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Power Point Review for the 18th
Century (Not all-inclusive)
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, “What then is this new man? This
American?”
– Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur in Letters from an American Farmer
– SEE REVIEW QUESTIONS At THE END OF THE SLIDE SHOW--
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18th Century America: Themes
Anglo-American Identity –Better to be British in America
than British in Britain -- “Who is this new man – this
American?”
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1) Prosperity, population growth, diversity (Pennsylvania: The best poor man’s country.”) New England, Middle and southern colonies.
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2) Centrality of slavery to the colonial economy
(Slavery was important in both North and South; a key to the colonial economies of both sections; By 1770, 20% of NYC population was
black;250,000 Africans brought in the slave trade in the 18th century.)
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3) Erosion of deference; Questioning authority
• The Enlightenment: Ben Franklin (Electricity and lightning; authority in reason, not social status)
• The Great Awakening: 1st colonial mass movement -- George Whitefield (taught Americans to question authority)
• Immigration of Scotch-Irish and Germans into the back country; The Regulators in the Carolinas (Scotch-Irish and Germans vs.
Assemblies.
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4) Imperial System after 1700: Theory was mercantilism but practically speaking was Salutary Neglect, Colonial autonomy, and the rise
of the Colonial Assemblies. (Assemblies had the power of the purse – to tax and to appropriate money – paid the salaries of the
governors)
• Americans liked being British. They admired the British Constitution, the grandeur of the city of London, and the economic, political,
and military power of the Empire. But they were appalled at the unequal distribution of wealth in England that left a majority
landless and in poverty, and they were scandalized by the corruption endemic to British politics as seen in patronage and the
“rotten borough” system.
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5) Little inter-colonial Unity: Colonies had little contact with each other; more with Britain than with each other.
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The Failure of the Albany Plan of Union (that proposed an Inter-colonial Council that would have the power to tax in order to raise
money for defense; Ben Franklin urged colonies to approve the Plan of Union with his famous cartoon ”Serpent cartoon” (see,
http://claver.gprep.org/fac/serpent_cartoon_from_franklin-join oor die.htmin the
Pennsylvania Gazette entitled, “Join or Die”; Assemblies would not relinquish any power to tax)
7) Climactic War for Empire: The French Vanquished, 1754-63
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Indians and the balance of Power – The Iroquois Confederation (Six Nations) and Native Americans in Ohio Valley
• The French and Indian War (French eliminated from the Continent)
• Americans had Great Expectations for greater equality in the Empire
•
18th century themes explained at
out-2015.htm
http://claver.gprep.org/fac/sjochs/18th century themes spelled
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English Colonies, 1700
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English Colonies, 1754
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Prosperity: Social mobility and increasing prosperity characterized the
American colonies in the 18th century, though life remained very tough for the small
percentage of the population that constituted the urban poor. Approximately 90-95% of
Americans, however, lived on farms.
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Pennsylvania as a “peaceable kingdom” and
as the American bread basket – “The best
poor man’s country in the world.” The
“Middle Colonies” (New York, New Jersey,
and Pennsylvania) were prosperous and
diverse in population.
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Philadelphia: The Largest City in British
America
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Colonial trading patterns: Triangular Trade and Navigation Acts
After 1700, under the policy of “salutary” or “benign neglect,” the British paid little attention to the
administration of the American colonies. The colonists obeyed the Acts that benefited them (enumerated
commodities such as tobacco had to be sold in England) and ignored those that hurt them (they smuggled
molasses and sugar from the French and Dutch colonies in the Caribbean.). Both Britain and the American
colonies flourished. Ships from New England carried salted cod fish and lumber from New England and
flour produced from the wheat of Pennsylvania, to the British slave islands in the West Indies. In a
“consumer revolution,” Americans doubled their per-capita purchases of British manufactured goods.
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WOMEN IN THE 18th Century
Males headed families in a system known as “patriarchy.” The Great
Awakening, however, stressed the crucial importance of women in
the family as crucial moral guardians and teachers, thus emphasizing
a woman’s own sphere of expertise within the family. During the
Great Awakening, women took on the role of “lay exhorters” during
open field revivals, one of the reasons why “Old Lights” in society
viewed the Awakening as a great social danger.
The role of women in the 18th century was absolutely crucial to
settled life and development. A crucial division of labor existed on
farms (and remember that approximately 95% of the population
lived on farms.) Men on farms raised the raw materials: wool from
sheep, grain, etc. Women “processed" the raw materials (ie. wheat
into flour and then into bread; wool into yarn and then into clothing,
etc.) The presence of women was crucial for a settled, healthy and
prosperous life. (A few women, such as Betsy Ross (seamstress) of
Philadelphia and Eliza Lucas Pinckney (plantation owner in South
Carolina that specialized in indigo) even ran their own businesses.
