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Instructions:
1. Only use this book. (ebook attached) DO NOT USE ANY OUTSIDE SOURCE!!)
2. Use question-answer format—write out the question, then write a short essay answering it. Do that for each question.
3. Use quotes and page citations for each chapter (essays that don’t will be graded down).
4. I would like 70-90% of the answers are quotes for each question. The rest can be your own writing with very simple English PLEASE!
5. The essay needs to be total of 8 pages minimum.
6. Double spaced Please.
Questions:
Ch.6, The Revolution Within
1. In what ways did political and religious liberties expand after the Revolution? (Democratizing Freedom + Toward Religious Toleration)
2. How did the Revolution affect the status of women? (Daughters of Liberty)
Ch.7, Founding a Nation (1783-1789)
1. What events and ideas led to the belief in 1786 and 1787 that the Articles of Confederation were not working well? (America Under the Confederation)
2. What were the major arguments in support of the Constitution given by the Federalists? What were the major arguments against the Constitution put forth by the Anti-Federalists? (The Ratification Debate and the Origin of the Bill of Rights)
Ch.14, A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War (1861-1865)
1. Describe how the North’s war aims evolved between 1861 and 1863, changing from simply preserving the Union to also ending slavery. What role did blacks play in winning the Civil War? (The Coming of Emancipation)
2. How did the war effort and leadership problems affect the society and economy of the Confederacy? (The Confederate Nation)
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n
B W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y
N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N
E R I C F O N E R
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n
W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program— trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today—with a staff of 400 and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year— W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.
Copyright © 2014, 2012 by Eric Foner All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Fourth Edition Editor: Steve Forman Associate Editor: Justin Cahill Editorial Assistant: Penelope Lin Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson Managing Editor, College Digital Media: Kim Yi Project Editor: Diane Cipollone Copy Editor: Elizabeth Dubrulle Marketing Manager: Sarah England Media Editors: Steve Hoge, Tacy Quinn Assistant Editor, Media: Stefani Wallace Production Manager: Sean Mintus Art Director: Rubina Yeh Designer: Chin-Yee Lai Photo Editor: Stephanie Romeo Photo Research: Donna Ranieri Permissions Manager: Megan Jackson Permissions Clearing: Bethany Salminen Composition and Layout: Jouve Manufacturing: Transcontinental
Since this page cannot accommodate all of the copyright notices, the Credits pages at the end of the book constitute an extension of the copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
This edition: ISBN 978-0-393-92033-8 (pbk.)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017 wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005), an accomplished artist who lived
through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publi- cations include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Free- dom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Recon- struction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent book is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize.
A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
C O N T E N T S
Contents
vi i
1 . A N E W W O R L D . . . 1
THE FIRST AMERICANS . . . 3
The Settling of the Americas ... 3 Indian Societies of the Americas ... 3
Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley ... 5 Western Indians ... 6
Indians of Eastern North America ... 6 Native American Religion ... 7
Land and Property ... 9 Gender Relations ... 10 European Views
of the Indians ... 10
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM .. . 11
Indian Freedom ... 11 Christian Liberty ... 12 Freedom and
Authority ... 12 Liberty and Liberties ... 13
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE . . . 13
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation ... 14 Freedom and Slavery in
Africa ... 14 The Voyages of Columbus ... 16
CONTACT . . . 16
Columbus in the New World ... 16 Exploration and Conquest ... 17
The Demographic Disaster ... 19
THE SPANISH EMPIRE . . . 20
Governing Spanish America ... 21 Colonists and Indians in Spanish
America ... 21 Justifications for Conquest ... 22 Piety and Profit ... 23
Reforming the Empire ... 24 Exploring North America ... 25
Spanish in Florida and the Southwest ... 25 The Pueblo Revolt ... 27
Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies
(1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19, 1681) ... 28
THE FRENCH AND DUTCH EMPIRES . . . 30
French Colonization ... 32 New France and the Indians ... 32 The
Dutch Empire ... 34 Dutch Freedom ... 34 The Dutch and Religious
Toleration ... 35 Settling New Netherland ... 36 Features of European
Settlement ... 36
REVIEW .. . 37
2 . B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A , 1 6 0 7 – 1 6 6 0 . . . 3 8
ENGLAND AND THE NEW WORLD . . . 40
Unifying the English Nation ... 40 England and Ireland ... 40 England
and North America ... 40 Motives for Colonization ... 41 The Social
Crisis ... 42 Masterless Men ... 43
A b o u t t h e A u t h o r . . . v
L i s t o f M a p s , T a b l e s , a n d F i g u r e s . . . x v i i i
P r e f a c e . . . x x
vii i
Contents
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH .. . 43
English Emigrants ... 43 Indentured Servants ... 44 Land and
Liberty ... 44 Englishmen and Indians ... 45 The Transformation
of Indian Life ... 46
SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE .. . 47
The Jamestown Colony ... 47 Powhatan and Pocahontas ... 48 The
Uprising of 1622 ... 49 A Tobacco Colony ... 50 Women and the
Family ... 50 The Maryland Experiment ... 52 Religion in
Maryland ... 52
THE NEW ENGLAND WAY .. . 53
The Rise of Puritanism ... 53 Moral Liberty ... 53 The Pilgrims at
Plymouth ... 54 The Great Migration ... 55 The Puritan Family ... 55
Government and Society in Massachusetts ... 56 Church and State in
Puritan Massachusetts ... 58
NEW ENGLANDERS DIVIDED .. . 59
Roger Williams ... 60 Rhode Island and Connecticut ... 60 The Trials
of Anne Hutchinson ... 61 Puritans and Indians ... 61
Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637),
and From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court
(July 3, 1645) ... 62
The Pequot War ... 64 The New England Economy ... 65 A Growing
Commercial Society ... 66
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND FREEDOM ... 67
The Rights of Englishmen ... 67 The English Civil War ... 68
England’s Debate over Freedom ... 68 The Civil War and English
America ... 69 Cromwell and the Empire ... 70
REVIEW .. . 71
3 . C R E A T I N G A N G L O - A M E R I C A , 1 6 6 0 – 1 7 5 0 . . . 7 2
GLOBAL COMPETITION AND THE EXPANSION OF
ENGLAND’S EMPIRE . . . 74
The Mercantilist System ... 74 The Conquest of New Netherland ... 74
New York and the Indians ... 75 The Charter of Liberties ... 77 The
Founding of Carolina ... 77 The Holy Experiment ... 78 Land in
Pennsylvania ... 79
ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY .. . 80
Englishmen and Africans ... 80 Slavery in History ... 81 Slavery
in the West Indies ... 81 Slavery and the Law ... 82 The Rise of
Chesapeake Slavery ... 83 Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in
Virginia ... 83 A Slave Society ... 85
Contents
ix
COLONIES IN CRISIS . . . 86
The Glorious Revolution ... 86 The Glorious Revolution in America ... 87
The Salem Witch Trials ... 89
THE GROWTH OF COLONIAL AMERICA .. . 90
A Diverse Population ... 90 The German Migration ... 91
Voices of Freedom: From Memorial against Non-English Immigration
(December 1727), and From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant
to Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769) ... 92
Religious Diversity ... 95 Indian Life in Transition ... 95 Regional
Diversity ... 96 The Consumer Revolution ... 97 Colonial Cities ... 97
An Atlantic World ... 98
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES . . . 99
The Colonial Elite ... 99 Anglicization ... 100 Poverty in the
Colonies ... 100 The Middle Ranks ... 101 Women and the
Household Economy ... 101 North America at Mid-Century ... 102
REVIEW .. . 103
4 . S L A V E R Y , F R E E D O M , A N D T H E S T R U G G L E F O R E M P I R E , T O 1 7 6 3 . . . 1 0 4
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE . . . 106
Atlantic Trade ... 106 Africa and the Slave Trade ... 107 The Middle
Passage ... 109 Chesapeake Slavery ... 109 The Rice Kingdom ... 110
The Georgia Experiment ... 111 Slavery in the North ... 112
SLAVE CULTURES AND SLAVE RESISTANCE .. . 113
Becoming African-American ... 113 African Religion in Colonial America
... 113 African-American Cultures ... 114 Resistance to Slavery ... 115
AN EMPIRE OF FREEDOM .. . 116
British Patriotism ... 116 The British Constitution ... 117 Republican
Liberty ... 117 Liberal Freedom ... 118
THE PUBLIC SPHERE . . . 119
The Right to Vote ... 119 Political Cultures ... 120 The Rise of the
Assemblies ... 121 Politics in Public ... 121 The Colonial Press ... 122
Freedom of Expression and Its Limits ... 122 The Trial of Zenger ... 123
The American Enlightenment ... 124
THE GREAT AWAKENING .. . 125
Religious Revivals ... 125 The Preaching of Whitefield ... 126 The
Awakening’s Impact ... 126
IMPERIAL RIVALRIES . . . 127
