran into a stone wall of opposition.


In America the Anglican Church fell distress-ingly short of its promise. Secure and self-satisfied,like its parent in England, it clung to a faith that wasless fierce and more worldly than the religion ofPuritanical New England. Sermons were shorter;hell was less scorching; and amusements, like Virginia fox hunting, were less scorned. So dismalwas the reputation of the Anglican clergy in seventeenth-century Virginia that the College ofWilliam and Mary was founded in 1693 to train abetter class of clerics.

The influential Congregational Church, whichhad grown out of the Puritan Church, was formallyestablished in all the New England colonies, exceptindependent-minded Rhode Island. At first Massa-chusetts taxed all residents to support Congrega-tionalism but later relented and exempted membersof other well-known denominations. Presbyterian-ism, though closely associated with Congregational-ism, was never made official in any colonies.

Ministers of the gospel, turning from the Bibleto this sinful world, increasingly grappled withburning political issues. As the early rumblings ofrevolution against the British crown could be heard,sedition flowed freely from pulpits. Presbyterian-ism, Congregationalism, and rebellion became a

neo-trinity. Many leading Anglican clergymen,aware of which side their tax-provided bread wasbuttered on, naturally supported their king.

Anglicans in the New World were seriouslyhandicapped by not having a resident bishop,whose presence would be convenient for the ordi-nation of young ministers. American students ofAnglican theology had to travel to England to beordained. On the eve of the Revolution there wasserious talk of creating an American bishopric, butthe scheme was violently opposed by many non-Anglicans, who feared a tightening of the royal reins.This controversy poured holy oil on the smolderingfires of rebellion.

Religious toleration had indeed made enor-mous strides in America, at least when comparedwith its halting steps abroad. Roman Catholics werestill generally discriminated against, as in England,even in officeholding. But there were fewerCatholics in America, and hence the anti-papistlaws were less severe and less strictly enforced. Ingeneral, people could worship—or not worship—asthey pleased.

Colonial Religion 95

Established (Tax-Supported) Churchesin the Colonies, 1775*

YearColonies Churches Disestablished

Mass. (incl. Me.) 1833Connecticut Congregational 1818New Hampshire 1819New York Anglican 1777

(in N.Y. City and three neighboring counties)

Maryland 1777Virginia 1786North Carolina Anglican 1776South Carolina 1778Georgia 1777Rhode IslandNew JerseyDelaware None

Pennsylvania

*Note the persistence of the Congregational establishment inNew England.

Estimated Religious Census, 1775

Name Number Chief Locale

Congregationalists 575,000 New EnglandAnglicans 500,000 N.Y., SouthPresbyterians 410,000 FrontierGerman churches

(incl. Lutheran) 200,000 Pa.Dutch Reformed 75,000 N.Y., N.J.Quakers 40,000 Pa., N.J., Del.Baptists 25,000 R.I., Pa.,

N.J., Del.Roman Catholics 25,000 Md., Pa.Methodists 5,000 ScatteredJews 2,000 N.Y., R.I.

EST. TOTAL

MEMBERSHIP 1,857,000EST. TOTAL

POPULATON 2,493,000PERCENTAGE

CHURCH MEMBERS 74%

}

}

}

The Great Awakening

In all the colonial churches, religion was less fervidin the early eighteenth century than it had been acentury earlier, when the colonies were firstplanted. The Puritan churches in particular saggedunder the weight of two burdens: their elaboratetheological doctrines and their compromisingefforts to liberalize membership requirements.Churchgoers increasingly complained about the“dead dogs” who droned out tedious, overeruditesermons from Puritan pulpits. Some ministers, onthe other hand, worried that many of their parish-ioners had gone soft and that their souls were nolonger kindled by the hellfire of orthodox Calvinism.Liberal ideas began to challenge the old-time reli-gion. Some worshipers now proclaimed that humanbeings were not necessarily predestined to damna-tion and might save themselves by good works.Even more threatening to the Calvinist doctrine ofpredestination were the doctrines of the Arminians,followers of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius,who preached that individual free will, not divinedecree, determined a person’s eternal fate. Pres-sured by these “heresies,” a few churches grudginglyconceded that spiritual conversion was not neces-sary for church membership. Together, these twintrends toward clerical intellectualism and lay liber-alism were sapping the spiritual vitality from manydenominations.

The stage was thus set for a rousing religiousrevival. Known as the Great Awakening, it explodedin the 1730s and 1740s and swept through thecolonies like a fire through prairie grass. The Awak-ening was first ignited in Northampton, Massachu-setts, by a tall, delicate, and intellectual pastor,Jonathan Edwards. Perhaps the deepest theologicalmind ever nurtured in America, Edwards pro-claimed with burning righteousness the folly ofbelieving in salvation through good works andaffirmed the need for complete dependence onGod’s grace. Warming to his subject, he painted inlurid detail the landscape of hell and the eternal tor-ments of the damned. “Sinners in the Hands of anAngry God” was the title of one of his most famoussermons. He believed that hell was “paved with theskulls of unbaptized children.”

Edwards’s preaching style was learned andclosely reasoned, but his stark doctrines sparked awarmly sympathetic reaction among his parish-ioners in 1734. Four years later the itinerant English


Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanackcontained such thoughts on religion as

“A good example is the best sermon.’’

“Many have quarreled about religion thatnever practiced it.’’

“Serving God is doing good to man, butpraying is thought an easier service, andtherefore more generally chosen.’’

“How many observe Christ’s birthday; how fewhis precepts! O! ’tis easier to keep holidaysthan commandments.’’

parson George Whitefield loosed a different style ofevangelical preaching on America and touched off aconflagration of religious ardor that revolutionizedthe spiritual life of the colonies. A former alehouseattendant, Whitefield was an orator of rare gifts. Hismagnificent voice boomed sonorously over thou-sands of enthralled listeners in an open field. One ofEngland’s greatest actors of the day commentedenviously that Whitefield could make audiencesweep merely by pronouncing the word Mesopota-mia and that he would “give a hundred guineas if Icould only say ‘O!’ like Mr. Whitefield.”

Triumphally touring the colonies, Whitefieldtrumpeted his message of human helplessness and divine omnipotence. His eloquence reducedJonathan Edwards to tears and even caused theskeptical and thrifty Benjamin Franklin to empty hispockets into the collection plate. During these roar-ing revival meetings, countless sinners professedconversion, and hundreds of the “saved” groaned,shrieked, or rolled in the snow from religious excita-tion. Whitefield soon inspired American imitators.Taking up his electrifying new style of preaching,they heaped abuse on sinners and shook enormousaudiences with emotional appeals. One preachercackled hideously in the face of hapless wrong-doers. Another, naked to the waist, leaped franti-cally about in the light of flickering torches.

Orthodox clergymen, known as “old lights,” weredeeply skeptical of the emotionalism and the theatri-cal antics of the revivalists. “New light” ministers, onthe other hand, defended the Awakening for its rolein revitalizing American religion. Congregationalistsand Presbyterians split over this issue, and many ofthe believers in religious conversion went over to theBaptists and other sects more prepared to make

room for emotion in religion. The Awakening leftmany lasting effects. Its emphasis on direct, emotivespirituality seriously undermined the older clergy,whose authority had derived from their educationand erudition. The schisms it set off in many denomi-nations greatly increased the numbers and the com-petitiveness of American churches. It encouraged afresh wave of missionary work among the Indiansand even among black slaves, many of whom alsoattended the mass open-air revivals. It led to thefounding of “new light” centers of higher learningsuch as Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth.Perhaps most significant, the Great Awakening wasthe first spontaneous mass movement of the Ameri-can people. It tended to break down sectional bound-aries as well as denominational lines and contributedto the growing sense that Americans had of them-selves as a single people, united by a common historyand shared experiences.

Schools and Colleges

A time-honored English idea regarded education asa blessing reserved for the aristocratic few, not forthe unwashed many. Education should be for lead-ership, not citizenship, and primarily for males.Only slowly and painfully did the colonists break thechains of these ancient restrictions.

Puritan New England, largely for religious rea-sons, was more zealously interested in education

Religious Revivals 97

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) preachedhellfire, notably in one famous sermon:

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell,much as one holds a spider or someloathsome insect over the fire, abhors you,and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towardyou burns like fire; he looks upon you asworthy of nothing else but to be cast into thefire.’’

John Adams (c. 1736–1826) the future secondpresident, wrote to his wife:

“The education of our children is never out ofmy mind. . . . I must study politics and warthat my sons may have the liberty to studymathematics and philosophy. My sons oughtto study mathematics and philosophy,geography, natural history, naval architecture,navigation, commerce, and agriculture, inorder to give their children a right to studypainting, poetry, music, architecture,statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.’’

than any other section. Dominated by the Congre-gational Church, it stressed the need for Bible read-ing by the individual worshiper. The primary goal ofthe clergy was to make good Christians rather thangood citizens. A more secular approach was evidentlate in the eighteenth century, when some childrenwere warned in the following verse:

He who ne’er learns his A.B.C.Forever will a blockhead be.But he who learns his letters fairShall have a coach to take the air.

Education, principally for boys, flourishedalmost from the outset in New England. Thisdensely populated region boasted an impressivenumber of graduates from the English universities,especially Cambridge, the intellectual center of Eng-land’s Puritanism. New Englanders, at a relativelyearly date, established primary and secondaryschools, which varied widely in the quality ofinstruction and in the length of time that their doorsremained open each year. Back-straining farm labordrained much of a youth’s time and energy.

Fairly adequate elementary schools were alsohammering knowledge into the heads of reluctant“scholars” in the middle colonies and in the South.Some of these institutions were tax-supported; oth-ers were privately operated. The South, with itswhite and black population diffused over wideareas, was severely handicapped by logistics inattempting to establish an effective school system.Wealthy families leaned heavily on private tutors.

The general atmosphere in the colonial schoolsand colleges continued grim and gloomy. Most ofthe emphasis was placed on religion and on theclassical languages, Latin and Greek. The focus wasnot on experiment and reason, but on doctrine anddogma. The age was one of orthodoxy, and independ-ence of thinking was discouraged. Discipline wasquite severe, with many a mischievous child beingsadistically “birched” with a switch cut from a birch tree. Sometimes punishment was inflicted by


Colonial Colleges

Original Name Opened or Name (If Different) Location Founded Denomination

1. Harvard Cambridge, Mass. 1636 Congregational2. William and Mary Williamsburg, Va. 1693 Anglican3. Yale New Haven, Conn. 1701 Congregational4. Princeton College of New Jersey Princeton, N.J. 1746 Presbyterian5. Pennsylvania The Academy Philadelphia, Pa. 1751 Nonsectarian6. Columbia King’s College New York, N.Y. 1754 Anglican7. Brown Rhode Island College Providence, R.I. 1764 Baptist8. Rutgers Queen’s College New Brunswick, N.J. 1766 Dutch Reformed9. Dartmouth (begun as Hanover, N.H. 1769 Congregational

an Indian missionary school)

indentured-servant teachers, who could themselvesbe whipped for their failures as workers and whotherefore were not inclined to spare the rod.

College education was regarded—at least at first in New England—as more important thaninstruction in the ABCs. Churches would wither if a new crop of ministers was not trained to lead thespiritual flocks. Many well-to-do families, especiallyin the South, sent their boys abroad to Englishinstitutions.

For purposes of convenience and economy,nine local colleges were established during the colonial era. Student enrollments were small, num-bering about 200 boys at the most; and at one time afew lads as young as eleven were admitted to Har-vard. Instruction was poor by present-day stan-dards. The curriculum was still heavily loaded withtheology and the “dead” languages, although by1750 there was a distinct trend toward “live” lan-guages and other modern subjects. A significantcontribution was made by Benjamin Franklin, whoplayed a major role in launching what became theUniversity of Pennsylvania, the first American col-lege free from denominational control.

A Provincial Culture

When it came to art and culture, colonial Americanswere still in thrall to European tastes, especiallyBritish. The simplicity of pioneering life had not yetbred many homespun patrons of the arts. Oneaspiring painter, John Trumbull (1756–1843) of Con-necticut, was discouraged in his youth by hisfather’s chilling remark, “Connecticut is notAthens.” Like so many of his talented artistic con-temporaries, Trumbull was forced to travel to Lon-don to pursue his ambitions. Charles Willson Peale(1741–1827), best known for his portraits of GeorgeWashington, ran a museum, stuffed birds, and prac-ticed dentistry. Gifted Benjamin West (1738–1820)and precocious John Singleton Copley (1738–1815)succeeded in their ambition to become famouspainters, but like Trumbull they had to go to Eng-land to complete their training. Only abroad couldthey find subjects who had the leisure to sit for theirportraits and the money to pay handsomely forthem. Copley was regarded as a Loyalist during theRevolutionary War, and West, a close friend of

George III and official court painter, was buried inLondon’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Architecture was largely imported from the OldWorld and modified to meet the peculiar climaticand religious conditions of the New World. Even thelowly log cabin was apparently borrowed from Swe-den. The red-bricked Georgian style, so common inthe pre-Revolutionary decades, was introducedabout 1720 and is best exemplified by the beauty ofnow-restored Williamsburg, Virginia.

Colonial literature, like art, was generally undis-tinguished, and for much the same reasons. Onenoteworthy exception was the precocious poetPhillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784), a slave girl broughtto Boston at age eight and never formally educated.Taken to England when twenty years of age, shepublished a book of verse and subsequently wroteother polished poems that revealed the influence ofAlexander Pope. Her verse compares favorably withthe best of the poetry-poor colonial period, but theremarkable fact is that she could overcome herseverely disadvantaged background and write anypoetry at all.

Versatile Benjamin Franklin, often called “thefirst civilized American,” also shone as a literarylight. Although his autobiography is now a classic,he was best known to his contemporaries for PoorRichard’s Almanack, which he edited from 1732 to1758. This famous publication, containing manypithy sayings culled from the thinkers of the ages,

Education and Culture 99

emphasized such homespun virtues as thrift, indus-try, morality, and common sense. Examples are“What maintains one vice would bring up two chil-dren”; “Plough deep while sluggards sleep”; “Hon-esty is the best policy”; and “Fish and visitors stinkin three days.” Poor Richard’s was well known inEurope and was more widely read in America thananything except the Bible. As a teacher of both oldand young, Franklin had an incalculable influencein shaping the American character.

Science, rising above the shackles of supersti-tion, was making some progress, though laggingbehind the Old World. A few botanists, mathemati-cians, and astronomers had won some repute, butBenjamin Franklin was perhaps the only first-rankscientist produced in the American colonies.Franklin’s spectacular but dangerous experiments,including the famous kite-flying episode provingthat lightning was a form of electricity, won himnumerous honors in Europe. But his mind also hada practical turn, and among his numerous inven-

tions were bifocal spectacles and the highly efficientFranklin stove. His lightning rod, not surprisingly,was condemned by some stodgy clergymen who feltit was “presuming on God” by attempting to controlthe “artillery of the heavens.”

Pioneer Presses

Stump-grubbing Americans were generally too poorto buy quantities of books and too busy to readthem. A South Carolina merchant in 1744 advertisedthe arrival of a shipment of “printed books, Pictures,Maps, and Pickles.” A few private libraries of fair sizecould be found, especially among the clergy. TheByrd family of Virginia enjoyed perhaps the largestcollection in the colonies, consisting of about fourthousand volumes. Bustling Benjamin Franklinestablished in Philadelphia the first privately sup-ported circulating library in America; and by 1776


there were about fifty public libraries and collec-tions supported by subscription.

Hand-operated printing presses cranked outpamphlets, leaflets, and journals. On the eve of theRevolution, there were about forty colonial newspa-pers, chiefly weeklies that consisted of a single largesheet folded once. Columns ran heavily to somberessays, frequently signed with such pseudonyms asCicero, Philosophicus, and Pro Bono Publico (“Forthe Public Good”). The “news” often lagged manyweeks behind the event, especially in the case ofoverseas happenings, in which the colonists weredeeply interested. Newspapers proved to be a pow-erful agency for airing colonial grievances and rally-ing opposition to British control.

A celebrated legal case, in 1734–1735, involvedJohn Peter Zenger, a newspaper printer. Signifi-cantly, the case arose in New York, reflecting thetumultuous give-and-take of politics in the middlecolonies, where so many different ethnic groups jos-tled against one another. Zenger’s newspaper hadassailed the corrupt royal governor. Charged withseditious libel, the accused was hauled into court,where he was defended by a former indentured ser-vant, now a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer,Andrew Hamilton. Zenger argued that he hadprinted the truth, but the bewigged royal chief jus-tice instructed the jury not to consider the truth orfalsity of Zenger’s statements; the mere fact of print-ing, irrespective of the truth, was enough to convict.Hamilton countered that “the very liberty of bothexposing and opposing arbitrary power” was atstake. Swayed by his eloquence, the jurors defied

the bewigged judges and daringly returned a verdictof not guilty. Cheers burst from the spectators.

The Zenger decision was a banner achievementfor freedom of the press and for the health of democ-racy. It pointed the way to the kind of open publicdiscussion required by the diverse society that colo-nial New York already was and that all America wasto become. Although contrary to existing law andnot immediately accepted by other judges andjuries, in time it helped establish the doctrine thattrue statements about public officials could not beprosecuted as libel. Newspapers were thus eventu-ally free to print responsible criticisms of powerfulofficials, though full freedom of the press wasunknown during the pre-Revolutionary era.

The Great Game of Politics

American colonists may have been backward in nat-ural or physical science, but they were making note-worthy contributions to political science.

The thirteen colonial governments took a variety of forms. By 1775, eight of the colonies hadroyal governors, who were appointed by the king.Three—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware—were under proprietors who themselves chose thegovernors. And two—Connecticut and RhodeIsland—elected their own governors under self-governing charters.

Practically every colony utilized a two-houselegislative body. The upper house, or council, wasnormally appointed by the crown in the royalcolonies and by the proprietor in the proprietarycolonies. It was chosen by the voters in the self-governing colonies. The lower house, as the popularbranch, was elected by the people—or rather bythose who owned enough property to qualify as vot-ers. In several of the colonies, the backcountry ele-ments were seriously underrepresented, and theyhated the ruling colonial clique perhaps more thanthey did kingly authority. Legislatures, in which thepeople enjoyed direct representation, voted suchtaxes as they chose for the necessary expenses ofcolonial government. Self-taxation through repre-sentation was a precious privilege that Americanshad come to cherish above most others.

Governors appointed by the king were generallyable men, sometimes outstanding figures. Some,unfortunately, were incompetent or corrupt—broken-down politicians badly in need of jobs. The

The Press and Politics 101

Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676–1741) concludedhis eloquent plea in the Zenger case withthese words:

“The question before the court and you,gentlemen of the jury, is not of small norprivate concern. It is not the cause of a poorprinter, nor of New York alone, which you arenow trying. No! It may, in its consequence,affect every freeman that lives under aBritish government on the main [land] ofAmerica. It is the best cause. It is the causeof liberty.’’

worst of the group was probably impoverished LordCornbury, first cousin of Queen Anne, who wasmade governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702.He proved to be a drunkard, a spendthrift, a grafter,an embezzler, a religious bigot, and a vain fool, whowas accused (probably inaccurately) of dressing likea woman. Even the best appointees had troublewith the colonial legislatures, basically because theroyal governor embodied a bothersome transat-lantic authority some three thousand miles away.

The colonial assemblies found various ways toassert their authority and independence. Some ofthem employed the trick of withholding the gover-nor’s salary unless he yielded to their wishes. He wasnormally in need of money—otherwise he wouldnot have come to this godforsaken country—so thepower of the purse usually forced him to terms. Butone governor of North Carolina died with his salaryeleven years in arrears.

The London government, in leaving the colonialgovernor to the tender mercies of the legislature,was guilty of poor administration. In the interests ofsimple efficiency, the British authorities shouldhave arranged to pay him from independentsources. As events turned out, control over thepurse by the colonial legislatures led to prolongedbickering, which proved to be one of the persistentirritants that generated a spirit of revolt.*

Administration at the local level was also varied.County government remained the rule in the plan-tation South; town-meeting government predomi-nated in New England; and a modification of thetwo developed in the middle colonies. In the townmeeting, with its open discussion and open voting,

direct democracy functioned at its best. In this unri-valed cradle of self-government, Americans learnedto cherish their privileges and exercise their dutiesas citizens of the New World commonwealths.

Yet the ballot was by no means a birthright. Reli-gious or property qualifications for voting, witheven stiffer qualifications for officeholding, existedin all the colonies in 1775. The privileged upperclasses, fearful of democratic excesses, were unwill-ing to grant the ballot to every “biped of the forest.”Perhaps half of the adult white males were thus dis-franchised. But because of the ease of acquiringland and thus satisfying property requirements, theright to vote was not beyond the reach of mostindustrious and enterprising colonists. Yet some-what surprisingly, eligible voters often did not exer-cise this precious privilege. They frequentlyacquiesced in the leadership of their “betters,” whoran colonial affairs—though always reserving theright to vote misbehaving rascals out of office.

By 1775 America was not yet a true democracy—socially, economically, or politically. But it was farmore democratic than England and the Europeancontinent. Colonial institutions were giving freerrein to the democratic ideals of tolerance, educa-tional advantages, equality of economic opportu-nity, freedom of speech, freedom of the press,freedom of assembly, and representative govern-ment. And these democratic seeds, planted in richsoil, were to bring forth a lush harvest in later years.

Colonial Folkways

Everyday life in the colonies may now seem glam-orous, especially as reflected in antique shops. Butjudged by modern standards, it was drab andtedious. For most people the labor was heavy andconstant—from “can see” to “can’t see.”

Food was plentiful, though the diet could becoarse and monotonous. Americans probably atemore bountifully, especially of meat, than any peo-ple in the Old World. Lazy or sickly was the personwhose stomach was empty.

Basic comforts now taken for granted were lack-ing. Churches were not heated at all, except forcharcoal foot-warmers that the women carried.During the frigid New England winters, the preach-ing of hellfire may not have seemed altogether unat-tractive. Drafty homes were poorly heated, chieflyby inefficient fireplaces. There was no running


Junius, the pseudonym for a critic (or critics)of the British government from 1768 to 1772,published a pointed barb in criticizing onenew appointee:

“It was not Virginia that wanted a governorbut a court favorite that wanted a salary.’’

*Parliament finally arranged for separate payment of the governors through the Townshend taxes of 1767, but by thenthe colonists were in such an ugly mood over taxation that this innovation only added fresh fuel to the flames.

water in the houses, no plumbing, and probably nota single bathtub in all colonial America. Candlesand whale-oil lamps provided faint and flickeringillumination. Garbage disposal was primitive. Long-snouted hogs customarily ranged the streets to con-sume refuse, while buzzards, protected by law,flapped greedily over tidbits of waste.

Amusement was eagerly pursued where timeand custom permitted. The militia assembled peri-odically for “musters,” which consisted of severaldays of drilling, liberally interspersed with merry-making and flirting. On the frontier, pleasure wasoften combined with work at house-raisings, quilt-ing bees, husking bees, and apple parings. Funeralsand weddings everywhere afforded opportunitiesfor social gatherings, which customarily involvedthe swilling of much strong liquor.

Winter sports were common in the North,whereas in the South card playing, horse racing,cockfighting, and fox hunting were favorite pas-times. George Washington, not surprisingly, was asuperb rider. In the nonpuritanical South, dancingwas the rage—jigs, square dances, the Virginiareel—and the agile Washington could swing his fairpartner with the best of them.

Other diversions beckoned. Lotteries were uni-versally approved, even by the clergy, and were usedto raise money for churches and colleges, includingHarvard. Stage plays became popular in the Southbut were frowned upon in Quaker and Puritancolonies and in some places forbidden by law. Manyof the New England clergy saw playacting as time-consuming and immoral; they preferred religious

lectures, from which their flocks derived much spir-itual satisfaction.

Holidays were everywhere celebrated in theAmerican colonies, but Christmas was frownedupon in New England as an offensive reminder of“Popery.” “Yuletide is fooltide” was a common Puri-tan sneer. Thanksgiving Day came to be a trulyAmerican festival, for it combined thanks to Godwith an opportunity for jollification, gorging, andguzzling.

By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain’s severalNorth American colonies, despite their differences,revealed some striking similarities. All were basicallyEnglish in language and customs, and Protestant inreligion, while the widespread presence of other peo-ples and faiths compelled every colony to cede atleast some degree of ethnic and religious toleration.Compared with contemporary Europe, they allafforded to enterprising individuals unusual oppor-tunities for social mobility. They all possessed somemeasure of self-government, though by no meanscomplete democracy. Communication and trans-portation among the colonies were improving.British North America by 1775 looked like a patch-work quilt—each part slightly different, but stitchedtogether by common origins, common ways of life,and common beliefs in toleration, economic devel-opment, and, above all, self-rule. Fatefully, all thecolonies were also separated from the seat of imper-ial authority by a vast ocean moat some three thou-sand miles wide. These simple facts of shared history,culture, and geography set the stage for the colonists’struggle to unite as an independent people.

Chronology 103

Chronology

1693 College of William and Mary founded

1701 Yale College founded

1721 Smallpox inoculation introduced

1732 First edition of Franklin’s Poor Richard’sAlmanack

1734 Jonathan Edwards begins Great Awakening

1734-1735 Zenger free-press trial in New York

1738 George Whitefield spreads Great Awakening

1746 Princeton College founded

1760 Britain vetoes South Carolina anti–slave trademeasures

1764 Paxton Boys march on PhiladelphiaBrown College founded

1766 Rutgers College founded

1768-1771 Regulator protests

1769 Dartmouth College founded


VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Colonial America: Communities of Conflict or Consensus?

The earliest historians of colonial society por-trayed close-knit, homogeneous, and hierarchi-

cal communities. Richard Bushman’s From Puritanto Yankee (1967) challenged that traditional viewwhen he described colonial New England as anexpanding, opening society. In this view thecolonists gradually lost the religious discipline andsocial structure of the founding generations, as theypoured out onto the frontier or sailed the seas insearch of fortune and adventure. Rhys Isaac viewedthe Great Awakening in the South as similar evi-dence of erosion in the social constraints and defer-ence that once held colonial society together.Unbridled religious enthusiasm, North and South,directed by itinerant preachers, encouraged the sortof quest for personal autonomy that eventually ledAmericans to demand national independence.

Other scholars have focused on the negativeaspects of this alleged breakdown in the traditionalorder, particularly on the rise of new social inequali-ties. Social historians like Kenneth Lockridge haveargued that the decline of cohesive communities,population pressure on the land, and continued dom-inance of church and parental authority gave rise to alandless class, forced to till tenant plots in the coun-tryside or find work as manual laborers in the cities.Gary Nash, in The Urban Crucible (1979), likewisetraced the rise of a competitive, individualistic socialorder in colonial cities, marking the end of the patron-age and paternalism that had once bound communi-ties together. Increasingly, Nash contended, classantagonisms split communities. The wealthy aban-doned their traditional obligations toward the poorfor more selfish capitalistic social relations thatfavored their class peers. The consequent politiciza-tion of the laboring classes helped motivate their par-ticipation in the American Revolution.

Some scholars have disputed that “declension”undermined colonial communities. Christine Heyr-

man, in particular, has argued in Commerce andCulture (1984) that the decline of traditional moreshas been overstated; religious beliefs and commer-cial activities coexisted throughout the late seven-teenth and early eighteenth centuries. Similarly,Jack Greene has recently suggested that the obses-sion with the decline of deference has obscured thefact that colonies outside of New England, like Vir-ginia and Maryland, actually experienced a consoli-dation of religious and social authority throughoutthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, becom-ing more hierarchical and paternalistic.

Like Greene, many historians have focused onsectional differences between the colonies, and thepeculiar nature of social equality and inequality ineach. Much of the impetus for this inquiry stemsfrom an issue that has long perplexed students ofearly America: the simultaneous evolution of a rigidracial caste system alongside democratic politicalinstitutions. Decades ago, when most historianscame from Yankee stock, they resolved the apparentparadox by locating the seeds of democracy in NewEngland. The aggressive independence of the peo-ple, best expressed by the boisterous town meetings,spawned the American obsession with freedom. Onthe other hand, this view holds, the slave societies ofthe South were hierarchical, aristocratic communi-ties under the sway of a few powerful planters.

More recently, some historians have attackedthis simple dichotomy, noting many undemocraticfeatures in colonial New England and arguing thatwhile the South may have been the site of tremen-dous inequality, it also produced most of the found-ing fathers. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison—the architects of American government with itsfoundation in liberty—all hailed from slaveholdingVirginia. In fact, nowhere were republican princi-ples stronger than in Virginia. Some scholars,notably Edmund S. Morgan in American Slavery,


American Freedom (1975), consider the willingnessof wealthy planters to concede the equality andfreedom of all white males a device to ensure racialsolidarity and to mute class conflict. In this view theconcurrent emergence of slavery and democracywas no paradox. White racial solidarity muffled ani-mosity between rich and poor and fostered thedevotion to equality among whites that became ahallmark of American democracy.

Few historians still argue that the coloniesoffered boundless opportunities for inhabitants,white or black. But scholars disagree vigorously overwhat kinds of inequalities and social tensions mostshaped eighteenth-century society and contributed

to the revolutionary agitation that eventually con-sumed—and transformed—colonial America. Evenso, whether one accepts Morgan’s argument that“Americans bought their independence with slavelabor,” or those interpretations that point to risingsocial conflict between whites as the salient charac-teristic of colonial society on the eve of the Revolu-tion, the once-common assumption that Americawas a world of equality and consensus no longerreigns undisputed. Yet because one’s life chanceswere still unquestionably better in America thanEurope, immigrants continued to pour in, imbuedwith high expectations about America as a land ofopportunity.


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6

The Duel for North America

��

1608–1763

A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.

VOLTAIRE, C. 1756

As the seventeenth century neared its sunset, atitanic struggle was shaping up for mastery of

the North American continent. The contest involvedthree Old World Nations—Britain,* France, andSpain—and it unavoidably swept up Native Ameri-can peoples as well. From 1688 to 1763, four bitterwars convulsed Europe. All four of those conflictswere world wars. They amounted to a death strugglefor domination in Europe as well as in the NewWorld, and they were fought on the waters and soilof two hemispheres. Counting these first fourclashes, nine world wars have been waged since1688. The American people, whether as British sub-jects or as American citizens, proved unable to stay

out of a single one of them. And one of those wars—known as the Seven Years’ War in Europe and theFrench and Indian War in America—set the stage forAmerica’s independence.

France Finds a Foothold in Canada

Like England and Holland, France was a latecomerin the scramble for New World real estate, and for basically the same reasons. It was convulsedduring the 1500s by foreign wars and domesticstrife, including the frightful clashes between theRoman Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots. On St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572, over ten thousandHuguenots—men, women, and children—werebutchered in cold blood.

106

*After the union of England and Scotland in 1707, “GreatBritain” became the nation’s official name.

A new era dawned in 1598 when the Edict ofNantes, issued by the crown, granted limited tolera-tion to French Protestants. Religious wars ceased,and in the new century France blossomed into themightiest and most feared nation in Europe, led by aseries of brilliant ministers and by the vaingloriousKing Louis XIV. Enthroned as a five-year-old boy, hereigned for no less than seventy-two years(1643–1715), surrounded by a glittering court andfluttering mistresses. Fatefully for North America,Louis XIV also took a deep interest in overseascolonies.

Success finally rewarded the exertions of Francein the New World, after rocky beginnings. In 1608, theyear after Jamestown, the permanent beginnings of avast empire were established at Quebec, a granitesentinel commanding the St. Lawrence River. Theleading figure was Samuel de Champlain, an intrepidsoldier and explorer whose energy and leadershipfairly earned him the title “Father of New France.’’

Champlain entered into friendly relations—afateful friendship—with the nearby Huron Indian

tribes. At their request, he joined them in battleagainst their foes, the federated Iroquois tribes ofthe upper New York area. Two volleys from the“lightning sticks’’ of the whites routed the terrifiedIroquois, who left behind three dead and onewounded. France, to its sorrow, thus earned the last-ing enmity of the Iroquois tribes. They thereafterhampered French penetration of the Ohio Valley,sometimes ravaging French settlements and fre-quently serving as allies of the British in the pro-longed struggle for supremacy on the continent.

The government of New France (Canada) finallyfell under the direct control of the king after variouscommercial companies had faltered or failed. Thisroyal regime was almost completely autocratic. Thepeople elected no representative assemblies, nordid they enjoy the right to trial by jury, as in theEnglish colonies.

Population in Catholic New France grew at a list-less pace. As late as 1750, only sixty thousand or sowhites inhabited New France. Landowning Frenchpeasants, unlike the dispossessed English tenant

French Beginnings in North America 107

France’s American Empire at Its Greatest Extent, 1700

farmers who embarked for the British colonies, had little economic motive to move. ProtestantHuguenots, who might have had a religious motiveto migrate, were denied a refuge in this raw colony.The French government, in any case, favored itsCaribbean island colonies, rich in sugar and rum,over the snow-cloaked wilderness of Canada.

New France Fans Out

New France did contain one valuable resource: thebeaver. European fashion-setters valued beaver-pelthats for their warmth and opulent appearance. To

adorn the heads of Europeans, French fur-trappersranged over the woods and waterways of NorthAmerica in pursuit of beaver. These colorfulcoureurs de bois (“runners of the woods”) were alsorunners of risks—two-fisted drinkers, free spenders,free livers and lovers. They littered the land withscores of place names, including Baton Rouge (redstick), Terre Haute (high land), Des Moines (somemonks), and Grand Teton (big breast).

Singing, paddle-swinging French voyageurs alsorecruited Indians into the fur business. The Indianfur flotilla arriving in Montreal in 1693 numberedfour hundred canoes. But the fur trade had somedisastrous drawbacks. Indians recruited into the furbusiness were decimated by the white man’s dis-

108 CHAPTER 6 The Duel for North America, 1608–1763

R.

Columbia

Colorado

R.

Mis

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ippi

R.

Ohio

R.

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Missouri

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Red R.

Rio Grande

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French trading posts (1604–1760)

Hudson's Bay Company (1670–1869)

Monteal-based fur trade (1763–1784)

North West Company (1784–1821)

Spain and New Mexico (1598–1821)

Fur-Trading Posts To serve the needs of European fashion, fur-traders pursued the beaver for morethan two centuries over the entire continent of North America. They brought many Indians for the firsttime into contact with white culture.

eases and debauched by his alcohol. Slaughteringbeaver by the boatload also violated many Indians’religious beliefs and sadly demonstrated the shat-tering effect that contact with Europeans wreakedon traditional Indian ways of life.

Pursuing the sharp-toothed beaver ever deeperinto the heart of the continent, the French trappersand their Indian partners hiked, rode, snowshoed,sailed, and paddled across amazing distances. Theytrekked in a huge arc across the Great Lakes, intopresent-day Saskatchewan and Manitoba; along thevalleys of the Platte, the Arkansas, and the Missouri;west to the Rockies; and south to the border ofSpanish Texas (see map at left). In the process theyall but extinguished the beaver population in manyareas, inflicting incalculable ecological damage.