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The Ubiquity of Slavery, North and
South
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By the mid 18th century, slaves constituted about 20% of the entire population of the
American colonies.
New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies began their economic ascent because the
regions harvested fish and grain and shipped it to the West Indies to feed slaves.
Enslaved blacks made up nearly one-fifth the population of New York City, many working on
the docks or as domestics.
Thousands of acres of land in Connecticut, New York, and tiny Rhode Island held
plantations that used slave labor.
Rhode Island was America’s leader in the transatlantic slave trade, launching nearly 1000
voyages to Africa and carrying at least 100,000 captives back across the Atlantic:
”molasses, for rum, for slaves.”
The vast majority of slaves worked in the South growing tobacco and rice.
The largest slave uprising, known as the Stono Rebellion, took place in 1739 in South
Carolina.
Portrait of a black man by John Singleton
Copley, 1777/1778
http://www.dia.org/the_collection/overview/vie
wobject.asp?objectid=41297
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Urban Slavery
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th
Enslaved Africans in the 18 century
Painting of a wedding in the slave quarters
Africans developed both overt (Stono Rebellion, 1739; maroon
communities of runaways) and covert means (feigning illness,
breaking tools, pilfering from storehouses, running away,
maintaining vestiges of African culture – see painting above) to
resist the dehumanizing aspects of slavery.
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Ben Franklin: “Self-made man and
the American embodiment of the
Enlightenment in America
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Ben Franklin:
Enlightenment
Scientist
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Ben Franklin: Taming Lightning
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The 18th Century: Erosion of
Deference:
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The Great Awakening: Jonathan Edwards
and George Whitefield (Teaching Americans
to question authority)
Immigration: Scotch Irish and German into the
backcountry (Regulators in the Carolinas
challenge the coastal elite who dominated the
colonial legislature.)
The American Enlightenment (Ben Franklin
stressed the primacy of reason over
authority.)
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Population increase – Immigration of Germans (200,000)
and Scotch-Irish (250,000) into the back country of Pa.,
Virginia, North and South Carolina
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The
Great
Wagon
Road
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Life in the Backcountry
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Political Representation
Both North and South Carolina colonial legislatures were
dominated by coastal planters who refused to grant settlers
beyond the coast political representation proportional to their
percentage of the population. In addition, the legislature
refused even to establish courts, parishes and other legal
institutions in the back country.
The Regulators
In response to lack of law and order and political
representation, two protest movements evolved, one in North
Carolina and one in South Carolina. These movements were
called the Regulation (Regulators). Local government was very
corrupt in the backcountry. The Regulation movements aimed
to set things straight, often taking the law into their own hands
by acting as vigilantes against criminals, hence the term
mountain justice. The legislature turned deaf ears towards the
backcountry. (See the document by Rev. Woodmason that we
studied in class.)
In 1770, Regulators in North Carolina marched on the assembly and were
defeated at the Battle of Alamance.
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Back country people challenge deference
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The Great Awakening, 1730s to the 1760s
–Teaching Americans to question
authority.
Jonathan Edwards, theologian and powerful preacher --“Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God,” – and America’s first cultural hero and leader of the first American mass
movement, George Whitefield, “God’s Divine Dramatist.”
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George
Whitefield
became the
best known
and best
loved man
in America
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Whitefield was a former actor who
used his acting skills to great effect
– body movements, hand gestures,
voice modulation, story telling.
During his revivals he used
emotional, simple language that
emphasized man’s depravity, and
God’s saving grace as experienced
in the conversion experience. He
criticized ministers for their cold,
erudite sermons – for being
“dead-hearted.” He was a master of
publicity and advertised his revivals
by sending newspapers accounts of
earlier ones. Crowds were so large
(and some ministers so angry that
they refused to allow him to speak
in their churches) that he preached
in open fields. During these revivals
people were mixed together
irrespective of their social class and
women and blacks, and poor white
males would stand up and “exhort
the crowd.” The implication was
equality. The experience of the
revival as well as of people
choosing to leave their old churches
for “new light” churches taught them
to question established authority
and eroded the spirit of deference.
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During the 1st Great Awakening
slaves were Christianized
Emotional Methodist service in Philadelphia
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Adult baptism was one of the central tenets of the Baptists, who won many
converts – both black and white – in the South. Initially, the Baptists, who stressed
simplicity, emotional preaching and conversion, and separation of church and
state, also opposed slavery.
