Download The American Colonies: Introduction This chapter begins with a

The American Colonies: Introduction This chapter begins with a description of Captain John Smithʹs capture by the warriors of Powhatan, the chief of about fourteen thousand Algonquian peoples who lived along the coast of Virginia. Smith believed that Powhatan had been ready to kill him by smashing his head with rocks but that he was fortuitously saved by Powhatanʹs daughter, Pocahontas. However, it is far more likely that she was playing a part in a ceremony designed to express Powhatanʹs power of life and death over a subordinate chief. Relations broke down between English settlers and the Algonquians though. Captured, Pocahontas eventually married John Rolfe, had a son, and moved to England where she was celebrated with a great deal of pomp and circumstance. Powhatanʹs world of hunters and gatherers was gradually replaced by one of settlers with weapons, tools, and ideas foreign to the Native Americans. As a thriving tobacco trade grew between the Chesapeake Bay colony and Europe, Native American lands were usurped and their ways of life irreparably challenged. An English Colony on the Chesapeake, pp. 71‐80 In 1603, King James I of England, impressed by Spainʹs successes in the New World, was eager to establish colonies of his own in North America. Englandʹs success in defending itself from the Spanish Armada suggested that England might now succeed in defending new colonies in North America on land claimed by Spain. Thus, in 1606, the king granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company of adventurers, authorizing their occupation of over six million acres in North America. These men and other proponents of colonization hoped settlements would benefit the empire, both by yielding goods and by providing a convenient destination for masses of unemployed English people. Virginia Company investors dreamed about the quick and easy profits they could reap, but they failed to appreciate the difficulties of adapting European desires and expectations to the New World environment, particularly in regard to Native American peoples. Within twenty years the Jamestown settlement somehow managed to survive, but the English government replaced the private Virginia Company, which was never profitable. The Fragile Jamestown Settlement In December 1606, 144 Englishmen sailed for Virginia aboard three ships. In May 1607, the survivors of the journey put ashore on a small peninsula in the James River in the heart of Powhatanʹs chiefdom. They hastily built a fort as protection from the Indians and Spanish and named the settlement Jamestown, but skirmishes with the Indians were frequent. The settlers soon discovered that disease and famine were greater threats than the Indiansʹ spears and arrows or attacks by the Spanish. Despite Powhatanʹs eventual overtures of peace and delivery of much needed foodstuffs and John Smithʹs forays to trade with the Indians, by January 1608, only 38 of the original settlers remained alive to welcome the Virginia Companyʹs supply ships and 120 new colonists. Although the Virginia Company sent hundreds of new settlers each year to Jamestown, few survived these early years. Cooperation and Conflict between Natives and Newcomers Given the colonistsʹ vulnerability, it is surprising perhaps that Powhatan did not attack Jamestown and drive the English out of the Chesapeake. Several factors probably contributed to his hesitation. The Indians were impressed by the English God, whom they felt must be very powerful, and even more by English goods. They were eager to trade corn to get these valuable items. Moreover, Powhatan and his werowances probably concluded that such powerful strangers would make better allies than enemies, especially in regard to other Native American tribes. Notwithstanding, more than once the Indians refused to trade their corn to the settlers, but the English brutally broke that boycott by attacking the uncooperative Indians, pillaging their villages, and confiscating their corn. Despite receiving or taking food from the Indians, Jamestown failed to thrive not only because of the settlersʹ weakened physical condition, but also because the majority were gentlemen and their servants, who considered cultivating the land beneath them. Nevertheless, over time, the colony slowly expanded. Its continued existence changed Indian society, introducing new tensions over resources as well as European diseases that decimated Indians in epidemic proportions. In 1622, after fifteen years of an uneasy truce, Opechancanough, Powhatanʹs brother and successor after his death, launched an all‐out assault on the colony, killing 347 settlers— nearly one‐third of the English population. The attack failed to drive the English out. From this point on, the colonists no longer deemed the Indians necessary for their survival; instead, they concluded that their settlementʹs existence depended on the destruction of all Indians in the vicinity. From Private Company to Royal Government The shocking