French Catholic missionaries, notably the Jesuits,labored zealously to save the Indians for Christ andfrom the fur-trappers. Some of the Jesuit missionar-ies, their efforts scorned, suffered unspeakable tor-tures at the hands of the Indians. But though theymade few permanent converts, the Jesuits played avital role as explorers and geographers.

Other explorers sought neither souls nor fur, butempire. To thwart English settlers pushing into theOhio Valley, Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit, “theCity of Straits,” in 1701. To check Spanish penetrationinto the region of the Gulf of Mexico, ambitiousRobert de La Salle floated down the Mississippi in1682 to the point where it mingles with the Gulf. Henamed the great interior basin “Louisiana,” in honorof his sovereign, Louis XIV. Dreaming of empire, hereturned to the Gulf three years later with a coloniz-ing expedition of four ships. But he failed to find theMississippi delta, landed in Spanish Texas, and in1687 was murdered by his mutinous men.

Undismayed, French officials persisted in theirefforts to block Spain on the Gulf of Mexico. Theyplanted several fortified posts in what is now Missis-sippi and Louisiana, the most important of whichwas New Orleans (1718). Commanding the mouthof the Mississippi River, this strategic semitropicaloutpost also tapped the fur trade of the huge inte-rior valley. The fertile Illinois country—where theFrench established forts and trading posts atKaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes—became the

Trappers, Explorers, and Indians in New France 109

garden of France’s North American empire. Surpris-ing amounts of grain were floated down the Missis-sippi for transshipment to the West Indies and toEurope.

The Clash of Empires

The earliest contests among the European powersfor control of North America, known to the Britishcolonists as King William’s War (1689–1697) andQueen Anne’s War (1702–1713), mostly pitted Britishcolonists against the French coureurs de bois, withboth sides recruiting whatever Indian allies theycould. Neither France nor Britain at this stage con-sidered America worth the commitment of largedetachments of regular troops, so the combatantswaged a kind of primitive guerrilla warfare. Indianallies of the French ravaged with torch and toma-hawk the British colonial frontiers, visiting espe-cially bloody violence on the villages ofSchenectady, New York, and Deerfield, Massachu-setts (see the top map on p. 112). Spain, eventuallyallied with France, probed from its Florida base atoutlying South Carolina settlements. For their partthe British colonists failed miserably in salliesagainst Quebec and Montreal but scored a signalvictory when they temporarily seized the strongholdof Port Royal in Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia).

Peace terms, signed at Utrecht in 1713, revealedhow badly France and its Spanish ally had beenbeaten. Britain was rewarded with French-populated Acadia (which the British renamed NovaScotia, or New Scotland) and the wintry wastes ofNewfoundland and Hudson Bay. These immensetracts pinched the St. Lawrence settlements of

France, foreshadowing their ultimate doom. A gener-ation of peace ensued, during which Britain providedits American colonies with decades of “salutaryneglect”—fertile soil for the roots of independence.

By the treaty of 1713, the British also won limitedtrading rights in Spanish America, but these laterinvolved much friction over smuggling. Ill feelingflared up when the British captain Jenkins, en-countering Spanish revenue authorities, had one ear


Later English Monarchs*


William III, 1689–1702 Collapse of Dominion of New England; King William’s War

Anne, 1702–1714 Queen Anne’s War, 1702–1713

George I, 1714–1727 Navigation Laws laxly enforced (“salutary neglect”)

George II, 1727–1760 Ga. founded; King George’s War; French and Indian War

George III, 1760–1820 American Revolution, 1775–1783

*See pp. 29, 53 for earlier ones.

British Territory After Two Wars, 1713

sliced off by a sword. The Spanish commander re-portedly sneered, “Carry this home to the King, yourmaster, whom, if he were present, I would serve inlike fashion.” The victim, with a tale of woe on histongue and a shriveled ear in his hand, aroused furi-ous resentment when he returned home to Britain.

The War of Jenkins’s Ear, curiously but aptlynamed, broke out in 1739 between the British andthe Spaniards. It was confined to the Caribbean Sea

and to the much-buffeted buffer colony of Georgia,where philanthropist-soldier James Oglethorpefought his Spanish foe to a standstill.

This small-scale scuffle with Spain in Americasoon merged with the large-scale War of AustrianSuccession in Europe, and came to be called KingGeorge’s War in America. Once again, France allieditself with Spain. And once again, a rustic force ofNew Englanders invaded New France. With help

World Wars Rock America 111

The Nine World Wars

Dates In Europe In America

1688–1697 War of the League of Augsburg King William’s War, 1689–16971701–1713 War of Spanish Succession Queen Anne’s War, 1702–17131740–1748 War of Austrian Succession King George’s War, 1744–17481756–1763 Seven Years’ War French and Indian War, 1754–17631778–1783 War of the American Revolution American Revolution, 1775–17831793–1802 Wars of the French Revolution Undeclared French War, 1798–18001803–1815 Napoleonic Wars War of 1812, 1812–18141914–1918 World War I World War I, 1917–19181939–1945 World War II World War II, 1941–1945

from a British fleet and with a great deal of goodluck, the raw and sometimes drunken recruits cap-tured the reputedly impregnable French fortress ofLouisbourg, which was on Cape Breton Island andcommanded the approaches to the St. LawrenceRiver (see map above).

When the peace treaty of 1748 handed Louis-bourg back to their French foe, the victorious NewEnglanders were outraged. The glory of their arms—never terribly lustrous in any event—seemed tar-nished by the wiles of Old World diplomats. Worse,Louisbourg was still a cocked pistol pointed at theheart of the American continent. France, powerfuland unappeased, still clung to its vast holdings inNorth America.

George Washington Inaugurates War with France

As the dogfight intensified in the New World, theOhio Valley became the chief bone of contentionbetween the French and British. The Ohio countrywas the critical area into which the westward-pushing British colonists would inevitably pene-trate. For France it was also the key to the continentthat the French had to retain, particularly if theywere going to link their Canadian holdings withthose of the lower Mississippi Valley. By the mid-1700s, the British colonists, painfully aware of thesebasic truths, were no longer so reluctant to bear the burdens of empire. Alarmed by French land-

grabbing and cutthroat fur-trade competition in theOhio Valley, they were determined to fight for theireconomic security and for the supremacy of theirway of life in North America.

Rivalry for the lush lands of the upper Ohio Val-ley brought tensions to the snapping point. In 1749 agroup of British colonial speculators, chiefly influen-tial Virginians, including the Washington family, hadsecured shaky legal “rights” to some 500,000 acres inthis region. In the same disputed wilderness, the


St. Lawrence

R.

Lake Ontario

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

(captured 1745)LouisbourgQuebec

Port RoyalMontreal

Deerfield(1704)

Albany Boston

New York

Schenectady(1690)

Cape BretonIsland

Scenes of the French Wars The arrowsindicate French-Indian attacks. Schenectadywas burned to the ground in the raid of 1690.At Deerfield, site of one of the New Englandfrontier’s bloodiest confrontations, invaderskilled fifty inhabitants and sent over a hundredothers fleeing for their lives into the winterwilderness. The Indian attackers also took overone hundred Deerfield residents captive,including the child Titus King. He later wrote,“Captivity is an awful school for children, whenwe see how quick they will fall in with theIndian ways. Nothing seems to be more taking[appealing]. In six months’ time they forsakefather and mother, forget their own land, re-fuse to speak their own tongue, and seeminglybe wholly swallowed up with the Indians.”

Alleg heny

R.

Monong

ahel

aR

.

Potomac R.

Ohi

oR

.

Lake Erie (French)

(French)

(Pittsburgh)(French)

(Washington's defeat)(British)

(French)

Fort Presque Isle

Fort Le Boeuf

Fort Duquesne

Fort Necessity

Fort Venango

P E N N S Y L V A N I A

MD.

VA.

N E W Y O R K

Washington‘s route1753–1754

The Ohio Country, 1753–1754

French were in the process of erecting a chain offorts commanding the strategic Ohio River. Espe-cially formidable was Fort Duquesne at the pivotalpoint where the Monongahela and Allegheny Riversjoin to form the Ohio—the later site of Pittsburgh.

In 1754 the governor of Virginia ushered GeorgeWashington, a twenty-one-year-old surveyor andfellow Virginian, onto the stage of history. To securethe Virginians’ claims, Washington was sent to theOhio country as a lieutenant colonel in command ofabout 150 Virginia militiamen. Encountering a smalldetachment of French troops in the forest aboutforty miles from Fort Duquesne, the Virginians firedthe first shots of the globe-girdling new war. TheFrench leader was killed, and his men retreated. Anexultant Washington wrote, “I heard the bulletswhistle, and believe me, there is something charm-ing in the sound.” It soon lost its charm.

The French promptly returned with reinforce-ments, who surrounded Washington in his hastilyconstructed breastworks, Fort Necessity. After a ten-hour siege, he was forced to surrender his entirecommand in July 1754—ironically the fourth of July.But he was permitted to march his men away withthe full honors of war.

With the shooting already started and in dangerof spreading, the British authorities in Nova Scotiatook vigorous action. Understandably fearing a stabin the back from the French Acadians, whom Britainhad acquired in 1713, the British brutally uprootedsome four thousand of them in 1755. Theseunhappy French deportees were scattered as farsouth as Louisiana, where the descendants of theFrench-speaking Acadians are now called “Cajuns”and number nearly a million.

Global War and Colonial Disunity

The first three Anglo-French colonial wars had allstarted in Europe, but the tables were now reversed.The fourth struggle, known as the French andIndian War, began in America. Touched off byGeorge Washington in the wilds of the Ohio Valley in1754, it rocked along on an undeclared basis for twoyears and then widened into the most far-flung con-flict the world had yet seen—the Seven Years’ War. Itwas fought not only in America but in Europe, in theWest Indies, in the Philippines, in Africa, and on theocean. The Seven Years’ War was a seven-seas war.

In Europe the principal adversaries were Britainand Prussia on one side, arrayed against France,Spain, Austria, and Russia on the other. The bloodi-est theater was in Germany, where Frederick theGreat deservedly won the title of “Great” byrepelling French, Austrian, and Russian armies,often with the opposing forces outnumbering hisown three to one. The London government, unableto send him effective troop reinforcements, liberallysubsidized him with gold. Luckily for the Britishcolonists, the French wasted so much strength inthis European bloodbath that they were unable tothrow an adequate force into the New World. “Amer-ica was conquered in Germany,” declared Britain’sgreat statesman William Pitt.

In previous colonial clashes, the Americans hadrevealed an astonishing lack of unity. Colonists whowere nearest the shooting had responded muchmore generously with volunteers and money thanthose enjoying the safety of remoteness. Even theIndians had laughed at the inability of the coloniststo pull together. Now, with musketballs alreadysplitting the air in Ohio, the crisis demanded con-certed action.

In 1754 the British government summoned anintercolonial congress to Albany, New York, near theIroquois Indian country. Travel-weary delegatesfrom only seven of the thirteen colonies showed up.The immediate purpose was to keep the scalpingknives of the Iroquois tribes loyal to the British inthe spreading war. The chiefs were harangued atlength and then presented with thirty wagonloadsof gifts, including guns.

The French-English Showdown 113

The longer-range purpose at Albany was toachieve greater colonial unity and thus bolster thecommon defense against France. A month beforethe congress assembled, ingenious BenjaminFranklin published in his Pennsylvania Gazette themost famous cartoon of the colonial era. Showingthe separate colonies as parts of a disjointed snake,it broadcast the slogan “Join, or Die.”

Franklin himself, a wise and witty counselor,was the leading spirit of the Albany Congress. Hisoutstanding contribution was a well-devised butpremature scheme for colonial home rule. TheAlbany delegates unanimously adopted the plan,but the individual colonies spurned it, as did theLondon regime. To the colonists, it did not seem togive enough independence; to the British officials, itseemed to give too much. The disappointing resultconfirmed one of Franklin’s sage observations: allpeople agreed on the need for union, but their“weak noddles” were “perfectly distracted” whenthey attempted to agree on details.

Braddock’s Blundering and Its Aftermath

The opening clashes of the French and Indian Warwent badly for the British colonists. Haughty andbullheaded General Braddock, a sixty-year-old offi-cer experienced in European warfare, was sent toVirginia with a strong detachment of British regu-lars. After foraging scanty supplies from the reluc-tant colonists, he set out in 1755 with some twothousand men to capture Fort Duquesne. A consid-erable part of his force consisted of ill-disciplinedcolonial militiamen (“buckskins”), whose behind-the-tree methods of fighting Indians won “Bulldog”Braddock’s professional contempt.

Braddock’s expedition, dragging heavy artillery,moved slowly. Axmen laboriously hacked a paththrough the dense forest, thus opening a road thatwas later to be an important artery to the West. Afew miles from Fort Duquesne, Braddock encoun-


tered a much smaller French and Indian army. Atfirst the enemy force was repulsed, but it quicklymelted into the thickets and poured a murderousfire into the ranks of the redcoats. In the ensuingdebate, George Washington, an energetic and fear-less aide to Braddock, had two horses shot fromunder him and four bullets pierced his coat, andBraddock himself was mortally wounded. The entireBritish force was routed after appalling losses.

Inflamed by this easy victory, the Indians tookto a wider warpath. The whole frontier from Penn-sylvania to North Carolina, left virtually naked byBraddock’s bloody defeat, felt their fury. Scalpingforays occurred within eighty miles of Philadelphia,and in desperation the local authorities offeredbounties for Indian scalps: $50 for a woman’s and$130 for a warrior’s. George Washington, with onlythree hundred men, tried desperately to defend thescorched frontier.

The British launched a full-scale invasion ofCanada in 1756, now that the undeclared war inAmerica had at last merged into a world conflict.But they unwisely tried to attack a number ofexposed wilderness posts simultaneously, instead ofthrowing all their strength at Quebec and Montreal.If these strongholds had fallen, all the outposts tothe west would have withered for lack of riverbornesupplies. But the British ignored such sound strat-egy, and defeat after defeat tarnished their arms,both in America and in Europe.

Pitt’s Palms of Victory

In the hour of crisis, Britain brought forth, as itrepeatedly has, a superlative leader—William Pitt. Atall and imposing figure, whose flashing eyes wereset in a hawklike face, he was popularly known asthe “Great Commoner.” Pitt drew much of hisstrength from the common people, who admiredhim so greatly that on occasion they kissed hishorses. A splendid orator endowed with a majesticvoice, he believed passionately in his cause, in hiscountry, and in himself.

In 1757 Pitt became a foremost leader in theLondon government. Throwing himself headlonginto his task, he soon earned the title “Organizer ofVictory.” He wisely decided to soft-pedal assaults onthe French West Indies, which had been bleedingaway much British strength, and to concentrate onthe vitals of Canada—the Quebec-Montreal area. He also picked young and energetic leaders, thusbypassing incompetent and cautious old generals.

Pitt first dispatched a powerful expedition in1758 against Louisbourg. The frowning fortress,though it had been greatly strengthened, fell after ablistering siege. Wild rejoicing swept Britain, for thiswas the first significant British victory of the entirewar.

Quebec was next on Pitt’s list. For this crucialexpedition, he chose the thirty-two-year-old James

The French and Indian War 115

LakeH

uron

Lake Erie

L. Ontario

ATLANTIC

OCEAN(Braddock's defeat, 1755)

(British capture, 1759)


�

(Acadians expelled 1755)


Fort Niagara

Crown Point

Fort Ticonderoga�(British capture, 1759)

Louisbourg (1758)

Fort Duquesne

Quebec (1759)

Montreal (1760)NOVA SCOTIA

Events of 1755–1760

Wolfe, who had been an officer since the age of four-teen. Though slight and sickly, Wolfe combined amixture of dash with painstaking attention to detail.The British attackers were making woeful progresswhen Wolfe, in a daring night move, sent a detach-ment up a poorly guarded part of the rocky emi-nence protecting Quebec. This vanguard scaled thecliff, pulling itself upward by the bushes and show-ing the way for the others. In the morning the twoarmies faced each other on the Plains of Abrahamon the outskirts of Quebec, the British under Wolfeand the French under the Marquis de Montcalm.Both commanders fell fatally wounded, but theFrench were defeated and the city surrendered (see“Makers of America: The French,” pp. 118–119).

The Battle of Quebec in 1759 ranks as one of themost significant engagements in British and Ameri-can history. When Montreal fell in 1760, the Frenchflag had fluttered in Canada for the last time. By thepeace settlement at Paris (1763), French power wasthrown completely off the continent of North Amer-ica, leaving behind a fertile French population thatis to this day a strong minority in Canada. This bitter

pill was sweetened somewhat when the Frenchwere allowed to retain several small but valuablesugar islands in the West Indies, and two never-to-be-fortified islets in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for fish-ing stations. A final blow came when the French, tocompensate their luckless Spanish ally for its losses,ceded to Spain all trans-Mississippi Louisiana, plusthe outlet of New Orleans. Spain, for its part, turnedFlorida over to Britain in return for Cuba, whereHavana had fallen to British arms.

Great Britain thus emerged as the dominantpower in North America, while taking its place asthe leading naval power of the world.

Restless Colonists

Britain’s colonists, baptized by fire, emerged withincreased confidence in their military strength.They had borne the brunt of battle at first; they hadfought bravely alongside the crack British regulars;and they had gained valuable experience, officers


North America Before 1754 North America After 1763 (after French losses)

and men alike. In the closing days of the conflict,some twenty thousand American recruits wereunder arms.

The French and Indian War, while bolsteringcolonial self-esteem, simultaneously shattered themyth of British invincibility. On Braddock’s bloodyfield, the “buckskin” militia had seen the demoral-ized regulars huddling helplessly together or fleeingtheir unseen enemy.

Ominously, friction had developed during thewar between arrogant British officers and the rawcolonial “boors.” Displaying the contempt of theprofessional soldier for amateurs, the Britishrefused to recognize any American militia commis-sion above the rank of captain—a demotion humili-ating to “Colonel” George Washington. They alsoshowed the usual condescension of snobs from thecivilized Old Country toward the “scum” who hadconfessed failure by fleeing to the “outhouses of civ-ilization.” General Wolfe referred to the colonialmilitia, with exaggeration, as “in general the dirtiest,most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you canconceive.” Energetic and hard-working Americansettlers, in contrast, believed themselves to be thecutting edge of British civilization. They felt thatthey deserved credit rather than contempt for risk-ing their lives to secure a New World empire.

British officials were further distressed by thereluctance of the colonists to support the common

cause wholeheartedly. American shippers, usingfraudulent papers, developed a golden traffic withthe enemy ports of the Spanish and French WestIndies. This treasonable trade in foodstuffs actuallykept some of the hostile islands from starving at thevery time when the British navy was trying to sub-due them. In the final year of the war, the Britishauthorities, forced to resort to drastic measures, for-bade the export of all supplies from New Englandand the middle colonies.

Other colonists, self-centered and alienated bydistance from the war, refused to provide troops andmoney for the conflict. They demanded the rightsand privileges of Englishmen, without the dutiesand responsibilities of Englishmen. Not until Pitthad offered to reimburse the colonies for a substan-tial part of their expenditures—some £900,000—didthey move with some enthusiasm. If the Americanshad to be bribed to defend themselves against arelentless and savage foe, would they ever unite tostrike the mother country?

The curse of intercolonial disunity, presentfrom early days, had continued throughout therecent hostilities. It had been caused mainly byenormous distances; by geographical barriers likerivers; by conflicting religions, from Catholic toQuaker; by varied nationalities, from German toIrish; by differing types of colonial governments; bymany boundary disputes; and by the resentment ofthe crude backcountry settlers against the aristo-cratic bigwigs.

Yet unity received some encouragement duringthe French and Indian War. When soldiers andstatesmen from widely separated colonies metaround common campfires and council tables, theywere often agreeably surprised by what they found.Despite deep-seated jealousy and suspicion, theydiscovered that they were all fellow Americans whogenerally spoke the same language and shared com-mon ideals. Barriers of disunity began to melt,although a long and rugged road lay ahead before acoherent nation would emerge.

Americans: A People of Destiny

The removal of the French menace in Canada pro-foundly affected American attitudes. While theFrench hawk had been hovering in the North andWest, the colonial chicks had been forced to cling

Impact of the Global Struggle 117

The Reverend Andrew Burnaby, an observantChurch of England clergyman who visitedthe colonies in the closing months of theFrench and Indian War, scoffed at anypossibility of unification (1760):

“. . . for fire and water are not moreheterogeneous than the different colonies inNorth America. Nothing can exceed thejealousy and emulation which they possess inregard to each other. . . . in short . . . werethey left to themselves there would soon bea civil war from one end of the continent tothe other, while the Indians and Negroswould . . . impatiently watch the opportunityof exterminating them all together.”

The French

A t the height of his reign in the late seventeenthcentury, Louis XIV, France’s “Sun King,” turned

his covetous eyes westward to the New World. Heenvisioned there a bountiful New France, settled by civilizing French pioneers, in the maritimeprovinces of Acadia and the icy expanses of Quebec.But his dreams flickered out like candles before theBritish juggernaut in the eighteenth century, and hisformer New World subjects had to suffer foreigngovernance in the aftermath of the French defeatsin 1713 and 1763. Over the course of two centuries,many chafed under the British yoke and eventuallyfound their way to the United States.

The first French to leave Canada were the Aca-dians, the settlers of the seaboard region that nowcomprises Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PrinceEdward Island, and part of Maine. In 1713 theFrench crown ceded this territory to the British, whodemanded that the Acadians either swear allegianceto Britain or withdraw to French territory. At firstdoing neither, they managed to escape reprisalsuntil Le Grand Derangement (“the Great Displace-ment”) in 1755, when the British expelled themfrom the region at bayonet point. The Acadians fledfar south to the French colony of Louisiana, wherethey settled among the sleepy bayous, planted sugar

118

cane and sweet potatoes, practiced Roman Catholi-cism, and spoke the French dialect that came to be called Cajun (a corruption of the English wordAcadian.) The Cajun settlements were tiny andsecluded, many of them accessible only by smallboat.

For generations these insular people werescarcely influenced by developments outside theirtight-knit communities. Louisiana passed throughSpanish, French, and American hands, but theCajuns kept to themselves. Cajun women some-times married German, English, or Spanish men—today one finds such names as Schneider and Lopezin the bayous—but the outsiders were alwaysabsorbed completely into the large Cajun families.Not until the twentieth century did Cajun parentssurrender their children to public schools and sub-mit to a state law restricting French speech. Only inthe 1930s, with a bridge-building spree engineeredby Governor Huey Long, was the isolation of thesebayou communities broken.

In 1763, as the French settlers of Quebec fellunder British rule, a second group of French peoplebegan to leave Canada. By 1840 what had been anirregular southward trickle of Quebecois swelled toa steady stream, depositing most of the migratingFrench-Canadians in New England. These nine-teenth-century emigrants were not goaded by bayonets but driven away by the lean harvests

yielded by Quebec’s short growing season andscarcity of arable land. They frequently recrossedthe border to visit their old homes, availing them-selves of the train routes opened in the 1840sbetween Quebec and Boston. Most hoped somedayto return to Canada for good.

They emigrated mostly to work in New Eng-land’s lumberyards and textile mills, graduallyestablishing permanent settlements in the northernwoods. Like the Acadians, these later migrants fromQuebec stubbornly preserved their Roman Catholi-cism. And both groups shared a passionate love oftheir French language, believing it to be the cementthat bound them, their religion, and their culturetogether. As one French-Canadian explained, “Letus worship in peace and in our own tongue. All elsemay disappear but this must remain our badge.” Yettoday almost all Cajuns and New England French-Canadians speak English.

North of the border, in the land that these immi-grants left behind, Louis XIV’s dream of implantinga French civilization in the New World lingers on inthe Canadian province of Quebec. Centuries havepassed since the British won the great eighteenth-century duel for North America, but the French lan-guage still adorns the road signs of Quebec andrings out in its classrooms, courts, and markets, elo-quently testifying to the continued vitality of Frenchculture in North America.

119

close to the wings of their British mother hen. Nowthat the hawk was killed, they could range far afieldwith a new spirit of independence.

The French, humiliated by the British and sad-dened by the fate of Canada, consoled themselveswith one wishful thought. Perhaps the loss of theirAmerican empire would one day result in Britain’sloss of its American empire. In a sense the history ofthe United States began with the fall of Quebec andMontreal; the infant republic was cradled on thePlains of Abraham.

The Spanish and Indian menaces were also nowsubstantially reduced. Spain was eliminated fromFlorida, although entrenched in Louisiana and NewOrleans, and was still securely in possession ofmuch of western North America, including the vastterritory from present-day Texas to California. As forthe Indians, the Treaty of Paris that ended theFrench and Indian War dealt a harsh blow to the Iro-quois, Creeks, and other interior tribes. The Spanishremoval from Florida and the French removal fromCanada deprived the Indians of their most powerful

diplomatic weapon—the ability to play off the rivalEuropean powers against one another. In the futurethe Indians would have to negotiate exclusively withthe British.

Sensing the newly precarious position of theIndian peoples, the Ottawa chief Pontiac in 1763 ledseveral tribes, aided by a handful of French traderswho remained in the region, in a violent campaignto drive the British out of the Ohio country. Pontiac’swarriors besieged Detroit in the spring of 1763 andeventually overran all but three British posts west ofthe Appalachians, killing some two thousand sol-diers and settlers.

The British retaliated swiftly and cruelly. Waginga primitive version of biological warfare, one Britishcommander ordered blankets infected with small-pox to be distributed among the Indians. Such tac-tics crushed the uprising and brought an uneasytruce to the frontier. His bold plan frustrated, Pon-tiac himself perished in 1769 at the hands of a rivalchieftain. As for the British, the bloody episode con-vinced them of the need to stabilize relations with


ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Lake Erie

Lak e Onta r i

Lak

eH

ur

N.H.

MASS.

MAINE�(Part of�Mass.)

CONN.R.I.N.Y.

N.J.

DEL.MD.

VA.

N.C.

S.C.

GA.

PA.

Savannah

Charleston

Wilmington

Williamsburg

Philadelphia

New York

Hartford

AlbanyFortNiagara

Fort Pitt

Detroit

Fort Michilimackinac

Providence

PortsmouthBoston

St. Marys

AnnapolisBaltimore

Jamestown

Long Island

Pontiac's uprising, 1763

Proclamation line of 1763

Area of settlement withinthe British colonies

British Colonies at End of French and IndianWar, 1763This map, showing the colonies thirteen yearsbefore the Declaration of Independence, helpsto explain why the British would be unable toconquer their offspring. The colonists werespreading rapidly into the backcountry, wherethe powerful British navy could not flush themout. During the Revolutionary War, the Britishat one time or another captured the leadingcolonial cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia,and Charleston—but the more remote interiorremained a sanctuary for rebels.

the western Indians and to keep regular troops sta-tioned along the restless frontier, a measure forwhich they soon asked the colonists to foot the bill.

Land-hungry American colonists were now freeto burst over the dam of the Appalachian Mountainsand flood out over the verdant western lands. A tinyrivulet of pioneers like Daniel Boone had alreadytrickled into Tennessee and Kentucky; other coura-geous settlers made their preparations for the long,dangerous trek over the mountains.

Then, out of a clear sky, the London governmentissued its Proclamation of 1763. It flatly prohibitedsettlement in the area beyond the Appalachians,pending further adjustments. The truth is that thishastily drawn document was not designed tooppress the colonists at all, but to work out theIndian problem fairly and prevent another bloodyeruption like Pontiac’s uprising.

But countless Americans, especially land specu-lators, were dismayed and angered. Was not theland beyond the mountains their birthright? Had

they not, in addition, purchased it with their bloodin the recent war? In complete defiance of theproclamation, they clogged the westward trails. In1765 an estimated one thousand wagons rolledthrough the town of Salisbury, North Carolina, ontheir way “up west.” This wholesale flouting of royalauthority boded ill for the longevity of British rule inAmerica.

The French and Indian War also caused thecolonists to develop a new vision of their destiny.With the path cleared for the conquest of a conti-nent, with their birthrate high and their energyboundless, they sensed that they were a potent peo-ple on the march. And they were in no mood to berestrained.

Lordly Britons, whose suddenly swollen empirehad tended to produce swollen heads, were in nomood for back talk. Puffed up over their recent vic-tories, they were already annoyed with their unrulycolonial subjects. The stage was set for a violentfamily quarrel.

Chronology 121

Chronology

1598 Edict of Nantes

1608 Champlain colonizes Quebec for France

1643 Louis XIV becomes king of France

1682 La Salle explores Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico

1689- King William’s War (War of the League of1697 Augsburg)

1702- Queen Anne’s War (War of Spanish1713 Succession)

1718 French found New Orleans

1739 War of Jenkins’s Ear

1744- King George’s War (War of Austrian 1748 Succession)

1754 Washington battles French on frontier Albany Congress

1754- French and Indian War (Seven Years’1763 War)

1755 Braddock’s defeat

1757 Pitt emerges as leader of British government

1759 Battle of Quebec

1763 Peace of ParisPontiac’s uprisingProclamation of 1763


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122

7

The Roadto Revolution

��

1763–1775

The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.

JOHN ADAMS, 1818

Victory in the Seven Years’ War made Britain themaster of a vastly enlarged imperial domain in

North America. But victory—including the subse-quent need to garrison ten thousand troops alongthe sprawling American frontier—was painfullycostly. The London government therefore struggledafter 1763 to compel the American colonists toshoulder some of the financial costs of empire. Thischange in British colonial policy reinforced anemerging sense of American political identity andhelped to precipitate the American Revolution.

The eventual conflict was by no meansinevitable. Indeed, given the tightening commer-cial, military, and cultural bonds between coloniesand mother country since the first crude settle-ments a century and a half earlier, it might be con-sidered remarkable that the Revolution happened at

all. The truth is that Americans were reluctant revo-lutionaries. Until late in the the day, they soughtonly to claim the “rights of Englishmen,” not to sep-arate from the mother country. But what began as asquabble about economic policies soon exposedirreconcilable differences between Americans andBritons over cherished political principles. Theensuing clash gave birth to a new nation.

The Deep Roots of Revolution

In a broad sense, America was a revolutionary forcefrom the day of its discovery by Europeans. The NewWorld nurtured new ideas about the nature of soci-ety, citizen, and government. In the Old World, many

humble folk had long lived in the shadow of grave-yards that contained the bones of their ancestors fora thousand years past. Few people born into suchchangeless surroundings dared to question theirlowly social status. But European immigrants in theNew World were not so easily subdued by the scowlof their superiors. In the American wilderness, theyencountered a world that was theirs to make afresh.

Two ideas in particular had taken root in theminds of the American colonists by the mid-eigh-teenth century: one was what historians call repub-licanism. Looking to the models of the ancientGreek and Roman republics, exponents of republi-canism defined a just society as one in which all citi-zens willingly subordinated their private, selfishinterests to the common good. Both the stability of society and the authority of government thusdepended on the virtue of the citizenry—its capac-ity for selflessness, self-sufficiency, and courage, andespecially its appetite for civic involvement. By itsvery nature, republicanism was opposed to hierar-chical and authoritarian institutions such as aris-tocracy and monarchy.

A second idea that fundamentally shapedAmerican political thought derived from a group ofBritish political commentators know as “radicalWhigs.” Widely read by the colonists, the Whigsfeared the threat to liberty posed by the arbitrarypower of the monarch and his ministers relative toelected representatives in Parliament. The Whigsmounted withering attacks on the use of patronageand bribes by the king’s ministers—symptoms of awider moral failure in society that they called “cor-ruption,” in the sense of rot or decay. The Whigswarned citizens to be on guard against corruptionand to be eternally vigilant against possible conspir-acies to denude them of their hard-won liberties.Together, republican and Whig ideas predisposedthe American colonists to be on hair-trigger alertagainst any threat to their rights.

The circumstances of colonial life had donemuch to bolster those attitudes. Dukes and princes,barons and bishops were unknown in the colonies,while property ownership and political participa-tion were relatively widespread. The Americans hadalso grown accustomed to running their own affairs,largely unmolested by remote officials in London.Distance weakens authority; great distance weakensauthority greatly. So it came as an especially joltingshock when Britain after 1763 tried to enclose itsAmerican colonists more snugly in its grip.

Mercantilism and Colonial Grievances

Britain’s empire was acquired in a “fit of absent-mindedness,’’ an old saying goes, and there is muchtruth in the jest. Not one of the original thirteencolonies except Georgia was formally planted by theBritish government. All the others were haphazardlyfounded by trading companies, religious groups, orland speculators.

The British authorities nevertheless embraced atheory, called mercantilism, that justified their con-trol over the colonies. Mercantilists believed thatwealth was power and that a country’s economicwealth (and hence its military and political power)could be measured by the amount of gold or silverin its treasury. To amass gold or silver, a countryneeded to export more than it imported. Possessingcolonies thus conferred distinct advantages, sincethe colonies could both supply raw materials to themother country (thereby reducing the need for for-eign imports) and provide a guaranteed market forexports.

The London government looked on the Ameri-can colonists more or less as tenants. They wereexpected to furnish products needed in the mothercountry, such as tobacco, sugar, and ships’ masts; torefrain from making for export certain products,such as woolen cloth or beaver hats; to buy importedmanufactured goods exclusively from Britain; andnot to indulge in bothersome dreams of economicself-sufficiency or, worse, self-government.

From time to time, Parliament passed laws toregulate the mercantilist system. The first of these,the Navigation Law of 1650, was aimed at rival

New Ideas in the New World 123

Adam Smith (1723–1790), the Scottish“Father of Modern Economics,” frontallyattacked mercantilism in 1776:

“To prohibit a great people, however, frommaking all that they can of every part oftheir own produce, or from employing theirstock and industry in the way that they judgemost advantageous to themselves, is amanifest violation of the most sacred rightsof mankind.”

Dutch shippers trying to elbow their way into theAmerican carrying trade. Thereafter all commerceflowing to and from the colonies could be trans-ported only in British (including colonial) vessels.Subsequent laws required that European goods des-tined for America first had to be landed in Britain,where tariff duties could be collected and Britishmiddlemen could take a slice of the profits. Otherlaws stipulated that American merchants must shipcertain “enumerated” products, notably tobacco,exclusively to Britain, even though prices might bebetter elsewhere.

British policy also inflicted a currency shortageon the colonies. Since the colonists regularly boughtmore from Britain than they sold there, the differ-ence had to be made up in hard cash. Every yeargold and silver coins, mostly earned in illicit tradewith the Spanish and French West Indies, drainedout of the colonies, creating an acute money short-age. To facilitate everyday purchases, the colonists

resorted to butter, nails, pitch, and feathers for pur-poses of exchange.

Currency issues came to a boil when dire finan-cial need forced many of the colonies to issue papermoney, which swiftly depreciated. British mer-chants and creditors squawked so loudly that Parlia-ment prohibited the colonial legislatures fromprinting paper currency and from passing indulgentbankruptcy laws—practices that might harm Britishmerchants. The Americans grumbled that their wel-fare was being sacrificed for the well-being of Britishcommercial interests.