Spanish North America ... 127 The Spanish in California ... 127 The
French Empire ... 129
x
Contents
BATTLE FOR THE CONTINENT .. . 130
The Middle Ground ... 130 The Seven Years’ War ... 130 A World
Transformed ... 131 Pontiac’s Rebellion ... 132 The Proclamation
Line ... 132
Voices of Freedom: From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763), and
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) ... 134
Pennsylvania and the Indians ... 136 Colonial Identities ... 137
REVIEW .. . 138
5 . T H E A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N , 1 7 6 3 – 1 7 8 3 . . . 1 3 9
THE CRISIS BEGINS . . . 140
Consolidating the Empire ... 140 Taxing the Colonies ... 142
Taxation and Representation ... 143 Liberty and Resistance ... 144
The Regulators ... 145
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION .. . 145
The Townshend Crisis ... 145 The Boston Massacre ... 146 Wilkes
and Liberty ... 147 The Tea Act ... 148 The Intolerable Acts ... 148
THE COMING OF INDEPENDENCE .. . 149
The Continental Congress ... 149 The Continental Association ... 150
The Sweets of Liberty ... 150 The Outbreak of War ... 151
Independence? ... 151 Paine’s Common Sense ... 152 The Declaration
of Independence ... 153 An Asylum for Mankind ... 154 The Global
Declaration of Independence ... 155
Voices of Freedom: From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), and
From Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of
the American Revolution (1775) ... 156
SECURING INDEPENDENCE .. . 158
The Balance of Power ... 158 Blacks in the Revolution ... 158 The
First Years of the War ... 159 The Battle of Saratoga ... 161 The War
in the South ... 162 Victory at Last ... 162
REVIEW .. . 166
6 . T H E R E V O L U T I O N W I T H I N . . . 1 6 7
DEMOCRATIZING FREEDOM .. . 169
The Dream of Equality ... 169 Expanding the Political Nation ... 169
The Revolution in Pennsylvania ... 170 The New Constitutions ... 171
The Right to Vote ... 171
TOWARD RELIGIOUS TOLERATION .. . 172
Catholic Americans ... 173 Separating Church and State ... 173
Jefferson and Religious Liberty ... 174 Christian Republicanism ... 175
A Virtuous Citizenry ... 175
Contents
xi
DEFINING ECONOMIC FREEDOM .. . 176
Toward Free Labor ... 176 The Soul of a Republic ... 176 The Politics
of Inflation ... 177 The Debate over Free Trade ... 178
THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY .. . 178
Colonial Loyalists ... 178 The Loyalists’ Plight ... 179 The Indians’
Revolution ... 181
SLAVERY AND THE REVOLUTION .. . 182
The Language of Slavery and Freedom ... 182 Obstacles to Abolition ... 183
The Cause of General Liberty ... 183 Petitions for Freedom ... 184
British Emancipators ... 185 Voluntary Emancipations ... 185
Voices of Freedom: From Abigail Adams to John Adams, Braintree,
Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From Petitions of Slaves to the
Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777) ... 186
Abolition in the North ... 188 Free Black Communities ... 188
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY .. . 189
Revolutionary Women ... 189 Republican Motherhood ... 190 The
Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 190
REVIEW .. . 192
7 . F O U N D I N G A N A T I O N , 1 7 8 3 – 1 7 9 1 . . . 1 9 3
AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATION .. . 195
The Articles of Confederation ... 195 Congress, Settlers, and the West ...
196 The Land Ordinances ... 198 The Confederation’s Weaknesses ...
200 Shays’s Rebellion ... 200 Nationalists of the 1780s ... 201
A NEW CONSTITUTION .. . 202
The Structure of Government ... 202 The Limits of Democracy ... 203
The Division and Separation of Powers ... 204 The Debate over Slavery
... 205 Slavery in the Constitution ... 205 The Final Document ... 207
THE RATIFICATION DEBATE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BILL
OF RIGHTS . . . 208
The Federalist ... 208 “Extend the Sphere” ... 208 The Anti-
Federalists ... 209
Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the American
Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787) ... 210
The Bill of Rights ... 214
“WE THE PEOPLE” . . . 215
National Identity ... 215 Indians in the New Nation ... 215 Blacks and
the Republic ... 217 Jefferson, Slavery, and Race ... 218 Principles of
Freedom ... 219
REVIEW .. . 220
xii
Contents
8 . S E C U R I N G T H E R E P U B L I C , 1 7 9 1 – 1 8 1 5 . . . 2 2 1
POLITICS IN AN AGE OF PASSION .. . 222
Hamilton’s Program ... 223 The Emergence of Opposition ... 223 The
Jefferson-Hamilton Bargain ... 224 The Impact of the French Revolution
... 225 Political Parties ... 226 The Whiskey Rebellion ... 226 The
Republican Party ... 226 An Expanding Public Sphere ... 227
Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of
the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) ... 228
The Rights of Women ... 230
THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY .. . 231
The Election of 1796 ... 231 The “Reign of Witches” ... 232 The
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ... 233 The “Revolution of
1800” ... 233 Slavery and Politics ... 234 The Haitian
Revolution ... 235 Gabriel’s Rebellion ... 235
JEFFERSON IN POWER .. . 236
Judicial Review ... 237 The Louisiana Purchase ... 237 Lewis and
Clark ... 239 Incorporating Louisiana ... 240 The Barbary Wars ... 241
The Embargo ... 241 Madison and Pressure for War ... 242
THE “SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE” . . . 243
The Indian Response ... 243 The War of 1812 ... 244 The War’s
Aftermath ... 246 The End of the Federalist Party ... 247
REVIEW .. . 248
9 . T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N , 1 8 0 0 – 1 8 4 0 . . . 2 4 9
A NEW ECONOMY .. . 251
Roads and Steamboats ... 251 The Erie Canal ... 252 Railroads
and the Telegraph ... 254 The Rise of the West ... 255 The Cotton
Kingdom ... 257
MARKET SOCIETY .. . 259
Commercial Farmers ... 260 The Growth of Cities ... 260 The Factory
System ... 261 The “Mill Girls” ... 262 The Growth of Immigration ...
263 The Rise of Nativism ... 265 The Transformation of Law ... 266
THE FREE INDIVIDUAL .. . 267
The West and Freedom ... 267 The Transcendentalists ... 267 The
Second Great Awakening ... 268 The Awakening’s Impact ... 269
Voices of Freedom: From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American
Scholar” (1837), and From “Factory Life as It Is, by an Operative”
(1845) ... 270
The Emergence of Mormonism ... 272
Contents
xi i i
THE LIMITS OF PROSPERITY . . . 273
Liberty and Prosperity ... 273 Race and Opportunity ... 274 The Cult
of Domesticity ... 275 Women and Work ... 276 The Early Labor
Movement ... 277 The “Liberty of Living” ... 277
REVIEW .. . 279
1 0 . D E M O C R A C Y I N A M E R I C A , 1 8 1 5 – 1 8 4 0 . . . 2 8 0
THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY .. . 281
Property and Democracy ... 281 The Dorr War ... 282 Tocqueville on
Democracy ... 282 The Information Revolution ... 283 The Limits of
Democracy ... 284 A Racial Democracy ... 284
NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS . . . 285
The American System ... 285 Banks and Money ... 287 The Panic
of 1819 ... 287 The Missouri Controversy ... 288
NATION, SECTION, AND PARTY .. . 289
The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence ... 289
The Monroe Doctrine ... 290 The Election of 1824 ... 291
Voices of Freedom: From President James Monroe, Annual Message
to Congress (1823), and From John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition on
Government” (ca. 1845) ... 292
The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams ... 294 “Liberty Is Power” ... 294
Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party ... 294 The Election
of 1828 ... 295
THE AGE OF JACKSON .. . 296
The Party System ... 296 Democrats and Whigs ... 297 Public and
Private Freedom ... 298 South Carolina and Nullification ... 299
Calhoun’s Political Theory ... 299 The Nullification Crisis ... 301
Indian Removal ... 301 The Supreme Court and the Indians ... 302
THE BANK WAR AND AFTER .. . 304
Biddle’s Bank ... 304 Pet Banks, the Economy, and the Panic
of 1837 ... 306 Van Buren in Office ... 307 The Election of 1840 ... 307
REVIEW .. . 310
1 1 . T H E P E C U L I A R I N S T I T U T I O N . . . 3 1 1
THE OLD SOUTH .. . 312
Cotton Is King ... 313 The Second Middle Passage ... 314 Slavery
and the Nation ... 314 The Southern Economy ... 314 Plain Folk
of the Old South ... 316 The Planter Class ... 317 The Paternalist
Ethos ... 318 The Proslavery Argument ... 318 Abolition in the
Americas ... 320 Slavery and Liberty ... 320
xiv
Contents
LIFE UNDER SLAVERY .. . 321
Slaves and the Law ... 321 Conditions of Slave Life ... 322 Free
Blacks in the Old South ... 322 Slave Labor ... 323 Slavery in the
Cities ... 324 Maintaining Order ... 325
SLAVE CULTURE .. . 326
The Slave Family ... 326 The Threat of Sale ... 327 Gender Roles
among Slaves ... 327 Slave Religion ... 328 The Desire for Liberty ... 329
RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY .. . 330
Forms of Resistance ... 330
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long
(1840), and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) ... 332
The Amistad ... 334 Slave Revolts ... 335 Nat Turner’s Rebellion ... 336
REVIEW .. . 338
1 2 . A N A G E O F R E F O R M , 1 8 2 0 – 1 8 4 0 . . . 3 3 9
THE REFORM IMPULSE .. . 340
Utopian Communities ... 341 The Shakers ... 343 Oneida ... 343
Worldly Communities ... 344 Religion and Reform ... 345 Critics of
Reform ... 346 Reformers and Freedom ... 346 The Invention of the
Asylum ... 347 The Common School ... 347
THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY .. . 348
Colonization ... 348 Militant Abolitionism ... 349 Spreading the