mortality rate and evidence of mismanagement led to the Virginia Companyʹs dissolution in 1624; Virginia became a royal colony governed directly by the crown. The king now appointed the governor, but most features of local government established under the company remained in effect, such as the House of Burgesses, first convened in 1619. By 1624, it was evident that English settlers were in Virginia to stay: New settlers were still arriving, the crown was committed to the colony, and steady progress was being made in the cultivation of tobacco. A Tobacco Society, pp. 80‐87 Tobacco grew wild in the New World where Native Americans had been using it for thousands of years. During the sixteenth century, Spanish colonists in the New World sent tobacco to Europe where it was an expensive luxury but, during the following century, English colonists in North America sent so much tobacco to European markets that it became quite affordable and was used widely. In 1612, John Rolfeʹs experiments with West Indian tobacco seeds showed that the plant could be cultivated successfully in Virginia. The first shipment of Virginia‐grown tobacco arrived in England in 1617 and sold for a handsome price. Ironically, the same Virginia colonists who could not or would not grow food for themselves quickly learned how to harvest as much tobacco as possible. Tobacco cultivation proved a crucial turning point for the Virginia colony, as the crop changed the aimless settlers into a community of dedicated planters. Tobacco Agriculture A demanding crop, tobacco required close attention and a great deal of hand labor year‐round. Primitive tools and planting methods made this intensive cycle of labor more taxing. Fields were cleared by girdling trees, and the tree‐stump‐studded fields were hoed instead of plowed. Colonists also had to grow food crops in the midst of the tobacco production cycle, leaving little time for idleness. But in spare moments, they enjoyed the fruits of their labor. English settlers, however, were willing to work hard because they could expect to do much better in the Chesapeake than in England. A hired laborer in a Virginia tobacco field earned in one year what it took his counterpart in England to earn in two to three years. More important, land was so plentiful in Virginia that even laborers could hope to obtain it. New settlers to the area who paid their own passage received fifty acres of free land known as a headright. This policy, begun by the Virginia Company, was continued by the royal government to attract settlers. A Servant Labor System The seventeenth‐century Chesapeake was fundamentally a servant society, with about 80 percent of new arrivals working as indentured servants. As indentured servants, English workers contracted their labor for a period of four to seven years in return for passage to Virginia and the chance to acquire land and wealth. The planter paid the cost of transportation and provided the servant with food and shelter. As many as half of the indentured servants died before their servitude ended, but those who survived were likely to acquire their own farms. More than two‐
thirds of the servants were young, unskilled males between the ages of fifteen and twenty‐five. Only about one servant in four was a woman because employers preferred men for fieldwork. Servant life was very harsh by the standards of England and the Chesapeake. Servants who ran away or female servants who became pregnant had additional time added on to their contract. For some servant women, premarital pregnancy was a path out of servitude: The father of an unborn child sometimes purchased the indenture of the servant mother‐to‐be, freed, and married her. Notwithstanding, indentured servitude was not an easy road for those who chose to work it. Cultivating Land and Faith Dispersments of the Chesapeake settlements were determined by the demands of tobacco. Because tobacco exhausted the land of its nutrients quickly, farms consisted of cultivated land surrounded by virgin forest. Moreover, planters preferred land on navigable rivers to ease transporting the tobacco onto ships. Most Chesapeake settlers nominally were Protestants, but few were very observant. Even the colony of Maryland, which was founded by Lord Baltimore and intended as a haven for persecuted English Catholics, devoted more attention to tobacco cultivation than to religion. The Evolution of Chesapeake Society, pp. 87‐93 Tobacco cultivation propelled the evolution of Chesapeake society. The varying degrees of success among tobacco growers created a hierarchical society, in which wealth and status among colonists were quite disparate. Social stratification led to political polarization that climaxed in 1676 with Baconʹs Rebellion. Amid this political and social change, tobacco cultivation remained a constant. Social and Economic Polarization Until mid‐century, societal divisions in the Chesapeake were less between rich and poor planters than between free farmers and indentured servants, and a rough frontier equality characterized free