The British crown also reserved the right to nul-lify any legislation passed by the colonial assembliesif such laws worked mischief with the mercantilistsystem. This royal veto was used rather sparingly—just 469 times in connection with 8,563 laws. But the colonists fiercely resented its very existence—another example of how principle could weigh moreheavily than practice in fueling colonial grievances.

The Merits and Menace of Mercantilism

In theory the British mercantile system seemedthoroughly selfish and deliberately oppressive. Butthe truth is that until 1763, the various Naviga-tion Laws imposed no intolerable burden, mainlybecause they were only loosely enforced. Enterpris-ing colonial merchants learned early to disregard orevade troublesome restrictions. Some of the firstAmerican fortunes, like that of John Hancock, wereamassed by wholesale smuggling.

124 CHAPTER 7 The Road to Revolution, 1763–1775

The Boston Gazette declared in 1765,

“A colonist cannot make a button, ahorseshoe, nor a hobnail, but some snootyironmonger or respectable buttonmaker ofBritain shall bawl and squall that his honor’sworship is most egregiously maltreated,injured, cheated, and robbed by the rascallyAmerican republicans.”

Americans also reaped direct benefits from themercantile system. If the colonies existed for thebenefit of the mother country, it was hardly less truethat Britain existed for the benefit of the colonies.London paid liberal bounties to colonial producersof ship parts, over the protests of British competi-tors. Virginia tobacco planters enjoyed a monopolyin the British market, snuffing out the tiny Britishtobacco industry. The colonists also benefited fromthe protection of the world’s mightiest navy and astrong, seasoned army of redcoats—all without apenny of cost.

But even when painted in its rosiest colors, themercantile system burdened the colonists withannoying liabilities. Mercantilism stifled economicinitiative and imposed a rankling dependency onBritish agents and creditors. Most grievously, manyAmericans simply found the mercantilist system

debasing. They felt used, kept in a state of perpetualeconomic adolescence, and never allowed to comeof age. As Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1775,

We have an old mother that peevish isgrown;

She snubs us like children that scarce walkalone;

She forgets we’re grown up and have senseof our own.

Revolution broke out, as Theodore Roosevelt laterremarked, because Britain failed to recognize anemerging nation when it saw one.

The Stamp Tax Uproar

Victory-flushed Britain emerged from the SevenYears’ War holding one of the biggest empires in theworld—and also, less happily, the biggest debt,some £140 million, about half of which had beenincurred defending the American colonies. To jus-tify and service that debt, British officials nowmoved to redefine their relationship with theirNorth American colonies.

Prime Minister George Grenville first arousedthe resentment of the colonists in 1763 by orderingthe British navy to begin strictly enforcing the Navi-gation Laws. He also secured from Parliament theso-called Sugar Act of 1764, the first law ever passedby that body for raising tax revenue in the coloniesfor the crown. Among various provisions, it in-creased the duty on foreign sugar imported from

Mercantilism in Theory and Practice 125

English statesman Edmund Burke(1729–1797) warned in 1775,

“Young man, there is America—which at thisday serves for little more than to amuse youwith stories of savage men and uncouthmanners; yet shall, before you taste ofdeath, show itself equal to the whole of thatcommerce which now attracts the envy ofthe world.”

the West Indies. After bitter protests from thecolonists, the duties were lowered substantially,and the agitation died down. But resentment waskept burning by the Quartering Act of 1765. Thismeasure required certain colonies to provide foodand quarters for British troops.

Then in the same year, 1765, Grenville imposedthe most odious measure of all: a stamp tax, to raiserevenues to support the new military force. TheStamp Act mandated the use of stamped paper orthe affixing of stamps, certifying payment of tax.Stamps were required on bills of sale for about fiftytrade items as well as on certain types of commer-cial and legal documents, including playing cards,pamphlets, newspapers, diplomas, bills of lading,and marriage licenses.

Grenville regarded all these measures as reason-able and just. He was simply asking the Americansto pay a fair share of the costs for their own defense,through taxes that were already familiar in Britain.In fact, the British people for two generations hadendured a stamp tax far heavier than that passed forthe colonies.

Yet the Americans were angrily aroused at whatthey regarded as Grenville’s fiscal aggression. Thenew laws did not merely pinch their pocketbooks.Far more ominously, Grenville also seemed to bestriking at the local liberties they had come to

assume as a matter of right. Thus some colonialassemblies defiantly refused to comply with theQuartering Act, or voted only a fraction of the sup-plies that it called for.

Worst of all, Grenville’s noxious legislationseemed to jeopardize the basic rights of the col-onists as Englishmen. Both the Sugar Act and theStamp Act provided for trying offenders in the hatedadmiralty courts, where juries were not allowed. Theburden of proof was on the defendants, who wereassumed to be guilty unless they could prove them-selves innocent. Trial by jury and the precept of“innocent until proved guilty’’ were ancient privi-leges that British people everywhere, including theAmerican colonists, held most dear.

And why was a British army needed at all in thecolonies, now that the French were expelled fromthe continent and Pontiac’s warriors crushed? Couldits real purpose be to whip rebellious colonists intoline? Many Americans, weaned on radical Whig sus-picion of all authority, began to sniff the strongscent of a conspiracy to strip them of their historicliberties. They lashed back violently, and the StampAct became the target that drew their most fero-cious fire.

Angry throats raised the cry, “No taxation with-out representation.’’ There was some irony in theslogan, because the seaports and tidewater townsthat were most wrathful against the Stamp Act hadlong denied full representation to their own back-country pioneers. But now the aggravated coloniststook the high ground of principle.


The famous circular letter from theMassachusetts House of Representatives(1768) stated,

“. . . considering the utter impracticability oftheir ever being fully and equally representedin Parliament, and the great expense thatmust unavoidably attend even a partialrepresentation there, this House think that ataxation of their constituents, even withouttheir consent, grievous as it is, would bepreferable to any representation that couldbe admitted for them there.”

The Americans made a distinction between“legislation’’ and “taxation.’’ They conceded theright of Parliament to legislate about matters thataffected the entire empire, including the regulationof trade. But they steadfastly denied the right of Par-liament, in which no Americans were seated, toimpose taxes on Americans. Only their own electedcolonial legislatures, the Americans insisted, couldlegally tax them. Taxes levied by the distant BritishParliament amounted to robbery, a piratical assaulton the sacred rights of property.

Grenville dismissed these American protests ashairsplitting absurdities. The power of Parliamentwas supreme and undivided, he asserted, and in anycase the Americans were represented in Parliament.Elaborating the theory of “virtual representation,’’Grenville claimed that every member of Parliamentrepresented all British subjects, even those Ameri-cans in Boston or Charleston who had never votedfor a member of Parliament.

The Americans scoffed at the notion of virtualrepresentation. And truthfully, they did not reallywant direct representation in Parliament, whichmight have seemed like a sensible compromise. Ifthey had obtained it, any gouty member of theHouse of Commons could have proposed anoppressive tax bill for the colonies, and the Ameri-can representatives, few in number, would havestood bereft of a principle with which to resist.

Thus the principle of no taxation without rep-resentation was supremely important, and thecolonists clung to it with tenacious consistency.When the British replied that the sovereign power ofgovernment could not be divided between “legisla-tive’’ authority in London and “taxing’’ authority inthe colonies, they forced the Americans to deny theauthority of Parliament altogether and to begin toconsider their own political independence. Thischain of logic eventually led, link by link, to revolu-tionary consequences.

Parliament Forced to Repeal the Stamp Act

Colonial outcries against the hated stamp tax tookvarious forms. The most conspicuous assemblagewas the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, which broughttogether in New York City twenty-seven distin-guished delegates from nine colonies. After digni-

fied debate the members drew up a statement oftheir rights and grievances and beseeched the kingand Parliament to repeal the repugnant legislation.

The Stamp Act Congress, which was largelyignored in England, made little splash at the time inAmerica. Its ripples, however, began to erode sec-tional suspicions, for it brought together around thesame table leaders from the different and rivalcolonies. It was one more halting but significantstep toward intercolonial unity.

More effective than the congress was the wide-spread adoption of nonimportation agreementsagainst British goods. Woolen garments of home-spun became fashionable, and the eating of lambchops was discouraged so that the wool-bearingsheep would be allowed to mature. Nonimportationagreements were in fact a promising stride towardunion; they spontaneously united the Americanpeople for the first time in common action.

Mobilizing in support of nonimportation gaveordinary American men and women new opportu-nities to participate in colonial protests. Many peo-ple who had previously stood on the sidelines nowsigned petitions swearing to uphold the terms of theconsumer boycotts. Groups of women assembled inpublic to hold spinning bees and make homespuncloth as a replacement for shunned British textiles.Such public defiance helped spread revolutionaryfervor throughout American colonial society.

Conflict over Taxes 127

Sometimes violence accompanied colonialprotests. Groups of ardent spirits, known as Sons ofLiberty and Daughters of Liberty, took the law intotheir own hands. Crying “Liberty, Property, and NoStamps,” they enforced the nonimportation agree-ments against violators, often with a generous coatof tar and feathers. Patriotic mobs ransacked thehouses of unpopular officials, confiscated theirmoney, and hanged effigies of stamp agents on lib-erty poles.

Shaken by colonial commotion, the machineryfor collecting the tax broke down. On that dismalday in 1765 when the new act was to go into effect,the stamp agents had all been forced to resign, andthere was no one to sell the stamps. While flagsflapped at half-mast, the law was openly and fla-grantly defied—or, rather, nullified.

England was hard hit. America then boughtabout one-quarter of all British exports, and aboutone-half of British shipping was devoted to theAmerican trade. Merchants, manufacturers, andshippers suffered from the colonial nonimportationagreements, and hundreds of laborers were thrownout of work. Loud demands converged on Parlia-

ment for repeal of the Stamp Act. But many of themembers could not understand why 7.5 millionBritons had to pay heavy taxes to protect thecolonies, whereas some 2 million colonists refusedto pay for only one-third of the cost of their owndefense.

After a stormy debate, Parliament in 1766 grudg-ingly repealed the Stamp Act. Grateful residents ofNew York erected a leaden statue to King George III.But American rejoicing was premature. Having with-drawn the Stamp Act, Parliament in virtually thesame breath provocatively passed the DeclaratoryAct, reaffirming Parliament’s right “to bind” thecolonies “in all cases whatsoever.” The British gov-ernment thereby drew its line in the sand. It definedthe constitutional principle it would not yield:absolute and unqualified sovereignty over its NorthAmerican colonies. The colonists had already drawntheir own battle line by making it clear that theywanted a measure of sovereignty of their own andwould undertake drastic action to secure it. The stagewas set for a continuing confrontation. Within a fewyears, that statue of King George would be meltedinto thousands of bullets to be fired at his troops.


The Townshend Tea Taxand the Boston “Massacre’’

Control of the British ministry was now seized bythe gifted but erratic “Champagne Charley’’ Town-shend, a man who could deliver brilliant speechesin Parliament even while drunk. Rashly promisingto pluck feathers from the colonial goose with aminimum of squawking, he persuaded Parliamentin 1767 to pass the Townshend Acts. The mostimportant of these new regulations was a lightimport duty on glass, white lead, paper, paint, andtea. Townshend, seizing on a dubious distinctionbetween internal and external taxes, made this tax,unlike the Stamp Act, an indirect customs dutypayable at American ports. But to the increasinglyrestless colonists, this was a phantom distinction.For them the real difficulty remained taxes—in anyform—without representation.

Flushed with their recent victory over the stamptax, the colonists were in a rebellious mood. The im-post on tea was especially irksome, for an estimated1 million people drank the refreshing brew twice a day.

The new Townshend revenues, worse yet, wereto be earmarked to pay the salaries of the royal gov-ernors and judges in America. From the standpointof efficient administration by London, this was areform long overdue. But the ultrasuspicious Ameri-cans, who had beaten the royal governors into lineby controlling the purse, regarded Townshend’s taxas another attempt to enchain them. Their worst

fears took on greater reality when the London gov-ernment, after passing the Townshend taxes, sus-pended the legislature of New York in 1767 forfailure to comply with the Quartering Act.

Nonimportation agreements, previously potent,were quickly revived against the Townshend Acts.But they proved less effective than those devisedagainst the Stamp Act. The colonists, again enjoyingprosperity, took the new tax less seriously thanmight have been expected, largely because it waslight and indirect. They found, moreover, that theycould secure smuggled tea at a cheap price, andconsequently smugglers increased their activities,especially in Massachusetts.

British officials, faced with a breakdown of lawand order, landed two regiments of troops in Bostonin 1768. Many of the soldiers were drunken and pro-fane characters. Liberty-loving colonists, resentingthe presence of the red-coated “ruffians,’’ tauntedthe “bloody backs’’ unmercifully.

A clash was inevitable. On the evening of March5, 1770, a crowd of some sixty townspeople set upona squad of about ten redcoats, one of whom was hit

Aftermath of the Stamp Act 129

Giving new meaning to the proverbialtempest in a teapot, a group of 126 Bostonwomen signed an agreement, or“subscription list,” which announced,

“We the Daughters of those Patriots who haveand now do appear for the public interest . . .do with Pleasure engage with them indenying ourselves the drinking of ForeignTea, in hopes to frustrate a Plan that tendsto deprive the whole Community of . . . all that is valuable in Life.”

by a club and another of whom was knocked down.Acting apparently without orders but under extremeprovocation, the troops opened fire and killed orwounded eleven “innocent’’ citizens. One of the firstto die was Crispus Attucks, described by contempo-raries as a powerfully built runaway “mulatto’’ andas a leader of the mob. Both sides were in somedegree to blame, and in the subsequent trial (inwhich future president John Adams served asdefense attorney for the soldiers), only two of theredcoats were found guilty of manslaughter. Thesoldiers were released after being branded on thehand.

The Seditious Committees of Correspondence

By 1770 King George III, then only thirty-two yearsold, was strenuously attempting to assert the powerof the British monarchy. He was a good man in his

private morals, but he proved to be a bad ruler.Earnest, industrious, stubborn, and lustful forpower, he surrounded himself with cooperative “yesmen,’’ notably his corpulent prime minister, LordNorth.

The ill-timed Townshend Acts had failed to produce revenue, though they did produce near-rebellion. Net proceeds from the tax in one yearwere a paltry £295, and during that time the annualmilitary costs to Britain in the colonies hadmounted to £170,000. Nonimportation agreements,though feebly enforced, were pinching British man-ufacturers. The government of Lord North, bowingto various pressures, finally persuaded Parliamentto repeal the Townshend revenue duties. But thethree-pence toll on tea, the tax the colonists foundmost offensive, was retained to keep alive the prin-ciple of parliamentary taxation.

Flames of discontent in America continued tobe fanned by numerous incidents, including theredoubled efforts of the British officials to enforcethe Navigation Laws. Resistance was further kindled


by a master propagandist and engineer of rebellion,Samuel Adams of Boston, a cousin of John Adams.Unimpressive in appearance (his hands trembled),he lived and breathed only for politics. His friendshad to buy him a presentable suit of clothes whenhe left Massachusetts on intercolonial business.Zealous, tenacious, and courageous, he was ultra-sensitive to infractions of colonial rights. Cherishinga deep faith in the common people, he appealedeffectively to what was called his “trained mob.’’

Samuel Adams’s signal contribution was toorganize in Massachusetts the local committees ofcorrespondence. After he had formed the first onein Boston during 1772, some eighty towns in thecolony speedily set up similar organizations. Theirchief function was to spread the spirit of resistance

by interchanging letters and thus keep alive oppo-sition to British policy. One critic referred to thecommittees as “the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition.’’

Intercolonial committees of correspondencewere the next logical step. Virginia led the way in1773 by creating such a body as a standing commit-tee of the House of Burgesses. Within a short time,every colony had established a central committeethrough which it could exchange ideas and infor-mation with other colonies. These intercolonialgroups were supremely significant in stimulatingand disseminating sentiment in favor of unitedaction. They evolved directly into the first Americancongresses.

Uniting for Rebellion 131

Tea Parties at Boston and Elsewhere

Thus far—that is, by 1773—nothing had happenedto make rebellion inevitable. Nonimportation wasweakening. Increasing numbers of colonists werereluctantly paying the tea tax, because the legal teawas now cheaper than the smuggled tea, evencheaper than tea in England.

A new ogre entered the picture in 1773. Thepowerful British East India Company, overburdenedwith 17 million pounds of unsold tea, was facingbankruptcy. If it collapsed, the London governmentwould lose heavily in tax revenue. The ministrytherefore decided to assist the company by award-ing it a complete monopoly of the American teabusiness. The giant corporation would now be ableto sell the coveted leaves more cheaply than everbefore, even with the three-pence tax tacked on. Butmany American tea drinkers, rather than rejoicingat the lower prices, cried foul. They saw this Britishmove as a shabby attempt to trick the Americans,with the bait of cheaper tea, into swallowing theprinciple of the detested tax. For the determinedAmericans, principle remained far more importantthan price.

If the British officials insisted on the letter of thelaw, violence would certainly result. Fatefully, theBritish colonial authorities decided to enforce thelaw. Once more, the colonists rose up in wrath to defyit. Not a single one of the several thousand chests of tea shipped by the East India Company everreached the hands of the consignees. In Philadel-phia and New York, mass demonstrations forced thetea-bearing ships to return to England with theircargo holds still full. At Annapolis, Marylandersburned both cargo and vessel, while proclaiming“Liberty and Independence or death in pursuit ofit.” In Charleston, South Carolina, officials seizedthe tea for nonpayment of duties after intimidatedlocal merchants refused to accept delivery. (Ironi-


Peter Oliver (1713–1791), the chief justice of Massachusetts, penned a Loyalist accountof the Revolution after the outbreak ofhostilities. Recalling the popular protests of the early 1770s, he wrote that

“[the colonial] upper & lower House consistedof Men generally devoted to the Interest ofthe Faction. The Foundations of Governmentwere subverted; & every Loyalist was obligedto submit to be swept away by the Torrent. . . . Some indeed dared to say that their Soulswere their own; but no one could call his Bodyhis own; for that was at the Mercy of theMob, who like the Inquisition Coach, would calla Man out of his Bed, & he must step inwhether he liked the Conveyance or not.”

cally, the confiscated Charleston tea was later auc-tioned to raise money for the Revolutionary army.)

Only in Boston did a British official stubbornlyrefuse to be cowed. Massachusetts governorThomas Hutchinson had already felt the fury of themob, when Stamp Act protesters had destroyed hishome in 1765. This time he was determined not tobudge. Ironically, Hutchinson agreed that the tea taxwas unjust, but he believed even more strongly thatthe colonists had no right to flout the law. Hutchin-son infuriated Boston’s radicals when he orderedthe tea ships not to clear Boston harbor until theyhad unloaded their cargoes. Sentiment against himwas further inflamed when Hutchinson’s enemiespublished a private letter in which he declared that“an abridgement of what are called English liber-ties” was necessary for the preservation of law andorder in the colonies—apparently confirming thedarkest conspiracy theories of the American radi-cals. Provoked beyond restraint, a band of Bostoni-ans, clumsily disguised as Indians, boarded thedocked tea ships on December 16, 1773. Theysmashed open 342 chests and dumped the contentsinto Boston harbor. A silent crowd watched approv-ingly as salty tea was brewed for the fish.

Reactions varied. Radicals exulted in the peo-ple’s zeal for liberty. Conservatives complained thatthe destruction of private property violated the fun-damental norms of civil society. Hutchinson, chas-tened and disgusted, betook himself to Britain,never to return. The British authorities, meanwhile,saw little alternative to whipping the upstartcolonists into shape. The granting of some measureof home rule to the Americans might at this stagestill have prevented rebellion, but few Britons ofthat era were blessed with such wisdom. Amongthose who were so blessed was Edmund Burke, thegreat conservative political theorist and a stoutchampion of the American cause. “To tax and toplease, no more than to love and be wise,” he sto-ically remarked, “is not given to men.”

Parliament Passes the “Intolerable Acts’’

An irate Parliament responded speedily to theBoston Tea Party with measures that brewed a revo-lution. By huge majorities in 1774, it passed a series

of acts designed to chastise Boston in particular,Massachusetts in general. They were branded inAmerica as “the massacre of American Liberty.’’

Most drastic of all was the Boston Port Act. Itclosed the tea-stained harbor until damages werepaid and order could be ensured. By other “Intolera-ble Acts”—as they were called in America—many ofthe chartered rights of colonial Massachusetts wereswept away. Restrictions were likewise placed on theprecious town meetings. Contrary to previous prac-tice, enforcing officials who killed colonists in theline of duty could now be sent to Britain for trial.There, suspicious Americans assumed, they wouldbe likely to get off scot-free.

By a fateful coincidence, the “Intolerable Acts’’were accompanied in 1774 by the Quebec Act.Passed at the same time, it was erroneouslyregarded in English-speaking America as part of theBritish reaction to the turbulence in Boston. Actu-ally, the Quebec Act was a good law in bad company.For many years the British government had debatedhow it should administer the sixty thousand or soconquered French subjects in Canada, and it hadfinally framed this farsighted and statesmanlikemeasure. The French were guaranteed theirCatholic religion. They were also permitted to retainmany of their old customs and institutions, whichdid not include a representative assembly or trial byjury in civil cases. In addition, the old boundaries ofthe province of Quebec were now extended south-ward all the way to the Ohio River.

The Quebec Act, from the viewpoint of theFrench-Canadians, was a shrewd and conciliatorymeasure. If Britain had only shown as much fore-sight in dealing with its English-speaking colonies,it might not have lost them.

But from the viewpoint of the Americancolonists as a whole, the Quebec Act was especiallynoxious. All the other “Intolerable Acts’’ lawsslapped directly at Massachusetts, but this one hada much wider range. It seemed to set a dangerousprecedent in America against jury trials and popularassemblies. It alarmed land speculators, who weredistressed to see the huge trans-Allegheny areasnatched from their grasp. It aroused anti-Catholics,who were shocked by the extension of RomanCatholic jurisdiction southward into a huge regionthat had once been earmarked for Protestantism—aregion about as large as the thirteen originalcolonies. One angry Protestant cried that thereought to be a “jubilee in hell’’ over this enormousgain for “popery.’’

The Eve of Rebellion 133

The Continental Congress andBloodshed

American dissenters responded sympathetically tothe plight of Massachusetts. It had put itself in thewrong by the violent destruction of the tea cargoes;now Britain had put itself in the wrong by brutalpunishment that seemed far too cruel for the crime.Flags were flown at half-mast throughout thecolonies on the day that the Boston Port Act wentinto effect, and sister colonies rallied to send food tothe stricken city. Rice was shipped even from far-away South Carolina.

Most memorable of the responses to the “Intol-erable Acts’’ was the summoning of a ContinentalCongress in 1774. It was to meet in Philadelphia toconsider ways of redressing colonial grievances.Twelve of the thirteen colonies, with Georgia alonemissing, sent fifty-five distinguished men, amongthem Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Washing-ton, and Patrick Henry. Intercolonial frictions werepartially melted away by social activity after work-ing hours; in fifty-four days George Washingtondined at his own lodgings only nine times.

The First Continental Congress deliberated forseven weeks, from September 5 to October 26, 1774.It was not a legislative but a consultative body—aconvention rather than a congress. John Adams

played a stellar role. Eloquently swaying his col-leagues to a revolutionary course, he helped defeatby the narrowest of margins a proposal by the mod-erates for a species of American home rule underBritish direction. After prolonged argument theCongress drew up several dignified papers. Theseincluded a ringing Declaration of Rights, as well assolemn appeals to other British American colonies,to the king, and to the British people.

The most significant action of the Congress wasthe creation of The Association. Unlike previousnonimportation agreements, The Association calledfor a complete boycott of British goods: nonimporta-tion, nonexportation, and nonconsumption. Yet it isimportant to note that the delegates were not yetcalling for independence. They sought merely torepeal the offensive legislation and return to thehappy days before parliamentary taxation. If colo-nial grievances were redressed, well and good; ifnot, the Congress was to meet again in May 1775.Resistance had not yet ripened into open rebellion.

But the fatal drift toward war continued. Parlia-ment rejected the Congress’s petitions. In Americachickens squawked and tar kettles bubbled as viola-tors of The Association were tarred and feathered.Muskets were gathered, men began to drill openly,and a clash seemed imminent.

In April 1775 the British commander in Bostonsent a detachment of troops to nearby Lexington


QUEBECQuebec

Montreal

NOVA SCOTIA

NEW YORK

PENNSYLVANIA

VIRGINIA

Ohio

R.

Mississippi R.

Quebec before 1774

Quebec after 1774,as envisioned by theQuebec Act.

Quebec Before and After 1774Young Alexander Hamilton voiced the fears of manycolonists when he warned that the Quebec Act of1774 would introduce “priestly tyranny” intoCanada, making that country another Spain orPortugal. “Does not your blood run cold,” he asked,“to think that an English Parliament should pass anact for the establishment of arbitrary power andPopery in such a country?”

and Concord. They were to seize stores of colonialgunpowder and also to bag the “rebel’’ ringleaders,Samuel Adams and John Hancock. At Lexington thecolonial “Minute Men’’ refused to disperse rapidlyenough, and shots were fired that killed eight Amer-icans and wounded several more. The affair wasmore the “Lexington Massacre’’ than a battle. Theredcoats pushed on to Concord, whence they wereforced to retreat by the rough and ready Americans,whom Emerson immortalized:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.*

The bewildered British, fighting off murderousfire from militiamen crouched behind thick stonewalls, finally regained the sanctuary of Boston. Lick-ing their wounds, they could count about threehundred casualties, including some seventy killed.Britain now had a war on its hands.

Imperial Strength and Weakness

Aroused Americans had brashly rebelled against amighty empire. The population odds were aboutthree to one against the rebels—some 7.5 millionBritons to 2.5 million colonists. The odds in mon-etary wealth and naval power overwhelminglyfavored the mother country.

Britain then boasted a professional army ofsome fifty thousand men, as compared with thenumerous but wretchedly trained American militia.George III, in addition, had the treasury to hire for-eign soldiers, and some thirty thousand Germans—so-called Hessians—were ultimately employed. TheBritish enrolled about fifty thousand American Loy-alists and enlisted the services of many Indians,who though unreliable fair-weather fighters, in-flamed long stretches of the frontier. One Britishofficer boasted that the war would offer no prob-lems that could not be solved by an “experiencedsheep herder.’’

Yet Britain was weaker than it seemed at firstglance. Oppressed Ireland was a smoking volcano,and British troops had to be detached to watch it.France, bitter from its recent defeat, was awaiting an

The Revolutionary War Begins 135

*Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn.”

opportunity to stab Britain in the back. The Londongovernment was confused and inept. There was noWilliam Pitt, “Organizer of Victory,’’ only the stub-born George III and his pliant Tory prime minister,Lord North.

Many earnest and God-fearing Britons had nodesire whatever to kill their American cousins.William Pitt withdrew a son from the army ratherthan see him thrust his sword into fellow Anglo-Saxons struggling for liberty. The English Whig fac-tions, opposed to Lord North’s Tory wing, openlycheered American victories—at least at the outset.Aside from trying to embarrass the Tories politically,many Whigs believed that the battle for British free-dom was being fought in America. If George III tri-umphed, his rule at home might become tyrannical.This outspoken sympathy in Britain, though plainlya minority voice, greatly encouraged the Americans.If they continued their resistance long enough, theWhigs might come into power and deal generouslywith them.

Britain’s army in America had to operate underendless difficulties. The generals were second-rate;the soldiers, though on the whole capable, werebrutally treated. There was one extreme case ofeight hundred lashes on the bare back for strikingan officer. Provisions were often scarce, rancid, andwormy. On one occasion a supply of biscuits, cap-tured some fifteen years earlier from the French,was softened by dropping cannonballs on them.

Other handicaps loomed. The redcoats had toconquer the Americans; restoring the pre-1763 statusquo would be a victory for the colonists. Britain wasoperating some 3,000 miles from its home base, anddistance added greatly to the delays and uncertain-ties arising from storms and other mishaps. Militaryorders were issued in London that, when receivedmonths later, would not fit the changing situation.

America’s geographical expanse was enormous:roughly 1,000 by 600 miles. The united colonies hadno urban nerve center, like France’s Paris, whosecapture would cripple the country as a whole.British armies took every city of any size, yet like aboxer punching a feather pillow, they made littlemore than a dent in the entire country. The Amer-icans wisely traded space for time. BenjaminFranklin calculated that during the prolonged cam-paign in which the redcoats captured Bunker Hilland killed some 150 Patriots, about 60,000 Americanbabies were born.

American Pluses and Minuses

The revolutionists were blessed with outstandingleadership. George Washington was a giant amongmen; Benjamin Franklin was a master among diplo-mats. Open foreign aid, theoretically possible fromthe start, eventually came from France. NumerousEuropean officers, many of them unemployed andimpoverished, volunteered their swords for pay. In aclass by himself was a wealthy young French noble-man, the Marquis de Lafayette. Fleeing from bore-dom, loving glory and ultimately liberty, at agenineteen the “French gamecock’’ was made a majorgeneral in the colonial army. His commission waslargely a recognition of his family influence andpolitical connections, but the services of thisteenage general in securing further aid from Francewere invaluable.

Other conditions aided the Americans. Theywere fighting defensively, with the odds, all thingsconsidered, favoring the defender. In agriculture,the colonies were mainly self-sustaining, like a kindof Robinson Crusoe’s island. The Americans alsoenjoyed the moral advantage that came from beliefin a just cause. The historical odds were not impos-sible. Other peoples had triumphed in the face ofgreater obstacles: Greeks against Persians, Swissagainst Austrians, Dutch against Spaniards.


Privately (1776) General George Washington(1732–1799) expressed his distrust of militia:

“To place any dependence upon militia isassuredly resting on a broken staff. . . . The sudden change in their manner of living. . . brings on sickness in many, impatience inall, and such an unconquerable desire ofreturning to their respective homes that itnot only produces shameful and scandalousdesertions among themselves, but infusesthe like spirit in others. . . . If I was calledupon to declare upon oath whether themilitia have been most serviceable or hurtfulupon the whole, I should subscribe to thelatter.”

Yet the American rebels were badly organizedfor war. From the earliest days, they had beenalmost fatally lacking in unity, and the new nationlurched forward uncertainly like an uncoordinatedcentipede. Even the Continental Congress, whichdirected the conflict, was hardly more than a debat-ing society, and it grew feebler as the struggledragged on. “Their Congress now is quite disjoint’d,’’gibed an English satirist, “Since Gibbits (gallows)[are] for them appointed.’’ The disorganizedcolonists fought almost the entire war before adopt-ing a written constitution—the Articles of Confeder-ation—in 1781.

Jealousy everywhere raised its hideous head.Individual states, proudly regarding themselves assovereign, resented the attempts of Congress toexercise its flimsy powers. Sectional jealousy boiledup over the appointment of military leaders; some

distrustful New Englanders almost preferred Britishofficers to Americans from other sections.

Economic difficulties were nearly insuperable.Metallic money had already been heavily drainedaway. A cautious Continental Congress, unwilling toraise anew the explosive issue of taxation, wasforced to print “Continental’’ paper money in greatamounts. As this currency poured from the presses,it depreciated until the expression “not worth aContinental’’ became current. One barber con-temptuously papered his shop with the near-worthless dollars. The confusion proliferated whenthe individual states were compelled to issue depre-ciated paper money of their own.

Inflation of the currency inevitably skyrocketedprices. Families of the soldiers at the fighting frontwere hard hit, and hundreds of anxious husbandsand fathers deserted. Debtors easily acquired hand-fuls of the quasi-worthless money and gleefully paidtheir debts “without mercy’’—sometimes with thebayonets of the authorities to back them up.

A Thin Line of Heroes

Basic military supplies in the colonies were danger-ously scanty, especially firearms. Legend to the con-trary, colonial Americans were not a well-armedpeople. Firearms were to be found in only a smallminority of households, and many of those gunswere the property of the local militia. Not a singlegun factory existed in the colonies, and an importedmusket cost the equivalent of two months’ salary fora skilled artisan. Small wonder that only one intwelve American militiamen reported for duty with

The Military Balance Sheet 137

General Washington’s disgust with hiscountrymen is reflected in a diary entry for1776:

“Chimney corner patriots abound; venality,corruption, prostitution of office for selfishends, abuse of trust, perversion of fundsfrom a national to a private use, andspeculations upon the necessities of thetimes pervade all interests.”

his own musket—or that Benjamin Franklin seri-ously proposed arming the American troops withbows and arrows. Among the reasons for the even-tual alliance with France was the need for a reliablesource of firearms.

Other shortages bedeviled the rebels. At ValleyForge, Pennsylvania, shivering American soldierswent without bread for three successive days in thecruel winter of 1777–1778. In one southern cam-paign, some men fainted for lack of food. Manufac-tured goods also were generally in short supply inagricultural America, and clothing and shoes wereappallingly scarce. The path of the Patriot fightingmen was often marked by bloody snow. At frigid Val-ley Forge, during one anxious period, twenty-eighthundred men were barefooted or nearly naked.Woolens were desperately needed against the win-try blasts, and in general the only real uniform of thecolonial army was uniform raggedness. During agrand parade at Valley Forge, some of the officersappeared wrapped in woolen bedcovers. One RhodeIsland unit was known as the “Ragged, Lousy, NakedRegiment.’’

American militiamen were numerous but alsohighly unreliable. Able-bodied American males—perhaps several hundred thousand of them—hadreceived rudimentary training, and many of theserecruits served for short terms in the rebel armies.But poorly trained plowboys could not stand up in

the open field against professional British troopsadvancing with bare bayonets. Many of these undis-ciplined warriors would, in the words of Washington,“fly from their own shadows.’’

A few thousand regulars—perhaps seven oreight thousand at the war’s end—were finallywhipped into shape by stern drillmasters. Notableamong them was an organizational genius, the saltyGerman Baron von Steuben. He spoke no Englishwhen he reached America, but he soon taught hismen that bayonets were not for broiling beefsteaksover open fires. As they gained experience, thesesoldiers of the Continental line more than held theirown against crack British troops.

Blacks also fought and died for the Americancause. Although many states initially barred themfrom militia service, by war’s end more than fivethousand blacks had enlisted in the American armedforces. The largest contingents came from the north-ern states with substantial numbers of free blacks.

Blacks fought at Trenton, Brandywine, Saratoga,and other important battles. Some, including PrinceWhipple—later immortalized in Emanuel Leutze’sfamous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware”(see p. 153)—became military heroes. Others servedas cooks, guides, spies, drivers, and road builders.

African-Americans also served on the Britishside. In November 1775 Lord Dunmore, royal gover-nor of Virginia, issued a proclamation promisingfreedom for any enslaved black in Virginia whojoined the British army. News of Dunmore’s decreetraveled swiftly. Virginia and Maryland tightenedslave patrols, but within one month, three hundredslaves had joined what came to be called “Lord Dun-more’s Ethiopian Regiment.” In time thousands ofblacks fled plantations for British promises of eman-cipation. When one of James Madison’s slaves wascaught trying to escape to the British lines, Madisonrefused to punish him for “coveting that liberty” thatwhite Americans proclaimed the “right & worthypursuit of every human being.” At war’s end theBritish kept their word, to some at least, and evacu-ated as many as fourteen thousand “Black Loyalists”to Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and England.