Abolitionist Message ... 350 Slavery and Moral Suasion ... 351 A
New Vision of America ... 352
BLACK AND WHITE ABOLITIONISM .. . 353
Black Abolitionists ... 353 Gentlemen of Property and Standing ... 354
THE ORIGINS OF FEMINISM .. . 356
The Rise of the Public Woman ... 356 Women and Free Speech ... 356
Women’s Rights ... 357 Feminism and Freedom ... 358 Women and
Work ... 358 The Slavery of Sex ... 359
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The Liberator
(August 2, 1837), and From Frederick Douglass, Speech on July 5,
1852, Rochester, New York ... 360
“Social Freedom” ... 362 The Abolitionist Schism ... 363
REVIEW .. . 365
1 3 . A H O U S E D I V I D E D , 1 8 4 0 – 1 8 6 1 . . . 3 6 6
FRUITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY .. . 368
Continental Expansion ... 368 The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and
California ... 368 The Texas Revolt ... 370 The Election of 1844 ... 370
The Road to War ... 372 The War and Its Critics ... 372 Combat
Contents
xv
in Mexico ... 373 Race and Manifest Destiny ... 374 Gold-Rush
California ... 376 Opening Japan ... 377
A DOSE OF ARSENIC . . . 378
The Wilmot Proviso ... 378 The Free Soil Appeal ... 379 Crisis and
Compromise ... 380 The Great Debate ... 380 The Fugitive Slave
Issue ... 381 Douglas and Popular Sovereignty ... 382 The Kansas-
Nebraska Act ... 382
THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY .. . 383
The Northern Economy ... 383 The Rise and Fall of the Know-
Nothings ... 385 The Free Labor Ideology ... 386 “Bleeding Kansas”
and the Election of 1856 ... 387
THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN .. . 388
The Dred Scott Decision ... 389 Lincoln and Slavery ... 390 The
Lincoln-Douglas Campaign ... 390 John Brown at Harpers Ferry ... 391
Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) ... 392
The Rise of Southern Nationalism ... 394 The Election of 1860 ... 395
THE IMPENDING CRISIS . . . 397
The Secession Movement ... 397 The Secession Crisis ... 398 And
the War Came ... 399
REVIEW .. . 401
1 4 . A N E W B I R T H O F F R E E D O M : T H E C I V I L W A R , 1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6 5 . . . 4 0 2
THE FIRST MODERN WAR .. . 403
The Two Combatants ... 404 The Technology of War ... 405 The
Public and the War ... 406 Mobilizing Resources ... 407 Military
Strategies ... 407 The War Begins ... 408 The War in the East,
1862 ... 409 The War in the West ... 410
THE COMING OF EMANCIPATION .. . 410
Slavery and the War ... 410 Steps toward Emancipation ... 413
Lincoln’s Decision ... 413 The Emancipation Proclamation ... 414
Enlisting Black Troops ... 416 The Black Soldier ... 416
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION .. . 417
Liberty, Union, and Nation ... 418 The War and American Religion ... 419
Voices of Freedom: From Letter of Thomas F. Drayton (April 17,
1861), and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair,
Baltimore (April 18, 1864) ... 420
Liberty in Wartime ... 422 The North’s Transformation ... 422
Government and the Economy ... 423 The War and Native
Americans ... 423 A New Financial System ... 425 Women and
the War ... 425 The Divided North ... 426
xvi
Contents
THE CONFEDERATE NATION .. . 428
Leadership and Government ... 428 The Inner Civil War ... 428
Economic Problems ... 429 Women and the Confederacy ... 430
Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 431
TURNING POINTS . . . 431
Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 431 1864 ... 433
REHEARSALS FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THE END
OF THE WAR .. . 434
The Sea Islands Experiment ... 434 Wartime Reconstruction in the West
... 435 The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction ... 435 Victory at Last ...
436 The War and the World ... 438 The War in American History ... 438
REVIEW .. . 440
1 5 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ” : R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 . . . 4 4 1
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM .. . 443
Families in Freedom ... 443 Church and School ... 444 Political
Freedom ... 444 Land, Labor, and Freedom ... 445 Masters without
Slaves ... 445 The Free Labor Vision ... 447 The Freedmen’s Bureau
... 447 The Failure of Land Reform ... 448 The White Farmer ... 449
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the
Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping
Contract (1866) ... 450
Aftermath of Slavery ... 453
THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION .. . 454
Andrew Johnson ... 454 The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ...
454 The Black Codes ... 455 The Radical Republicans ... 456 The
Origins of Civil Rights ... 456 The Fourteenth Amendment ... 457
The Reconstruction Act ... 458 Impeachment and the Election
of Grant ... 458 The Fifteenth Amendment ... 460 The “Great
Constitutional Revolution” ... 461 The Rights of Women ... 461
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH .. . 462
“The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 462 The Black Officeholder ... 464
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 464 Southern Republicans in
Power ... 465 The Quest for Prosperity ... 465
THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION .. . 466
Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 466 “A Reign of Terror” ... 467
The Liberal Republicans ... 469 The North’s Retreat ... 470 The
Triumph of the Redeemers ... 471 The Disputed Election and Bargain
of 1877 ... 472 The End of Reconstruction ... 473
REVIEW .. . 474
Contents
xvii
A P P E N D I X
DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776) ... A-2
The Constitution of The United States (1787) ... A-5
From George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) ... A-17
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments And Resolutions (1848) ... A-22
From Frederick Douglass’s “What, To the Slave, Is The Fourth Of July?”
Speech (1852) ... A-25 The Gettysburg Address (1863) ... A-29
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865) ... A-30
The Populist Platform of 1892 ... A-31
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) ... A-34
From The Program For The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom
(1963) ... A-37 Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) ... A-38
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) ... A-42
TABLES AND FIGURES
Presidential Elections ... A-46
Admission of States ... A-54
Population of the United States ... A-55
Historical Statistics of The United States:
Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed As A Percentage
of The Labor Force, 1800–2010 ... A-56
Immigration, By Origin ... A-56
Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013 ... A-57
Union Membership As A Percentage Of Nonagricultural Employment,
1880–2012 ... A-57
Voter Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012 ... A-57
Birthrate, 1820–2011 ... A-57
S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G S ... A - 5 9
G L O S S A R Y ... A - 6 7
C R E D I T S ... A - 9 5
I N D E X ... A - 9 9
xvii i
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
M A P S
CHAPTER 1
The First Americans ... 4
Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500 ... 8
The Old World on the Eve of American
Colonization, ca. 1500 ... 15
Voyages of Discovery ... 18
Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the
New World ... 26
The New World—New France and New
Netherland, ca. 1650 ... 31
CHAPTER 2
English Settlement in the Chesapeake,
ca. 1650 ... 48
English Settlement in New England,
ca. 1640 ... 59
CHAPTER 3
Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and
Early Eighteenth Centuries ... 76
European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the
Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760 ... 94
CHAPTER 4
Atlantic Trading Routes ... 107
The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World,
1460–1770 ... 108
European Empires in North America,
ca. 1750 ... 128
Eastern North America after the Peace of
Paris, 1763 ... 133
CHAPTER 5
The Revolutionary War in the North,
1775–1781 ... 160
The Revolutionary War in the South,
1775–1781 ... 163
North America, 1783 ... 164
CHAPTER 6
Loyalism in the American Revolution ... 180
CHAPTER 7
Western Lands, 1782–1802 ... 197
Western Ordinances, 1785–1787 ... 199
Ratification of the Constitution ... 213
CHAPTER 8
The Presidential Election of 1800 ... 234
The Louisiana Purchase ... 239
The War of 1812 ... 245
CHAPTER 9
The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals,
1840 ... 253
Travel Times from New York City in 1800
and 1830 ... 256
The Market Revolution: The Spread of
Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840 ... 258
Cotton Mills, 1820s ... 263
CHAPTER 10
The Missouri Compromise, 1820 ... 289
The Presidential Election of 1824 ... 291
The Presidential Election of 1828 ... 296
Indian Removals, 1830–1840 ... 302
The Presidential Election of 1840 ... 308
CHAPTER 11
Slave Population, 1860 ... 315
Size of Slaveholdings, 1860 ... 319
Major Crops of the South, 1860 ... 325
Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century
Atlantic World ... 331
CHAPTER 12
Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth
Century ... 342
CHAPTER 13
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s ... 369
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 ... 374
Continental Expansion through 1853 ... 375
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 ... 383
Lists of Maps, Tables, and Figures
xix
The Railroad Network, 1850s ... 384
The Presidential Election of 1856 ... 389
The Presidential Election of 1860 ... 396
CHAPTER 14
The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861 ...