families. After 1650, however, three developments contributed to a growing social polarization. First, tobacco prices declined as production increased, making it more difficult for freed servants to save enough to become landowners. Second, as the mortality rate of freed servants decreased, the number of freed men seeking land increased. Finally, the drop in mortality also contributed to a rising planter elite class whose members were living longer, acquiring more land, and making more money. By the 1670s, Chesapeake society had become polarized: Landowners‐the planter elite and the more numerous yeoman farmers‐made up one group; landless settlers, mostly freed servants, made up another group. Each looked upon the other with mistrust. Government Policies and Political Conflict In general, government and politics intensified rather than reduced socioeconomic distinctions. Discrepant laws governed masters and servants. Moreover, the planter elite dominated the government, from membership in the House of Burgesses to the governorʹs council. In the late seventeenth century, the franchise became more restricted, with voting limited to landowners and householders. Colonial officials not only administered government but profited from it as well, especially through revenue collecting. Beginning in 1660, the Navigation Act allowed the crown to extract revenue from the Chesapeake, and subsequent acts would be applied to other colonies. These measures were designed to give English merchants, shippers, and even seamen a monopoly on the colonial import trade. The acts reflected English mercantilist assumptions— the idea that the colonies existed to benefit the mother country. Hierarchy and stratification defined not only the relationship between king and colonies but also that between the planter and the lower classes. Baconʹs Rebellion In 1676, Baconʹs Rebellion erupted as a dispute over Indian policy. As the Chesapeake population grew, the land‐hungry poor whites encroached on Indian land and violence between settlers and Indians erupted. The government tried to maintain the peace, but frontier settlers, led by the ambitious Nathaniel Bacon, wanted revenge. They saw the colonial government, headed by William Berkeley, as run by corrupt officials who were as much their enemies as the Indians. Governor Berkeley pronounced Bacon a rebel, threatened to punish him for treason, and called for new elections of burgesses, which Bacon and his supporters swept. They passed Baconʹs Laws, which gave local settlers a greater voice in the government and cracked down on corruption. When the king learned of the turmoil in the Chesapeake and its devastating effect on tobacco exports and customs duties, he ordered an investigation. The royal officials replaced Berkeley with a governor more attentive to the kingʹs interests, nullified Baconʹs Laws, and instituted an export tax on every hogshead of tobacco as a way of paying the expenses of government without having to obtain the consent of the tightfisted House of Burgesses. After Baconʹs Rebellion, political stability slowly returned to the Chesapeake. Toward a Slave Labor System, pp. 94‐98 African slavery was introduced to the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese during the sixteenth century when European diseases decimated Native American populations. In the seventeenth century, West Indian English planters followed the Iberian example and developed sugar plantations with slave labor. However, in English North America, African slavery was not adopted until the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Beginning in the 1670s, slavery slowly made its way out of the English Caribbean and, by the end of the century, slave labor systems were found in the Chesapeake as well as in the Carolinas. The West Indies: Sugar and Slavery Englandʹs most profitable seventeenth‐century colonies were established not on the North American mainland but in the Caribbean. English planters developed a profitable sugarcane industry that, by the end of that century, had exported nearly 50 million pounds a year to the mother country. Sugar plantations demanded a large initial investment; poor farmers could not afford the expensive machinery. The successful plantersʹ immense profits came from the sweat and toil of African slaves. By 1700, the island of Barbados was literally a slave society controlled by white men. The plantation regime was extremely brutal for slaves, who were often worked to death. Although sugar plantations never developed on the North American mainland, the West Indies nonetheless exerted a powerful influence on the introduction of slavery in North America. Carolina: A West Indian Frontier In 1663, a Barbadian planter named John Colleton and seven other men obtained a charter from King Charles II to colonize the region south of Virginia. The proprietors planned to siphon settlers from Barbados and other colonies and encourage them to develop an export crop. They established a permanent English beachhead in the southern part of the colony