Morale in the Revolutionary army was badlyundermined by American profiteers. Putting profitsbefore patriotism, they sold to the British becausethe invader could pay in gold. Speculators forcedprices sky-high, and some Bostonians made profitsof 50 to 200 percent on army garb while the Ameri-can army was freezing at Valley Forge. Washingtonnever had as many as twenty thousand effective


Enslaved blacks hoped that the Revolutionarycrisis would make it possible for them tosecure their own liberty. On the eve of the war in South Carolina, merchant JosiahSmith, Jr., noted such a rumor among theslaves:

“[Freedom] is their common Talk throughoutthe Province, and has occasioned impertinentbehavior in many of them, insomuch that ourProvincial Congress now sitting hath votedthe immediate raising of Two Thousand MenHorse and food, to keep those mistakencreatures in awe.”

Despite such repressive measures, slaveuprisings continued to plague the southerncolonies through 1775 and 1776.

troops in one place at one time, despite bounties ofland and other inducements. Yet if the rebels hadthrown themselves into the struggle with zeal, theycould easily have raised many times that number.

The brutal truth is that only a select minority ofthe American colonists attached themselves to the

cause of independence with a spirit of selfless devo-tion. These were the dedicated souls who bore theburden of battle and the risks of defeat; these werethe freedom-loving Patriots who deserved the grati-tude and esteem of generations yet unborn. Seldomhave so few done so much for so many.


Chronology

1650 First Navigation Laws to control colonialcommerce

1696 Board of Trade assumes governance of colonies

1763 French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War) ends

1764 Sugar Act

1765 Quartering ActStamp ActStamp Act Congress

1766 Declaratory Act

1767 Townshend Acts passedNew York legislature suspended by Parliament

1768 British troops occupy Boston

1770 Boston MassacreAll Townshend Acts except tea tax repealed

1772 Committees of correspondence formed

1773 British East India Company granted tea monopoly

Governor Hutchinson’s actions provoke Boston Tea Party

1774 “Intolerable Acts”Quebec ActFirst Continental CongressThe Association boycotts British goods

1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Whose Revolution?

Historians once assumed that the Revolution wasjust another chapter in the unfolding story of

human liberty—an important way station on adivinely ordained pathway toward moral perfectionin human affairs. This approach, often labeled the“Whig view of history,” was best expressed inGeorge Bancroft’s ten-volume History of the UnitedStates of America, published between the 1830s and1870s.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a group ofhistorians known as the “imperial school” chal-lenged Bancroft, arguing that the Revolution wasbest understood not as the fulfillment of nationaldestiny, but as a constitutional conflict within theBritish Empire. For historians like George Beer,

Charles Andrews, and Lawrence Gipson, the Revo-lution was the product of a collision between two different views of empire. While the Americanswere moving steadily toward more self-govern-ment, Britain increasingly tightened its grip, threaten-ing a stranglehold that eventually led to wrenchingrevolution.

By the early twentieth century, these ap-proaches were challenged by the so-called progres-sive historians, who argued that neither divinedestiny nor constitutional quibbles had much to do with the Revolution. Rather, the Revolutionstemmed from deep-seated class tensions withinAmerican society that, once released by revolt, pro-duced a truly transformed social order. Living them-

selves in a reform age when entrenched economicinterests cowered under heavy attack, progressivehistorians like Carl Becker insisted that the Revo-lution was not just about “home rule” within the British Empire, but also about “who should ruleat home” in America, the upper or lower classes. J. Franklin Jameson took Becker’s analysis one stepfurther in his influential The American RevolutionConsidered as a Social Movement (1926). He claimedthat the Revolution not only grew out of intensestruggles between social groups, but also inspiredmany ordinary Americans to seek greater economicand political power, fundamentally democratizingsociety in its wake.

In the 1950s the progressive historians fell out offavor as the political climate became more conser-vative. Interpretations of the American Revolutionas a class struggle did not play well in a countryobsessed with the spread of communism, and in itsplace arose the so-called consensus view. Historianssuch as Robert Brown and Edmund Morgan down-played the role of class conflict in the Revolutionaryera, but emphasized that colonists of all ranksshared a commitment to certain fundamental polit-ical principles of self-government. The unifyingpower of ideas was now back in fashion almost ahundred years after Bancroft.

Since the 1950s two broad interpretations havecontended with each other and perpetuated thecontroversy over whether political ideals or eco-nomic and social realities were most responsible forthe Revolution. The first, articulated most promi-nently by Bernard Bailyn, has emphasized ideologi-cal and psychological factors. Focusing on the powerof ideas to foment revolution, Bailyn argued that thecolonists, incited by their reading of seventeenth-

century and early-eighteenth-century English politi-cal theorists, grew extraordinarily (perhaps evenexaggeratedly) suspicious of any attempts to tightenthe imperial reins on the colonies. When confrontedwith new taxes and commercial regulations, thesehypersensitive colonists screamed “conspiracyagainst liberty” and “corrupt ministerial plot.” Intime they took up armed insurrection in defense oftheir intellectual commitment to liberty.

A second school of historians, writing duringthe 1960s and 1970s and inspired by the socialmovements of that turbulent era, revived the pro-gressive interpretation of the Revolution. GaryNash, in The Urban Crucible (1979), and EdwardCountryman, in A People in Revolution (1981),pointed to the increasing social and economic divi-sions among Americans in both the urban seaportsand the isolated countryside in the years leading upto the Revolution. Attacks by laborers on politicalelites and expressions of resentment toward wealthwere taken as evidence of a society that was breed-ing revolutionary change from within, quite asidefrom British provocations. While the concerns of theprogressive historians echo in these socioeconomicinterpretations of the Revolution, the neoprogres-sives have been more careful not to reduce theissues simplistically to the one-ring arena of eco-nomic self-interest. Instead, they have argued thatthe varying material circumstances of Americanparticipants led them to hold distinctive versions ofrepublicanism, giving the Revolution a less unifiedand more complex ideological underpinning thanthe idealistic historians had previously suggested.The dialogue between proponents of “ideas” and“interests” has gradually led to a more nuancedmeeting of the two views.



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8

America Secedesfrom the Empire

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1775–1783

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the serviceof their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and

thanks of man and woman.

THOMAS PAINE, DECEMBER 1776

Bloodshed at Lexington and Concord in April of1775 was a clarion call to arms. About twenty

thousand musket-bearing “Minute Men’’ swarmedaround Boston, there to coop up the outnumberedBritish.

The Second Continental Congress met inPhiladelphia the next month, on May 10, 1775, andthis time the full slate of thirteen colonies was rep-resented. The conservative element in Congress wasstill strong, despite the shooting in Massachusetts.There was still no well-defined sentiment for inde-pendence—merely a desire to continue fighting inthe hope that the king and Parliament would con-sent to a redress of grievances. Congress hopefullydrafted new appeals to the British people andking—appeals that were spurned. Anticipating a

possible rebuff, the delegates also adopted mea-sures to raise money and to create an army and anavy. The British and the Americans now teeteredon the brink of all-out warfare.

Congress Drafts George Washington

Perhaps the most important single action of theCongress was to select George Washington, one ofits members already in officer’s uniform, to head thehastily improvised army besieging Boston. Thischoice was made with considerable misgivings. Thetall, powerfully built, dignified Virginia planter, thenforty-three, had never risen above the rank of a

141

colonel in the militia. His largest command hadnumbered only twelve hundred men, and that hadbeen some twenty years earlier. Falling short of truemilitary genius, Washington would actually losemore pitched battles than he won.

But the distinguished Virginian was gifted withoutstanding powers of leadership and immensestrength of character. He radiated patience,courage, self-discipline, and a sense of justice. Hewas a great moral force rather than a great militarymind—a symbol and a rallying point. Peopleinstinctively trusted him; they sensed that when heput himself at the head of a cause, he was prepared,if necessary, to go down with the ship. He insistedon serving without pay, though he kept a carefulexpense account amounting to more than $100,000.Later he sternly reprimanded his steward at MountVernon for providing the enemy, under duress, withsupplies. He would have preferred instead to see theenemy put the torch to his mansion.

The Continental Congress, though dimly per-ceiving Washington’s qualities of leadership, chosemore wisely than it knew. His selection, in truth, waslargely political. Americans in other sections, alreadyjealous, were beginning to distrust the large NewEngland army being collected around Boston. Pru-dence suggested a commander from Virginia, thelargest and most populous of the colonies. As a manof wealth, both by inheritance and by marriage,Washington could not be accused of being a fortuneseeker. As an aristocrat, he could be counted on byhis peers to check “the excesses of the masses.”

Bunker Hill and Hessian Hirelings

The clash of arms continued on a strangely contra-dictory basis. On the one hand, the Americans wereemphatically affirming their loyalty to the king andearnestly voicing their desire to patch up difficul-ties. On the other hand, they were raising armiesand shooting down His Majesty’s soldiers. This curi-ous war of inconsistency was fought for fourteenlong months—from April 1775 to July 1776—beforethe fateful plunge into independence was taken.

Gradually the tempo of warfare increased. InMay 1775 a tiny American force under Ethan Allenand Benedict Arnold surprised and captured theBritish garrisons at Ticonderoga and Crown Point,

on the scenic lakes of upper New York. A pricelessstore of gunpowder and artillery for the siege ofBoston was thus secured. In June 1775 the colonistsseized a hill, now known as Bunker Hill (actuallyBreed’s Hill), from which they menaced the enemy inBoston. The British, instead of cutting off the retreatof their foes by flanking them, blundered bloodilywhen they launched a frontal attack with three thou-

142 CHAPTER 8 America Secedes from the Empire, 1775–1783

sand men. Sharpshooting Americans, numbering fif-teen hundred and strongly entrenched, moweddown the advancing redcoats with frightful slaugh-ter. But the colonists’ scanty store of gunpowderfinally gave out, and they were forced to abandon the hill in disorder. With two more such victories,remarked the French foreign minister, the Britishwould have no army left in America.

Even at this late date, in July 1775, the Conti-nental Congress adopted the “Olive Branch Peti-tion,’’ professing American loyalty to the crown andbegging the king to prevent further hostilities. Butfollowing Bunker Hill, King George III slammed thedoor on all hope of reconciliation. In August 1775 heformally proclaimed the colonies in rebellion; theskirmishes were now out and out treason, a hangingcrime. The next month he widened the chasm whenhe sealed arrangements for hiring thousands of Ger-man troops to help crush his rebellious subjects. SixGerman princes involved in the transaction neededthe money (one reputedly had seventy-four chil-dren); George III needed the men. Because most ofthese soldiers-for-hire came from the German prin-cipality of Hesse, the Americans called all the Euro-pean mercenaries Hessians.

News of the Hessian deal shocked the colonists.The quarrel, they felt, was within the family. Why

bring in outside mercenaries, especially foreignerswho had an exaggerated reputation for butchery?

Hessian hirelings proved to be good soldiers in amechanical sense, but many of them were moreinterested in booty than in duty. For good reasonthey were dubbed “Hessian flies.’’ Seduced by Amer-ican promises of land, hundreds of them finallydeserted and remained in America to becomerespected citizens.

The Abortive Conquest of Canada

The unsheathed sword continued to take its toll. InOctober 1775, on the eve of a cruel winter, theBritish burned Falmouth (Portland), Maine. In thatsame autumn, the rebels daringly undertook a two-pronged invasion of Canada. American leadersbelieved, erroneously, that the conquered Frenchwere explosively restive under the British yoke. Asuccessful assault on Canada would add a four-teenth colony, while depriving Britain of a valuablebase for striking at the colonies in revolt. But thislarge-scale attack, involving some two thousandAmerican troops, contradicted the claim of thecolonists that they were merely fighting defensively

Early Battles 143

for a redress of grievances. Invasion northward wasundisguised offensive warfare.

This bold stroke for Canada narrowly missedsuccess. One invading column under the Irish-bornGeneral Richard Montgomery, formerly of the Britisharmy, pushed up the Lake Champlain route and cap-tured Montreal. He was joined at Quebec by thebedraggled army of General Benedict Arnold, whosemen had been reduced to eating dogs and shoeleather during their grueling march through theMaine woods. An assault on Quebec, launched onthe last day of 1775, was beaten off. The able Mont-gomery was killed; the dashing Arnold was woundedin one leg. Scattered remnants under his commandretreated up the St. Lawrence River, reversing theway Montgomery had come. French-Canadian lead-ers, who had been generously treated by the Britishin the Quebec Act of 1774, showed no real desire towelcome the plundering anti-Catholic invaders.

Bitter fighting persisted in the colonies, thoughthe Americans continued to disclaim all desire forindependence. In January 1776 the British set fire tothe Virginia town of Norfolk. In March they werefinally forced to evacuate Boston, taking with themthe leading friends of the king. (Evacuation Day isstill celebrated annually in Boston.) In the South the

rebellious colonists won two victories in 1776—onein February against some fifteen hundred Loyalistsat Moore’s Creek Bridge in North Carolina, and theother in June against an invading British fleet atCharleston harbor.

Thomas Paine Preaches Common Sense

Why did Americans continue to deny any intentionof independence? Loyalty to the empire was deeplyingrained; many Americans continued to considerthemselves part of a transatlantic community inwhich the mother country of Britain played a lead-ing role; colonial unity was poor; and open rebellionwas dangerous, especially against a formidableBritain. Irish rebels of that day were customarilyhanged, drawn, and quartered. American rebelsmight have fared no better. As late as January 1776—five months before independence was declared—the king’s health was being toasted by the officers of Washington’s mess near Boston. “God save theking’’ had not yet been replaced by “God save the Congress.’’


ConcordBunker Hill

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Ft. TiconderogaCrown Point

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Arnold's route, 1775

Montgomery's route, 1775

Revolution in the North, 1775–1776Benedict Arnold’s troops were described as“pretty young men” when they sailed fromMassachusetts. They were considerably lesspretty on their arrival in Quebec, after eightweeks of struggling through wet and frigidforests, often without food. “No one canimagine,” one of them wrote, “the sweetnessof a roasted shot-pouch [ammunition bag] tothe famished appetite.”

Gradually the Americans were shocked into anawareness of their inconsistency. Their eyes werejolted open by harsh British acts like the burning ofFalmouth and Norfolk, and especially by the hiringof the Hessians.

Then in 1776 came the publication of CommonSense, one of the most influential pamphlets everwritten. Its author was the radical Thomas Paine,once an impoverished corset-maker’s apprentice,who had come over from Britain a year earlier. Histract became a whirlwind best-seller and within afew months reached the astonishing total of 120,000copies.

Paine flatly branded the shilly-shallying of thecolonists as contrary to “common sense.’’ Why notthrow off the cloak of inconsistency? Nowhere in thephysical universe did the smaller heavenly bodycontrol the larger one. Then why should the tinyisland of Britain control the vast continent of Amer-ica? As for the king, whom the Americans professedto revere, he was nothing but “the Royal Brute ofGreat Britain.’’

Paine and the Ideaof “Republicanism”

Paine’s passionate protest was as compelling as itwas eloquent and radical—even doubly radical. Itcalled not simply for independence, but for the cre-ation of a new kind of political society, a republic,where power flowed from the people themselves,not from a corrupt and despotic monarch. In lan-guage laced with biblical imagery familiar to com-mon folk, he argued that all government officials—governors, senators, and judges—not just represen-tatives in a house of commons, should derive theirauthority from popular consent.

Paine was hardly the first person to champion arepublican form of government. Political philoso-phers had advanced the idea since the days of clas-sical Greece and Rome. Revived in the Renaissanceand in seventeenth-century England, republicanideals had uneasily survived within the British“mixed government,” with its delicate balance ofking, nobility, and commons. Republicanism partic-ularly appealed to British politicians critical ofexcessive power in the hands of the king and hisadvisers. Their writings found a responsive audi-ence among the American colonists, who inter-

Declaring Independence 145

In Common Sense Thomas Paine(1737–1809) argued for the superiority of arepublic over a monarchy:

“The nearer any government approaches to arepublic the less business there is for a king.It is somewhat difficult to find a propername for the government of England. SirWilliam Meredith calls it a republic; but in itspresent state it is unworthy of the name,because the corrupt influence of the crown,by having all the places in its disposal, hathso effectively swallowed up the power, andeaten out the virtue of the house ofcommons (the republican part of theconstitution) that the government ofEngland is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain.”

preted the vengeful royal acts of the previousdecade as part of a monarchical conspiracy to stripthem of their liberties as British subjects. Paine’sradical prescription for the colonies—to rejectmonarchy and empire and embrace an independ-ent republic—fell on receptive ears.

The colonists’ experience with governance hadprepared them well for Paine’s summons to create arepublic. Many settlers, particularly New Englanders,had practiced a kind of republicanism in their dem-ocratic town meetings and annual elections, whilethe popularly elected committees of correspon-dence during 1774 and 1775 had demonstrated thefeasibility of republican government. The absenceof a hereditary aristocracy and the relative equalityof condition enjoyed by landowning farmersmeshed well with the republican repudiation of afixed hierarchy of power.

Most Americans considered citizen “virtue” fun-damental to any successful republican government.Because political power no longer rested with thecentral, all-powerful authority of the king, individu-als in a republic needed to sacrifice their personalself-interest to the public good. The collective goodof “the people” mattered more than the privaterights and interests of individuals. Paine inspired hiscontemporaries to view America as fertile groundfor the cultivation of such civic virtue.

Yet not all Patriots agreed with Paine’s ultra-democratic approach to republicanism. Somefavored a republic ruled by a “natural aristocracy” oftalent. Republicanism for them meant an end tohereditary aristocracy, but not an end to all socialhierarchy. These more conservative republicansfeared that the fervor for liberty would overwhelmthe stability of the social order. They watched withtrepidation as the “lower orders” of society—poorerfarmers, tenants, and laboring classes in towns andcities—seemed to embrace a kind of runaway re-publicanism that amounted to radical “leveling.”The contest to define the nature of American repub-licanism would noisily continue for the next hun-dred years.

Jefferson’s “Explanation’’of Independence

Members of the Philadelphia Congress, instructedby their respective colonies, gradually edged towarda clean break. On June 7, 1776, fiery Richard Henry

Lee of Virginia moved that “these United Coloniesare, and of right ought to be, free and independentstates. . . .’’ After considerable debate, the motionwas adopted nearly a month later, on July 2, 1776.

The passing of Lee’s resolution was the formal“declaration’’ of independence by the Americancolonies, and technically this was all that wasneeded to cut the British tie. John Adams wrote con-fidently that ever thereafter, July 2 would be cele-brated annually with fireworks. But something morewas required. An epochal rupture of this kind calledfor some formal explanation. An inspirationalappeal was also needed to enlist other Britishcolonies in the Americas, to invite assistance fromforeign nations, and to rally resistance at home.


A Revolution for Women? Abigail Adams ChidesHer Husband, 1776 In the midst of the revolu-tionary fervor of 1776, at least one woman—AbigailAdams, wife of noted Massachusetts Patriot (andfuture president) John Adams—raised her voice onbehalf of women. Yet she apparently raised it onlyin private—in this personal letter to her husband.Private documents like the correspondence anddiaries of individuals both prominent and ordinaryoffer invaluable sources for the historian seeking to discover sentiments, opinions, and perspectivesthat are often difficult to discern in the officialpublic record. What might it suggest about the his-torical circumstances of the 1770s that AbigailAdams confined her claim for women’s equality tothis confidential exchange with her spouse? Whatmight have inspired the arguments she employed?Despite her privileged position and persuasivepower, and despite her threat to “foment a rebel-lion,” Abigail Adams’s plea went largely unheededin the Revolutionary era—as did comparablepleadings to extend the revolutionary principle ofequality to blacks. What might have accounted forthis limited application of the ideas of liberty andequality in the midst of a supposedly democraticrevolution?


Shortly after Lee made his memorable motionon June 7, Congress appointed a committee to pre-pare an appropriate statement. The task of drafting itfell to Thomas Jefferson, a tall, freckled, sandy-hairedVirginia lawyer of thirty-three. Despite his youth, he was already recognized as a brilliant writer, and he measured up splendidly to the awesomeassignment. After some debate and amendment, theDeclaration of Independence was formally approvedby the Congress on July 4, 1776. It might better havebeen called “the Explanation of Independence’’ or, asone contemporary described it, “Mr. Jefferson’sadvertisement of Mr. Lee’s resolution.’’

Jefferson’s pronouncement, couched in a loftystyle, was magnificent. He gave his appeal universal-ity by invoking the “natural rights’’ of humankind—not just British rights. He argued persuasively thatbecause the king had flouted these rights, thecolonists were justified in cutting their connection.He then set forth a long list of the presumably tyran-nous misdeeds of George III. The overdrawn bill ofindictment included imposing taxes without con-sent, dispensing with trial by jury, abolishing valuedlaws, establishing a military dictatorship, maintain-ing standing armies in peacetime, cutting off trade,burning towns, hiring mercenaries, and incitinghostility among the Indians.*

Jefferson’s withering blast was admittedly one-sided. But he was in effect the prosecuting attorney,and he took certain liberties with historical truth.He was not writing history; he was making itthrough what has been called “the world’s greatesteditorial.’’ He owned many slaves, and his affirma-tion that “all men are created equal’’ was to haunthim and his fellow citizens for generations.

The formal Declaration of Independence clearedthe air as a thundershower does on a muggy day. For-eign aid could be solicited with greater hope of suc-cess. Those Patriots who defied the king were nowrebels, not loving subjects shooting their way intoreconciliation. They must all hang together, Franklinis said to have grimly remarked, or they would allhang separately. Or, in the eloquent language of thegreat declaration, “We mutually pledge to each otherour lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.’’

Jefferson’s defiant Declaration of Independencehad a universal impact unmatched by any otherAmerican document. This “shout heard round theworld’’ has been a source of inspiration to countlessrevolutionary movements against arbitrary author-ity. Lafayette hung a copy on a wall in his home,leaving beside it room for a future French Declara-tion of the Rights of Man—a declaration that wasofficially born thirteen years later.

Patriots and Loyalists

The War of Independence, strictly speaking, was awar within a war. Colonials loyal to the king (Loyal-ists) fought the American rebels (Patriots), while therebels also fought the British redcoats (see “Makersof America: The Loyalists,” pp. 150–151). Loyalistswere derisively called “Tories,’’ after the dominantpolitical factions in Britain, whereas Patriots werecalled “Whigs,’’ after the opposition factions inBritain. A popular definition of a Tory among thePatriots betrayed bitterness: “A Tory is a thing whosehead is in England, and its body in America, and itsneck ought to be stretched.’’

Like many revolutions, the American Revolu-tion was a minority movement. Many colonists wereapathetic or neutral, including the Byrds of Virginia,who sat on the fence. The opposing forces con-tended not only against each other but also for theallegiance and support of the civilian population. Inthis struggle for the hearts and minds of the people,


The American signers of the Declaration ofIndependence had reason to fear for theirnecks. In 1802, twenty-six years later, GeorgeIII (1738–1820) approved this death sentencefor seven Irish rebels:

“. . . [You] are to be hanged by the neck, butnot until you are dead; for while you are stillliving your bodies are to be taken down, yourbowels torn out and burned before yourfaces, your heads then cut off, and yourbodies divided each into four quarters, andyour heads and quarters to be then at theKing’s disposal; and may the Almighty Godhave mercy on your souls.”

*For an annotated text of the Declaration of Independence, seethe Appendix.

the British proved fatally inept, and the Patriot mili-tias played a crucial role. The British military provedable to control only those areas where it couldmaintain a massive military presence. Elsewhere, assoon as the redcoats had marched on, the rebelmilitiamen appeared and took up the task of “politi-cal education’’—sometimes by coercive means.Often lacking bayonets but always loaded withpolitical zeal, the ragtag militia units served asremarkably effective agents of Revolutionary ideas.They convinced many colonists, even those indif-ferent to independence, that the British army wasan unreliable friend and that they had better throwin their lot with the Patriot cause. They also merci-lessly harassed small British detachments and occu-pation forces. One British officer ruefully observedthat “the Americans would be less dangerous if theyhad a regular army.’’

Loyalists, numbering perhaps 16 percent of theAmerican people, remained true to their king. Fami-lies often split over the issue of independence: Ben-jamin Franklin supported the Patriot side, whereashis handsome illegitimate son, William Franklin(the last royal governor of New Jersey), upheld theLoyalist cause.

The Loyalists were tragic figures. For genera-tions the British in the New World had been taughtfidelity to the crown. Loyalty is ordinarily regardedas a major virtue—loyalty to one’s family, one’s

friends, one’s country. If the king had triumphed, ashe seemed likely to do, the Loyalists would havebeen acclaimed patriots, and defeated rebels likeWashington would have been disgraced, severelypunished, and probably forgotten.

Many people of education and wealth, of cul-ture and caution, remained loyal. These wary soulswere satisfied with their lot and believed that anyviolent change would only be for the worse. Loyal-ists were also more numerous among the older gen-eration. Young people make revolutions, and fromthe outset energetic, purposeful, and militant youngpeople surged forward—figures like the sleeplesslyscheming Samuel Adams and the impassionedPatrick Henry. His flaming outcry before the VirginiaAssembly—“Give me liberty or give me death!’’—still quickens patriotic pulses.

Loyalists also included the king’s officers andother beneficiaries of the crown—people who knewwhich side their daily bread came from. The samewas generally true of the Anglican clergy and a largeportion of their congregations, all of whom had longbeen taught submission to the king.

Usually the Loyalists were most numerouswhere the Anglican church was strongest. A notableexception was Virginia, where the debt-burdenedAnglican aristocrats flocked into the rebel camp.The king’s followers were well entrenched in aristo-cratic New York City and Charleston, and also in

Patriots and Loyalists 149

The Loyalists

In late 1776 Catherine Van Cortlandt wrote to herhusband, a New Jersey merchant fighting in a Loy-

alist brigade, about the Patriot troops who hadquartered themselves in her house. “They were themost disorderly of species,” she complained, “andtheir officers were from the dregs of the people.”

Like the Van Cortlandts, many Loyalists thoughtof themselves as the “better sort of people.” Theyviewed their adversaries as “lawless mobs” and“brutes.” Conservative, wealthy, and well-educated,Loyalists of this breed thought a break with Britainwould invite anarchy. Loyalism made sense to them,too, for practical reasons. Viewing colonial militiasas no match for His Majesty’s army, Loyalist pam-phleteer Daniel Leonard warned his Patriot enemiesin 1775 that “nothing short of a miracle could gainyou one battle.”

But Loyalism was hardly confined to the well-to-do. It also appealed to many people of modestmeans who identified strongly with Britain or whohad reason to fear a Patriot victory. Thousands ofBritish veterans of the Seven Years’ War, for example,had settled in the colonies after 1763. Many of themtook up farming on two-hundred-acre land grants

in New York. They were loath to turn their backs onthe crown. So, too, were recent immigrants fromnon-English regions of the British Isles, especiallyfrom Scotland and Ireland, who had settled in Geor-gia or the backcountry of North and South Carolina.Many of these newcomers, resenting the plantationelite who ran these colonies, filled the ranks of Torybrigades such as the Volunteers of Ireland and the North Carolina Highlanders, organized by theBritish army to galvanize Loyalist support.

Other ethnic minorities found their own rea-sons to support the British. Some members ofDutch, German, and French religious sects believedthat religious tolerance would be greater under theBritish than under the Americans, whose prejudicesthey had already encountered. Above all, thousandsof African-Americans joined Loyalist ranks in thehope that service to the British might offer anescape from bondage. British officials encouragedthat belief. Throughout the war and in every colony,some African-Americans fled to British lines, wherethey served as soldiers, servants, laborers, and spies.Many of them joined black regiments that special-ized in making small sorties against Patriot militia.

150

In Monmouth, New Jersey, the black LoyalistColonel Tye and his band of raiders became leg-endary for capturing Patriots and their supplies.

As the war drew to an end in 1783, the fate ofblack Loyalists varied enormously. Many thousandswho came to Loyalism as fugitive slaves managed tofind a way to freedom, most notably the large groupwho won British passage from the port of New Yorkto Nova Scotia. Other African-American Loyalistssuffered betrayal. British general Lord Cornwallisabandoned over four thousand former slaves in Vir-ginia, and many black Loyalists who boarded shipsfrom British-controlled ports expecting to embarkfor freedom instead found themselves sold backinto slavery in the West Indies.

White Loyalists faced no threat of enslavement,but they did suffer punishments beyond mere dis-grace: arrest, exile, confiscation of property, and lossof legal rights. Faced with such retribution, someeighty thousand Loyalists fled abroad, mostly toBritain and the maritime provinces of Canada.Some settled contentedly as exiles, but many, espe-

cially those who went to Britain where they had dif-ficulty becoming accepted, lived diminished andlonely lives—“cut off,” as Loyalist Thomas Danforthput it, “from every hope of importance in life . . .[and] in a station much inferior to that of a menialservant.”

But most Loyalists remained in America, wherethey faced the special burdens of reestablishingthemselves in a society that viewed them as traitors.Some succeeded remarkably despite the odds, suchas Hugh Gaine, a printer in New York City who even-tually reopened a business and even won contractsfrom the new government. Ironically, this formerLoyalist soldier published the new national armyregulations authored by the Revolutionary heroBaron von Steuben. Like many former Loyalists,Gaine reintegrated himself into public life by sidingwith the Federalist call for a strong central govern-ment and powerful executive. When New York rati-fied the Constitution in 1788, Gaine rode the float atthe head of the city’s celebration parade. He had, likemany other former Loyalists, become an American.

151

Quaker Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where Gen-eral Washington felt that he was fighting in “theenemy’s country.’’ While his men were starving atValley Forge, nearby Pennsylvania farmers were sell-ing their produce to the British for the king’s gold.

Loyalists were least numerous in New England,where self-government was especially strong andmercantilism was especially weak. Rebels were themost numerous where Presbyterianism and Con-gregationalism flourished, notably in New England.Invading British armies vented their contempt andanger by using Yankee churches for pigsties.

The Loyalist Exodus

Before the Declaration of Independence in 1776,persecution of the Loyalists was relatively mild. Yetthey were subjected to some brutality, including tar-ring and feathering and riding astride fence rails.

After the Declaration of Independence, whichsharply separated Loyalists from Patriots, harshermethods prevailed. The rebels naturally desired aunited front. Putting loyalty to the colonies first,they regarded their opponents, not themselves, astraitors. Loyalists were roughly handled, hundredswere imprisoned, and a few noncombatants werehanged. But there was no wholesale reign of terrorcomparable to that which later bloodied bothFrance and Russia during their revolutions. For onething, the colonists reflected Anglo-Saxon regard fororder; for another, the leading Loyalists were pru-dent enough to flee to the British lines.

About eighty thousand loyal supporters ofGeorge III were driven out or fled, but several hun-dred thousand or so of the mild Loyalists were per-mitted to stay. The estates of many of the fugitiveswere confiscated and sold—a relatively painless wayto help finance the war. Confiscation often workedgreat hardship, as, for example, when two aristo-cratic women were forced to live in their formerchicken house for leaning Toryward.

Some fifty thousand Loyalist volunteers at onetime or another bore arms for the British. They alsohelped the king’s cause by serving as spies, by incit-ing the Indians, and by keeping Patriot soldiers athome to protect their families. Ardent Loyalists hadtheir hearts in their cause, and a major blunder ofthe haughty British was not to make full use of themin the fighting.

General Washington at Bay

With Boston evacuated in March 1776, the Britishconcentrated on New York as a base of operations.Here was a splendid seaport, centrally located,where the king could count on cooperation from thenumerous Loyalists. An awe-inspiring British fleetappeared off New York in July 1776. It consisted ofsome five hundred ships and thirty-five thousandmen—the largest armed force to be seen in Americauntil the Civil War. General Washington, danger-ously outnumbered, could muster only eighteenthousand ill-trained troops with which to meet thecrack army of the invader.

Disaster befell the Americans in the summer andfall of 1776. Outgeneraled and outmaneuvered, theywere routed at the Battle of Long Island, where panicseized the raw recruits. By the narrowest of margins,and thanks to a favoring wind and fog, Washingtonescaped to Manhattan Island. Retreating northward,he crossed the Hudson River to New Jersey andfinally reached the Delaware River with the Britishclose at his heels. Tauntingly, enemy buglerssounded the fox-hunting call, so familiar to Virgini-ans of Washington’s day. The Patriot cause was at lowebb when the rebel remnants fled across the riverafter collecting all available boats to forestall pursuit.

The wonder is that Washington’s adversary,General William Howe, did not speedily crush thedemoralized American forces. But he was no mili-tary genius, and he well remembered the horribleslaughter at Bunker Hill, where he had commanded.The country was rough, supplies were slow in com-ing, and as a professional soldier, Howe did not rel-ish the rigors of winter campaigning. He evidentlyfound more agreeable the bedtime company of hismistress, the wife of one of his subordinates—ascandal with which American satirists had a gooddeal of ribald fun.

Washington, who was now almost counted out,stealthily recrossed the ice-clogged Delaware River.At Trenton, on December 26, 1776, he surprised andcaptured a thousand Hessians who were sleepingoff the effects of their Christmas celebration. A weeklater, leaving his campfires burning as a ruse, heslipped away and inflicted a sharp defeat on asmaller British detachment at Princeton. This bril-liant New Jersey campaign, crowned by these twolifesaving victories, revealed “Old Fox’’ Washingtonat his military best.


Burgoyne’s Blundering Invasion

London officials adopted an intricate scheme forcapturing the vital Hudson River valley in 1777. Ifsuccessful, the British would sever New Englandfrom the rest of the states and paralyze the Ameri-can cause. The main invading force, under an actor-playwright-soldier, General (“Gentleman Johnny’’)Burgoyne, would push down the Lake Champlainroute from Canada. General Howe’s troops in NewYork, if needed, could advance up the Hudson Riverto meet Burgoyne near Albany. A third and muchsmaller British force, commanded by Colonel BarrySt. Leger, would come in from the west by way ofLake Ontario and the Mohawk Valley.

British planners did not reckon with GeneralBenedict Arnold. After his repulse at Quebec in1775, he had retreated slowly along the St. LawrenceRiver back to the Lake Champlain area, by heroicefforts keeping an army in the field. The British hadpursued his tattered force to Lake Champlain in1776. But they could not move farther south untilthey had won control of the lake, which, in theabsence of roads, was indispensable for carryingtheir supplies.

While the British stopped to construct a size-able fleet, tireless Arnold assembled and fitted outevery floatable vessel. His tiny flotilla was finallydestroyed after desperate fighting, but time, if notthe battle, had been won. Winter was descendingand the British were forced to retire to Canada.

Bagging Burgoyne 153

General Burgoyne had to start anew from this basethe following year. If Arnold had not contributed hisdaring and skill, the British invaders of 1776 almostcertainly would have recaptured Fort Ticonderoga.If Burgoyne had started from this springboard in1777, instead of from Montreal, he almost certainlywould have succeeded in his venture. (At last the

apparently futile American invasion of Canada in1775 was beginning to pay rich dividends.)