404
The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862 ... 409
The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862 ... 411
The Emancipation Proclamation ... 414
The Civil War, 1863 ... 432
The Civil War, Late 1864–1865 ... 437
CHAPTER 15
The Barrow Plantation ... 446
Sharecropping in the South,
1880 ... 452
The Presidential Election of 1868 ... 460
Reconstruction in the South,
1867–1877 ... 471
The Presidential Election of 1876 ... 472
T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S
CHAPTER 1
Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500 ... 24
Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations:
The World, ca. 1500 ... 25
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants
to British North American Colonies,
1700–1775 ... 91
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of
Total Population of Original Thirteen
Colonies, 1770 ... 112
CHAPTER 7
Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population
of the United States, 1790 ... 217
CHAPTER 9
Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western
States, 1800–1850 (Excluding Indians)... 257
Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by
Five-Year Period ... 264
Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850 ... 265
CHAPTER 11
Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population ... 314
Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850 (in Round
Numbers) ... 318
CHAPTER 14
Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus
Confederacy ... 407
xx
Preface
P R E FA C E
Since it originally appeared late in 2004, Give Me Liberty! An American History has gone through three editions and been adopted for use in survey courses at close to one thousand two- and four-year colleges in the United States, as well as a good number overseas. Of course, I am extremely gratified by this response. The book offers students a clear narra- tive of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
The comments I have received from instructors and students encour- age me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in the classroom. These comments have also included many valuable suggestions, ranging from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that need more extensive treatment. In preparing new editions of the book I have tried to take these suggestions into account, as well as incorporating the insights of recent historical scholarship.
Since the original edition was written, I have frequently been asked to produce a more succinct version of the textbook, which now runs to some 1,200 pages. This Brief Edition is a response to these requests. The text of the current volume is about one-third shorter than the full version. The result, I believe, is a book more suited to use in one-semester survey courses, classes
Preface
xxi
where the instructor wishes to supplement the text with additional read- ings, and in other situations where a briefer volume is desirable.
Since some publishers have been known to assign the task of reduction in cases like this to editors rather than the actual author, I wish to empha- size that I did all the cutting and necessary rewriting for this Brief Edition myself. My guiding principle was to preserve the coverage, structure, and emphases of the regular edition and to compress the book by eliminating details of secondary importance, streamlining the narrative of events, and avoiding unnecessary repetition. While the book is significantly shorter, no subject treated in the full edition has been eliminated entirely and noth- ing essential, I believe, has been sacrificed. The sequence of chapters and subjects remains the same, and the freedom theme is present and operative throughout.
In abridging the textbook I have retained the original interpretive framework as well as the new emphases added when the second and third editions of the book were published. The second edition incorporated new material about the history of Native Americans, an area of American his- tory that has been the subject of significant new scholarship in the past few years. It also devoted greater attention to the history of immigration and the controversies surrounding it—issues of considerable relevance to Amer- ican social and political life today.
The most significant change in the third edition reflected my desire to place American history more fully in a global context. In the past few years, scholars writing about the American past have sought to delineate the influ- ences of the United States on the rest of the world as well as the global devel- opments that have helped to shape the course of events here at home. They have also devoted greater attention to transnational processes—the expan- sion of empires, international labor migrations, the rise and fall of slavery, the globalization of economic enterprise—that cannot be understood solely within the confines of one country’s national boundaries. Without seek- ing in any way to homogenize the history of individual nations or neglect the domestic forces that have shaped American development, this edition retains this emphasis.
The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my desire to integrate more fully into the narrative the history of American religion. Today, this is a thriving subfield of American historical writing, partly because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates over the relations between government and religion and over the definition of reli- gious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American experience. The Brief Edition also employs a bright new design for the text and its vari- ous elements. The popular Voices of Freedom feature—a pair of excerpts from primary source documents in each chapter that illuminate divergent interpretations of freedom—is present here. So too are the useful chapter
xxii
Preface
opening focus questions, which appear in the running heads of the relevant text pages as well. There are chapter opening chronologies and end-of- chapter review pages with questions and key terms. As a new feature in the Brief Edition there are marginal glosses in the text pages that are meant to highlight key points and indicate the chapter structure for students. They are also useful means for review. The Brief Edition features more than 400 illustrations and over 100 captioned maps in easy to read four-color renditions. The Further Readings sections appear in the Appendix along with the Glossary and the collection of key documents. The Brief Edition is fully supported by the same array of print and electronic supplements that support the other editions of Give Me Liberty! These materials have been revised to match the content of the Brief Edition.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a bur- den to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will help to con- vince readers with all degrees of interest that history does matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, . . . [that] history is literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the power of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose government is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or imme- diate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of inter- pretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is con- stantly changing. There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among
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themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the rea- sons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each generation asks dif- ferent questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-Americans, working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to pres- ent an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and eco- nomic history, and to their interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary peo- ple who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of char- acters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War.
The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory survey course.
Freedom, and battles to define its meaning, has long been central to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of differ- ent groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of mak- ing sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole.
No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our politi- cal language, freedom—or liberty, with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces its purpose
xxiv
Preface
as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles, liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow,” wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’”
The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be mislead- ing. Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging defi- nition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revo- lution, the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.
Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a real- ity and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice.
Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of free- dom that determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed over time.
In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was pri- marily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—including the right of a com- munity to be governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identi- fied with each person’s opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom. This develop- ment was encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace which offered Americans an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from attire and “lifestyle” to relations between
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the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom.
A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social con- ditions necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions and relationships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the inde- pendent small producer—the farmer, skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper— who did not have to depend on another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision making) in the Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy mass consump- tion within a market economy.
The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of free- dom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Ameri- cans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, class, and in other ways.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has fre- quently been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nine- teenth century, expanding freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for others. By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept extended into new realms.
Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birthright owes much to abolitionists who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and Civil War and was rein- vigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birth control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans.
Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the
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powerless and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our culture together and exposes the contradictions between what Amer- ica claims to be and what it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.” While freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened, for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role in our political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who seek to export American freedom overseas. As with the longer version of the book, I hope that this Brief Edition of Give Me Liberty! will offer begin- ning students a clear account of the course of American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied, contentious, and ever-changing as America itself.
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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable histo- rians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list in the Appendix offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically, however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who gener- ously read portions of this work and offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions:
Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University Mary E. Adams, City College of San Francisco Jeff Adler, University of Florida David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University John Barr, Lone Star College, Kingwood Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College James Broussard, Lebanon Valley College Michael Bryan, Greenville Technical College Stephanie Cole, The University of Texas at Arlington Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College Beverly Gage, Yale University Monica Gisolfi, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Adam Goudsouzian, University of Memphis Mike Green, Community College of Southern Nevada Vanessa Gunther, California State University, Fullerton David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky Brian Harding, Mott Community College Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–Cy Fair April Holm, University of Mississippi David Hsiung, Juniata College James Karmel, Harford Community College Kelly Knight, Penn State University Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College Jeffrey K. Lucas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke Tina Margolis, Westchester Community College Kent McGaughy, HCC Northwest College James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville Gil Montemayor, McLennan Community College Jonathan Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College Robert M. O’Brien, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
xxvii i
Preface
Joseph Palermo, California State University, Sacramento Ann Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Esther Robinson, Lone Star College–Cy Fair Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernadino Diane Sager, Maple Woods Community College John Shaw, Portland Community College Mark Spencer, Brock University David Stebenne, Ohio State University Judith Stein, City College, City University of New York George Stevens, Duchess Community College Robert Tinkler, California State University, Chico Elaine Thompson, Louisiana Tech University David Weiman, Barnard College William Young, Maple Woods Community College
I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American his- tory; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the history of the environment.
I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia Univer- sity’s Department of History who helped with this project. Theresa Ventura offered invaluable assistance in gathering material for the new sections plac- ing American history in a global context. April Holm provided similar assis- tance for new coverage in this edition of the history of American religion and debates over religious freedom. James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era. Beverly Gage did the same for the twenti- eth century. Daniel Freund provided all-round research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brinkley for offering advice and encourage- ment throughout the writing of this book.
Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources for the study of American history. Nancy Robertson at IUIPUI did a superb job revising and enhancing the in-book pedagogy. Monica Gisolfi (Univer- sity of North Carolina, Wilmington) and Robert Tinkler (California State University, Chico) did excellent work on the Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank. Kathleen Thomas (University of Wisconsin, Stout) helped greatly in the revisions of the companion media packages.
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At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor— patient, encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank Steve’s assistants, Justin Cahill and Penelope Lin, for their indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Debbie Nichols for their careful copyediting and proof read- ing work. Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri for their resourceful atten- tion to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-Yee Lai for their refinements of the book design; Mike Fodera and Debra Morton-Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fourth Edition; Kim Yi for keep- ing the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production; Steve Hoge for orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the textbook; Jessica Brannon-Wranosky, Texas A&M University–Commerce, our digital media author for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Volker Janssen, Cali- fornia State University, Fullerton, for the helpful new online reading exer- cises; Nicole Netherton, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned publisher ded- icated to excellence in its work.
Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations pre- sented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at ef17@columbia.edu.
My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola, for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that con- sumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was writ- ten and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and grammar.
Eric Foner New York City
July 2013
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n
C H A P T E R 1
A
N E W W O R L D
7000 BC Agriculture developed in Mexico and Andes
900– Hopi and Zuni tribes build 1200 AD planned towns
1200 Cahokia city-empire along the Mississippi
1400s Iroquois League established
1434 Portuguese explore sub- Saharan African Coast
1487 Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope
1492 Reconquista of Spain
Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas
1498 Vasco da Gama sails to the Indian Ocean
1500 Pedro Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal
1502 First African slaves trans- ported to the Caribbean islands
1517 Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses
1519 Hernán Cortés arrives in Mexico
1528 Las Casas’s History of the Indies
1530s Pizarro’s conquest of Peru
1542 Spain promulgates the New Laws
1608 Champlain establishes Quebec
1609 Hudson claims New Netherland
1610 Santa Fe established
1680 Pueblo Revolt
A
N E W W O R L D
C H A P T E R 1
France Bringing the Faith to the Indians
of New France. European nations
justified colonization with the argument
that they were bringing Christianity—
without which freedom was impossible—
to Native Americans. In this painting
from the 1670s, an Indian kneels before
a female representation of France. Both
hold a painting of the Trinity.
Chapter 1 A New World2
What were the major pat-
terns of Native American
life in North America
before Europeans arrived?
How did Indian and Euro-
pean ideas of freedom dif-
fer on the eve of contact?
What impelled European
explorers to look west
across the Atlantic?
What happened when the
peoples of the Americas
came in contact with
Europeans?
What were the chief
features of the Spanish
empire in America?
What were the chief fea-
tures of the French and
Dutch empires in North
America?
F O C U S Q U E S T I O N S
T he discovery of America,” the British writer Adam Smith announced in his celebrated work The Wealth of Nations (1776), was one of “the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” Historians no longer use the word “discovery” to describe the European exploration, conquest, and colonization of a hemisphere already home to millions of people. But there can be no doubt that when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the West Indian islands in 1492, he set in motion some of the most pivotal developments in human history. Immense changes soon followed in both the Old and New Worlds; the consequences of these changes are still with us today.
The peoples of the American continents and Europe, previously unaware of each other’s existence, were thrown into continuous interaction. Crops new to each hemisphere crossed the Atlantic, reshaping diets and transforming the natural environment. Because of their long isolation, the inhabitants of North and South America had developed no immunity to the germs that also accompanied the colonizers. As a result, they suffered a series of devastating epidemics, the greatest population catastrophe in human history. Within a decade of Columbus’s voyage, a fourth continent—Africa—found itself drawn into the new Atlantic system of trade and population movement. In Africa, Europeans found a supply of unfree labor that enabled them to exploit the fertile lands of the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, of approximately 10 million men, women, and children who crossed from the Old World to the New between 1492 and 1820, the vast majority, about 7.7 million, were African slaves.
From the vantage point of 1776, the year the United States declared itself an independent nation, it seemed to Adam Smith that the “discovery” of America had produced both great “benefits” and great “misfortunes.” To the nations of western Europe, the development of American colonies brought an era of “splendor and glory.” Smith also noted, however, that to the “natives” of the Americas the years since 1492 had been ones of “dreadful misfortunes” and “every sort of injustice.” And for millions of Africans, the settlement of America meant a descent into the abyss of slavery.
Long before Columbus sailed, Europeans had dreamed of a land of abundance, riches, and ease beyond the western horizon. Europeans envisioned America as a religious refuge, a society of equals, a source of power and glory. They searched the New World for golden cities and fountains of eternal youth. Some of these dreams would indeed be fulfilled. To many European settlers, America offered a far greater chance to own land and worship as they pleased than existed in Europe, with its rigid, unequal social order and official churches. Yet the New World also became
3T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
the site of many forms of unfree labor, including indentured servitude, forced labor, and one of the most brutal and unjust systems, plantation slavery. The conquest and settlement of the Western Hemisphere opened new chapters in the long histories of both freedom and slavery.
T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
The Settling of the Americas
The residents of the Americas were no more a single group than Europeans or Africans. They spoke hundreds of different languages and lived in numerous kinds of societies. Most, however, were descended from bands of hunters and fishers who had crossed the Bering Strait via a land bridge at various times between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago—the exact dates are hotly debated by archaeologists.
The New World was new to Europeans but an ancient homeland to those who already lived there. The hemisphere had witnessed many changes during its human history. First, the early inhabitants and their descendants spread across the two continents, reaching the tip of South America perhaps 11,000 years ago. As the climate warmed, they faced a food crisis as the immense animals they hunted, including woolly mam- moths and giant bison, became extinct. Around 9,000 years ago, at the same time that agriculture was being developed in the Near East, it also emerged in modern-day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread to other parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible.
Indian Societies of the Americas
North and South America were hardly an empty wilderness when Europeans arrived. The hemisphere contained cities, roads, irrigation systems, extensive trade networks, and large structures such as the pyramid-temples whose beauty still inspires wonder. With a population close to 250,000, Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico, was one of the world’s largest cities. Farther south lay the Inca kingdom, centered in modern-day Peru. Its population of perhaps 12 million was linked by a complex system of roads and bridges that extended 2,000 miles along the Andes mountain chain.
Indian civilizations in North America had not developed the scale, gran- deur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and Inca societies to their south.
Emergence of agriculture
Roads, trade networks, and irrigation systems
Chapter 1 A New World4
Tenochtitlán
Monte Alban
Poverty Point
Chichen Itzá
Chaco Canyon
Cahokia
Palenque
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
CENTRAL AMERICA
Chukc h i Pe n insu la
Yucatán Pen ins u la
Aleut ian I s lands INCAS
MAY ANS
MOHAWK ONEIDA
CAYUGA SENECA
ONONDAGA
CHEROKEE
HOPI ZUNI
PUEBLO CHICKASAW
CHOCTAW
AZTECS
Be rin
g St rait
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Atlantic Ocean
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
500
500
1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
Possible migration routes
Oh io Ri
ve r
M ississippi R.
T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
A map illustrating the probable routes by which the first Americans settled the Western Hemisphere at various times between 15,000
and 60,000 years ago.
5T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
North American Indians lacked the technologies Europeans had mastered, such as metal tools and machines, gunpowder, and the scientific knowledge necessary for long-distance navigation. No society north of Mexico had achieved literacy (although some made maps on bark and animal hides). Their “backwardness” became a central justification for European conquest. But, over time, Indian societies had perfected techniques of farming, hunt- ing, and fishing, developed structures of political power and religious belief, and engaged in far-reaching networks of trade and communication.
Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley
Remarkable physical remains still exist from some of the early civilizations in North America. Around 3,500 years ago, before Egyptians built the pyramids, Native Americans constructed a large community centered on a series of giant semicircular mounds on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana. Known today as Poverty Point, it was a commercial and governmental center whose residents established trade routes throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of the Ohio River valley, called “mound builders” by eighteenth-century set- tlers who encountered the large earthen burial mounds they created, had traded across half the continent. After their decline, another culture flour- ished in the Mississippi River valley, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, a fortified community with between 10,000 and
Map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán
and the Gulf of Mexico, probably
produced by a Spanish conquistador
and published in 1524 in an edition of
the letters of Hernán Cortés. The map
shows the city’s complex system of
canals, bridges, and dams, with the
Great Temple at the center. Gardens
and a zoo are also visible.
“Mound builders”
Justification for conquest
Chapter 1 A New World6
30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200. It stood as the largest settled com- munity in what is now the United States until surpassed in population by New York and Philadelphia around 1800.
Western Indians
In the arid northeastern area of present-day Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni and their ancestors engaged in settled village life for over 3,000 years. During the peak of the region’s culture, between the years 900 and 1200, these peoples built great planned towns with large multiple-family dwell- ings in local canyons, constructed dams and canals to gather and distribute water, and conducted trade with groups as far away as central Mexico and the Mississippi River valley. The largest of their structures, Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, stood five stories high and had over 600 rooms. Not until the 1880s was a dwelling of comparable size constructed in the United States.