at Charles Towne (later Charleston) in 1670. The Barbadian immigrants brought their slaves with them, thus establishing African slaves in South Carolina. During the first generation of the colony, Carolina served primarily as an economic colony of Barbados, exporting everything from livestock to timber back to the island. In the mid‐1690s, the colonists hit upon a hardy strain of rice that thrived in the region; thereafter, rice became the industry that dominated Carolina. Slave Labor Emerges in the Chesapeake By 1700, more than eight out of ten persons in Englandʹs mainland southern colonies lived in the Chesapeake, and one out of eight was black. In 1650, slavery was still a relatively minor institution in Virginia and Maryland but, beginning in the 1670s, tobacco planters began a transition from servant to slave labor that portended slaveryʹs full adoption and institutionalization in the American South. Africans were favored over indentured servants as laborers for a number of reasons. First, because they and their descendants would be slaves for life, they constituted a potentially never‐ending and self‐perpetuating labor supply for planters. Further, unlike indentured servants, African slaves could be controlled politically. Whereas servants came to the Chesapeake with expectations of eventual liberty and ownership of land, slaves had no hope of attaining the privileges of freedom. Unlike the previous labor system divided between landless colonists on the one hand, and planter elites and yeoman planters on the other, this change from a servant to a slave labor system polarized Chesapeake society along lines of race and status. Although there were still large economic differences among whites, the rights enjoyed by poor white farmers made them feel that they too had a stake in the existence of slavery, even if they could not afford to own slaves themselves. Conclusion: The Growth of English Colonies Based on Export Crops and Slave Labor, p. 98 By the end of the seventeenth century, the English colonies of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina were established firmly in North America, producing staples such as tobacco for export. Export crops made a handful of colonists wealthy and provided a livelihood for many. Southern colonial society differed significantly from that of England, yet the colonists considered themselves English subjects, claiming the rights and privileges of English citizens. The English believed themselves superior to Indians and Africans; thus colonists did not hesitate to deny these groups English rights and privileges. The English colonies differed from New Spain as well. The English did not seek to convert the native population to Christianity, the Chesapeake did not harbor gold or silver mines, and the encomienda system did not develop because Indians were too few and too hostile and their communities too small and decentralized to be organized effectively. However, the Chesapeake developed its own system of forced labor and racial distinctions. Only a remnant of Powhatanʹs powerful confederation existed by 1700. The English colonists were in North America to stay. Introduction Chapter Four begins with a discussion of Roger Williams, a critic of the Puritan leaders who ran the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the seventeenth century. Williams, a well‐educated English Puritan minister who came to Massachusetts to preach, criticized how Puritans worshipped and the way they governed their colony. English Puritans traveled to America to provide a model of Christian community that would be a guide to their fellow Englishmen. Williams thought the Massachusetts experiment failed to live up to its ideals. He criticized Puritans for abusing Indians, coveting riches, and persecuting Christians who disagreed with their doctrine. In return, Puritan leaders denounced Williams and banished him from Massachusetts. Williams fled south to found the colony of Rhode Island, on the principle of liberty of conscience. Williamsʹs dissent from Puritan orthodoxy showed that faith mattered intensely to seventeenth‐century colonists. It also revealed tensions inside of Massachusetts that would cool Puritan zeal by 1700, a time when all the North American colonies had become more integrated into the English Empire. Puritan Origins: The English Reformation, pp. 105‐106 The English Reformation began less so as a result of doctrinal revolts and more so because of a political dispute between the king and the pope. In 1534, King Henry VIII, angered by the power and interference of the Catholic Church, broke Englandʹs ties with Rome and established himself as head of his nationʹs Christian faith. Henry made relatively few other changes in his ʺnewʺ church, which remained very Catholic in theology and worship. Many English Protestants clamored for reforms that would ʺpurifyʺ the church of its Catholic trappings; these Protestants came to be called Puritans. The fate of Protestantism waxed and waned under the monarchs who succeeded Henry VIII. The survival