General Burgoyne began his fateful invasionwith seven thousand regular troops. He was encum-bered by a heavy baggage train and a considerablenumber of women, many of whom were wives of hisofficers. Progress was painfully slow, for sweatyaxmen had to chop a path through the forest, whileAmerican militiamen began to gather like hornetson Burgoyne’s flanks.

General Howe, meanwhile, was causing aston-ished eyebrows to rise. At a time when it seemedobvious that he should be starting up the HudsonRiver from New York to join his slowly advancingcolleague, he deliberately embarked with the mainBritish army for an attack on Philadelphia, the rebelcapital. As scholars now know, he wanted to force a general engagement with Washington’s army,destroy it, and leave the path wide open for Bur-goyne’s thrust. Howe apparently assumed that hehad ample time to assist Burgoyne directly, shouldhe be needed.

General Washington, keeping a wary eye on theBritish in New York, hastily transferred his army tothe vicinity of Philadelphia. There, late in 1777, he


Albany

ValleyForge

Boston

Newport

New York

Philadelphia

Ticonderoga

WestPoint

Montreal

Saratoga(Oct. 17, 1777)Oriskany

(Aug. 6, 1777)

Monmouth(June 28, 1778)��

Brandywine Creek(Sept. 11, 1777)

Arnold's Naval Battle(Oct. 11, 1776)

Germantown(Oct. 4, 1777)

Con

nect

icut

R.

St.

Lawren

ceR.

Hud

son

R.

Susquehanna R.

ChesapeakeBay

LakeOntario

LakeChamplain

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Mohawk R.

Del

awar

e R.

Howe's route to Philadelphia, 1777

St. Leger's route, 1777

Burgoyne's route, 1777

New York–Pennsylvania Theater, 1777–1778Distinguished members of the Continental Congress fled fromPhiladelphia in near-panic as the British army approached.Thomas Paine reported that at three o’clock in the morning,the streets were “as full of Men, Women, and Children as on aMarket Day.” John Adams had anticipated that “I shall runaway, I suppose, with the rest,” since “we are too brittle ware,you know, to stand the dashing of balls and bombs.” Adamsgot his chance to decamp with the others into the interior ofPennsylvania and tried to put the best face on things. “Thistour,” he commented, “has given me an opportunity of seeingmany parts of this country which I never saw before.”

was defeated in two pitched battles, at BrandywineCreek and Germantown. Pleasure-loving GeneralHowe then settled down comfortably in the livelycapital, leaving Burgoyne to flounder through thewilds of upper New York. Benjamin Franklin,recently sent to Paris as an envoy, truthfully jestedthat Howe had not captured Philadelphia but thatPhiladelphia had captured Howe. Washingtonfinally retired to winter quarters at Valley Forge, astrong, hilly position some twenty miles northwestof Philadelphia. There his frostbitten and hungrymen were short of about everything except misery.This rabble was nevertheless whipped into a profes-sional army by the recently arrived Prussian drill-master, the profane but patient Baron von Steuben.

Burgoyne meanwhile had begun to bog downnorth of Albany, while a host of American militia-men, scenting the kill, swarmed about him. In aseries of sharp engagements, in which GeneralArnold was again shot in the leg at Quebec, theBritish army was trapped. Meanwhile, the Ameri-cans had driven back St. Leger’s force at Oriskany.Unable to advance or retreat, Burgoyne was forcedto surrender his entire command at Saratoga onOctober 17, 1777, to the American general HoratioGates.

Saratoga ranks high among the decisive battlesof both American and world history. The victoryimmensely revived the faltering colonial cause.Even more important, it made possible the urgentlyneeded foreign aid from France, which in turnhelped ensure American independence.

Strange French Bedfellows

France, thirsting for revenge against Britain, waseager to inflame the quarrel that had broken out inAmerica. The New World colonies were by farBritain’s most valuable overseas possessions. If theycould be wrestled from Britain, it presumably wouldcease to be a front-rank power. France might thenregain its former position and prestige, the loss ofwhich in the recent Seven Years’ War rankled deeply.

America’s cause rapidly became something of afad in France. The bored aristocracy, which haddeveloped some interest in the writings of liberalFrench thinkers like Rousseau, was rather intriguedby the ideal of American liberty. Hardheaded Frenchofficials, on the other hand, were not prompted by alove for America, but by a realistic concern for theinterests of France. Any marriage with Americawould be strictly one of convenience.

After the shooting at Lexington in April 1775,French agents undertook to blow on the embers.They secretly provided the Americans with life-saving supplies of firearms and gunpowder, chieflythrough a sham company rigged up for that pur-pose. About 90 percent of all the gunpowder used bythe Americans in the first two and a half years of thewar came from French arsenals.

Secrecy enshrouded all these French schemes.Open aid to the American rebels might provokeBritain into a declaration of war, and France, stillweakened by its recent defeat, was not ready tofight. It feared that the American rebellion mightfade out, for the colonies were proclaiming theirdesire to patch up differences. But the Declarationof Independence in 1776 showed that the Ameri-cans really meant business, and the smashing victory at Saratoga seemed to indicate that the revo-lutionaries had an excellent chance of winning theirfreedom.

After the humiliation at Saratoga in 1777, theBritish Parliament belatedly passed a measure thatin effect offered the Americans home rule within theempire. This was essentially all that the colonialshad ever asked for—except independence. If theFrench were going to break up the British Empire,they would have to bestir themselves. Wily andbespectacled old Benjamin Franklin, whose simplefur cap and witty sayings had captivated the Frenchpublic, played skillfully on France’s fears of reconciliation.

The French Alliance 155

Many in the Continental Army becameincreasingly bitter with the lack of civiliansupport. As one Joseph Plumb Martin wroteabout soldiering,

“[We] kept upon our parade in groups,venting our spleen at our country andgovernment, then at our officers, and thenat ourselves for our imbecility in stayingthere and starving in detail for an ungratefulpeople who did not care what became of us,so they could enjoy themselves while wewere keeping a cruel enemy from them.”

The French king, Louis XVI, was reluctant tointervene. Although somewhat stupid, he was alertenough to see grave dangers in aiding the Ameri-cans openly and incurring war with Britain. But hisministers at length won him over. They argued thathostilities were inevitable, sooner or later, to undothe victor’s peace of 1763. If Britain should regain itscolonies, it might join with them to seize the sugar-rich French West Indies and thus secure compensa-tion for the cost of the recent rebellion. The Frenchhad better fight while they could have an Americanally, rather than wait and fight both Britain and itsreunited colonies.

So France, in 1778, offered the Americans atreaty of alliance. Their treaty promised everythingthat Britain was offering—plus independence. Bothallies bound themselves to wage war until theUnited States had won its freedom and until bothagreed to terms with the common foe.

This was the first entangling military alliance inthe experience of the Republic and one that latercaused prolonged trouble. The American people,with ingrained isolationist tendencies, accepted theFrench entanglement with distaste. They werepainfully aware that it bound them to a hereditaryfoe that was also a Roman Catholic power. But whenone’s house is on fire, one does not inquire tooclosely into the background of those who carry thewater buckets.

The Colonial War Becomesa World War

England and France thus came to blows in 1778,and the shot fired at Lexington rapidly widened intoa global conflagration. Spain entered the frayagainst Britain in 1779, as did Holland. CombinedSpanish and French fleets outnumbered those ofBritain, and on two occasions the British Islesseemed to be at the mercy of hostile warships.

The weak maritime neutrals of Europe, who hadsuffered from Britain’s dominance over the seas,


After concluding the alliance, France sent aminister to America, to the delight of onePatriot journalist:

“Who would have thought that the Americancolonies, imperfectly known in Europe a fewyears ago and claimed by every pettifogginglawyer in the House of Commons, everycobbler in the beer-houses of London, as apart of their property, should to-day receivean ambassador from the most powerfulmonarchy in Europe.”

Ireland (restive)

Russia, 1780Denmark-Norway, 1780

Members of the Sweden, 1780Armed Neutrality Holy Roman Empire, 1781(with dates of Prussia, 1782joining) Portugal, 1782

Two Sicilies, 1783 (after peace signed)

Britain Against the World

Britain and Allies Enemy or Unfriendly Powers

Great Britain United States, 1775–1783Some Loyalists and Indians Belligerents France, 1778–178330,000 hired Hessians (Total population: Spain, 1779–1783(Total population on c. 39.5 million) Holland, 1779–1783

Britain’s side: c. 8 million)

{

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now began to demand more respect for their rights.In 1780 the imperious Catherine the Great of Russiatook the lead in organizing the Armed Neutrality,which she later sneeringly called the “Armed Nul-lity.’’ It lined up almost all the remaining Europeanneutrals in an attitude of passive hostility towardBritain. The war was now being fought not only inEurope and North America, but also in South Amer-ica, the Caribbean, and Asia.

To say that America, with some French aid,defeated Britain is like saying, “Daddy and I killedthe bear.’’ To Britain, struggling for its very life, thescuffle in the New World became secondary. TheAmericans deserve credit for having kept the wargoing until 1778, with secret French aid. But theydid not achieve their independence until the con-flict erupted into a multipower world war that wastoo big for Britain to handle. From 1778 to 1783,France provided the rebels with guns, money,immense amounts of equipment, about one-half ofAmerica’s regular armed forces, and practically all ofthe new nation’s naval strength.

France’s entrance into the conflict forced theBritish to change their basic strategy in America.Hitherto they could count on blockading the colo-nial coast and commanding the seas. Now theFrench had powerful fleets in American waters,chiefly to protect their own valuable West Indiesislands, but in a position to jeopardize Britain’sblockade and lines of supply. The British thereforedecided to evacuate Philadelphia and concentratetheir strength in New York City.

In June 1778 the withdrawing redcoats wereattacked by General Washington at Monmouth,New Jersey, on a blisteringly hot day. Scores of mencollapsed or died from sunstroke. But the battle wasindecisive, and the British escaped to New York,although about one-third of their Hessiansdeserted. Henceforth, except for the Yorktown inter-lude of 1781, Washington remained in the New Yorkarea hemming in the British.

Blow and Counterblow

In the summer of 1780, a powerful French army ofsix thousand regular troops, commanded by theComte de Rochambeau, arrived in Newport, RhodeIsland. The Americans were somewhat suspicious of

their former enemies; in fact, several ugly flare-ups,involving minor bloodshed, had already occurredbetween the new allies. But French gold and good-will melted hard hearts. Dancing parties werearranged with the prim Puritan maidens; oneFrench officer related, doubtless with exaggeration,“The simple innocence of the Garden of Eden pre-vailed.’’ No real military advantage came immedi-ately from this French reinforcement, althoughpreparations were made for a Franco-Americanattack on New York.

Improving American morale was staggered laterin 1780, when General Benedict Arnold turned trai-tor. A leader of undoubted dash and brilliance, hewas ambitious, greedy, unscrupulous, and sufferingfrom a well-grounded but petulant feeling that hisvaluable services were not fully appreciated. Heplotted with the British to sell out the key strong-hold of West Point, which commanded the HudsonRiver, for £6,300 and an officer’s commission. By the sheerest accident, the plot was detected in the nick of time, and Arnold fled to the British.“Whom can we trust now?’’ cried General Washing-ton in anguish.

The British meanwhile had devised a plan toroll up the colonies, beginning with the South,where the Loyalists were numerous. The colony of

The War Drags On 157

Savannah(U.S. surrender, Oct. 9, 1779)

Charleston(U.S. surrender, May 12, 1780)

Yorktown(Cornwallis's�surrender,�Oct. 19, 1781)

Wilmington

Charlottesville

Jamestown

King's Mountain(U.S. victory, Oct. 7, 1780)

Cowpens(U.S. victory,�

Jan. 17, 1780)

VIRGINIA

GEORGIA

SOUTH CAROLINA

NORTH CAROLINA

James R.

Savannah R.

ChesapeakeBay

Cornwallis's route

War in the South, 1780–1781

Georgia was ruthlessly overrun in 1778–1779;Charleston, South Carolina, fell in 1780. The surren-der of the city to the British involved the capture offive thousand men and four hundred cannon andwas a heavier loss to the Americans, in relation toexisting strength, than that of Burgoyne was to theBritish.

Warfare now intensified in the Carolinas, wherePatriots bitterly fought their Loyalist neighbors. Itwas not uncommon for prisoners on both sides tobe butchered in cold blood after they had throwndown their arms. The tide turned later in 1780 andearly in 1781, when American riflemen wiped out aBritish detachment at King’s Mountain and thendefeated a smaller force at Cowpens. In the Carolinacampaign of 1781, General Nathanael Greene, aQuaker-reared tactician, distinguished himself byhis strategy of delay. Standing and then retreating,

he exhausted his foe, General Charles Cornwallis, invain pursuit. By losing battles but winning cam-paigns, the “Fighting Quaker’’ finally succeeded inclearing most of Georgia and South Carolina ofBritish troops.

The Land Frontier and the Sea Frontier

The West was ablaze during much of the war. Indianallies of George III, hoping to protect their land,were busy with torch and tomahawk; they wereegged on by British agents branded as “hair buyers’’because they allegedly paid bounties for Americanscalps. Fateful 1777 was known as “the bloody year’’on the frontier. Although two nations of the IroquoisConfederacy, the Oneidas and the Tuscaroras, sidedwith the Americans, the Senecas, Mohawks, Cayu-gas, and Onondagas joined the British. They wereurged on by Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, a convertto Anglicanism who believed, not without reason,that a victorious Britain would restrain Americanexpansion into the West. Brant and the British rav-aged large areas of backcountry Pennsylvania andNew York until checked by an American force in1779. In 1784 the pro-British Iroquois were forced tosign the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the first treatybetween the United States and an Indian nation.Under its terms the Indians ceded most of theirland.


Vincennes

Detroit

FortPitt

Cahokia

Kaskaskia

Lake

Mic

higa

n

Lake Erie

Mississip

piR.

Miss ouri R.

Ohio R.

George Rogers Clark’s Campaign, 1778–1779

Yet even in wartime, the human tide of west-ward-moving pioneers did not halt its flow. Elo-quent testimony is provided by place names inKentucky, such as Lexington (named after the bat-tle) and Louisville (named after America’s new ally,Louis XVI).

In the wild Illinois country, the British wereespecially vulnerable to attack, for they held onlyscattered posts that they had captured from theFrench. An audacious frontiersman, George RogersClark, conceived the idea of seizing these forts bysurprise. In 1778–1779 he floated down the OhioRiver with about 175 men and captured in quicksuccession the forts Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vin-cennes. Clark’s admirers have argued, without posi-tive proof, that his success forced the British to cedethe region north of the Ohio River to the UnitedStates at the peace table in Paris.

America’s infant navy had meanwhile been lay-ing the foundations of a brilliant tradition. Thenaval establishment consisted of only a handful ofnondescript ships, commanded by daring officers,the most famous of whom was a hard-fightingyoung Scotsman, John Paul Jones. As events turnedout, this tiny naval force never made a real dent inBritain’s thunderous fleets. Its chief contributionwas in destroying British merchant shipping andthus carrying the war into the waters around theBritish Isles.

More numerous and damaging than ships of theregular American navy were swift privateers. Thesecraft were privately owned armed ships—legalizedpirates in a sense—specifically authorized by Con-gress to prey on enemy shipping. Altogether over athousand American privateers, responding to thecall of patriotism and profit, sallied forth with aboutseventy thousand men (“sailors of fortune’’). Theycaptured some six hundred British prizes, whileBritish warships captured about as many Americanmerchantmen and privateers.

Privateering was not an unalloyed asset. It hadthe unfortunate effect of diverting manpower fromthe main war effort and involving Americans,including Benedict Arnold, in speculation and graft.But the privateers brought in urgently needed gold,harassed the enemy, and raised American morale byproviding victories at a time when victories werefew. British shipping was so badly riddled by priva-teers and by the regular American navy that insur-ance rates skyrocketed. Merchant ships were

compelled to sail in convoy, and British shippersand manufacturers brought increasing pressure onParliament to end the war on honorable terms.

Yorktown and the Final Curtain

One of the darkest periods of the war was1780–1781, before the last decisive victory. Inflationof the currency continued at full gallop. The govern-ment, virtually bankrupt, declared that it wouldrepay many of its debts at the rate of only 2.5 centson the dollar. Despair prevailed, the sense of unitywithered, and mutinous sentiments infected thearmy.

Meanwhile, the British general Cornwallis wasblundering into a trap. After futile operations in Vir-ginia, he had fallen back to Chesapeake Bay at Yorktown to await seaborne supplies and reinforce-ments. He assumed Britain would continue to con-trol the sea. But these few fateful weeks happened tobe one of the brief periods during the war whenBritish naval superiority slipped away.

The French were now prepared to cooperateenergetically in a brilliant stroke. Admiral de Grasse,operating with a powerful fleet in the West Indies,advised the Americans that he was free to join withthem in an assault on Cornwallis at Yorktown. Quickto seize this opportunity, General Washington madea swift march of more than three hundred miles to

Victory at Yorktown 159

Baron von Steuben (1730–1794), a Prussiangeneral who helped train the ContinentalArmy, found the Americans to be verydifferent from other soldiers he had known.As von Steuben explained to a fellowEuropean,

“The genius of this nation is not in the least tobe compared with that of the Prussians,Austrians, or French. You say to your soldier,‘Do this’ and he doeth it; but I am obliged tosay, ‘This is the reason why you ought to dothat,’ and then he does it.”

the Chesapeake from the New York area. Accompa-nied by Rochambeau’s French army, Washingtonbeset the British by land, while de Grasse blockadedthem by sea after beating off the British fleet. Com-pletely cornered, Cornwallis surrendered his entireforce of seven thousand men on October 19, 1781,as his band appropriately played “The World Turn’dUpside Down.’’ The triumph was no less Frenchthan American: the French provided essentially allthe sea power and about half of the regular troops inthe besieging army of some sixteen thousand men.

Stunned by news of the disaster, Prime MinisterLord North cried, “Oh God! It’s all over! It’s all over!’’But it was not. George III stubbornly planned tocontinue the struggle, for Britain was far from beingcrushed. It still had fifty-four thousand troops inNorth America, including thirty-two thousand inthe United States. Washington returned with hisarmy to New York, there to continue keeping a vigi-lant eye on the British force of ten thousand men.

Fighting actually continued for more than ayear after Yorktown, with Patriot-Loyalist warfare inthe South especially savage. “No quarter for Tories’’was the common battle cry. One of Washington’smost valuable contributions was to keep the lan-guishing cause alive, the army in the field, and thestates together during these critical months. Other-wise a satisfactory peace treaty might never havebeen signed.

Peace at Paris

After Yorktown, despite George III’s obstinate eager-ness to continue fighting, many Britons were wearyof war and increasingly ready to come to terms.

They had suffered heavy reverses in India and in theWest Indies. The island of Minorca in the Mediter-ranean had fallen; the Rock of Gibraltar was totter-ing. Lord North’s ministry collapsed in March 1782,temporarily ending the personal rule of George III.A Whig ministry, rather favorable to the Americans,replaced the Tory regime of Lord North.

Three American peace negotiators had mean-while gathered at Paris: the aging but astute Ben-jamin Franklin; the flinty John Adams, vigilant for


Blundering George III, a poor loser, wrotethis of America:

“Knavery seems to be so much the strikingfeature of its inhabitants that it may not inthe end be an evil that they become aliensto this Kingdom.”

New England interests; and the impulsive John Jayof New York, deeply suspicious of Old Worldintrigue. The three envoys had explicit instructionsfrom Congress to make no separate peace and toconsult with their French allies at all stages of thenegotiations. But the American representativeschafed under this directive. They well knew that ithad been written by a subservient Congress, withthe French Foreign Office indirectly guiding the pen.

France was in a painful position. It had inducedSpain to enter the war on its side, in part by promis-ing to deliver British-held Gibraltar. Yet the toweringrock was defying frantic joint assaults by French andSpanish troops. Spain also coveted the immensetrans-Allegheny area, on which restless Americanpioneers were already settling.

France, ever eager to smash Britain’s empire,desired an independent United States, but oneindependent in the abstract, not in action. It there-fore schemed to keep the new republic cooped upeast of the Allegheny Mountains. A weak America—

like a horse sturdy enough to plow but not vigorousenough to kick—would be easier to manage in promoting French interests and policy. France waspaying a heavy price in men and treasure to winAmerica’s independence, and it wanted to get itsmoney’s worth.

But John Jay was unwilling to play France’sgame. Suspiciously alert, he perceived that theFrench could not satisfy the conflicting ambitions ofboth Americans and Spaniards. He saw signs—orthought he did—indicating that the Paris ForeignOffice was about to betray America’s trans-Allegheny interests to satisfy those of Spain. Hetherefore secretly made separate overtures to Lon-don, contrary to his instructions from Congress. Thehard-pressed British, eager to entice one of theirenemies from the alliance, speedily came to termswith the Americans. A preliminary treaty of peacewas signed in 1782; the final peace, the next year.

By the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the British for-mally recognized the independence of the United

Negotiating the Peace 161

States. In addition, they granted generous bound-aries, stretching majestically to the Mississippi onthe west, to the Great Lakes on the north, and toSpanish Florida on the south. (Spain had recentlycaptured Florida from Britain.) The Yankees, thoughnow divorced from the empire, were to retain ashare in the priceless fisheries of Newfound-land. The Canadians, of course, were profoundly displeased.

The Americans, on their part, had to yieldimportant concessions. Loyalists were not to be fur-ther persecuted, and Congress was to recommend tothe state legislatures that confiscated Loyalist prop-erty be restored. As for the debts long owed toBritish creditors, the states vowed to put no lawfulobstacles in the way of their collection. Unhappilyfor future harmony, the assurances regarding bothLoyalists and debts were not carried out in the man-ner hoped for by London.

A New Nation Legitimized

Britain’s terms were liberal almost beyond belief. Theenormous trans-Allegheny area was thrown in as avirtual gift, for George Rogers Clark had capturedonly a small segment of it. Why the generosity? Hadthe United States beaten Britain to its knees?

The key to the riddle may be found in the OldWorld. At the time the peace terms were drafted,Britain was trying to seduce America from itsFrench alliance, so it made the terms as alluring aspossible. The shaky Whig ministry, hanging on by itsfingernails for only a few months, was more friendlyto the Americans than were the Tories. It was deter-mined, by a policy of liberality, to salve recentwounds, reopen old trade channels, and preventfuture wars over the coveted trans-Allegheny region.This far-visioned policy was regrettably not followedby the successors of the Whigs.

In spirit, the Americans made a separatepeace—contrary to the French alliance. In fact, theydid not. The Paris Foreign Office formally approvedthe terms of peace, though disturbed by the lone-wolf course of its American ally. France wasimmensely relieved by the prospect of bringing thecostly conflict to an end and of freeing itself from itsembarrassing promises to the Spanish crown.

America alone gained from the world-girdlingwar. The British, though soon to stage a comeback,were battered and beaten. The French savoredsweet revenge but plunged headlong down the slip-pery slope to bankruptcy and revolution. In truth,fortune smiled benignly on the Americans. Snatch-ing their independence from the furnace of worldconflict, they began their national career with asplendid territorial birthright and a priceless her-itage of freedom. Seldom, if ever, have any peoplebeen so favored.


Chronology 163

Chronology

1775 Battles of Lexington and ConcordSecond Continental CongressAmericans capture British garrisons at

Ticonderoga and Crown PointBattle of Bunker HillKing George III formally proclaims

colonies in rebellionFailed invasion of Canada

1776 Paine's Common SenseDeclaration of IndependenceBattle of Trenton

1777 Battle of BrandywineBattle of GermantownBattle of Saratoga

1778 Formation of French-American allianceBattle of Monmouth

1778-1779 Clark’s victories in the West

1781 Battle of King’s MountainBattle of CowpensGreene leads Carolina campaignFrench and Americans force Cornwallis to

surrender at Yorktown

1782 North’s ministry collapses in Britain

1783 Treaty of Paris

1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix


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164

PART TWO

BUILDING THENEW NATION

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1776–1860

By 1783 Americans hadwon their freedom. Now

they had to build their coun-try. To be sure, they wereblessed with a vast and fertileland, and they inherited fromtheir colonial experience aproud legacy of self-rule. Buthistory provided scant prece-dent for erecting a republicon a national scale. No law ofnature guaranteed that thethirteen rebellious colonieswould stay glued together as a single nation, nor thatthey would preserve, not tomention expand, their demo-cratic way of life. New insti-tutions had to be created,new habits of thought cultivated. Who could predictwhether the American experiment in government bythe people would succeed?

The feeble national gov-ernment cobbled togetherunder the Articles of Con-federation during the Revo-lutionary War soon provedwoefully inadequate to thetask of nation building. Inless than ten years after theRevolutionary War’s con-clusion, the Articles werereplaced by a new Constitu-tion, but even its adoptiondid not end the debate overjust what form Americangovernment should take.Would the president, theCongress, or the courts bethe dominant branch? Whatshould be the proper divi-

sion of authority between the federal governmentand the states? How could the rights of individualsbe protected against a potentially powerful govern-

ment? What economic poli-cies would best serve theinfant republic? How shouldthe nation defend itselfagainst foreign foes? Whatprinciples should guide for-eign policy? Was America anation at all, or was it merelya geographic expression,destined to splinter into sev-eral bitterly quarreling sec-tions, as had happened to so many other would-becountries?

After a shaky start underGeorge Washington andJohn Adams in the 1790s,buffeted by foreign troublesand domestic crises, thenew Republic passed amajor test when power waspeacefully transferred from the conservative Feder-alists to the more liberal Jeffersonians in the elec-tion of 1800. A confident President Jefferson pro-ceeded boldly to expand the national territory withthe landmark Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Butbefore long Jefferson, and then his successor, JamesMadison, were embroiled in what eventuallyproved to be a fruitless effort to spare the UnitedStates from the ravages of the war then raging inEurope.

America was dangerously divided during theWar of 1812 and suffered a humiliating defeat. But a new sense of national unity and purpose wasunleashed in the land thereafter. President Monroe,presiding over this “Era of Good Feelings,” pro-claimed in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 that both ofthe American continents were off-limits to furtherEuropean intervention. The foundations of a conti-nental-scale economy were laid, as a “transporta-tion revolution” stitched the country together withcanals and railroads and turnpikes. Settlers floodedover those new arteries into the burgeoning West,often brusquely shouldering aside the native peo-ples. Immigrants, especially from Ireland and Ger-many, flocked to American shores. The combination

of new lands and new laborfed the growth of a marketeconomy, including thecommercialization of agri-culture and the beginningsof the factory system of pro-duction. Old ways of lifewithered as the marketeconomy drew women aswell as men, children as wellas adults, blacks as well aswhites, into its embrace.Ominously, the slave systemgrew robustly as cotton production, mostly for sale on European markets,exploded into the boomingSouthwest.

Meanwhile, the UnitedStates in the era of AndrewJackson gave the world an

impressive lesson in political science. Betweenroughly 1820 and 1840, Americans virtuallyinvented mass democracy, creating huge politicalparties and enormously expanding political partici-pation by enfranchising nearly all adult white males.Nor was the spirit of innovation confined to thepolitical realm. A wave of reform and cultural vital-ity swept through many sectors of American society.Utopian experiments proliferated. Religious revivalsand even new religions, like Mormonism, flour-ished. A national literature blossomed. Crusadeswere launched for temperance, prison reform,women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery.

By the second quarter of the nineteenth cen-tury, the outlines of a distinctive American nationalcharacter had begun to emerge. Americans were adiverse, restless people, tramping steadily west-ward, eagerly forging their own nascent IndustrialRevolution, proudly exercising their democraticpolitical rights, impatient with the old, in love withthe new, testily asserting their superiority over allother peoples—and increasingly divided, in heart,in conscience, and in politics, over the single great-est blight on their record of nation making anddemocracy building: slavery.

165

9

The Confederationand the Constitution

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1776–1790

This example of changing the constitution by assembling the wisemen of the state, instead of assembling armies, will be worth as

much to the world as the former examples we have given it.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

The American Revolution was not a revolution inthe sense of a radical or total change. It did not

suddenly and violently overturn the entire politicaland social framework, as later occurred in theFrench and Russian Revolutions. What happenedwas accelerated evolution rather than outright revo-lution. During the conflict itself, people went onworking and praying, marrying and playing. Manyof them were not seriously disturbed by the actualfighting, and the most isolated communitiesscarcely knew that a war was on.

Yet some striking changes were ushered in,affecting social customs, political institutions, andideas about society, government, and even genderroles. The exodus of some eighty thousand substan-tial Loyalists robbed the new ship of state of conser-vative ballast. This weakening of the aristocraticupper crust, with all its culture and elegance, paved

the way for new, Patriot elites to emerge. It alsocleared the field for more egalitarian ideas to sweepacross the land.

The Pursuit of Equality

“All men are created equal,” the Declaration of Inde-pendence proclaimed, and equality was everywherethe watchword. Most states reduced (but usually didnot eliminate altogether) property-holding require-ments for voting. Ordinary men and womendemanded to be addressed as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”—titles once reserved for the wealthy and highborn.Most Americans ridiculed the lordly pretensions ofContinental Army officers who formed an exclusivehereditary order, the Society of the Cincinnati. Social

166

democracy was further stimulated by the growth oftrade organizations for artisans and laborers. Citi-zens in several states, flushed with republican fervor,also sawed off the remaining shackles of medievalinheritance laws, such as primogeniture, whichawarded all of a father’s property to the eldest son.

A protracted fight for separation of church andstate resulted in notable gains. Although the well-entrenched Congregational Church continued to belegally established in some New England states, theAnglican Church, tainted by association with theBritish crown, was humbled. De-anglicized, it re-formed as the Protestant Episcopal Church and waseverywhere disestablished. The struggle for divorcebetween religion and government proved fiercest inVirginia. It was prolonged to 1786, when freethink-ing Thomas Jefferson and his co-reformers, includ-ing the Baptists, won a complete victory with thepassage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Free-dom. (See the table of established churches, p. 95.)

The egalitarian sentiments unleashed by thewar likewise challenged the institution of slavery.Philadelphia Quakers in 1775 founded the world’sfirst antislavery society. Hostilities hampered thenoxious trade in “black ivory,’’ and the ContinentalCongress in 1774 called for the complete abolitionof the slave trade, a summons to which most of thestates responded positively. Several northern stateswent further and either abolished slavery outrightor provided for the gradual emancipation of blacks.Even on the plantations of Virginia, a few idealisticmasters freed their human chattels—the first frailsprouts of the later abolitionist movement.

But this revolution of sentiments was sadlyincomplete. No states south of Pennsylvania abol-ished slavery, and in both North and South, the lawdiscriminated harshly against freed blacks andslaves alike. Emancipated African-Americans could

be barred from purchasing property, holding certainjobs, and educating their children. Laws againstinterracial marriage also sprang up at this time.

Why, in this dawning democratic age, did aboli-tion not go further and cleanly blot the evil of slav-ery from the fresh face of the new nation? The sorrytruth is that the fledgling idealism of the FoundingFathers was sacrificed to political expediency. Afight over slavery would have fractured the fragilenational unity that was so desperately needed.“Great as the evil [of slavery] is,” the young VirginianJames Madison wrote in 1787, “a dismemberment ofthe union would be worse.” Nearly a century later,the slavery issue did wreck the Union—temporarily.

Likewise incomplete was the extension of thedoctrine of equality to women. Some women didserve (disguised as men) in the military, and NewJersey’s new constitution in 1776 even, for a time,

Aftermath of the Revolution 167

The impact of the American Revolution wasworldwide. About 1783 a British ship stoppedat some islands off the East African coast,where the natives were revolting against theirArab masters. When asked why they werefighting they replied,

“America is free, Could not we be?”

enabled women to vote. But though Abigail Adamsteased her husband John in 1776 that “the Ladies’’were determined “to foment a rebellion’’ of theirown if they were not given political rights, most ofthe women in the Revolutionary era were still doingtraditional women’s work.

Yet women did not go untouched by Revolution-ary ideals. Central to republican ideology was theconcept of “civic virtue’’—the notion that democracydepended on the unselfish commitment of each citi-zen to the public good. And who could better culti-vate the habits of a virtuous citizenry than mothers,to whom society entrusted the moral education ofthe young? Indeed the selfless devotion of a motherto her family was often cited as the very model ofproper republican behavior. The idea of “republicanmotherhood’’ thus took root, elevating women to anewly prestigious role as the special keepers of thenation’s conscience. Educational opportunities forwomen expanded, in the expectation that educatedwives and mothers could better cultivate the virtuesdemanded by the Republic in their husbands,daughters, and sons. Republican women now borecrucial responsibility for the survival of the nation.

Constitution Making in the States

The Continental Congress in 1776 called upon thecolonies to draft new constitutions. In effect, the Continental Congress was actually asking the

colonies to summon themselves into being as newstates. The sovereignty of these new states, accord-ing to the theory of republicanism, would rest onthe authority of the people. For a time the manufac-ture of governments was even more pressing thanthe manufacture of gunpowder. Although the statesof Connecticut and Rhode Island merely retouchedtheir colonial charters, constitution writers else-where worked tirelessly to capture on black-inkedparchment the republican spirit of the age.

Massachusetts contributed one especially note-worthy innovation when it called a special conven-tion to draft its constitution and then submitted thefinal draft directly to the people for ratification.Once adopted in 1780, the Massachusetts constitu-tion could be changed only by another speciallycalled constitutional convention. This procedurewas later imitated in the drafting and ratification ofthe federal Constitution.

The newly penned state constitutions had manyfeatures in common. Their similarity, as it turnedout, made easier the drafting of a workable federalcharter when the time was ripe. In the British tradi-tion, a “constitution” was not a written document,but rather an accumulation of laws, customs, andprecedents. Americans invented something differ-ent. The documents they drafted were contractsthat defined the powers of government, as did theold colonial charters, but they drew their authorityfrom the people, not from the royal seal of a distantking. As written documents the state constitutionswere intended to represent a fundamental law,superior to the transient whims of ordinary legisla-tion. Most of these documents included bills ofrights, specifically guaranteeing long-prized liber-ties against later legislative encroachment. Most ofthem required the annual election of legislators,who were thus forced to stay in touch with themood of the people. All of them deliberately createdweak executive and judicial branches, at least bypresent-day standards. A generation of quarrelingwith His Majesty’s officials had implanted a deepdistrust of despotic governors and arbitrary judges.

In all the new state governments, the legisla-tures, as presumably the most democratic branch ofgovernment, were given sweeping powers. But asThomas Jefferson warned, “173 despots [in a legisla-ture] would surely be as oppressive as one.’’ ManyAmericans soon came to agree with him.