After the decline of these communities, probably because of drought, survivors moved to the south and east, where they established villages and perfected the techniques of desert farming. These were the people Spanish explorers called the Pueblo Indians (because they lived in small villages, or pueblos, when the Spanish first encountered them in the sixteenth cen- tury). On the Pacific coast, another densely populated region, hundreds of distinct groups resided in independent villages and lived primarily by fishing, hunting sea mammals, and gathering wild plants and nuts.
Indians of Eastern North America
In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes inhabited towns and villages scattered from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. They lived on corn, squash, and beans, sup- plemented by fishing and hunting deer, tur- keys, and other animals. Indian trade routes crisscrossed the eastern part of the continent. Tribes frequently warred with one another to obtain goods, seize captives, or take revenge for the killing of relatives. They conducted diplomacy and made peace. Little in the way of centralized authority existed until, in the fifteenth century, various leagues or
Village life and trade
A modern aerial photograph of the
ruins of Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco
Canyon in present-day New Mexico.
The rectangular structures are the
foundations of dwellings, and the
circular ones are kivas, or places
of religious worship.
7T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
confederations emerged in an effort to bring order to local regions. In the Southeast, the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw each united dozens of towns in loose alliances. In present-day New York and Pennsylvania, five Iroquois peoples—the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga— formed a Great League of Peace, bringing a period of stability to the area.
The most striking feature of Native American society at the time Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each group had its own political system and set of religious beliefs, and North America was home to liter- ally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Indians did not think of themselves as a single unified people, an idea invented by Europeans and only many years later adopted by Indians themselves. Indian identity centered on the immediate social group—a tribe, village, chiefdom, or con- federacy. When Europeans first arrived, many Indians saw them as simply one group among many. The sharp dichotomy between Indians and “white” persons did not emerge until later in the colonial era.
Native American Religion
Nonetheless, the diverse Indian societies of North America did share cer- tain common characteristics. Their lives were steeped in religious ceremo- nies often directly related to farming and hunting. Spiritual power, they
Diversity of Native American society
The Village of Secoton, by John
White, an English artist who spent
a year on the Outer Banks of North
Carolina in 1585–1586 as part of an
expedition sponsored by Sir Walter
Raleigh. A central street links houses
surrounded by fields of corn. In the
lower part, dancing Indians take part
in a religious ceremony.
Chapter 1 A New World8
INUIT
INUIT
ALGONQUIAN
MICMAC PENOBSCOT
ABENAKI
HURON
NEUTRAL
ERIE
IROQUOIS
SUSQUEHANNOCK NARRAGANSETT
WAMPANOAG
PEQUOT MOHEGAN
CREE
CHIPPEWA
CHIPPEWA
OTTOWAMENOMINEE
WINNEBAGO
POTAWATOMI
ASSINIBOINE CHEYENNE SIOUX
TLINGIT
TSHIMSHIAN
KWAKIUTLS
NOOTKIN SHUSWAP
KOOTENAY BLACKFEET
SHOSHONE
FLATHEAD HIDATSA
MANDAN
KIOWA
SIOUX
ARAPAHO
PAWNEE IOWA
CHUMASH
LUISENO
DIEGUENO
COSTANO
POMO
TILLAMOOK
CHINOOK
SKAGIT WALLA WALLA
CAYUSE NEZ
PERCE
KLAMATH MODOC
MAIDU
SOUTHERN PAIUTE
HOPI
UTE
CHEMEHUEVI
SERRANO
CAHUILLA ZUNI TEWA
JUMANO
YACHI CONCHO
LAGUERNO
COAHUILTEC
KABANKAWA
NATCHEZ APALACHEE
CALUSA
ARAWAK
CHOCTAW
YAMASEE
TIMUCUA
CREEK
CHEROKEE
CHICKASAW
PAMLICO
TUSCARORA
MOSOPELEA
SHAWNEESAUK KICKAPOO
ILLINOIS KASKASKIA
MESCALERO
COMANCHE
WICHITA
CADDO
t h i n l y p o p u l a t e d
th i n
l y p o p u l a t e d
L. Sup erior
L. M
ic hi
ga n
L. Huron
L. E rie
L. O ntar
io
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Paci f ic Oc ean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Arctic hunter-gatherers Subarctic hunter-fisher-gatherers Northwest coast marine economy Plains hunter-gatherers Plains horticulturalists
Non-horticultural rancherian peoples Rancherian peoples with low-intensity horticulture Rancherian peoples with intensive horticulture Pueblos with intensive horticulture Seacoast foragers
Ways of Life in North America, AD 1515 Marginal horticultural hunters River-based horticultural chiefdoms Orchard-growing alligator hunters Tidewater horticulturalists Fishers and wild-rice gatherers
N A T I V E W A Y S O F L I F E , c a . 1 5 0 0
The native population of North America at the time of first contact with Europeans consisted of numerous tribes with their own
languages, religious beliefs, and economic and social structures. This map suggests the numerous ways of life existing at the time.
9T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
believed, suffused the world, and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds of living and inanimate things—animals, plants, trees, water, and wind. Through religious ceremonies, they aimed to harness the aid of powerful supernatural forces to serve human interests. Indian villages also held elab- orate religious rites, participation in which helped to define the boundaries of community membership. In all Indian societies, those who seemed to pos- sess special abilities to invoke supernatural powers—shamans, medicine men, and other religious leaders—held positions of respect and authority.
In some respects, Indian religion was not that different from popular spiritual beliefs in Europe. Most Indians held that a single Creator stood atop the spiritual hierarchy. Nonetheless, nearly all Europeans arriving in the New World quickly concluded that Indians were in dire need of being converted to a true, Christian faith.
Land and Property
Equally alien in European eyes were Indian attitudes toward property. Generally, village leaders assigned plots of land to individual families to use for a season or more, and tribes claimed specific areas for hunting. Unclaimed land remained free for anyone to use. Families “owned” the right to use land, but they did not own the land itself. Indians saw land as a common resource, not an economic commodity. There was no market in real estate before the coming of Europeans.
Land as a common resource
Indian religious rituals
A Catawba map illustrates the
differences between Indian and
European conceptions of landed
property. The map depicts not
possession of a specific territory, but
trade and diplomatic connections
between various native groups
and with the colony of Virginia,
represented by the rectangle on the
lower right. The map, inscribed on
deerskin, was originally presented
by Indian chiefs to Governor Francis
Nicholson of South Carolina in 1721.
This copy, the only version that
survives, was made by the governor
for the authorities in London. It added
English labels that conveyed what the
Indians had related orally with the gift.
Chapter 1 A New World10
Nor were Indians devoted to the accumulation of wealth and mate- rial goods. Especially east of the Mississippi River, where villages moved every few years when soil or game became depleted, acquiring numer- ous possessions made little sense. However, status certainly mattered in Indian societies. Tribal leaders tended to come from a small number of families, and chiefs lived more splendidly than average members of soci- ety. But their reputation often rested on their willingness to share goods with others rather than hoarding them for themselves.
Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift giv- ing was essential to Indian society. Trade, for example, meant more than a commercial transaction—it was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies of gift exchange that bound different groups in webs of mutual obligation. “There are no beggars among them,” reported the English colonial leader Roger Williams of New England’s Indians.
Gender Relations
The system of gender relations in most Indian societies also differed mark- edly from that of Europe. Membership in a family defined women’s lives, but they openly engaged in premarital sexual relations and could even choose to divorce their husbands. Most, although not all, Indian societies were matrilineal—that is, centered on clans or kinship groups in which children became members of the mother’s family, not the father’s. Under English law, a married man controlled the family’s property and a wife had no independent legal identity. In contrast, Indian women owned dwellings and tools, and a husband generally moved to live with the family of his wife. Because men were frequently away on the hunt, women took responsibility not only for household duties but for most agricultural work as well.
European Views of the Indians
Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms. They were regarded either as “noble savages,” gentle, friendly, and superior in some ways to Europeans, or as uncivilized and brutal savages. Over time, however, n egative images of Indians came to overshadow positive ones. Early European descriptions of North American Indians as barbaric centered on three areas—religion, land use, and gender relations. Whatever their country of origin, European newcomers concluded that Indians
Gift giving
Matrilineal societies
Indian women planting crops while
men break the sod. An engraving by
Theodor de Bry, based on a painting
by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues.
Morgues was part of an expedition
of French Huguenots to Florida in
1564; he escaped when the Spanish
destroyed the outpost in the following
year.
11I N D I A N F R E E D O M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D O M
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
lacked genuine religion, or in fact worshiped the devil. Whereas the Indians saw nature as a world of spirits and souls, the Europeans viewed it as a collection of potential commodities, a source of economic opportunity.