of English Protestantism was still in doubt when Elizabeth I came to the throne (in 1558) and attempted to consolidate a position midway between the extremes of Catholicism and Puritanism. Puritan agitation for further reform of the church continued during the reigns of Elizabethʹs successors— James I and Charles I— neither of whom were receptive to Puritan ideas. Indeed, both monarchsʹ anti‐Puritan policies made many Puritans believe that if they were to be free to live and worship in peace, they would have to leave England. For example, King Charles Iʹs dissolution of Parliament (in 1629) caused great anxiety among English Puritans who, now without political representation, could not defend themselves legally against Charlesʹs anti‐Puritan policies. Puritans and the Settlement of New England, pp. 107‐111 The sixteenth‐century religious and political turmoil engendered by the English Reformation led many Puritans to emigrate to New England. The colonies they established were shaped by their faith and desire to create a new society that conformed to their interpretation of Godʹs plan for humankind. The Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony Plymouth colony was settled by the Pilgrims, Separatist Puritans who had emigrated to escape persecution in England. They moved first to Holland, in 1608, but by 1620 they found they could not live and worship as they had hoped. Believing that America was a place where they might protect their childrenʹs piety and preserve their community, the Separatists obtained permission to settle in the extensive lands granted to the Virginia Company. They left for the New World aboard the Mayflower in August 1620, landing offcourse at Cape Cod in present‐day Massachusetts in November. To provide order, security, and legitimacy for the new colony, the Pilgrims created their own government by consent, drawing up the Mayflower Compact. They also elected William Bradford as their governor. Although survival was difficult in the early years, the Pilgrims were fortunate in their Indian friends— for example Squanto and Chief Massasoit— who showed them how to gather seafood and cultivate corn. After the first harvest in the fall of 1621, the settlers invited the Indians to celebrate a thanksgiving feast. Plymouth remained a small colony, attracting few immigrants, but that did not bother the Pilgrims, who wanted to live quietly and simply according to their faith. The Founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony Shortly before Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629, a number of Puritans formed the Massachusetts Bay Company and were granted a charter for colonization in New England. In 1630, this group sailed for the New World with elected governor John Winthrop to lead them and a key provision in their charter that would allow them self‐government in Massachusetts. Aboard the ship Arbella, Winthrop delivered a sermon to his followers about the significance of their journey and their duty as settlers to follow a righteous path and to adhere strictly to Godʹs laws. He and his followers established the settlement that would become Boston and others near it in 1630 and, despite early hardships, the Massachusetts Bay Colony enjoyed a steady stream of migration during its first decade. Unlike the Virginia colonists, most immigrants to New England were farmers or tradesmen of middle‐class origin who paid their own passage to Massachusetts and came as part of a family. The immigrantsʹ family ties reinforced their religious beliefs through the interlocking institutions of family, church, and community. The Founding of the Middle Colonies, pp. 121‐126 The English colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania originated as proprietary colonies. Before the 1670s, few Europeans settled in any of these middle colonies. The most important European outpost in the region north of the Chesapeake and south of New England was the relatively small Dutch colony of New Netherland. By 1700, however, the English monarchy had seized New Netherland, renamed it New York, and encouraged the creation of a Quaker colony led by William Penn. From New Netherland to New York The Dutch settled New York after the voyages of Henry Hudson in 1609. The colony became the property of the Dutch West India Company, which struggled to govern the settlement and sent officials who set policies that many colonists deeply resented. New Netherland was Dutch in little more than ownership because few immigrants came from Holland, and the population remained small. It was a linguistically and religiously diverse colony. Immigrants from Sweden, France, Germany, Holland, and many other countries made up sizable minorities in the colony, and these people felt no loyalty to the Dutch West India Company. When England sent a fleet to take New Netherland in 1664, the Dutch colony fell and New Netherland became New York. Although he had no right to the land, Charles II of England gave the colony as part of an enormous land grant to his brother James, the Duke of