The democratic character of the new state legis-latures was vividly reflected by the presence ofmany members from the recently enfranchised

168 CHAPTER 9 The Confederation and the Constitution, 1776–1790

The Revolution enhanced the expectationsand power of women as wives and mothers. Asone “matrimonial republican” wrote in 1792,

“I object to the word ‘obey’ in the marriage-service because it is a general word, withoutlimitations or definition. . . . The obediencebetween man and wife, I conceive, is, orought to be mutual. . . . Marriage oughtnever to be considered a contract between a superior and an inferior, but a reciprocalunion of interest, an implied partnership ofinterests, where all differences areaccommodated by conference; and where the decision admits of no retrospect.”

poorer western districts. Their influence was power-fully felt in their several successful movements torelocate state capitals from the haughty eastern sea-ports into the less pretentious interior. In the Revo-lutionary era, the capitals of New Hampshire, NewYork, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, andGeorgia were all moved westward. These geographi-cal shifts portended political shifts that deeply dis-comfited many more conservative Americans.

Economic Crosscurrents

Economic changes begotten by the war were like-wise noteworthy, but not overwhelming. Statesseized control of former crown lands, and althoughrich speculators had their day, many of the largeLoyalist holdings were confiscated and eventuallycut up into small farms. Roger Morris’s huge estate


Copley Family Portrait, c. 1776–1777 A portraitpainting like this one by John Singleton Copley(1738-1815) documents physical likenesses, cloth-ing styles, and other material possessions typicalof an era. But it can do more than that. In the execution of the painting itself, the preeminentportrait painter of colonial America revealedimportant values of his time. Copley’s compositionand use of light emphasized the importance of themother in the family. Mrs. Copley is the visual cen-ter of the painting; the light falls predominantly on

her; and she provides the focus of activity for thefamily group. Although Copley had moved to Eng-land in 1774 to avoid the disruptions of war, he hadmade radical friends in his home town of Bostonand surely had imbibed the sentiment of the ageabout “republican motherhood”—a sentimentthat revered women as homemakers and mothers,the cultivators of good republican values in youngcitizens. What other prevailing attitudes, aboutgender and age, for example, might this paintingreveal?

in New York, for example, was sliced into 250 parcels—thus accelerating the spread of economic democ-racy. The frightful excesses of the French Revolutionwere avoided, partly because cheap land was easilyavailable. People do not chop off heads so readilywhen they can chop down trees. It is highly signifi-cant that in the United States, economic democracy,broadly speaking, preceded political democracy.

A sharp stimulus was given to manufacturing bythe prewar nonimportation agreements and later bythe war itself. Goods that had formerly been importedfrom Britain were mostly cut off, and the ingeniousYankees were forced to make their own. Ten yearsafter the Revolution, the busy Brandywine Creek,south of Philadelphia, was turning the water wheels ofnumerous mills along an eight-mile stretch. Yet Amer-ica remained overwhelmingly a nation of soil-tillers.

Economically speaking, independence haddrawbacks. Much of the coveted commerce of

Britain was still reserved for the loyal parts of theempire. American ships were now barred fromBritish and British West Indies harbors. Fisherieswere disrupted, and bounties for ships’ stores hadabruptly ended. In some respects the hated BritishNavigation Laws were more disagreeable after inde-pendence than before.

New commercial outlets, fortunately, compen-sated partially for the loss of old ones. Americanscould now trade freely with foreign nations, subjectto local restrictions—a boon they had not enjoyedin the days of mercantilism. Enterprising Yankeeshippers ventured boldly—and profitably—into theBaltic and China Seas. In 1784 the Empress of China,carrying a valuable weed (ginseng) that was highlyprized by Chinese herb doctors as a cure for impo-tence, led the way into the East Asian markets.

Yet the general economic picture was far fromrosy. War had spawned demoralizing extravagance,


speculation, and profiteering, with profits for someas indecently high as 300 percent. Runaway infla-tion had been ruinous to many citizens, and Con-gress had failed in its feeble attempts to curbeconomic laws. The average citizen was probablyworse off financially at the end of the shooting thanat the start.

The whole economic and social atmospherewas unhealthy. A newly rich class of profiteers wasnoisily conspicuous, whereas many once-wealthypeople were left destitute. The controversy leadingto the Revolutionary War had bred a keen distastefor taxes and encouraged disrespect for the majestyof the law generally. John Adams had been shockedwhen gleefully told by a horse-jockey neighbor thatthe courts of justice were all closed—a plight thatproved to be only temporary.

A Shaky Start Toward Union

What would the Americans do with the independ-ence they had so dearly won? The Revolution haddumped the responsibility of creating and operatinga new central government squarely into their laps.

Prospects for erecting a lasting regime were farfrom bright. It is always difficult to set up a new gov-ernment and doubly difficult to set up a new type ofgovernment. The picture was further clouded inAmerica by leaders preaching “natural rights’’ andlooking suspiciously at all persons clothed withauthority. America was more a name than a nation,and unity ran little deeper than the color on the map.

Disruptive forces stalked the land. The depar-ture of the conservative Tory element left the politi-cal system inclined toward experimentation andinnovation. Patriots had fought the war with a highdegree of disunity, but they had at least concurredon allegiance to a common cause. Now even thatwas gone. It would have been almost a miracle if anygovernment fashioned in all this confusion had longendured.

Hard times, the bane of all regimes, set inshortly after the war and hit bottom in 1786. As ifother troubles were not enough, British manufac-turers, with dammed-up surpluses, began floodingthe American market with cut-rate goods. War-babyAmerican industries, in particular, suffered indus-trial colic from such ruthless competition. One

Philadelphia newspaper in 1783 urged readers todon home-stitched garments of homespun cloth:

Of foreign gewgaws let’s be free,And wear the webs of liberty.

Yet hopeful signs could be discerned. The thir-teen sovereign states were basically alike in govern-mental structure and functioned under similarconstitutions. Americans enjoyed a rich politicalinheritance, derived partly from Britain and partlyfrom their own homegrown devices for self-govern-ment. Finally, they were blessed with political lead-ers of a high order in men like George Washington,James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, andAlexander Hamilton.

Creating a Confederation

The Second Continental Congress of Revolutionarydays was little more than a conference of ambas-sadors from the thirteen states. It was totally with-out constitutional authority and in general did onlywhat it dared to do, though it asserted some controlover military affairs and foreign policy. In nearly all respects, the thirteen states were sovereign, forthey coined money, raised armies and navies, anderected tariff barriers. The legislature of Virginiaeven ratified separately the treaty of alliance of 1778with France.

Shortly before declaring independence in 1776,the Congress appointed a committee to draft a writ-ten constitution for the new nation. The finishedproduct was the Articles of Confederation. Adoptedby Congress in 1777, it was translated into Frenchafter the Battle of Saratoga so as to convince Francethat America had a genuine government in the mak-ing. The Articles were not ratified by all thirteenstates until 1781, less than eight months before thevictory at Yorktown.

The chief apple of discord was western lands.Six of the jealous states, including Pennsylvania andMaryland, had no holdings beyond the AlleghenyMountains. Seven, notably New York and Virginia,were favored with enormous acreage, in most caseson the basis of earlier charter grants. The six land-hungry states argued that the more fortunate stateswould not have retained possession of this splendidprize if all the other states had not fought for it also.

Problems of a New Government 171

A major complaint was that the land-blessed statescould sell their trans-Allegheny tracts and thus payoff pensions and other debts incurred in the com-mon cause. States without such holdings wouldhave to tax themselves heavily to defray these obli-gations. Why not turn the whole western area overto the central government?

Unanimous approval of the Articles of Confeder-ation by the thirteen states was required, and land-starved Maryland stubbornly held out until March 1,1781. Maryland at length gave in when New York sur-rendered its western claims and Virginia seemedabout to do so. To sweeten the pill, Congress pledgeditself to dispose of these vast areas for the “commonbenefit.’’ It further agreed to carve from the newpublic domain not colonies, but a number of“republican’’ states, which in time would be admit-ted to the Union on terms of complete equality withall the others. This extraordinary commitment faith-fully reflected the anticolonial spirit of the Revolu-tion, and the pledge was later fully redeemed in thefamed Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Fertile public lands thus transferred to the cen-tral government proved to be an invaluable bond ofunion. The states that had thrown their heritage intothe common pot had to remain in the Union if theywere to reap their share of the advantages from theland sales. An army of westward-moving pioneerspurchased their farms from the federal government,directly or indirectly, and they learned to look to thenational capital, rather than to the state capitals—with a consequent weakening of local influence.Finally, a uniform national land policy was madepossible.

The Articles of Confederation:America’s First Constitution

The Articles of Confederation—some have said“Articles of Confusion’’—provided for a loose con-federation or “firm league of friendship.’’ Thirteenindependent states were thus linked together for


Western Land Cessions to the United States, 1782–1802

joint action in dealing with common problems,such as foreign affairs. A clumsy Congress was to bethe chief agency of government. There was no exec-utive branch—George III had left a bad taste—andthe vital judicial arm was left almost exclusively tothe states.

Congress, though dominant, was securely hob-bled. Each state had a single vote, so that some68,000 Rhode Islanders had the same voice as morethan ten times that many Virginians. All bills dealingwith subjects of importance required the support ofnine states; any amendment of the Articles them-selves required unanimous ratification. Unanimitywas almost impossible, and this meant that theamending process, perhaps fortunately, wasunworkable. If it had been workable, the Republicmight have struggled along with a patched-up Arti-cles of Confederation rather than replace it with aneffective Constitution.

The shackled Congress was weak—and waspurposely designed to be weak. Suspicious states,having just won control over taxation and com-merce from Britain, had no desire to yield theirnewly acquired privileges to an American parlia-ment—even one of their own making.

Two handicaps of the Congress were crippling.It had no power to regulate commerce, and thisloophole left the states free to establish conflictinglydifferent laws regarding tariffs and navigation. Norcould the Congress enforce its tax-collection pro-gram. It established a tax quota for each of the statesand then asked them please to contribute theirshare on a voluntary basis. The central authority—a“government by supplication’’—was lucky if in anyyear it received one-fourth of its requests.

The feeble national government in Philadelphiacould advise and advocate and appeal. But in deal-ing with the independent states, it could not com-mand or coerce or control. It could not act directlyupon the individual citizens of a sovereign state; itcould not even protect itself against gross indigni-ties. In 1783 a dangerous threat came from a groupof mutinous Pennsylvania soldiers who demandedback pay. After Congress had appealed in vain to thestate for protection, the members were forced tomove in disgrace to Princeton College in New Jer-sey. The new Congress, with all its paper powers,was even less effective than the old ContinentalCongress, which wielded no constitutional powersat all.

Yet the Articles of Confederation, weak thoughthey were, proved to be a landmark in government.

They were for those days a model of what a looseconfederation ought to be. Thomas Jefferson enthu-siastically hailed the new structure as the best one“existing or that ever did exist.’’ To compare it withthe European governments, he thought, was likecomparing “heaven and hell.’’ But although theConfederation was praiseworthy as confederationswent, the troubled times demanded not a looselywoven confederation but a tightly knit federation.This involved the yielding by the states of their sov-ereignty to a completely recast federal government,which in turn would leave them free to control theirlocal affairs.

In spite of their defects, the anemic Articles ofConfederation were a significant stepping-stonetoward the present Constitution. They clearly out-lined the general powers that were to be exercisedby the central government, such as making treatiesand establishing a postal service. As the first writtenconstitution of the Republic, the Articles kept alivethe flickering ideal of union and held the statestogether—until such time as they were ripe for theestablishment of a strong constitution by peaceful,evolutionary methods. Without this intermedi-ary jump, the states probably would never have

A Crippled Confederation 173

consented to the breathtaking leap from the oldboycott Association of 1774 to the Constitution ofthe United States.

Landmarks in Land Laws

Handcuffed though the Congress of the Confedera-tion was, it succeeded in passing supremely far-sighted pieces of legislation. These related to animmense part of the public domain recentlyacquired from the states and commonly known asthe Old Northwest. This area of land lay northwestof the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi River, andsouth of the Great Lakes.

The first of these red-letter laws was the LandOrdinance of 1785. It provided that the acreage ofthe Old Northwest should be sold and that the pro-ceeds should be used to help pay off the nationaldebt. The vast area was to be surveyed before saleand settlement, thus forestalling endless confusionand lawsuits. It was to be divided into townships sixmiles square, each of which in turn was to be splitinto thirty-six sections of one square mile each. Thesixteenth section of each township was set aside tobe sold for the benefit of the public schools—apriceless gift to education in the Northwest. Theorderly settlement of the Northwest Territory, wherethe land was methodically surveyed and titles duly

recorded, contrasted sharply with the chaos southof the Ohio River, where uncertain ownership wasthe norm and fraud was rampant.

Even more noteworthy was the Northwest Ordi-nance of 1787, which related to the governing of theOld Northwest. This law came to grips with theproblem of how a nation should deal with itscolonies—the same problem that had bedeviled theking and Parliament in London. The solution pro-vided by the Northwest Ordinance was a judiciouscompromise: temporary tutelage, then permanentequality. First, there would be two evolutionary ter-ritorial stages, during which the area would be sub-ordinate to the federal government. Then, when aterritory could boast sixty thousand inhabitants, itmight be admitted by Congress as a state, with allthe privileges of the thirteen charter members.(This is precisely what the Continental Congresshad promised the states when they surrenderedtheir lands in 1781.) The ordinance also forbadeslavery in the Old Northwest—a pathbreaking gainfor freedom.

The wisdom of Congress in handling this explo-sive problem deserves warm praise. If it hadattempted to chain the new territories in perma-nent subordination, a second American Revolutionalmost certainly would have erupted in later years,fought this time by the West against the East. Con-gress thus neatly solved the seemingly insolubleproblem of empire. The scheme worked so well that


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Surveying the Old Northwest Sections of a township under the Land Ordinance of 1785.

its basic principles were ultimately carried overfrom the Old Northwest to other frontier areas.

The World’s Ugly Duckling

Foreign relations, especially with London, remainedtroubled during these anxious years of the Confed-eration. Britain resented the stab in the back fromits rebellious offspring and for eight years refused tosend a minister to America’s “backwoods’’ capital.London suggested, with barbed irony, that if it sentone, it would have to send thirteen.

Britain flatly declined to make a commercialtreaty or to repeal its ancient Navigation Laws. Lord Sheffield, whose ungenerous views prevailed,argued persuasively in a widely sold pamphlet thatBritain would win back America’s trade anyhow.Commerce, he insisted, would naturally follow oldchannels. So why go to the Americans hat in hand?The British also officially shut off their profitableWest Indies trade from the United States, though theYankees, with their time-tested skill in smuggling,illegally partook nonetheless.

Scheming British agents were also active alongthe far-flung northern frontier. They intrigued withthe disgruntled Allen brothers of Vermont andsought to annex that rebellious area to Britain.Along the northern border, the redcoats continuedto hold a chain of trading posts on U.S. soil, andthere they maintained their fur trade with the Indi-ans. One plausible excuse for remaining was thefailure of the American states to honor the treaty ofpeace in regard to debts and Loyalists. But the mainpurpose of Britain in hanging on was probably tocurry favor with the Indians and keep their toma-hawks lined up on the side of the king as a barrieragainst future American attacks on Canada.

All these grievances against Britain were mad-dening to patriotic Americans. Some citizensdemanded, with more heat than wisdom, that theUnited States force the British into line by imposingrestrictions on their imports to America. But Con-gress could not control commerce, and the statesrefused to adopt a uniform tariff policy. Some “easystates’’ deliberately lowered their tariffs in order toattract an unfair share of trade.

Spain, though recently an enemy of Britain, wasopenly unfriendly to the new Republic. It controlledthe mouth of the all-important Mississippi, down

which the pioneers of Tennessee and Kentucky wereforced to float their produce. In 1784 Spain closedthe river to American commerce, threatening theWest with strangulation. Spain likewise claimed alarge area north of the Gulf of Mexico, includingFlorida, granted to the United States by the Britishin 1783. At Natchez, on disputed soil, it held animportant fort. It also schemed with the neighbor-ing Indians, grievously antagonized by the rapa-cious land policies of Georgia and North Carolina,to hem in the Americans east of the Alleghenies.Spain and Britain together, radiating their influenceout among resentful Indian tribes, prevented Amer-ica from exercising effective control over about halfof its total territory.

Even France, America’s comrade-in-arms,cooled off now that it had humbled Britain. The

Troubled Foreign Relations 175

Main Centers of Spanish and British Influence After 1783This map shows graphically that the United States in 1783achieved complete independence in name only, particularly inthe area west of the Appalachian Mountains. Not until twentyyears had passed did the new Republic, with the purchase ofLouisiana from France in 1803, eliminate foreign influencefrom the area east of the Mississippi River.

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British influence

Spanish influence

French demanded the repayment of money loanedduring the war and restricted trade with theirbustling West Indies and other ports.

Pirates of the North African states, including thearrogant Dey of Algiers, were ravaging America’sMediterranean commerce and enslaving Yankeesailors. The British purchased protection for theirown subjects, and as colonists the Americans hadenjoyed this shield. But as an independent nation,the United States was too weak to fight and too poorto bribe. A few Yankee shippers engaged in theMediterranean trade with forged British protectionpapers, but not all were so bold or so lucky.

John Jay, secretary for foreign affairs, derivedsome hollow satisfaction from these insults. Hehoped they would at least humiliate the Americanpeople into framing a new government at home thatwould be strong enough to command respect abroad.

The Horrid Specter of Anarchy

Economic storm clouds continued to loom in themid-1780s. The requisition system of raising moneywas breaking down; some of the states refused topay anything, while complaining bitterly about thetyranny of “King Congress.’’ Interest on the publicdebt was piling up at home, and the nation’s creditwas evaporating abroad.

Individual states were getting out of hand.Quarrels over boundaries generated numerousminor pitched battles. Some of the states were levy-

ing duties on goods from their neighbors; New York,for example, taxed firewood from Connecticut andcabbages from New Jersey. A number of the stateswere again starting to grind out depreciated papercurrency, and a few of them had passed laws sanc-tioning the semiworthless “rag money.’’ As a con-temporary rhymester put it,

Bankrupts their creditors with rage pursue;No stop, no mercy from the debtor crew.

An alarming uprising, known as Shays’s Rebel-lion, flared up in western Massachusetts in 1786.Impoverished backcountry farmers, many of themRevolutionary War veterans, were losing their farmsthrough mortgage foreclosures and tax delinquen-cies. Led by Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran of theRevolution, these desperate debtors demandedcheap paper money, lighter taxes, and a suspensionof property takeovers. Hundreds of angry agitators,again seizing their muskets, attempted to enforcetheir demands.

Massachusetts authorities responded with dras-tic action. Supported partly by contributions fromwealthy citizens, they raised a small army. Severalskirmishes occurred—at Springfield three Shaysiteswere killed, and one was wounded—and the move-ment collapsed. Daniel Shays, who believed that hewas fighting anew against tyranny, was condemnedto death but was later pardoned.

Shays’s followers were crushed—but the night-marish memory lingered on. The outbursts of theseand other distressed debtors struck fear in thehearts of the propertied class, who began to suspectthat the Revolution had created a monster of“mobocracy.’’ “Good God!’’ burst out George Wash-ington, who felt that only a Tory or a Briton couldhave predicted such disorders. Unbridled republi-canism, it seemed to many of the elite, had fed aninsatiable appetite for liberty that was fast becom-ing license. Civic virtue was no longer sufficient torein in self-interest and greed. It had become “unde-niably evident,” one skeptic sorrowfully lamented,“that some malignant disorder has seized upon ourbody politic.” If republicanism was too shaky aground upon which to construct a new nation, astronger central government would provide theneeded foundation. A few panicky citizens eventalked of importing a European monarch to carry onwhere George III had failed.

How critical were conditions under the Confed-eration? Conservatives, anxious to safeguard their


Social tensions reached a fever pitch duringShays’s Rebellion in 1787. In an interviewwith a local Massachusetts paper, instigatorDaniel Shays (1747–1825) explained how thedebt-ridden farmers hoped to free themselvesfrom the demands of a merchant-dominatedgovernment. The rebels would seize arms and

“march directly to Boston, plunder it, andthen . . . destroy the nest of devils, who bytheir influence, make the Court enact whatthey please, burn it and lay the town ofBoston in ashes.”

wealth and position, naturally exaggerated the seri-ousness of the nation’s plight. They were eager topersuade their fellow citizens to amend the Articlesof Confederation in favor of a muscular central gov-ernment. But the poorer states’ rights people pooh-poohed the talk of anarchy. Many of them weredebtors who feared that a powerful federal govern-ment would force them to pay their creditors.

Yet friends and critics of the Confederationagreed that it needed some strengthening. Populartoasts were “Cement to the Union’’ and “A hoop tothe barrel.’’ The chief differences arose over howthis goal should be attained and how a maximumdegree of states’ rights could be reconciled with astrong central government. America probably couldhave muddled through somehow with amendedArticles of Confederation. But the adoption of acompletely new constitution certainly spared theRepublic much costly indecision, uncertainty, andturmoil.

The nationwide picture was actually brighten-ing before the Constitution was drafted. Nearly halfthe states had not issued semiworthless paper cur-rency, and some of the monetary black sheepshowed signs of returning to the sound-money fold.Prosperity was beginning to emerge from the fog ofdepression. By 1789 overseas shipping had largelyregained its place in the commercial world. If condi-tions had been as grim in 1787 as painted by foes ofthe Articles of Confederation, the move for a newconstitution would hardly have encountered suchheated opposition.

A Convention of “Demigods’’

Control of commerce, more than any other prob-lem, touched off the chain reaction that led to aconstitutional convention. Interstate squabblingover this issue had become so alarming by 1786 thatVirginia, taking the lead, issued a call for a conven-tion at Annapolis, Maryland. Nine states appointeddelegates, but only five were finally represented.With so laughable a showing, nothing could be doneabout the ticklish question of commerce. A charis-matic New Yorker, thirty-one-year-old AlexanderHamilton, brilliantly saved the convention fromcomplete failure by engineering the adoption of hisreport. It called upon Congress to summon a con-vention to meet in Philadelphia the next year, not to

deal with commerce alone, but to bolster the entirefabric of the Articles of Confederation.

Congress, though slowly and certainly dying inNew York City, was reluctant to take a step thatmight hasten its day of reckoning. But after six of the states had seized the bit in their teeth and appointed delegates anyhow, Congress belat-edly issued the call for a convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising’’ the Articles of Confederation.

Every state chose representatives, except forindependent-minded Rhode Island (still “Rogues’Island’’), a stronghold of paper-moneyites. Theseleaders were all appointed by the state legislatures,whose members had been elected by voters whocould qualify as property holders. This double distil-lation inevitably brought together a select group ofpropertied men—though it is a grotesque distortionto claim that they shaped the Constitution primarilyto protect their personal financial interests. Whenone of them did suggest restricting federal office tomajor property owners, he was promptly de-nounced for the unwisdom of “interweaving into arepublican constitution a veneration for wealth.’’

A quorum of the fifty-five emissaries fromtwelve states finally convened at Philadelphia onMay 25, 1787, in the imposing red-brick statehouse.The smallness of the assemblage facilitated intimateacquaintance and hence compromise. Sessionswere held in complete secrecy, with armed sentinels

The Constitutional Convention 177

Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) clearlyrevealed his preference for an aristocraticgovernment in his Philadelphia speech(1787):

“All communities divide themselves into thefew and the many. The first are the rich andwellborn, the other the mass of the people. . . . The people are turbulent and changing;they seldom judge or determine right. Givetherefore to the first class a distinct,permanent share in the government. Theywill check the unsteadiness of the second,and as they cannot receive any advantage bychange, they therefore will ever maintaingood government.”

posted at the doors. Delegates knew that they wouldgenerate heated differences, and they did not wantto advertise their own dissensions or put the ammu-nition of harmful arguments into the mouths of theopposition.

The caliber of the participants was extraordi-narily high—“demigods,’’ Jefferson called them. Thecrisis was such as to induce the ablest men to droptheir personal pursuits and come to the aid of theircountry. Most of the members were lawyers, andmost of them fortunately were old hands at consti-tution making in their own states.

George Washington, towering austere and aloofamong the “demigods,’’ was unanimously electedchairman. His enormous prestige, as “the Sword ofthe Revolution,’’ served to quiet overheated tem-pers. Benjamin Franklin, then eighty-one, addedthe urbanity of an elder statesman, though he wasinclined to be indiscreetly talkative in his decliningyears. Concerned for the secrecy of their deliber-ations, the convention assigned chaperones toaccompany Franklin to dinner parties and makesure he held his tongue. James Madison, thenthirty-six and a profound student of government,made contributions so notable that he has beendubbed “the Father of the Constitution.’’ AlexanderHamilton, then only thirty-two, was present as anadvocate of a super-powerful central government.His five-hour speech in behalf of his plan, thoughthe most eloquent of the convention, left only onedelegate convinced—himself.

Most of the fiery Revolutionary leaders of 1776were absent. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, andThomas Paine were in Europe; Samuel Adams andJohn Hancock were not elected by Massachusetts.Patrick Henry, ardent champion of states’ rights, waschosen as a delegate from Virginia but declined toserve, declaring that he “smelled a rat.’’ It was per-haps well that these architects of revolution wereabsent. The time had come to yield the stage to lead-ers interested in fashioning solid political systems.

Patriots in Philadelphia

The fifty-five delegates were a conservative, well-to-do body: lawyers, merchants, shippers, landspeculators, and moneylenders. Not a singlespokesperson was present from the poorer debtorgroups. Nineteen of the fifty-five owned slaves. They

were young (the average age was about forty-two)but experienced statesmen. Above all, they werenationalists, more interested in preserving andstrengthening the young Republic than in furtherstirring the roiling cauldron of popular democracy.

The delegates hoped to crystallize the last evap-orating pools of revolutionary idealism into a stablepolitical structure that would endure. They stronglydesired a firm, dignified, and respected govern-ment. They believed in republicanism but sought toprotect the American experiment from its weak-nesses abroad and excesses at home. In a broadsense, the piratical Dey of Algiers, who drove thedelegates to their work, was a Founding Father. Theyaimed to clothe the central authority with genuine


Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), despite hishigh regard for the leaders at the Philadelphiaconvention, still was not unduly concernedabout Shaysite rebellions. He wrote in November 1787,

“What country before ever existed a centuryand a half without a rebellion? . . . The treeof liberty must be refreshed from time totime with the blood of patriots and tyrants.It is its natural manure.”

power, especially in controlling tariffs, so that theUnited States could wrest satisfactory commercialtreaties from foreign nations. The shortsighted hos-tility of the British mercantilists spurred the consti-tution framers to their task, and in this sense theilliberal Lord Sheffield was also a Founding Father.

Other motives hovered in the Philadelphia hall.Delegates were determined to preserve the union,forestall anarchy, and ensure security of life andproperty against dangerous uprisings by the“mobocracy.’’ Above all, they sought to curb theunrestrained democracy rampant in the variousstates. “We have, probably, had too good an opinionof human nature in forming our confederation,’’Washington concluded. The specter of the recentoutburst in Massachusetts was especially alarming,and in this sense Daniel Shays was yet anotherFounding Father. Grinding necessity extorted theConstitution from a reluctant nation. Fear occupiedthe fifty-sixth chair.

Hammering Outa Bundle of Compromises

Some of the travel-stained delegates, when they firstreached Philadelphia, decided upon a daring step.They would completely scrap the old Articles ofConfederation, despite explicit instructions fromCongress to revise. Technically, these bolder spiritswere determined to overthrow the existing govern-ment of the United States by peaceful means.

A scheme proposed by populous Virginia, andknown as “the large-state plan,’’ was first pushed

forward as the framework of the Constitution. Itsessence was that representation in both houses of abicameral Congress should be based on popula-tion—an arrangement that would naturally give thelarger states an advantage.

Tiny New Jersey, suspicious of brawny Virginia,countered with “the small-state plan.’’ This providedfor equal representation in a unicameral Congressby states, regardless of size and population, asunder the existing Articles of Confederation. Theweaker states feared that under the Virginia scheme,the stronger states would band together and lord itover the rest. Angry debate, heightened by a stiflingheat wave, led to deadlock. The danger loomed thatthe convention would unravel in complete failure.Even skeptical old Benjamin Franklin seriously pro-posed that the daily sessions be opened with prayerby a local clergyman.

Searching for Compromise 179

Jefferson was never a friend of stronggovernment (except when himself president),and he viewed with suspicion the substitutethat was proposed for the Articles ofConfederation:

“Indeed, I think all the good of this newConstitution might have been couched inthree or four new articles, to be added to thegood, old, and venerable fabric.”

After bitter and prolonged debate, the “GreatCompromise’’ of the convention was hammered outand agreed upon. A cooling of tempers came coinci-dentally with a cooling of the temperature. The largerstates were conceded representation by populationin the House of Representatives (Art. I, Sec. II, para. 3;see Appendix at the end of this book), and the smallerstates were appeased by equal representation in theSenate (see Art. I, Sec. III, para. 1). Each state, no mat-ter how poor or small, would have two senators. Thebig states obviously yielded more. As a sop to them,the delegates agreed that every tax bill or revenuemeasure must originate in the House, where popula-tion counted more heavily (see Art. I, Sec. VII, para.1). This critical compromise broke the logjam, andfrom then on success seemed within reach.

In a significant reversal of the arrangementmost state constitutions had embodied, the newConstitution provided for a strong, independentexecutive in the presidency. The framers were here

partly inspired by the example of Massachusetts,where a vigorous, popularly elected governor hadsuppressed Shays’s Rebellion. The president was tobe military commander in chief and to have widepowers of appointment to domestic offices—including judgeships. The president was also tohave veto power over legislation.

The Constitution as drafted was a bundle ofcompromises; they stand out in every section. Avital compromise was the method of electing thepresident indirectly by the Electoral College, ratherthan by direct means. While the large states wouldhave the advantage in the first round of popular vot-ing, as a state’s share of electors was based on thetotal of its senators and representatives in Congress,the small states would gain a larger voice if no can-didate got a majority of electoral votes and the elec-tion was thrown to the House of Representatives,where each state had only one vote (see Art. II, Sec.I, para. 2). Although the framers of the Constitutionexpected election by the House to occur frequently,it has happened just twice, in 1800 and in 1824.

Sectional jealousy also intruded. Should thevoteless slave of the southern states count as a per-son in apportioning direct taxes and in accordingrepresentation in the House of Representatives? TheSouth, not wishing to be deprived of influence,answered “yes.’’ The North replied “no,’’ arguing that,as slaves were not citizens, the North might as logi-cally demand additional representation based on itshorses. As a compromise between total representa-tion and none at all, it was decided that a slave mightcount as three-fifths of a person. Hence the memo-rable, if arbitrary, “three-fifths compromise’’ (see Art.I, Sec. II, para. 3).


One of the Philadelphia delegates recordedin his journal a brief episode involvingBenjamin Franklin, who was asked by awoman when the convention ended,

“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic ora monarchy?”

The elder statesman answered,

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

Evolution of Federal Union

Years Attempts at Union Participants

1643–1684 New England Confederation 4 colonies

1686–1689 Dominion of New England 7 colonies

1754 Albany Congress 7 colonies

1765 Stamp Act Congress 9 colonies

1772–1776 Committees of Correspondence 13 colonies

1774 First Continental Congress (adopts The Association) 12 colonies

1775–1781 Second Continental Congress 13 colonies

1781–1789 Articles of Confederation 13 states

1789–1790 Federal Constitution 13 states

Most of the states wanted to shut off the Africanslave trade. But South Carolina and Georgia, requiringslave labor in their rice paddies and malarial swamps,raised vehement protests. By way of compromise theconvention stipulated that the slave trade might con-tinue until the end of 1807, at which time Congresscould turn off the spigot (see Art. I, Sec. IX, para. 1). Itdid so as soon as the prescribed interval had elapsed.Meanwhile, all the new state constitutions exceptGeorgia’s forbade overseas slave trade.

Safeguards for Conservatism

Heated clashes among the delegates have beenoverplayed. The area of agreement was actuallylarge; otherwise the convention would have speed-ily disbanded. Economically, the members of theConstitutional Convention generally saw eye to eye;they demanded sound money and the protection ofprivate property. Politically, they were in basicagreement; they favored a stronger government,with three branches and with checks and balancesamong them—what critics branded a “triple-headed monster.’’ Finally, the convention was virtu-ally unanimous in believing that manhood-suffragedemocracy—government by “democratick bab-blers’’—was something to be feared and fought.

Daniel Shays, the prime bogeyman, still fright-ened the conservative-minded delegates. They

deliberately erected safeguards against the excessesof the “mob,’’ and they made these barriers as strongas they dared. The awesome federal judges were tobe appointed for life. The powerful president was tobe elected indirectly by the Electoral College; thelordly senators were to be chosen indirectly by statelegislatures (see Art. I, Sec. III, para. 1). Only in thecase of one-half of one of the three great branches—the House of Representatives—were qualified(propertied) citizens permitted to choose their offi-cials by direct vote (see Art. I, Sec. II, para. 1).

Yet the new charter also contained democraticelements. Above all, it stood foursquare on the twogreat principles of republicanism: that the onlylegitimate government was one based on the con-sent of the governed, and that the powers of govern-ment should be limited—in this case specificallylimited by a written constitution. The virtue of thepeople, not the authority of the state, was to be theultimate guarantor of liberty, justice, and order. “Wethe people,’’ the preamble began, in a ringing affir-mation of these republican doctrines.

At the end of seventeen muggy weeks—May 25to September 17, 1787—only forty-two of the origi-nal fifty-five members remained to sign the Consti-tution. Three of the forty-two, refusing to do so,returned to their states to resist ratification. Theremainder, adjourning to the City Tavern, cele-brated the toastworthy occasion. But no membersof the convention were completely happy about theresult. They were too near their work—and too

A Conservative Constitution 181

Strengthening the Central Government

Under Articles of Confederation Under Federal Constitution

A loose confederation of states A firm union of people1 vote in Congress for each state 2 votes in Senate for each state; representation by

population in House (see Art. I, Secs. II, III)Vote of 9 states in Congress for all important Simple majority vote in Congress, subject to presidential

measures veto (see Art. I, Sec. VII, para. 2)Laws administered loosely by committees of Congress Laws executed by powerful president (see Art. II, Secs. II, III)No congressional power over commerce Congress to regulate both foreign and interstate

commerce (see Art. I, Sec. VIII, para. 3)No congressional power to levy taxes Extensive power in Congress to levy taxes (see Art. I, Sec.

VIII, para. 1)Limited federal courts Federal courts, capped by Supreme Court (see Art. III)Unanimity of states for amendment Amendment less difficult (see Art. V)No authority to act directly upon individuals Ample power to enforce laws by coercion of individuals

and no power to coerce states and to some extent of states

weary. Whatever their personal desires, they finallyhad to compromise and adopt what was acceptableto the entire body, and what presumably would beacceptable to the entire country.

The Clash of Federalistsand Antifederalists

The Framing Fathers early foresaw that nationwideacceptance of the Constitution would not be easy toobtain. A formidable barrier was unanimous ratifi-cation by all thirteen states, as required for amend-ment by the still-standing Articles of Confederation.But since absent Rhode Island was certain to vetothe Constitution, the delegates boldly adopted a dif-ferent scheme. They stipulated that when ninestates had registered their approval through spe-cially elected conventions, the Constitution wouldbecome the supreme law of the land in those statesratifying (see Art. VII).