Adult baptism was one of the central tenets of the Baptists, who won
many converts – both black and white – in the South. Initially, the
Baptists, who stressed simplicity, emotional preaching and
conversion, and separation of church and state, also opposed slavery.
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Whitefield’s Field
Pulpit and Burial
Poem by Phyllis
W
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Whitefield’s field pulpit and Phyllis Wheatley’s poem written
on the occasion of Whitefield’s death in 1770. Whitefield had
become the most revered figure in America, as witness the
Revolutionary soldiers opening his coffin to clip off parts of
his clothing.
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The Great Awakening
split churches into “Old Light” and
“New Light “ (ie. “New Light”
Presbyterians, “New Light
Congregationalists,” etc.) and also
led to the establishment of new
colleges, including Dartmouth,
Princeton, and Brown. The growing
number of denominations helped
lead to greater religious pluralism
and toleration and eventually after
the American Revolution to the
“disestablishment” of churches.
During the colonial period, the
Congregational church was the
established (tax-supported) church in
most of the New England colonies,
while the Anglican Church was
established in New York, Maryland,
and the southern colonies.
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During the Awakening, Princeton, Brown, Rutgers,
and Dartmouth were founded as “New Light”
colleges by the “awakeners.”
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Anglo-American World
Americans liked being British. They admired the British Constitution, the grandeur of the city
of London, and the economic, political, and military power of the Empire. But they were
appalled at the unequal distribution of wealth in England that left a majority landless and in
poverty, and they were scandalized by the corruption endemic to British politics. They were
proud to members of the freest empire in history, but believed that it was better to be British in
America. In America, where land was plentiful, common people had better economic
opportunity and greater political rights such as voting. (80% owned enough land to vote.)
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William Hogarth’s
depiction of English
voting mirrored the
reservations that
Americans had about
politics in the mother
country. The man in the
foreground, obviously
incapacitated by drink is
being told how to vote
by the man standing and
whispering in his ear.
The King’s ministers
used bribery extensively
in the “rotten boroughs”
to get their candidates
elected to Parliament,
and used patronage
(offices and salaries) to
induce MPs in
Parliament to vote for
measures that the
King’s ministers
supported.
Colonial Government
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American colonial governments roughly mirrored the
British Constitution (King, Parliament (House of
Lords, House of Commons) and reflected the
colonists’ belief that they were “free born Englishmen
entitled to the rights thereof.”
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Governor (appointed in most colonies by the King
and possessing the power to veto laws, command the
militia, appoint judges, make land grants, etc.)
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Legislature (bi-cameral in every colony except
Pennsylvania which had a unicameral (one house)
legislature).
– Upper House (Council) appointed by the Governor
– Lower House (Assembly) elected by
property-owning white males, it controlled the
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“power of the purse.”
The Rise of the Assemblies
The “Power of the Purse”: To tax and to appropriate (The assembly paid
the salary of the governor.) According to John Locke, property equaled
liberty and taxation involved government taking property (and thus
liberty), so taxation had to be guarded jealously by the Assemblies.
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The War that Made America:
The French and Indian War
(1754-63) (& Years War in Europe)
37
e
Climact
ic War
for
Empire,
1754-63
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Caption for previous Map
This war involved the British, American
colonists, French, and Native Americans.
Two groups of Indians played crucial
roles: The six nation Iroquois League and
the Indians of the Ohio Valley such as the
Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware that had
been displaced by the Iroquois and sought
to maintain their independence from them
by allying with the French.
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Albany Plan of Union -- 1754
Franklin put the cartoon in his
newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette
to encourage acceptance of his plan.
The colonial legislatures, however,
rejected it because it would have
involved their giving up a portion of
their power to tax.
Read page 133 in the Textbook for the Albany Plan of Union
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William Pitt, the
architect of British victory
after 1757, concentrated
British forces in North
America, spent as much as
necessary, and requested
rather than demanded
militia and money from
the assemblies and offered
to reimburse them in gold
and silver at the end of the
war. “Only one man can
save this country,” he
declared, and American
colonists certainly
believed that as seen in the
porcelain commemorating
their hero.
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The fall of Quebec, 1759
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Results of the French and Indian
War, 1763
Americans celebrated the British-American victory in the French and
Indian War and declared their pride in being members of the
greatest and freest empire in history.
The French and Indian War eliminated France from the mainland of
North America and in the process made the American colonies
less dependant on Britain for protection.