York. New Jersey and Pennsylvania New Yorkʹs creation led indirectly to the founding of two other middle colonies: New Jersey and Pennsylvania. New Jersey first belonged to the Duke of York, but he gave it to two friends who became the colonyʹs proprietors. Conflicts between these men and some preexisting settlers led one of the proprietors to sell his interest to two Quakers. These Quaker proprietors themselves had a conflict and called in English Quaker William Penn— a prominent public figure from an eminent English family— who arbitrated an agreement whereby New Jersey was able to maintain its proprietary government. Penn became interested in establishing a colony in the New World to provide a safe haven for Quakers, an unpopular and persecuted sect whose members were imprisoned and executed in great numbers. Penn intended to settle Pennsylvania as a society based on Quaker principles. The Quakers believed that all individuals could communicate directly with God. They refused to accept hierarchical status or deference to those of rank and title since, in Godʹs eyes, all humans were equal. They also permitted women to assume positions of religious leadership. In 1681, Charles II, eager to rid England of this troublesome religious minority, made Penn the proprietor of the new colony called Pennsylvania. Toleration and Diversity in Pennsylvania Between 1682 and 1685, almost eight thousand immigrants came to Pennsylvania, most of them members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. Quaker ideals showed in the fair Indian policy and the tolerance of religious diversity in the new colony. Pennsylvania and its capital, Philadelphia, soon rivaled New York as a center of commerce, exporting flour and other foodstuffs to the West Indies and importing textiles and manufactured goods. As the colonyʹs proprietor, Penn had extensive power, but he proposed a more representative government in which property owners could vote for a council and an elected assembly, both of which were subject to an appointed governorʹs veto. Penn believed that the form of government mattered less than the people in it, but Quakers found points of disagreement. There were many struggles in the assembly and, in 1701, a new Charter of Privileges gave the assembly extensive new powers. The Colonies and the British Empire, pp. 127‐130 Until the 1660s, the English crown largely ignored the colonies. The king then recognized that profits could be realized by regulating colonial trade; he moved to consolidate royal control over colonial governments. Royal Regulation of Colonial Trade The Navigation Acts of 1650, 1651, and 1660 were the heart of Englandʹs system of regulation. They restricted trade within the empire to English (including American) ships and enumerated certain colonial goods— such as tobacco— that could be shipped only to England or to other English colonies. The Navigation Acts interfered less with the commerce of New England and the middle colonies, whose principal exports— fish, lumber, and flour— were not enumerated and could legally be sent directly to their most important markets in the West Indies. Another act, the Staple Act of 1663, required that all goods imported into the colonies pass through England. By the end of the seventeenth century, colonial trade flowed in and out of channels defined and regulated by the British Empire. King Philipʹs War and the Consolidation of Royal Authority The monarchy took steps to exercise greater control over colonial governments. The middle colonies, Maryland, and South Carolina were all proprietary colonies closely linked to the crown, and Virginia had been a royal colony since 1624. The monarchy now directed its efforts toward the New England colonies, which had developed their own distinctively independent Puritan governments. A devastating war with the Indians (King Philipʹs War, 1675‐1676) created the pretext for a royal investigation of whether New England adhered to English laws. This resulted in the crownʹs decision to revoke the Massachusetts Bay Companyʹs charter and to incorporate all the colonies stretching from Maine to Maryland into one entity called the Dominion of New England, appointing Sir Edmund Andros as royal governor. When news reached America of James IIʹs ouster in the Glorious Revolution, a rebellion broke out in Boston, and Andros and his followers were arrested. However, the days of Puritan independence and complete self— rule were over. Conclusion: An English Model of Colonization in North America, pp. 130‐131 At the close of the seventeenth century, the English New World colonies were firmly established. The English Empire in North America was quite different from its Spanish counterpart. The settlers relied on agriculture and trade rather than precious metals. Religious, political, social, and economic diversity could be seen throughout the settled areas; and free, white males enjoyed an unusual degree of political influence for that time. Over the following half‐century, the colonies would experience surprising changes.