This was extraordinary, even revolutionary. It wasin effect an appeal over the heads of the Congressthat had called the convention, and over the heads ofthe legislatures that had chosen its members, to thepeople—or those of the people who could vote. Inthis way the framers could claim greater popularsanction for their handiwork. A divided Congresssubmitted the document to the states on this basis,without recommendation of any kind.

The American people were somewhat aston-ished, so well had the secrets of the convention beenconcealed. The public had expected the old Articles ofConfederation to be patched up; now it was handed astartling new document in which, many thought, theprecious jewel of state sovereignty was swallowed up.One of the hottest debates of American history forth-with erupted. The antifederalists, who opposed thestronger federal government, were arrayed against thefederalists, who obviously favored it.

A motley crew gathered in the antifederalistcamp. Its leaders included prominent revolutionar-ies like Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and RichardHenry Lee. Their followers consisted primarily,though not exclusively, of states’ rights devotees,backcountry dwellers, and one-horse farmers—ingeneral, the poorest classes. They were joined bypaper-moneyites and debtors, many of whomfeared that a potent central government would forcethem to pay off their debts—and at full value. Largenumbers of antifederalists saw in the Constitution aplot by the upper crust to steal power back from thecommon folk.

Silver-buckled federalists had power and influ-ence on their side. They enjoyed the support of suchcommanding figures as George Washington andBenjamin Franklin. Most of them lived in the settledareas along the seaboard, not in the raw backcoun-try. Overall, they were wealthier than the antifeder-alists, more educated, and better organized. Theyalso controlled the press. More than a hundred


Ratification of the Constitution

Vote in Rank in 1790State Date Convention Population Population

1. Delaware Dec. 7, 1787 Unanimous 13 59,0962. Pennsylvania Dec. 12, 1787 46 to 23 3 433,6113. New Jersey Dec. 18, 1787 Unanimous 9 184,1394. Georgia Jan. 2, 1788 Unanimous 11 82,5485. Connecticut Jan. 9, 1788 128 to 40 8 237,6556. Massachusetts Feb. 7, 1788 187 to 168 2 475,199

(incl. Maine)7. Maryland Apr. 28, 1788 63 to 11 6 319,7288. South Carolina May 23, 1788 149 to 73 7 249,0739. New Hampshire June 21, 1788 57 to 46 10 141,899

10. Virginia June 26, 1788 89 to 79 1 747,61011. New York July 26, 1788 30 to 27 5 340,24112. North Carolina Nov. 21, 1789 195 to 77 4 395,00513. Rhode Island May 29, 1790 34 to 32 12 69,112

newspapers were published in America in the1780s; only a dozen supported the antifederalistcause.

Antifederalists voiced vehement objections tothe “gilded trap’’ known as the Constitution. Theycried with much truth that it had been drawn up bythe aristocratic elements and hence was antidemo-cratic. They likewise charged that the sovereignty ofthe states was being submerged and that the free-doms of the individual were jeopardized by the

absence of a bill of rights. They decried the drop-ping of annual elections for congressional represen-tatives, the erecting of a federal stronghold ten milessquare (later the District of Columbia), the creationof a standing army, the omission of any reference toGod, and the highly questionable procedure of rati-fying with only two-thirds of the states. A Philadel-phia newspaper added that Benjamin Franklin was“a fool from age’’ and George Washington “a foolfrom nature.’’

Federalists and Antifederalists 183

The Struggle over RatificationThis mottled map shows thatfederalist support tended tocluster around the coastal areas,which had enjoyed profitablecommerce with the outsideworld, including the export ofgrain and tobacco. Impoverishedfrontiersmen, suspicious of apowerful new central govern-ment under the Constitution,were generally antifederalists.

The Great Debate in the States

Special elections, some apathetic but others hotlycontested, were held in the various states for mem-bers of the ratifying conventions. The candidates—federalist or antifederalist—were elected on thebasis of their pledges for or against the Constitution.

With the ink barely dry on the parchment, foursmall states quickly accepted the Constitution, forthey had come off much better than they expected.Pennsylvania, number two on the list of ratifiers,was the first large state to act, but not until high-handed irregularities had been employed by thefederalist legislature in calling a convention. Theseincluded the forcible seating of two antifederalistmembers, their clothes torn and their faces red withrage, in order to complete a quorum.

Massachusetts, the second most populousstate, provided an acid test. If the Constitution hadfailed in Massachusetts, the entire movementmight easily have bogged down. The Boston ratify-ing convention at first contained an antifederalistmajority. It included grudging Shaysites and theaging Samuel Adams, as suspicious of governmentpower in 1787 as he had been in 1776. The assemblybuzzed with dismaying talk of summoning anotherconstitutional convention, as though the nationhad not already shot its bolt. Clearly the choice wasnot between this Constitution and a better one, butbetween this Constitution and the creaking Articles

of Confederation. The absence of a bill of rightsalarmed the antifederalists. But the federalists gavethem solemn assurances that the first Congresswould add such a safeguard by amendment, andratification was then secured in Massachusetts bythe rather narrow margin of 187 to 168.

Three more states fell into line. The last of thesewas New Hampshire, whose convention at first hadcontained a strong antifederalist majority. The fed-eralists cleverly arranged a prompt adjournmentand then won over enough waverers to secure ratifi-cation. Nine states—all but Virginia, New York,North Carolina, and Rhode Island—had now takenshelter under the “new federal roof,’’ and the docu-ment was officially adopted on June 21, 1788. Fran-cis Hopkinson exulted in his song “The New Roof”:

Huzza! my brave boys, our work is complete;The world shall admire Columbia’s fair seat.

But such rejoicing was premature so long as the fourdissenters, conspicuously New York and Virginia,dug in their heels.

The Four Laggard States

Proud Virginia, the biggest and most populous state,provided fierce antifederalist opposition. There thecollege-bred federalist orators, for once, encoun-tered worthy antagonists, including the fiery Patrick


Henry. He professed to see in the fearsome docu-ment the death warrant of liberty. George Washing-ton, James Madison, and John Marshall, on thefederalist side, lent influential support. With NewHampshire about to ratify, the new Union was goingto be formed anyhow, and Virginia could not verywell continue comfortably as an independent state.After exciting debate in the state convention, ratifi-cation carried, 89 to 79.

New York also experienced an uphill struggle,burdened as it was with its own heavily antifederal-ist state convention. Alexander Hamilton at heartfavored a much stronger central government thanthat under debate, but he contributed his sparklingpersonality and persuasive eloquence to whippingup support for federalism as framed. He also joinedJohn Jay and James Madison in penning a masterly

series of articles for the New York newspapers.Though designed as propaganda, these essaysremain the most penetrating commentary everwritten on the Constitution and are still widely soldin book form as The Federalist. Probably the mostfamous of these is Madison’s Federalist No. 10,which brilliantly refuted the conventional wisdomof the day that it was impossible to extend a republi-can form of government over a large territory.

New York finally yielded. Realizing that the statecould not prosper apart from the Union, the conven-tion ratified the document by the close count of 30 to27. At the same time, it approved thirty-two proposedamendments and—vain hope—issued a call for yetanother convention to modify the Constitution.

Last-ditch dissent developed in only two states.A hostile convention met in North Carolina, thenadjourned without taking a vote. Rhode Island didnot even summon a ratifying convention, rejectingthe Constitution by popular referendum. The twomost ruggedly individualist centers of the colonialera—homes of the “otherwise minded’’—thus rantrue to form. They were to change their course,albeit unwillingly, only after the new governmenthad been in operation for some months.

The race for ratification, despite much apathy,was close and quite bitter in some localities. No liveswere lost, but riotous disturbances broke out in NewYork and Pennsylvania, involving bruises andbloodshed. There was much behind-the-scenespressure on delegates who had promised their con-stituents to vote against the Constitution. The last

Ratifying the Constitution 185

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794), a prominentantifederalist, attacked the proposedconstitution in 1788:

“’Tis really astonishing that the same people,who have just emerged from a long and cruelwar in defense of liberty, should now agreeto fix an elective despotism upon themselvesand their posterity.”

The same year, prominent Patriot PatrickHenry (1736–1799) agreed that the proposedconstitution endangered everything theRevolution had sought to protect:

“This constitution is said to have beautifulfeatures; but when I come to examine thesefeatures, Sir, they appear to me horridlyfrightful: Among other deformities, it has anawful squinting; it squints towardsmonarchy: And does not this raiseindignation in the breast of every American?Your President may easily become King: YourSenate is so imperfectly constructed thatyour dearest rights may be sacrificed bywhat may be a small minority; . . . Where areyour checks in this Government?”

four states ratified, not because they wanted to butbecause they had to. They could not safely existoutside the fold.

A Conservative Triumph

The minority had triumphed—twice. A militantminority of American radicals had engineered themilitary Revolution that cast off the unwrittenBritish constitution. A militant minority of conser-vatives—now embracing many of the earlier radi-cals—had engineered the peaceful revolution thatoverthrew the inadequate constitution known asthe Articles of Confederation. Eleven states, ineffect, had seceded from the Confederation, leavingthe two still in, actually out in the cold.

A majority had not spoken. Only about one-fourth of the adult white males in the country, chieflythe propertied people, had voted for delegates to theratifying conventions. Careful estimates indicate thatif the new Constitution had been submitted to a man-hood-suffrage vote, as in New York, it would haveencountered much more opposition, probably defeat.

Conservatism was victorious. Safeguards hadbeen erected against mob-rule excesses, while therepublican gains of the Revolution were conserved.Radicals such as Patrick Henry, who had oustedBritish rule, saw themselves in turn upended byAmerican conservatives. The federalists were con-vinced that by setting the drifting ship of state on asteady course, they could restore economic andpolitical stability.

Yet if the architects of the Constitution wereconservative, it is worth emphasizing that they con-


served the principle of republican governmentthrough a redefinition of popular sovereignty.Unlike the antifederalists, who believed that thesovereignty of the people resided in a single branchof government—the legislature—the federalists

contended that every branch—executive, judiciary,and legislature—effectively represented the people.By ingeniously embedding the doctrine of self-rulein a self-limiting system of checks and balancesamong these branches, the Constitution reconciledthe potentially conflicting principles of liberty andorder. It represented a marvelous achievement, onethat elevated the ideals of the Revolution even whilesetting boundaries to them. One of the distinctive—and enduring—paradoxes of American history wasthus revealed: in the United States, conservativesand radicals alike have championed the heritage ofrepublican revolution.

Chronology 187

Two Massachusetts citizens took oppositepositions on the new Constitution. JonathanSmith, a farmer unsympathetic to Shays’sRebellion of 1787, wrote,

“I am a plain man, and I get my living by theplow. I have lived in a part of the countrywhere I have known the worth of goodgovernment by the want of it. The blackcloud of Shays rebellion rose last winter inmy area. It brought on a state of anarchythat led to tyranny. . . . When I saw thisConstitution I found that it was a cure forthese disorders. I got a copy of it and read itover and over. . . . I don’t think the worse ofthe Constitution because lawyers, and menof learning, and moneyed men are fond of it.[They] are all embarked in the same causewith us, and we must all swim or sinktogether.”

Amos Singletary (1721–1806), who describedhimself as a “poor” man, argued against theConstitution:

“We fought Great Britain—some said for athree-penny tax on tea; but it was not that.It was because they claimed a right to tax usand bind us in all cases whatever. And doesnot this Constitution do the same? . . . Theselawyers and men of learning and moneymen, that talk so finely and gloss overmatters so smoothly, to make us poorilliterate people swallow down the pill. . . .They expect to be the managers of theConstitution, and get all the power andmoney into their own hands. And then theywill swallow up all us little folks, just as thewhale swallowed up Jonah!”

Chronology

1774 First Continental Congress calls for abolitionof slave trade

1775 Philadelphia Quakers found world’s firstantislavery society

1776 New Jersey constitution temporarily giveswomen the vote

1777 Articles of Confederation adopted by SecondContinental Congress

1780 Massachusetts adopts first constitutiondrafted in convention and ratified bypopular vote

1781 Articles of Confederation put into effect

1783 Military officers form Society of theCincinnati

1785 Land Ordinance of 1785

1786 Virginia Statute for Religious FreedomShays’s RebellionMeeting of five states to discuss revision of

the Articles of Confederation

1787 Northwest OrdinanceConstitutional Convention in Philadelphia

1788 Ratification by nine states guarantees a newgovernment under the Constitution


VARYING VIEWPOINTS

The Constitution:Revolutionary or

Counterrevolutionary?

Although the Constitution has endured over twocenturies as the basis of American government,

historians have differed sharply over how to inter-pret its origins and meaning. The so-called Nation-alist School of historians, writing in the latenineteenth century, viewed the Constitution as thelogical culmination of the Revolution and, moregenerally, as a crucial step in the God-given progressof Anglo-Saxon peoples. As described in John Fiske’sThe Critical Period of American History (1888), theyoung nation, buffeted by foreign threats and grow-ing internal chaos, with only a weak central govern-ment to lean on, was saved by the adoption of amore rigorous Constitution, the ultimate fulfillmentof republican ideals.

By the early twentieth century, however, theprogressive historians had turned a more criticaleye to the Constitution. Having observed theSupreme Court of their own day repeatedly overrulelegislation designed to better social conditions forthe masses, they began to view the original docu-ment as an instrument created by elite conserva-tives to wrest political power away from thecommon people. For historians like Carl Becker andCharles Beard, the Constitution was part of the Rev-olutionary struggle between the lower classes (smallfarmers, debtors, and laborers) and the upperclasses (merchants, financiers, and manufacturers).

Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Con-stitution of the United States (1913) argued that theArticles of Confederation had protected debtors andsmall property owners and displeased wealthy elitesheavily invested in trade, the public debt, and thepromotion of manufacturing. Only a stronger, morecentralized government could protect their exten-sive property interests. Reviewing the economic

holdings of the Founding Fathers, Beard deter-mined that most of those men were indeed deeplyinvolved in investments that would increase invalue under the Constitution. In effect, Beardargued, the Constitution represented a successfulattempt by conservative elites to buttress their owneconomic supremacy at the expense of less fortu-nate Americans. He further contended that the Con-stitution was ratified by default, because the peoplemost disadvantaged by the new government did not possess the property qualifications needed to vote—more evidence of the class conflict under-lying the struggle between the federalists and the antifederalists.

Beard’s economic interpretation of the Consti-tution held sway through the 1940s. Historians likeMerrill Jensen elaborated Beard’s analysis by argu-ing that the 1780s were not in fact mired in chaos,but rather were hopeful times for many Americans.In the 1950s, however, this analysis fell victim to theattacks of the “consensus” historians, who soughtexplanations for the Constitution in factors otherthan class interest. Scholars such as Robert Brownand Forrest McDonald convincingly disputedBeard’s evidence about delegates’ property owner-ship and refuted his portrayal of the masses as prop-ertyless and disfranchised. They argued that theConstitution derived from an emerging consen-sus that the country needed a stronger central government.

Scholars since the 1950s have searched for newways to understand the origins of the Constitution.The most influential work has been Gordon Wood’sCreation of the American Republic (1969). Woodreinterpreted the ratification controversy as a strug-gle to define the true essence of republicanism.

Antifederalists so feared human inclination towardcorruption that they shuddered at the prospect ofputting powerful political weapons in the hands of acentral government. They saw small governmentssusceptible to local control as the only safeguardagainst tyranny. The federalists, on the other hand,believed that a strong, balanced national govern-ment would rein in selfish human instincts andchannel them toward the pursuit of the commongood. Alarmed by the indulgences of the state gov-ernments, the federalists, James Madison in partic-ular (especially in Federalist No. 10), developed the

novel ideal of an “extensive republic,” a polity thatwould achieve stability by virtue of its great size anddiversity. This conception challenged the conven-tional wisdom that a republic could survive only if itextended over a small area with a homogeneouspopulation. In this sense, Wood argued, the Consti-tution represented a bold experiment—the fulfill-ment, rather than the repudiation, of the mostadvanced ideas of the Revolutionary era—eventhough it emanated from traditional elites deter-mined to curtail dangerous disruptions to the socialorder.



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190

10

Launching theNew Ship of State

��

1789–1800

I shall only say that I hold with Montesquieu, that a governmentmust be fitted to a nation, as much as a coat to the individual; and,consequently, that what may be good at Philadelphia may be bad at

Paris, and ridiculous at Petersburg [Russia].

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 1799

America’s new ship of state did not spread its sailsto the most favorable breezes. Within twelve

troubled years, the American people had risen upand thrown overboard both the British yoke and theArticles of Confederation. A decade of lawbreakingand constitution smashing was not the best trainingfor government making. Americans had come toregard a central authority, replacing that of GeorgeIII, as a necessary evil—something to be distrusted,watched, and curbed.

Finances of the infant government were like-wise precarious. The revenue had declined to atrickle, whereas the public debt, with interest heav-ily in arrears, was mountainous. Worthless papermoney, both state and national, was as plentiful asmetallic money was scarce. Nonetheless, the Ameri-cans were brashly trying to erect a republic on an

immense scale, something that no other people hadattempted and that traditional political theorydeemed impossible. The eyes of a skeptical worldwere on the upstart United States.

Growing Pains

When the Constitution was launched in 1789, theRepublic was continuing to grow at an amazing rate.Population was doubling about every twenty-fiveyears, and the first official census of 1790 recordedalmost 4 million people. Cities had blossomed pro-portionately: Philadelphia numbered 42,000, NewYork 33,000, Boston 18,000, Charleston 16,000, andBaltimore 13,000.

America’s population was still about 90 percentrural, despite the flourishing cities. All but 5 percentof the people lived east of the Appalachian Moun-tains. The trans-Appalachian overflow was concen-trated chiefly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, allof which were welcomed as states within fourteenyears. (Vermont had preceded them, becoming thefourteenth state in 1791.) Foreign visitors to Amer-ica looked down their noses at the roughness andcrudity resulting from ax-and-rifle pioneering life.

People of the western waters—in the stump-studded clearings of Kentucky, Tennessee, andOhio—were particularly restive and dubiously loyal.The mouth of the Mississippi, their life-giving out-let, lay in the hands of unfriendly Spaniards. Slip-pery Spanish and British agents, jingling gold,moved freely among the settlers and held out seduc-tive promises of independence. Many observerswondered whether the emerging United Stateswould ever grow to maturity.

Washington for President

General Washington, the esteemed war hero, wasunanimously drafted as president by the ElectoralCollege in 1789—the only presidential nomineeever to be honored by unanimity. His presence wasimposing: 6 feet 2 inches, 175 pounds, broad andsloping shoulders, strongly pointed chin, and pock-marks (from smallpox) on nose and cheeks. Muchpreferring the quiet of Mount Vernon to the turmoil

of politics, he was perhaps the only president whodid not in some way angle for this exalted office.Balanced rather than brilliant, he commanded hisfollowers by strength of character rather than by thearts of the politician.

Washington’s long journey from Mount Vernonto New York City, the temporary capital, was a tri-umphal procession. He was greeted by roaring cannon, pealing bells, flower-carpeted roads, andsinging and shouting citizens. With appropriate cer-emony, he solemnly and somewhat nervously tookthe oath of office on April 30, 1789, on a crowdedbalcony overlooking Wall Street, which some haveregarded as a bad omen.

Washington soon put his stamp on the new gov-ernment, especially by establishing the cabinet. TheConstitution does not mention a cabinet; it merelyprovides that the president “may require’’ writtenopinions of the heads of the executive-branchdepartments (see Art. II, Sec. II, para. 1). But thissystem proved so cumbersome, and involved so

Washington as First President 191

The French statesman Anne Robert JacquesTurgot (1727–1781) had high expectations fora united America:

“This people is the hope of the human race. . . . The Americans should be an example ofpolitical, religious, commercial and industrialliberty. . . . But to obtain these ends for us,America . . . must not become . . . a mass ofdivided powers, contending for territory andtrade.”

much homework, that cabinet meetings graduallyevolved in the Washington administration.

At first only three full-fledged department headsserved under the president: Secretary of StateThomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexan-der Hamilton, and Secretary of War Henry Knox.

The Bill of Rights

The new nation faced some unfinished business.Many antifederalists had sharply criticized the Con-stitution drafted at Philadelphia for its failure toprovide guarantees of individual rights such as free-dom of religion and trial by jury. Many states hadratified the federal Constitution on the understand-ing that it would soon be amended to include suchguarantees. Drawing up a bill of rights headed thelist of imperatives facing the new government.

Amendments to the Constitution could be pro-posed in either of two ways—by a new constitu-

tional convention requested by two-thirds of thestates or by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Con-gress. Fearing that a new convention might unravelthe narrow federalist victory in the ratificationstruggle, James Madison determined to draft theamendments himself. He then guided them throughCongress, where his intellectual and political skillswere quickly making him the leading figure.

Adopted by the necessary number of states in1791, the first ten amendments to the Constitution,popularly known as the Bill of Rights, safeguardsome of the most precious American principles.Among these are protections for freedom of reli-gion, speech, and the press; the right to bear armsand to be tried by a jury; and the right to assembleand petition the government for redress of griev-ances. The Bill of Rights also prohibits cruel andunusual punishments and arbitrary governmentseizure of private property.

To guard against the danger that enumeratingsuch rights might lead to the conclusion that theywere the only ones protected, Madison inserted the

192 CHAPTER 10 Launching the New Ship of State, 1789–1800

Evolution of the Cabinet

DatePosition Established Comments

Secretary of state 1789Secretary of treasury 1789Secretary of war 1789 Loses cabinet status, 1947Attorney general 1789 Not head of Justice Dept. until 1870

Secretary of navy 1798 Loses cabinet status, 1947Postmaster general 1829 Loses cabinet status, 1970Secretary of interior 1849Secretary of agriculture 1889Secretary of commerce and labor 1903 Office divided in 1913Secretary of commerce 1913Secretary of labor 1913

Secretary of defense 1947 Subordinate to this secretary, with-out cabinet rank, are secretariesof army, navy, and air force

Secretary of health, education, and welfare 1953 Office divided in 1979Secretary of housing and urban development 1965Secretary of transportation 1966Secretary of energy 1977Secretary of health and human services 1979Secretary of education 1979Secretary of veterans’ affairs 1989

Hamilton’s Financial Policies 193

crucial Ninth Amendment. It declares that specify-ing certain rights “shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In agesture of reassurance to the states’ righters, heincluded the equally significant Tenth Amendment,which reserves all rights not explicitly delegated orprohibited by the federal Constitution “to the Statesrespectively, or to the people.’’ By preserving astrong central government while specifying protec-tions for minority and individual liberties, Madi-son’s amendments partially swung the federalistpendulum back in an antifederalist direction. (SeeAmendments I–X, in the Appendix.)

The first Congress also nailed other newlysawed government planks into place. It createdeffective federal courts under the Judiciary Act of1789. The act organized the Supreme Court, with achief justice and five associates, as well as federaldistrict and circuit courts, and established the officeof attorney general. New Yorker John Jay, Madison’scollaborator on The Federalist papers and one of theyoung Republic’s most seasoned diplomats, becamethe first chief justice of the United States.

Hamilton Revives the Corpse of Public Credit

The key figure in the new government was stillsmooth-faced Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamil-ton, a native of the British West Indies. Hamilton’sgenius was unquestioned, but critics claimed heloved his adopted country more than he loved hiscountrymen. Doubts about his character and hisloyalty to the republican experiment always swirledabout his head. Hamilton regarded himself as a kindof prime minister in Washington’s cabinet and onoccasion thrust his hands into the affairs of otherdepartments, including that of his archrival,Thomas Jefferson, who served as secretary of state.

A financial wizard, Hamilton set out immedi-ately to correct the economic vexations that hadcrippled the Articles of Confederation. His plan wasto shape the fiscal policies of the administration insuch a way as to favor the wealthier groups. They, inturn, would gratefully lend the government mone-tary and political support. The new federal regimewould thrive, the propertied classes would fatten,and prosperity would trickle down to the masses.

The youthful financier’s first objective was tobolster the national credit. Without public confi-dence in the government, Hamilton could notsecure the funds with which to float his riskyschemes. He therefore boldly urged Congress to“fund’’ the entire national debt “at par” and toassume completely the debts incurred by the statesduring the recent war.

“Funding at par’’ meant that the federal govern-ment would pay off its debts at face value, plusaccumulated interest—a then-enormous total ofmore than $54 million. So many people believed the

One of the most eloquent tributes toHamilton’s apparent miracle working camefrom Daniel Webster (1782–1852) in theSenate (1831):

“He smote the rock of the national resources,and abundant streams of revenue gushedforth. He touched the dead corpse of publiccredit, and it sprung upon its feet.”

infant Treasury incapable of meeting those obliga-tions that government bonds had depreciated to tenor fifteen cents on the dollar. Yet speculators heldfistfuls of them, and when Congress passed Hamil-ton’s measure in 1790, they grabbed for more. Someof them galloped into rural areas ahead of the news,buying for a song the depreciated paper holdings offarmers, war veterans, and widows.

Hamilton was willing, even eager, to have thenew government shoulder additional obligations.While pushing the funding scheme, he urged Con-gress to assume the debts of the states, totalingsome $21.5 million.

The secretary made a convincing case for“assumption.’’ The state debts could be regarded asa proper national obligation, for they had beenincurred in the war for independence. But foremostin Hamilton’s thinking was the belief that assump-tion would chain the states more tightly to the “fed-eral chariot.’’ Thus the secretary’s maneuver wouldshift the attachment of wealthy creditors from thestates to the federal government. The support of therich for the national administration was a cruciallink in Hamilton’s political strategy of strengtheningthe central government.

States burdened with heavy debts, like Massa-chusetts, were delighted by Hamilton’s proposal.States with small debts, like Virginia, were lesscharmed. The stage was set for some old-fashionedhorse trading. Virginia did not want the state debtsassumed, but it did want the forthcoming federaldistrict*—now the District of Columbia—to belocated on the Potomac River. It would thus gain incommerce and prestige. Hamilton persuaded areluctant Jefferson, who had recently come homefrom France, to line up enough votes in Congress forassumption. In return, Virginia would have the fed-eral district on the Potomac. The bargain was car-ried through in 1790.

Customs Duties and Excise Taxes

The new ship of state thus set sail dangerously over-loaded. The national debt had swelled to $75 millionowing to Hamilton’s insistence on honoring the out-standing federal and state obligations alike. Anyone

less determined to establish such a healthy publiccredit could have sidestepped $13 million in backinterest and could have avoided the state debtsentirely.

But Hamilton, “Father of the National Debt,’’was not greatly worried. His objectives were asmuch political as economic. He believed that withinlimits, a national debt was a “national blessing’’—akind of union adhesive. The more creditors to whomthe government owed money, the more peoplethere would be with a personal stake in the successof his ambitious enterprise. His unique contributionwas to make a debt—ordinarily a liability—an assetfor vitalizing the financial system as well as the gov-ernment itself.


*Authorized by the Constitution, Art. I, Sec. VIII, para. 17.

Where was the money to come from to payinterest on this huge debt and run the government?Hamilton’s first answer was customs duties, derivedfrom a tariff. Tariff revenues, in turn, depended on avigorous foreign trade, another crucial link in Hamil-ton’s overall economic strategy for the new Republic.

The first tariff law, imposing a low tariff of about8 percent on the value of dutiable imports, wasspeedily passed by the first Congress in 1789, evenbefore Hamilton was sworn in. Revenue was by farthe main goal, but the measure was also designed toerect a low protective wall around infant industries,which bawled noisily for more shelter than theyreceived. Hamilton had the vision to see that theindustrial revolution would soon reach America,and he argued strongly in favor of more protectionfor the well-to-do manufacturing groups—anothervital element in his economic program. But Congress was still dominated by the agriculturaland commercial interests, and it voted only twoslight increases in the tariff during Washington’spresidency.

Hamilton, with characteristic vigor, soughtadditional internal revenue and in 1791 securedfrom Congress an excise tax on a few domesticitems, notably whiskey. The new levy of seven centsa gallon was borne chiefly by the distillers who lived in the backcountry, where the wretched roadsforced the farmer to reduce (and liquify) bulkybushels of grain to horseback proportions. Whiskeyflowed so freely on the frontier in the form of dis-tilled liquor that it was used for money.

Hamilton Battles Jefferson for a Bank

As the capstone for his financial system, Hamiltonproposed a Bank of the United States. An enthusias-tic admirer of most things English, he took as hismodel the Bank of England. Specifically, he pro-posed a powerful private institution, of which thegovernment would be the major stockholder and inwhich the federal Treasury would deposit its surplusmonies. The central government not only wouldhave a convenient strongbox, but federal fundswould stimulate business by remaining in circula-tion. The bank would also print urgently neededpaper money and thus provide a sound and stablenational currency, badly needed since the dayswhen the Continental dollar was “not worth a Conti-nental.’’ The proposed bank would indeed be useful.But was it constitutional?

Jefferson, whose written opinion on this ques-tion Washington requested, argued vehementlyagainst the bank. There was, he insisted, no specificauthorization in the Constitution for such a finan-cial octopus. He was convinced that all powers notspecifically granted to the central government werereserved to the states, as provided in the about-to-be-ratified Bill of Rights (see Amendment X). Hetherefore concluded that the states, not Congress,had the power to charter banks. Believing that theConstitution should be interpreted “literally’’ or“strictly,’’ Jefferson and his states’ rights dis-ciples zealously embraced the theory of “strict construction.’’

Hamilton, also at Washington’s request, pre-pared a brilliantly reasoned reply to Jefferson’s argu-ments. Hamilton in general believed that what theConstitution did not forbid it permitted; Jefferson,in contrast, generally believed that what it did notpermit it forbade. Hamilton boldly invoked theclause of the Constitution that stipulates that Con-gress may pass any laws “necessary and proper’’ tocarry out the powers vested in the various govern-ment agencies (see Art. I, Sec. VIII, para. 18). Thegovernment was explicitly empowered to collecttaxes and regulate trade. In carrying out these basicfunctions, Hamilton argued, a national bank wouldbe not only “proper’’ but “necessary.’’ By inferenceor implication—that is, by virtue of “implied pow-ers’’—Congress would be fully justified in establish-ing the Bank of the United States. In short, Hamiltoncontended for a “loose’’ or “broad’’ interpretation of

A National Bank 195

the Constitution. He and his federalist followersthus evolved the theory of “loose construction’’ byinvoking the “elastic clause’’ of the Constitution—aprecedent for enormous federal powers.

Hamilton’s financial views prevailed. His elo-quent and realistic arguments were accepted byWashington, who reluctantly signed the bank mea-sure into law. This explosive issue had been debatedwith much heat in Congress, where the old North-South cleavage still lurked ominously. The mostenthusiastic support for the bank naturally camefrom the commercial and financial centers of theNorth, whereas the strongest opposition arose fromthe agricultural South.

The Bank of the United States, as created byCongress in 1791, was chartered for twenty years.Located in Philadelphia, it was to have a capital of$10 million, one-fifth of it owned by the federal gov-ernment. Stock was thrown open to public sale. Tothe agreeable surprise of Hamilton, a milling crowdoversubscribed in less than two hours, pushingaside many would-be purchasers.

Mutinous Moonshiners in Pennsylvania

The Whiskey Rebellion, which flared up in south-western Pennsylvania in 1794, sharply challengedthe new national government. Hamilton’s highexcise tax bore harshly on these homespun pioneerfolk. They regarded it not as a tax on a frivolous lux-ury but as a burden on an economic necessity and amedium of exchange. Even preachers of the gospelwere paid in “Old Monongahela rye.’’ Rye and corncrops distilled into alcohol were more cheaplytransported to eastern markets than bales of grain.Defiant distillers finally erected whiskey poles, simi-lar to the liberty poles of anti–stamp tax days in1765, and raised the cry “Liberty and No Excise.’’Boldly tarring and feathering revenue officers, theybrought collections to a halt.

President Washington, once a revolutionist, wasalarmed by what he called these “self-created soci-eties.’’ With the hearty encouragement of Hamilton,he summoned the militia of several states. Anxiousmoments followed the call, for there was muchdoubt as to whether men in other states wouldmuster to crush a rebellion in a sister state. Despitesome opposition, an army of about thirteen thou-sand rallied to the colors, and two widely separated

columns marched briskly forth in a gorgeous, leaf-tinted Indian summer, until knee-deep mud slowedtheir progress.

When the troops reached the hills of westernPennsylvania, they found no insurrection. The“Whiskey Boys’’ were overawed, dispersed, or cap-tured. Washington, with an eye to healing old sores,pardoned the two small-fry convicted culprits.

The Whiskey Rebellion was minuscule—somethree rebels were killed—but its consequences weremighty. George Washington’s government, now sub-stantially strengthened, commanded a new respect.Yet the foes of the administration condemned itsbrutal display of force—for having used a sledge-hammer to crush a gnat.

The Emergence of Political Parties

Almost overnight, Hamilton’s fiscal feats had estab-lished the government’s sound credit rating. TheTreasury could now borrow needed funds in theNetherlands on favorable terms.

But Hamilton’s financial successes—funding,assumption, the excise tax, the bank, the suppres-sion of the Whiskey Rebellion—created some politi-cal liabilities. All these schemes encroached sharplyupon states’ rights. Many Americans, dubious aboutthe new Constitution in the first place, might neverhave approved it if they had foreseen how the states


Attorney Hugh Henry Brackenridge(1748–1816) mediated between the WhiskeyRebels and the town of Pittsburgh. He laterwrote of the hated excise tax,

“I saw the operation to be unequal in thiscountry. . . . It is true that the excise paid bythe country would be that only on spiritsconsumed in it. But even in the case ofexports, the excise must be advanced in thefirst instance by the distiller and this wouldprevent effectually all the poorer part fromcarrying on the business. I . . . would havepreferred a direct tax with a view to reachunsettled lands which all around us havebeen purchased by speculating men.”

were going to be overshadowed by the federal colos-sus. Now, out of resentment against Hamilton’s revenue-raising and centralizing policies, an organ-ized opposition began to build. What once was apersonal feud between Hamilton and Jeffersondeveloped into a full-blown and frequently bitterpolitical rivalry.

National political parties, in the modern sense,were unknown in America when George Washing-ton took his inaugural oath. There had been Whigsand Tories, federalists and antifederalists, but thesegroups were factions rather than parties. They hadsprung into existence over hotly contested specialissues; they had faded away when their cause hadtriumphed or fizzled.

The Founders at Philadelphia had not envi-sioned the existence of permanent political parties.Organized opposition to the government—espe-cially a democratic government based on popularconsent—seemed tainted with disloyalty. Opposi-tion to the government affronted the spirit ofnational unity that the glorious cause of the Revolu-tion had inspired. The notion of a formal partyapparatus was thus a novelty in the 1790s, and whenJefferson and Madison first organized their opposi-tion to the Hamiltonian program, they confinedtheir activities to Congress and did not anticipatecreating a long-lived and popular party. But as their

The Birth of Political Parties 197

Evolution of Major Parties*

Year Hamiltonians Jeffersonians

c. 1792 Federalists Democratic-Republicansc. 1816 Death of Federalists

c. 1820 RepublicansOne party: Era ofGood Feelings

c. 1825 National Republicans Democratic-Republicans(Jacksonian Democrats)

1834 Whigs Democrats

1854 Republicans

To Present To Present

*See Appendix (Presidential Elections ) for third parties.


antagonism to Hamilton stiffened, and as the amaz-ingly boisterous and widely read newspapers of theday spread their political message, and Hamilton’s,among the people, primitive semblances of politicalparties began to emerge.