Europeans invoked the Indians’ distinctive pattern of land use and ideas about property to answer the awkward question raised by a British minister at an early stage of England’s colonization: “By what right or warrant can we enter into the land of these Savages, take away their right- ful inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places?” While the Spanish claimed title to land in America by right of conquest and papal authority, the English, French, and Dutch came to rely on the idea that Indians had not actually “used” the land and thus had no claim to it. Despite the Indians’ highly developed agriculture and well-established towns, Europeans frequently described them as nomads without settled communities.
In the Indians’ gender division of labor and matrilineal family struc- tures, Europeans saw weak men and mistreated women. Hunting and fishing, the primary occupations of Indian men, were considered leisure activities in much of Europe, not “real” work. Because Indian women worked in the fields, Europeans often described them as lacking freedom. Europeans insisted that by subduing the Indians, they were actually bringing them freedom—the freedom of true religion, private property, and the liberation of both men and women from uncivilized and unchristian gender roles.
I N D I A N F R E E D O M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D O M
Indian Freedom
Although many Europeans initially saw Indians as embodying freedom, most colonizers quickly concluded that the notion of “freedom” was alien to Indian societies. European settlers reached this conclusion in part because Indians did not appear to live under established governments or fixed laws, followed their own—not European—definitions of authority, and lacked the kind of order and discipline common in European society. Indians also did not define freedom as individual autonomy or tie it to the ownership of property—two attributes important to Europeans.
What were the Indians’ ideas of freedom? The modern notion of free- dom as personal independence had little meaning in most Indian societies, but individuals were expected to think for themselves and did not always have to go along with collective decision making. Far more important
A seventeenth-century engraving by
a French Jesuit priest illustrates many
Europeans’ view of Indian religion.
A demon hovers over an Iroquois
longhouse, suggesting that Indians
worship the devil.
Freedom in the group
Chapter 1 A New World12
than individual autonomy were kinship ties, the ability to follow one’s spiritual values, and the well-being and security of one’s community. In Indian culture, group autonomy and self-determination, and the mutual obligations that came with a sense of belonging and connectedness, took precedence over individual freedom. Ironically, the coming of Europeans, armed with their own language of liberty, would make freedom a preoc- cupation of American Indians, as part and parcel of the very process by which they were reduced to dependence on the colonizers.
Christian Liberty
On the eve of colonization, Europeans held numerous ideas of freedom. Some were as old as the city-states of ancient Greece, others arose during the political struggles of the early modern era. Some laid the foundations for modern conceptions of freedom, others are quite unfamiliar today. Freedom was not a single idea but a collection of distinct rights and privi- leges, many enjoyed by only a small portion of the population.
One conception common throughout Europe understood freedom less as a political or social status than as a moral or spiritual condition. Freedom meant abandoning the life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ. “Christian Liberty,” however, had no connection to later ideas of religious toleration, a notion that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of colonization. Every nation in Europe had an established church that decreed what forms of religious worship and belief were acceptable. Dissenters faced persecu- tion by the state as well as condemnation by church authorities. Religious uniformity was thought to be essential to public order; the modern idea that a person’s religious beliefs and practices are a matter of private choice, not legal obligation, was almost unknown.
Freedom and Authority
In its secular form, the equating of liberty with obedience to a higher authority suggested that freedom meant not anarchy but obedience to law. The identification of freedom with the rule of law did not, though, mean that all subjects of the crown enjoyed the same degree of freedom. Early modern European societies were extremely hierarchical, with marked gra- dations of social status ranging from the king and hereditary aristocracy down to the urban and rural poor. Inequality was built into virtually every social relationship.
Within families, men exercised authority over their wives and chil- dren. According to the widespread legal doctrine known as “coverture,” when a woman married she surrendered her legal identity, which became
Freedom as a spiritual condition
Hierarchy in the family
13T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
“covered” by that of her husband. She could not own property or sign contracts in her own name, control her wages if she worked, write a separate will, or, except in the rarest of circumstances, go to court seeking a divorce. The husband had the exclusive right to his wife’s “company,” including domestic labor and sexual relations.
Everywhere in Europe, family life depended on male dominance and female submission. Indeed, political writers of the sixteenth century explicitly compared the king’s authority over his subjects with the hus- band’s over his family. Both were ordained by God.
Liberty and Liberties
In this hierarchical society, liberty came from knowing one’s social place and fulfilling the duties appropriate to one’s rank. Most men lacked the freedom that came with economic independence. Property qualifications and other restrictions limited the electorate to a minuscule part of the adult male population. The law required strict obedience of employees, and breaches of labor contracts carried criminal penalties.
European ideas of freedom still bore the imprint of the Middle Ages, when “liberties” meant formal, specific privileges such as self-government, exemption from taxation, or the right to practice a particular trade, granted to individuals or groups by contract, royal decree, or purchase. Only those who enjoyed the “freedom of the city,” for example, could engage in cer- tain economic activities. Numerous modern civil liberties did not exist. The law decreed acceptable forms of religious worship. The government regularly suppressed publications it did not like, and criticism of author- ity could lead to imprisonment. Nonetheless, every European country that colonized the New World claimed to be spreading freedom—for its own population and for Native Americans.
T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E
It is fitting that the second epochal event that Adam Smith linked to Columbus’s voyage of 1492 was the discovery by Portuguese navigators of a sea route from Europe to Asia around the southern tip of Africa. The European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest for a sea route to India, China, and the islands of the East Indies, the source of the silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury goods on which international trade in the early modern era centered. For centuries, this commerce had been conducted across land, from China and South Asia to the Middle East
Hierarchy in society
Sea route to the East
Chapter 1 A New World14
and the Mediterranean region. Profit and piety—the desire to eliminate Islamic middlemen and win control of the lucrative trade for Christian western Europe—combined to inspire the quest for a direct route to Asia.
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, one might have predicted that China would establish the world’s first global empire. Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng He led seven large naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean. The first convoy consisted of 62 ships that were larger than those of any European nation, along with 225 support vessels and more than 25,000 men. On his sixth voyage, Zheng explored the coast of East Africa. Had his ships continued westward, they could easily have reached North and South America. But as a wealthy land-based empire, China did not feel the need for overseas expansion, and after 1433 the government ended support for long- distance maritime expeditions.
It fell to Portugal, far removed from the overland route to Asia, to begin exploring the Atlantic. Taking advantage of new long-distance ships known as caravels and new navigational devices such as the compass and quadrant, the Portuguese showed that it was possible to sail down the coast of Africa and return to Portugal. No European sailor had seen the coast of Africa below the Sahara. But in that year, a Portuguese ship brought a sprig of rosemary from West Africa, proof that one could sail beyond the desert and return.
Little by little, Portuguese ships moved farther down the coast. In 1485, they reached Benin, an imposing city whose craftsmen produced bronze sculptures that still inspire admiration for their artistic beauty and superb casting techniques. The Portuguese established fortified trading posts on the western coast of Africa. The profits reaped by these Portuguese “factories”—so named because merchants were known as “factors”— inspired other European powers to follow in their footsteps.
Portugal also began to colonize Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, which lie in the Atlantic off the African coast. The Portuguese established plantations on the Atlantic islands, eventually replacing the native populations with thousands of slaves shipped from Africa—an ominous precedent for the New World.
Freedom and Slavery in Africa
Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans. Traditionally, African slaves tended to be criminals, debtors, and captives in war. They worked within the households of their owners and had well-defined rights, such as possessing property and marrying free persons. It was not uncom-
Zheng He’s voyages
New techniques of sailing and navigation
Portuguese explorations
15T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
mon for African slaves to acquire their freedom. Slavery was one of several forms of labor, not the basis of the economy as it would become in large parts of the New World. The coming of the Portuguese, soon followed by traders from other European nations, accelerated the buying and selling of slaves within Africa. At least 100,000 African slaves were transported to Spain and Portugal between 1450 and 1500.
Having reached West Africa, Portuguese mariners pushed their explo- rations ever southward along the coast. Bartholomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope at the continent’s southern tip in 1487. In 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around it to India, demonstrating the feasibility of a sea route to the East. With a population of under 1 million, Portugal established a vast trading empire, with bases in India, southern China, and Indonesia. But six years before da Gama’s voyage, Christopher Columbus had, he believed, discovered a new route to China and India by sailing west.
T H E O L D W O R L D O N T H E E V E O F A M E R I C A N C O L O N I Z A T I O N , c a . 1 5 0 0
In the fifteenth century, the world
known to Europeans was limited to
Europe, parts of Africa, and Asia.
Explorers from Portugal sought to
find a sea route to the East in order to
circumvent the Italian city-states and
Middle Eastern rulers who controlled
the overland trade.
Lisbon
Genoa Venice
da Gama
da G ama
Dias
Zh en
g He
Zhe ng
He
PORTUGAL SPAIN
FRANCE
ENGLAND
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
NETHERLANDS
PERSIA
INDIA
CHINA
EAST INDIES
MALI
BENIN
CHAMPA
MALACCA
H o rmuz
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Made i ra I s .