It resulted in a great public debt for the British
It proved disastrous for Native Americans who could no longer play
the British against the French as a way of securing supplies and
their independence
It stirred great expectations in Americans for prosperity, settlement in
the Ohio Valley, reduced taxes from their assemblies because of
the war’s end, and greater equality in the Empire. The frustration
of these great expectations helped to create a crisis of Empire
shortly after the conclusion of the war.
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18th Century America: Themes
Anglo-American Identity –Better to be English in
America
“Who is this new man – this American?”
■
1) Prosperity, population growth, diversity (Pennsylvania: The best poor man’s country.”)
■
■
2) The centrality of slavery to the colonial economy
(Slavery was important in both North and South; a key to the colonial economies of both sections; By 1770, 20% of NYC
population was black;250,000 Africans brought in the slave trade in the 18th century.)
■
3) Erosion of deference and learning to Question authority
• The Enlightenment: Ben Franklin (Electricity and lightning; authority in reason, not social status)
• The Great Awakening: George Whitefield (taught Americans to question authority)
• Immigration of Scotch-Irish and Germans into the back country; The Regulators in the Carolinas (Scotch-Irish
and Germans vs. Assemblies.
■
4) Imperial System after 1700: Salutary Neglect, Colonial autonomy, and the rise of the Colonial Assemblies.
(Assemblies had the power of the purse – to tax and to appropriate money – paid the salaries of the governors)
• Americans liked being British. They admired the British Constitution, the grandeur of the city of London, and
the economic, political, and military power of the Empire. But they were appalled at the unequal distribution of
wealth in England that left a majority landless and in poverty, and they were scandalized by the corruption
endemic to British politics as seen in patronage and the “rotten borough” system.
■
5) Little inter-colonial Unity:
• The Failure of the Albany Plan of Union (Inter-colonial Council that would have the power to tax in order to
raise money for defense; Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette cartoon`: “Unite or Die”; Assemblies would not
relinquish any power to tax)
■
7) Climactic War for Empire: The French Vanquished, 1754-63
• Indians and the balance of Power – The Iroquois Confederation (Six Nations)
• The French and Indian War (French eliminated from the Continent)
• Americans had Great Expectations for greater equality in the Empire
45
Review Questions: use your notes, handouts, and the previous PowerPoint slides.
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18th Century
1. What was Ben Franklin's Albany Plan of Union? What happened to it?
2. What key themes played throughout the first 50 years of the 18th century?
3. What was the Great Awakening?
4. Who was Jonathan Edwards and why was he important?
5. Who was George Whitefield? Explain his success? What was the anecdote about the American
Revolutionary soldiers and what did it illustrate? Who was Phyllis Wheatley?
6. Explain how the Great Awakening laid the foundation for the later American revolution.
7. What were some characteristics of revivals associated with the Awakening? What was the implied
message of the revivals?
8. How did the Awakeners (New Lights") differ from the more established Old Light churches? Whjat impact
did the Awakening have on religion in America and on American colleges?
9. What was the Enlightenment? How did it contribute to an erosion of deference?
10. Who was the great figure of the Enlightenment in America? Give concrete examples of his
achievements.
11. What patterns of immigration developed in the 18th century?
12. Explain the conflict between the back country and the coast as seen in the Regulators of the Carolinas.
13. Explain the Triangular trade patterns that grew up.
14. Explain the economic importance of slavery to the colonial economy, north and south.
15. What were the Acts of Trade and Navigation? Give some examples of what they required.
16. Why was British policy towards the colonies best described as "salutary neglect?"
17. The role of women in the 18th century. Patriarchy in families; Men on farms raised the raw materials:
wool from sheep, grain, etc. and women "manufactured" the raw materials (ie. wheat into flour and then into
bread; wool into yarn and then into clothing, etc. The presence of women was crucial for a settled, healthy
and prosperous life.
18. What did Americans think of being British? Why?
19. Explain American ambivalence (admired-disliked) with regards Britain: socially and economically, and
politically.
20. How did Americans view British politics in the first half of the 18th century?
21. In terms of political participation, how did America differ from England?
22. What key factors explained the emergence of the colonial assemblies as the most powerful element of
colonial government in the first half of the 18th century?
23. How did Americans view property and its relation to liberty?
24. The dates of the French and Indian War.
25. The importance of George Washington, Albany Plan of Union; policies of William Pitt;; the fall of
Quebec.
26. The provisions of the Peace of Paris, 1763 and their results.
27. By 1763, had Americans developed a distinctive identity of their own?
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