The two-party system has existed in the UnitedStates since that time (see table on p. 197). Ironically,in light of early suspicions about the very legitimacyof parties, their competition for power has actuallyproved to be among the indispensable ingredients ofa sound democracy. The party out of power—“theloyal opposition’’—traditionally plays the invaluablerole of the balance wheel on the machinery of gov-ernment, ensuring that politics never drifts too farout of kilter with the wishes of the people.

The Impact of the French Revolution

When Washington’s first administration ended earlyin 1793, Hamilton’s domestic policies had alreadystimulated the formation of two political camps—Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans and Hamil-tonian Federalists. As Washington’s second termbegan, foreign-policy issues brought the differencesbetween them to a fever pitch.

Only a few weeks after Washington’s inaugura-tion in 1789, the curtain had risen on the first act of the French Revolution. Twenty-six years were to pass before the seething continent of Europe collapsed into a peace of exhaustion. Few non-American events have left a deeper scar on Ameri-can political and social life. In a sense the FrenchRevolution was misnamed: it was a revolution thatsent tremors through much of the civilized world.

In its early stages, the upheaval was surprisinglypeaceful, involving as it did a successful attempt toimpose constitutional shackles on Louis XVI. TheAmerican people, loving liberty and deploringdespotism, cheered. They were flattered to thinkthat the outburst in France was but the secondchapter of their own glorious Revolution, as to someextent it was. Only a few ultraconservative Federal-ists—fearing change, reform, and “leveling’’ princi-ples—were from the outset dubious or outspokenlyhostile to the “despicable mobocracy.’’ The moreardent Jeffersonians were overjoyed.

The French Revolution entered a more ominousphase in 1792, when France declared war on hostileAustria. Powerful ideals and powerful armies alikewere on the march. Late in that year, the electrifyingnews reached America that French citizen armies

British political observer William Cobbett(1763–1835) wrote of the frenzied reaction inAmerica to the death of Louis XVI:

“Never was the memory of a man so cruellyinsulted as that of this mild and humanemonarch. He was guillotined in effigy, in thecapital of the Union [Philadelphia], twenty orthirty times every day, during one wholewinter and part of the summer. Men, womenand children flocked to the tragical exhibition,and not a single paragraph appeared in thepapers to shame them from it.”

had hurled back the invading foreigners and thatFrance had proclaimed itself a republic. Americansenthusiastically sang “The Marseillaise’’ and otherrousing French Revolutionary songs, and theyrenamed thoroughfares with democratic flare. KingStreet in New York, for example, became LibertyStreet, and in Boston, Royal Exchange Alley becameEquality Lane.

But centuries of pent-up poison could not bepurged without baleful results. The guillotine wasset up, the king was beheaded in 1793, the churchwas attacked, and the head-rolling Reign of Terrorwas begun. Back in America, God-fearing Federalistaristocrats nervously fingered their tender whitenecks and eyed the Jeffersonian masses apprehen-sively. Lukewarm Federalist approval of the earlyRevolution turned, almost overnight, to heated talkof “blood-drinking cannibals.’’

Sober-minded Jeffersonians regretted thebloodshed. But they felt, with Jefferson, that onecould not expect to be carried from “despotism toliberty in a feather bed’’ and that a few thousandaristocratic heads were a cheap price to pay forhuman freedom.

Such approbation was shortsighted, for direperil loomed ahead. The earlier battles of the FrenchRevolution had not hurt America directly, but nowBritain was sucked into the contagious conflict. Theconflagration speedily spread to the New World,where it vividly affected the expanding young Amer-ican Republic. Thus was repeated the familiar storyof every major European war, beginning with 1689,that involved a watery duel for control of theAtlantic Ocean. (See the table on p. 111.)

Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation

Ominously, the Franco-American alliance of 1778was still on the books. By its own terms it was to last“forever.’’ It bound the United States to help theFrench defend their West Indies against future foes,and the booming British fleets were certain to attackthese strategic islands.

Many Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicansfavored honoring the alliance. Aflame with the lib-eral ideals of the French Revolution, red-bloodedJeffersonians were eager to enter the conflict againstBritain, the recent foe, at the side of France, the

recent friend. America owed France its freedom,they argued, and now was the time to pay the debtof gratitude.

But President George Washington, levelheadedas usual, was not swayed by the clamor of thecrowd. Backed by Hamilton, he believed that warhad to be avoided at all costs. Washington wascoolly playing for enormous stakes. The nation in1793 was militarily weak, economically wobbly, andpolitically disunited. But solid foundations werebeing laid, and American cradles were continuing torock a bumper crop of babies. Washington wiselyreasoned that if America could avoid the broils ofEurope for a generation or so, it would then be pop-ulous enough and powerful enough to assert itsmaritime rights with strength and success. Other-wise it might invite catastrophe. The strategy ofdelay—of playing for time while the birthrate foughtAmerica’s battles—was a cardinal policy of theFounding Fathers. Hamilton and Jefferson, oftenpoles apart on other issues, were in agreement here.

Accordingly, Washington boldly issued his Neu-trality Proclamation in 1793, shortly after the out-break of war between Britain and France. Thisepochal document not only proclaimed the govern-ment’s official neutrality in the widening conflictbut sternly warned American citizens to be impar-tial toward both armed camps. As America’s first formal declaration of aloofness from Old Worldquarrels, Washington’s Neutrality Proclamationproved to be a major prop of the spreading isola-tionist tradition. It also proved to be enormouslycontroversial. The pro-French Jeffersonians wereenraged by the Neutrality Proclamation, especiallyby Washington’s method of announcing it unilater-ally, without consulting Congress. The pro-BritishFederalists were heartened.

Debate soon intensified. An impetuous, thirty-year-old representative of the French Republic, Citi-zen Edmond Genêt, had landed at Charleston,South Carolina. With unrestrained zeal he under-took to fit out privateers and otherwise take advan-tage of the existing Franco-American alliance. Thegiddy-headed envoy—all sail and no anchor—wassoon swept away by his enthusiastic reception bythe Jeffersonian Republicans. He foolishly came tobelieve that the Neutrality Proclamation did notreflect the true wishes of the American people, andhe consequently embarked upon unneutral activitynot authorized by the French alliance—includingthe recruitment of armies to invade Spanish Florida

Friction with Britain 199

and Louisiana, as well as British Canada. EvenMadison and Jefferson were soon disillusioned byhis conduct. After he threatened to appeal over thehead of “Old Washington’’ to the sovereign voters,the president demanded Genêt’s withdrawal, andthe Frenchman was replaced by a less impulsiveemissary.

Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation clearlyillustrates the truism that self-interest is the basiccement of alliances. In 1778 both France and Amer-ica stood to gain; in 1793 only France. Technically,the Americans did not flout their obligation becauseFrance never officially called upon them to honor it.American neutrality in fact favored France. TheFrench West Indies urgently needed Yankee food-stuffs. If the Americans had entered the war atFrance’s side, the British fleets would have block-aded the American coast and cut off those essentialsupplies. America was thus much more useful toFrance as a reliable neutral provider than as a block-aded partner-in-arms.

Embroilments with Britain

President Washington’s far-visioned policy of neu-trality was sorely tried by the British. For ten longyears, they had been retaining the chain of northernfrontier posts on U.S. soil, all in defiance of thepeace treaty of 1783. The London government wasreluctant to abandon the lucrative fur trade in theGreat Lakes region and also hoped to build up an

Indian buffer state to contain the ambitious Ameri-cans. British agents openly sold firearms and fire-water to the Indians of the Miami Confederacy, analliance of eight Indian nations who terrorizedAmericans invading their lands. Little Turtle, warchief of the Miamis, gave notice that the confeder-acy regarded the Ohio River as the United States’northwestern, and their own southeastern, border.In 1790 and 1791, Little Turtle’s braves defeatedarmies led by Generals Josiah Harmar and Arthur St.Clair, killing hundreds of soldiers and handing theUnited States what remains one of its worst defeatsin the history of the frontier.

But in 1794, when a new army under General“Mad Anthony” Wayne routed the Miamis at theBattle of Fallen Timbers, the British refused to shel-ter Indians fleeing from the battle. Abandonedwhen it counted by their red-coated friends, theIndians soon offered Wayne the peace pipe. In theTreaty of Greenville, signed in August 1795, the con-federacy gave up vast tracts of the Old Northwest,including most of present-day Indiana and Ohio. Inexchange the Indians received a lump-sum pay-ment of $20,000, an annual annuity of $9,000, theright to hunt the lands they had ceded, and, mostimportant, what they hoped was recognition oftheir sovereign status. Although the treaty codifiedan unequal relationship, the Indians felt that it putsome limits on the ability of the United States todecide the fate of Indian peoples.

On the sea frontier, the British were eager tostarve out the French West Indies and naturallyexpected the United States to defend them underthe Franco-American alliance. Hard-boiled com-manders of the Royal Navy, ignoring America’srights as a neutral, struck savagely. They seizedabout three hundred American merchant ships inthe West Indies, impressed scores of seamen intoservice on British vessels, and threw hundreds ofothers into foul dungeons.

These actions incensed patriotic Americans. Amighty outcry arose, chiefly from Jeffersonians, thatAmerica should once again fight George III indefense of its liberties. At the very least, it should cutoff all supplies to its oppressor through a nation-wide embargo. But the Federalists stoutly resistedall demands for drastic action. Hamilton’s highhopes for economic development depended ontrade with Britain. War with the world’s mightiestcommercial empire would pierce the heart of theHamiltonian financial system.


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American Posts Held by the British After 1783

Jay’s Treaty and Washington’s Farewell

President Washington, in a last desperate gamble toavert war, decided to send Chief Justice John Jay toLondon in 1794. The Jeffersonians were acutelyunhappy over the choice, partly because they fearedthat so notorious a Federalist and Anglophile wouldsell out his country. Arriving in London, Jay gave the Jeffersonians further cause for alarm when, atthe presentation ceremony, he routinely kissed thequeen’s hand.

Unhappily, Jay entered the negotiations withweak cards, which were further sabotaged byHamilton. The latter, fearful of war with Britain,secretly supplied the British with the details ofAmerica’s bargaining strategy. Not surprisingly, Jaywon few concessions. The British did promise toevacuate the chain of posts on U.S. soil—a pledgethat inspired little confidence, since it had beenmade before in Paris (to the same John Jay!) in 1783.In addition, Britain consented to pay damages forthe recent seizures of American ships. But theBritish stopped short of pledging anything aboutfuture maritime seizures and impressments orabout supplying arms to Indians. And they forcedJay to give ground by binding the United States topay the debts still owed to British merchants on pre-Revolutionary accounts.

Jay’s unpopular pact, more than any other issue,vitalized the newborn Democratic-Republicanparty of Thomas Jefferson. When the Jeffersonianslearned of Jay’s concessions, their rage was fearful to

behold. The treaty seemed like an abject surrenderto Britain, as well as a betrayal of the JeffersonianSouth. Southern planters would have to pay themajor share of the pre-Revolutionary debts, whilerich Federalist shippers were collecting damages forrecent British seizures. Jeffersonian mobs hanged,burned, and guillotined in effigy that “damn’d arch-traitor, Sir John Jay.’’ Even George Washington’s hugepopularity was compromised by the controversyover the treaty.

Jay’s Treaty had other unforeseen conse-quences. Fearing that the treaty foreshadowed anAnglo-American alliance, Spain moved hastily tostrike a deal with the United States. Pinckney’sTreaty of 1795 with Spain granted the Americans vir-tually everything they demanded, including freenavigation of the Mississippi and the large disputedterritory north of Florida. (See the map on p. 175.)

Exhausted after the diplomatic and partisan bat-tles of his second term, President Washingtondecided to retire. His choice contributed powerfullyto establishing a two-term tradition for Americanpresidents.* In his Farewell Address to the nation in1796 (never delivered orally but printed in the news-papers), Washington strongly advised the avoidanceof “permanent alliances’’ like the still-vexatiousFranco-American Treaty of 1778. Contrary to generalmisunderstanding, Washington did not oppose allalliances, but favored only “temporary alliances’’ for“extraordinary emergencies.’’ This was admirableadvice for a weak and divided nation in 1796. Butwhat is sound counsel for a young stripling may notapply later to a mature and muscular giant.

Washington’s contributions as president wereenormous, even though the sparkling Hamilton attimes seemed to outshine him. The central govern-ment, its fiscal feet now under it, was solidly estab-lished. The West was expanding. The merchantmarine was plowing the seas. Above all, Washingtonhad kept the nation out of both overseas entangle-ments and foreign wars. The experimental stage hadpassed, and the presidential chair could now beturned over to a less impressive figure. But republicsare notoriously ungrateful. When Washington leftoffice in 1797, he was showered with the brickbats ofpartisan abuse, quite in contrast with the bouquetsthat had greeted his arrival.

Washington’s Farewell 201

Thomas Paine (1737–1809), then in Franceand resenting George Washington’s anti-French policies, addressed the president in anopen letter (1796) that reveals his bitterness:

“And as to you, sir, treacherous in privatefriendship (for so you have been to me, andthat in the day of danger) and a hypocrite inpublic life, the world will be puzzled todecide, whether you are an apostate or animposter; whether you have abandoned goodprinciples, or whether you ever had any.”

*Not broken until 1940 by Franklin D. Roosevelt and made a partof the Constitution in 1951 by the Twenty-second Amendment.

John Adams Becomes President

Who should succeed the exalted “Father of HisCountry’’? Alexander Hamilton was the best-knownmember of the Federalist party, now that Washing-ton had bowed out. But his financial policies, someof which had fattened the speculators, had madehim so unpopular that he could not hope to beelected president. The Federalists were forced to

turn to Washington’s vice president, the experiencedbut ungracious John Adams, a rugged chip off oldPlymouth Rock. The Democratic-Republicans natu-rally rallied behind their master organizer andleader, Thomas Jefferson.

Political passions ran feverishly high in thepresidential campaign of 1796. The lofty presence ofWashington had hitherto imposed some restraints;now the lid was off. Cultured Federalists like FisherAmes referred to the Jeffersonians as “fire-eatingsalamanders, poison-sucking toads.’’ Federalistsand Democratic-Republicans even drank their alein separate taverns. The issues of the campaign, as itturned out, focused heavily on personalities. But the Jeffersonians again assailed the too-forcefulcrushing of the Whiskey Rebellion and, above all,the negotiation of Jay’s hated treaty.

John Adams, with most of his support in NewEngland, squeezed through by the narrow margin of71 votes to 68 in the Electoral College. Jefferson, asrunner-up, became vice president.* One of theablest statesmen of his day, Adams at sixty-two wasa stuffy figure. Sharp-featured, bald, relatively short(five feet seven inches), and thickset (“His Rotun-dity’’), he impressed observers as a man of sternprinciples who did his duty with stubborn devotion.Although learned and upright, he was a tactless andprickly intellectual aristocrat, with no appeal to themasses and with no desire to cultivate any. Manycitizens regarded him with “respectful irritation.’’

The crusty New Englander suffered from otherhandicaps. He had stepped into Washington’s


*The possibility of such an inharmonious two-party combinationin the future was removed by the Twelfth Amendment to theConstitution in 1804. (See text in the Appendix.)

Although Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) andJohn Adams hardly saw eye to eye, Jeffersondisplayed grudging respect for Adams in apiece of private correspondence in 1787:

“He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator ofthe force and probable effect of the motiveswhich govern men. This is all the ill which canpossibly be said of him. He is as disinterestedas the Being who made him.”

shoes, which no successor could hope to fill. Inaddition, Adams was hated by Hamilton, who hadresigned from the Treasury in 1795 and who nowheaded the war faction of the Federalist party,known as the “High Federalists.” The famedfinancier even secretly plotted with certain mem-bers of the cabinet against the president, who had aconspiracy rather than a cabinet on his hands.Adams regarded Hamilton as “the most ruthless,impatient, artful, indefatigable and unprincipledintriguer in the United States, if not in the world.’’Most ominous of all, Adams inherited a violentquarrel with France—a quarrel whose gunpowderlacked only a spark.

Unofficial Fighting with France

The French were infuriated by Jay’s Treaty. Theycondemned it as the initial step toward an alliancewith Britain, their perpetual foe. They furtherassailed the pact as a flagrant violation of theFranco-American Treaty of 1778. French warships,in retaliation, began to seize defenseless American

merchant vessels, altogether about three hundredby mid-1797. Adding insult to outrage, the Parisregime haughtily refused to receive America’s newlyappointed envoy and even threatened him witharrest.

President Adams kept his head, temporarily,even though the nation was mightily aroused. Trueto Washington’s policy of steering clear of war at allcosts, he tried again to reach an agreement with theFrench and appointed a diplomatic commission ofthree men, including John Marshall, the future chiefjustice.

Adams’s envoys, reaching Paris in 1797, hopedto meet Talleyrand, the crafty French foreign minis-ter. They were secretly approached by three go-betweens, later referred to as X, Y, and Z in thepublished dispatches. The French spokesmen,among other concessions, demanded an unneutralloan of 32 million florins, plus what amounted to abribe of $250,000, for the privilege of merely talkingwith Talleyrand.

These terms were intolerable. The American trioknew that bribes were standard diplomatic devicesin Europe, but they gagged at paying a quarter of a million dollars for mere talk, without any

The French Crisis 203

assurances of a settlement. Negotiations quicklybroke down, and John Marshall, on reaching NewYork in 1798, was hailed as a conquering hero for his steadfastness.

War hysteria swept through the United States,catching up even President Adams. The slogan ofthe hour became “Millions for defense, but not onecent for tribute.’’ The Federalists were delighted atthis unexpected turn of affairs, whereas all exceptthe most rabid Jeffersonians hung their heads in shame over the misbehavior of their Frenchfriends.

War preparations in the United States werepushed along at a feverish pace, despite consider-able Jeffersonian opposition in Congress. The NavyDepartment was created; the three-ship navy was expanded; the United States Marine Corps wasestablished. A new army of ten thousand men wasauthorized (but was never fully raised).

Bloodshed was confined to the sea, and prin-cipally to the West Indies. In two and a half years of undeclared hostilities (1798–1800), American privateers and men-of-war of the new navy cap-tured over eighty armed vessels flying the Frenchcolors, though several hundred Yankee merchantships were lost to the enemy. Only a slight push, it seemed, might plunge both nations into a full-dress war.

Adams Puts Patriotism Above Party

Embattled France, its hands full in Europe, wantedno war. An outwitted Talleyrand realized that tofight the United States would merely add one morefoe to his enemy roster. The British, who were lend-ing the Americans cannon and other war supplies,were actually driven closer to their wayward cousinsthan they were to be again for many years. Tal-leyrand therefore let it be known, through round-about channels, that if the Americans would send anew minister, he would be received with properrespect.


The firmness of President John Adams(1735–1826) was revealed in his message toCongress (June 1798):

“I will never send another minister to Francewithout assurances that he will be received,respected, and honored as the representa-tive of a great, free, powerful, and independ-ent nation.”

This French furor brought to Adams a degree ofpersonal acclaim that he had never known before—and was never to know again. He doubtless per-ceived that a full-fledged war, crowned by theconquest of the Floridas and Louisiana, would bringnew plaudits to the Federalist party—and perhaps asecond term to himself. But the heady wine of pop-ularity did not sway his final judgment. He, likeother Founding Fathers, realized full well that warmust be avoided while the country was relativelyweak.

Adams unexpectedly exploded a bombshellwhen, early in 1799, he submitted to the Senate thename of a new minister to France. Hamilton and hiswar-hawk faction were enraged. But public opin-ion—Jeffersonian and reasonable Federalist alike—was favorable to one last try for peace.

America’s envoys (now three) found the politicalskies brightening when they reached Paris early in1800. The ambitious “Little Corporal,’’ the CorsicanNapoleon Bonaparte, had recently seized dictatorialpower. He was eager to free his hands of the Ameri-can squabble so that he might continue to redrawthe map of Europe and perhaps create a New Worldempire in Louisiana. The afflictions and ambitionsof the Old World were again working to America’sadvantage.

After a great deal of haggling, a memorabletreaty known as the Convention of 1800 was signedin Paris. France agreed to annul the twenty-two-year-old marriage of (in)convenience, but as a kindof alimony the United States agreed to pay the dam-age claims of American shippers. So ended thenation’s only peacetime military alliance for a cen-tury and a half. Its troubled history does much toexplain the traditional antipathy of the Americanpeople to foreign entanglements.

John Adams, flinty to the end, deserves im-mense credit for his belated push for peace, eventhough he was moved in part by jealousy of Hamil-ton. Adams not only avoided the hazards of war, butalso unwittingly smoothed the path for the peacefulpurchase of Louisiana three years later. He shouldindeed rank high among the forgotten purchasers ofthis vast domain. If America had drifted into a full-blown war with France in 1800, Napoleon would nothave sold Louisiana to Jefferson on any terms in1803.

President Adams, the bubble of his popularitypricked by peace, was aware of his signal contribu-tion to the nation. He later suggested as the epitaph

for his tombstone (not used), “Here lies John Adams,who took upon himself the responsibility of peacewith France in the year 1800.’’

The Federalist Witch Hunt

Exulting Federalists had meanwhile capitalized onthe anti-French frenzy to drive through Congress in1798 a sheaf of laws designed to muffle or minimizetheir Jeffersonian foes.

The first of these oppressive laws was aimed atsupposedly pro-Jeffersonian “aliens.’’ Most Euro-pean immigrants, lacking wealth, were scorned bythe aristocratic Federalist party. But they were wel-comed as voters by the less prosperous and moredemocratic Jeffersonians. The Federalist Congress,hoping to discourage the “dregs’’ of Europe, erecteda disheartening barrier. They raised the residencerequirements for aliens who desired to become citi-zens from a tolerable five years to an intolerablefourteen. This drastic new law violated the tradi-tional American policy of open-door hospitality andspeedy assimilation.

Two additional Alien Laws struck heavily atundesirable immigrants. The president was empow-ered to deport dangerous foreigners in time of

The Alien and Sedition Hysteria 205

In 1800 James Callender (1758–1803)published a pamphlet that assailed thepresident in strong language. For blasts likethe following tirade, Callender was pros-ecuted under the Sedition Act, fined $250,and sentenced to prison for nine months.

“The reign of Mr. Adams has, hitherto, been one continued tempest of malignantpassions. As president, he has never openedhis lips, or lifted his pen, without threateningand scolding. The grand object of hisadministration has been to exasperate therage of contending parties, to calumniateand destroy every man who differs from hisopinions. . . . Every person holding an officemust either quit it, or think and vote exactlywith Mr. Adams.”

peace and to deport or imprison them in time ofhostilities. Though defensible as a war measure—and an officially declared war with France seemedimminent—this was an arbitrary grant of executivepower contrary to American tradition and to thespirit of the Constitution, even though the stringentAlien Laws were never enforced.

The “lockjaw’’ Sedition Act, the last measure ofthe Federalist clampdown, was a direct slap at twopriceless freedoms guaranteed in the Constitutionby the Bill of Rights—freedom of speech and free-dom of the press (First Amendment). This law pro-vided that anyone who impeded the policies of thegovernment or falsely defamed its officials, includ-ing the president, would be liable to a heavy fineand imprisonment. Severe though the measure was,the Federalists believed that it was justified. The ver-bal violence of the day was unrestrained, and foul-penned editors, some of them exiled aliens, vilifiedAdams’s anti-French policy in vicious terms.

Many outspoken Jeffersonian editors wereindicted under the Sedition Act, and ten werebrought to trial. All of them were convicted, often bypacked juries swayed by prejudiced Federalistjudges. Some of the victims were harmless parti-sans, who should have been spared the notoriety of martyrdom. Among them was Congressman

Matthew Lyon (the “Spitting Lion’’), who had earliergained fame by spitting in the face of a Federalist.He was sentenced to four months in jail for writingof President Adams’s “unbounded thirst for ridicu-lous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.’’Another culprit was lucky to get off with a fine of$100 after he had expressed the wish that the wad ofa cannon fired in honor of Adams had landed in theseat of the president’s breeches.

The Sedition Act seemed to be in direct conflictwith the Constitution. But the Supreme Court, dom-inated by Federalists, was of no mind to declare thisFederalist law unconstitutional. (The Federalistsintentionally wrote the law to expire in 1801, so thatit could not be used against them if they lost thenext election.) This attempt by the Federalists tocrush free speech and silence the opposition party,high-handed as it was, undoubtedly made manyconverts for the Jeffersonians.

Yet the Alien and Sedition Acts, despite painedoutcries from the Jeffersonians they muzzled, com-manded widespread popular support. Anti-Frenchhysteria played directly into the hands of witch-hunting conservatives. In the congressional elec-tions of 1798–1799, the Federalists, riding a wave ofpopularity, scored the most sweeping victory oftheir entire history.


The Virginia (Madison) and Kentucky (Jefferson) Resolutions

Resentful Jeffersonians naturally refused to take theAlien and Sedition Laws lying down. Jefferson him-self feared that if the Federalists managed to chokefree speech and free press, they would then wipe outother precious constitutional guarantees. His ownfledgling political party might even be stamped outof existence. If this had happened, the country mighthave slid into a dangerous one-party dictatorship.

Fearing prosecution for sedition, Jeffersonsecretly penned a series of resolutions, which theKentucky legislature approved in 1798 and 1799. Hisfriend and fellow Virginian James Madison drafted asimilar but less extreme statement, which wasadopted by the legislature of Virginia in 1798.

Both Jefferson and Madison stressed the com-pact theory—a theory popular among English polit-ical philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. As applied to America by the Jeffersoni-ans, this concept meant that the thirteen sovereignstates, in creating the federal government, hadentered into a “compact,’’ or contract, regarding itsjurisdiction. The national government was conse-quently the agent or creation of the states. Sincewater can rise no higher than its source, the individ-ual states were the final judges of whether theiragent had broken the “compact’’ by oversteppingthe authority originally granted. Invoking this logic,Jefferson’s Kentucky resolutions concluded that thefederal regime had exceeded its constitutional pow-ers and that with regard to the Alien and SeditionActs, “nullification’’—a refusal to accept them—wasthe “rightful remedy.’’

No other state legislatures, despite Jefferson’shopes, fell into line. Some of them flatly refused toendorse the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. Oth-ers, chiefly in Federalist states, added ringing con-demnations. Many Federalists argued that thepeople, not the states, had made the original com-pact, and that it was up to the Supreme Court—notthe states—to nullify unconstitutional legislationpassed by Congress. This practice, though not specif-ically authorized by the Constitution, was finallyadopted by the Supreme Court in 1803 (see p. 218).

The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were abrilliant formulation of the extreme states’ rightsview regarding the Union—indeed more sweepingin their implications than their authors had

intended. They were later used by southerners tosupport nullification—and ultimately secession. Yetneither Jefferson nor Madison, as Founding Fathersof the Union, had any intention of breaking it up:they were groping for ways to preserve it. Their reso-lutions were basically campaign documentsdesigned to crystallize opposition to the Federalistparty and to unseat it in the upcoming presidentialelection of 1800. The only real nullification that Jef-ferson had in view was the nullification of Federalistabuses.

Federalists Versus Democratic-Republicans

As the presidential contest of 1800 approached, thedifferences between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans were sharply etched (see table on thenext page). As might be expected, most federalists ofthe pre-Constitution period (1787–1789) becameFederalists in the 1790s. Largely welded by Hamil-ton into an effective group by 1793, they openlyadvocated rule by the “best people.’’ “Those whoown the country,’’ remarked Federalist John Jay,“ought to govern it.’’ With their intellectual arro-gance and Tory tastes, Hamiltonians distrusted full-blown democracy as the fountain of all mischiefsand feared the “swayability’’ of the untutored com-mon folk.

Hamiltonian Federalists also advocated a strongcentral government with the power to crush demo-cratic excesses like Shays’s Rebellion, protect thelives and estates of the wealthy, and subordinate thesovereignty-loving states. They believed that gov-ernment should support private enterprise, notinterfere with it. This attitude came naturally to themerchants, manufacturers, and shippers along theAtlantic seaboard, who made up the majority ofFederalist support. Farther inland, few Hamiltoni-ans dwelled.

Federalists were also pro-British in foreignaffairs. Some of them still harbored mildly Loyalistsentiments from pre-Revolutionary days. All ofthem recognized that foreign trade, especially withBritain, was a key cog in Hamilton’s fiscal machinery.

Leading the anti-Federalists, who came eventu-ally to be known as Democratic-Republicans orsometimes simply Republicans, was Thomas Jeffer-son. Lanky and relaxed in appearance, lacking

Federalists Versus Republicans 207

personal aggressiveness, weak-voiced, and unableto deliver a rabble-rousing speech, he became amaster political organizer through his ability to leadpeople rather than drive them. His strongest appealwas to the middle class and to the underprivi-leged—the “dirt’’ farmers, the laborers, the artisans,and the small shopkeepers.

Liberal-thinking Jefferson, with his aristocratichead set on a farmer’s frame, was a bundle of incon-sistencies. By one set of tests, he should have been aFederalist, for he was a Virginia aristocrat and slave-owner who lived in an imposing hilltop mansion atMonticello. A so-called traitor to his upper class, Jefferson cherished uncommon sympathy for thecommon people, especially the downtrodden, theoppressed, and the persecuted. As he wrote in 1800,“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostilityagainst every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’’

Jeffersonian Republicans demanded a weakcentral regime. They believed that the best govern-ment was the one that governed least. The bulk ofthe power, Jefferson argued, should be retained bythe states. There the people, in intimate contactwith local affairs, could keep a more vigilant eye ontheir public servants. Otherwise, a dictatorshipmight develop. Central authority—a kind of neces-sary evil—was to be kept at a minimum through

a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Thenational debt, which he saw as a curse illegitimatelybequeathed to later generations, was to be paid off.

Jeffersonian Republicans, themselves primarilyagrarians, insisted that there should be no specialprivileges for special classes, particularly manufac-turers. Agriculture, to Jefferson, was the favoredbranch of the economy. He regarded farming asessentially ennobling; it kept people away fromwicked cities, out in the sunshine and close to thesod—and God. Most of his followers naturally camefrom the agricultural South and Southwest.

Above all, Jefferson advocated the rule of thepeople. But he did not propose thrusting the ballotinto the hands of every adult white male. He favoredgovernment for the people, but not by all the peo-ple—only by those men who were literate enough toinform themselves and wear the mantle of Ameri-can citizenship worthily. Universal education wouldhave to precede universal suffrage. The ignorant, heargued, were incapable of self-government. But hehad profound faith in the reasonableness andteachableness of the masses and in their collectivewisdom when taught.

Landlessness among American citizens threat-ened popular democracy as much as illiteracy, inJefferson’s eyes. He feared that propertyless depend-


The Two Political Parties, 1793–1800

Federalist Features Democratic-Republican (Jeffersonian) Features

Rule by the “best people” Rule by the informed massesHostility to extension of democracy Friendliness toward extension of democracyA powerful central government at the expense of A weak central government so as to preserve states’

states’ rights rightsLoose interpretation of Constitution Strict interpretation of ConstitutionGovernment to foster business; concentration of No special favors for business; agriculture preferred

wealth in interests of capitalistic enterpriseA protective tariff No special favors for manufacturersPro-British (conservative Tory tradition) Pro-French (radical Revolutionary tradition)National debt a blessing, if properly funded National debt a bane; rigid economyAn expanding bureaucracy Reduction of federal officeholdersA powerful central bank Encouragement to state banksRestrictions on free speech and press Relatively free speech and pressConcentration in seacoast area Concentration in South and Southwest; in agricul-

tural areas and backcountryA strong navy to protect shippers A minimal navy for coastal defense

ents would be political pawns in the hands of theirlandowning superiors. How could the emergence ofa landless class of voters be avoided? The answer, inpart, was by slavery. A system of black slave labor inthe South ensured that white yeoman farmers couldremain independent landowners. Without slavery,poor whites would have to provide the cheap laborso necessary for the cultivation of tobacco and rice,and their low wages would preclude their ever own-ing property. Jefferson thus tortuously reconciledslaveholding—his own included—with his moredemocratic impulses.

Yet for his time, Jefferson’s confidence that white,free men could become responsible and knowl-edgeable citizens was open-minded. He champi-oned their freedom of speech, for without freespeech, the misdeeds of tyranny could not beexposed. Jefferson even dared to say that given thechoice of “a government without newspapers” and“newspapers without a government,” he would optfor the latter. Yet no other American leader, exceptperhaps Abraham Lincoln, ever suffered more foulabuse from editorial pens; Jefferson might well haveprayed for freedom from the Federalist press.

Jeffersonian Republicans, unlike the Federalist“British boot-lickers,’’ were basically pro-French.They earnestly believed that it was to America’sadvantage to support the liberal ideals of the FrenchRevolution, rather than applaud the reaction of theBritish Tories.

So as the young Republic’s first full decade ofnationhood came to a close, the Founders’ hopesseemed already imperiled. Conflicts over domesticpolitics and foreign policy undermined the unity ofthe Revolutionary era and called into question thevery viability of the American experiment in de-mocracy. As the presidential election of 1800approached, the danger loomed that the fragile andbattered American ship of state, like many anotherbefore it and after it, would founder on the rocks ofcontroversy. The shores of history are littered withthe wreckage of nascent nations torn asunder beforethey could grow to a stable maturity. Why should theUnited States expect to enjoy a happier fate?

Jefferson’s Republic 209

Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a republicanAmerica was peopled with virtuous farmers,not factory hands. As early as 1784, he wrote,

“While we have land to labor then, let usnever wish to see our citizens occupied at awork-bench, or twirling a distaff. . . . For thegeneral operations of manufacture, let ourworkshops remain in Europe. . . . The mobsof great cities add just so much to thesupport of pure government, as sores do tothe strength of the human body.”


Chronology

1789 Constitution formally put into effectJudiciary Act of 1789Washington elected presidentFrench Revolution begins

1790 First official census

1791 Bill of Rights adoptedVermont becomes fourteenth stateBank of the United States createdExcise tax passed

1792 Washington reelected president

1792- Federalist and Democratic-Republican1793 parties formed

1793 Louis XVI beheaded; radical phase of FrenchRevolution

France declares war on Britain and SpainWashington’s Neutrality ProclamationCitizen Genêt affair

1794 Whiskey RebellionBattle of Fallen TimbersJay’s Treaty with Britain

1795 Treaty of Greenville: Indians cede OhioPinckney’s Treaty with Spain

1796 Washington’s Farewell Address

1797 Adams becomes presidentXYZ Affair

1798 Alien and Sedition Acts

1798-1799 Virginia and Kentucky resolutions

1798-1800 Undeclared war with France

1800 Convention of 1800: peace with France


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