Canary I s .
Cape o f Good Hope
Cape Verde
I s .
Azores
Cyprus Crete
S A H A R A D E S E R T
J ava
Sumatra
Cey lo n
Mediterranean Sea
Atlantic Ocean
Indian Oce an
Paci f ic Oce an
0
0
1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
Chapter 1 A New World16
The Voyages of Columbus
A seasoned mariner and fearless explorer from Genoa, a major port in northern Italy, Columbus had for years sailed the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, studying ocean currents and wind patterns. Like nearly all navigators of the time, Columbus knew the earth was round. But he drasti- cally underestimated its size. He believed that by sailing westward he could relatively quickly cross the Atlantic and reach Asia. No one in Europe knew that two giant continents lay 3,000 miles to the west. The Vikings, to be sure, had sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland around the year 1000 and established a settlement, Vinland. But this outpost was abandoned after a few years and had been forgotten, except in Norse legends.
For Columbus, as for other figures of the time, religious and com- mercial motives reinforced one another. A devout Catholic, he drew on the Bible for his estimate of the size of the globe. Along with developing trade with the East, he hoped to convert Asians to Christianity and enlist them in a crusade to redeem Jerusalem from Muslim control.
Columbus sought financial support throughout Europe for the planned voyage. Eventually, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to become sponsors. Their marriage in 1469 had united the warring king- doms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the reconquista—the “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who had occupied part of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. With Spain’s territory united, Ferdinand and Isabella—like the rulers of the Italian city-states—were anx-
ious to circumvent the Muslim stranglehold on eastern trade. It is not surprising, then, that Columbus set sail with royal letters of introduction to Asian rulers, autho- rizing him to negotiate trade agreements.
C O N T A C T
Columbus in the New World
On October 12, 1492, after only thirty-three days of sail- ing from the Canary Islands, where he had stopped to resupply his three ships, Columbus and his expedition arrived at the Bahamas. Soon afterward, he encountered the far larger islands of Hispaniola (today the site of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. When one of his ships ran aground, he abandoned it and left thirty-eight
Columbus’s Landfall, an engraving
from La lettera dell’isole (Letter from
the Islands). This 1493 pamphlet
reproduced, in the form of a poem,
Columbus’s first letter describing his
voyage of the previous year. Under
the watchful eye of King Ferdinand
of Spain, Columbus and his men land
on a Caribbean island, while local
Indians flee.
Norse settlement
17C O N T A C T
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
men behind on Hispaniola. But he found room to bring ten inhabitants of the island back to Spain for conversion to Christianity.
In the following year, 1493, Columbus returned with seventeen ships and more than 1,000 men to explore the area and establish a Spanish outpost. Columbus’s settlement on the island of Hispaniola, which he named La Isabella, failed, but in 1502 another Spanish explorer, Nicolás de Ovando, arrived with 2,500 men and established a permanent base, the first center of the Spanish empire in America. Columbus went to his grave believing that he had discovered a westward route to Asia. The explorations of another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, along the coast of South America between 1499 and 1502 made plain that a continent entirely unknown to Europeans had been encountered. The New World would come to bear not Columbus’s name but one based on Vespucci’s—America. Vespucci also realized that the native inhabitants were distinct peoples, not residents of the East Indies as Columbus had believed, although the name “Indians,” applied to them by Columbus, has endured to this day.
Exploration and Conquest
Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 1430s, news of Columbus’s achievement traveled quickly, at least among the educated minority in Europe. Other explorers were inspired to follow in his wake. John Cabot, a Genoese merchant who had settled in England, reached Newfoundland in 1497. Soon, scores of fishing boats from France, Spain, and England were active in the region. Pedro Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal in 1500.
But the Spanish took the lead in exploration and conquest. Inspired by a search for wealth, national glory, and the desire to spread Catholicism, Spanish conquistadores, often accompanied by religious missionaries and carrying flags emblazoned with the sign of the cross, radiated outward from Hispaniola. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked across the isth- mus of Panama and became the first European to gaze upon the Pacific Ocean. Between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the world, encountering Pacific islands and peoples previ- ously unknown to Europe.
The first explorer to encounter a major American civilization was Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 arrived at Tenochtitlán, the nerve center of the Aztec empire, whose wealth and power rested on domination of numerous subordinate peoples nearby. The Aztecs were violent warriors who engaged in the ritual sacrifice of captives and others, sometimes thou- sands at a time. This practice thoroughly alienated their neighbors.
Spain takes the lead
Cortés
Vespucci
Hispaniola settlement
Chapter 1 A New World18
Vinland
Magellan (1519-1522)
Cabot (1497)
Columbus (1492)
Ba lbo
a ( 151
3)
M ag
ell an
(1 51
9- 15
22 )
Ve sp
uc ci
(1 50
1- 15
02 )
Ca br
al (1
50 0)
Cor tés (1519) Colum
bus (1 493)
Colu mbus
(150 2)
Columbus (1498)
NEWFOUNDLAND NORTH
AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
AFRICA
EUROPE
At lant ic Oce an
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
V O Y A G E S O F D I S C O V E R Y
Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic crossing, in 1492, was soon followed by voyages of discovery by English, Portuguese, Spanish,
and Italian explorers.
19C O N T A C T
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
With only a few hundred European men, Cortés conquered the Aztec city, relying on superior military technology such as iron weapons and gunpowder, as well as shrewdness in enlisting the aid of some of the Aztecs’ subject peoples, who supplied him with thou- sands of warriors. His most powerful ally, however, was disease—a smallpox epidemic that devastated Aztec society. A few years later, Francisco Pizarro conquered the great Inca kingdom centered in modern-day Peru. Pizarro’s tactics were typical of the conquistadores. He captured the Incan king, demanded and received a ran- som, and then killed the king anyway. Soon, treasure fleets carrying cargoes of gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru were traversing the Atlantic to enrich the Spanish crown.
The Demographic Disaster
The transatlantic flow of goods and people is sometimes called the Columbian Exchange. Plants, animals, and cultures that had evolved inde- pendently on separate continents were now thrown together. Products introduced to Europe from the Americas included corn, tomatoes, pota- toes, peanuts, and tobacco, while people from the Old World brought wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep to the New. But Europeans also carried germs previously unknown in the Americas.
No one knows exactly how many people lived in the Americas at the time of Columbus’s voyages—current estimates range between 50 and 90 million, most of whom lived in Central and South America. In 1492, the Indian population within what are now the borders of the United States was between 2 and 5 million. The Indian populations of the Americas suf- fered a catastrophic decline because of contact with Europeans and their wars, enslavement, and especially diseases like smallpox, influenza, and measles. Never having encountered these diseases, Indians had not devel- oped antibodies to fight them. The result was devastating. The population of Mexico would fall by more than 90 percent in the sixteenth century, from perhaps 20 million to under 2 million. As for the area that now forms the United States, its Native American population fell continuously. It reached its lowest point around 1900, at only 250,000.
Overall, the death of perhaps 80 million people—close to one-fifth of humankind—in the first century and a half after contact with Europeans
Engravings, from the Florentine
Codex, of the forces of Cortés
marching on Tenochtitlán and
assaulting the city with cannon fire.
The difference in military technology
between the Spanish and Aztecs
is evident. Indians who allied with
Cortés had helped him build vessels
and carry them in pieces over
mountains to the city. The codex
(a volume formed by stitching
together manuscript pages) was
prepared under the supervision of
a Spanish missionary in sixteenth-
century Mexico.
Decline of Indian populations
Chapter 1 A New World20
represents the greatest loss of life in human history. It was disease as much as military prowess and more advanced technology that enabled Europeans to conquer the Americas.
T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain had established an immense empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans, once barriers separating different parts of the world, now became highways for the exchange of goods and the movement of people. Spanish galleons carried gold and silver from Mexico and Peru east- ward to Spain and westward to Manila in the Philippines and on to China.
Stretching from the Andes Mountains of South America through present-day Mexico and the Caribbean and eventually into Florida and the southwestern United States, Spain’s empire exceeded in size the Roman empire of the ancient world. Its center was Mexico City, a magnificent capi- tal built on the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán that boasted churches, hospitals, monasteries, government buildings, and the New World’s first university. Unlike the English and French New World empires, Spanish
A late-seventeenth-century painting
of the Plaza Mayor (main square)
of Mexico City. The image includes
a parade of over 1,000 persons, of
different ethnic groups and
occupations, dressed in their
characteristic attire.
Extent of the empire
21T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
America was essentially an urban civilization. For centuries, its great cit- ies, notably Mexico City, Quito, and Lima, far outshone any urban centers in North America and most of those in Europe.
Governing Spanish America
At least in theory, the government of Spanish America reflected the absolut- ism of the newly unified nation at home. Authority originated with the king and flowed downward through the Council of the Indies—the main body in Spain for colonial administration—and then to viceroys in Mexico and Peru and other local officials in America. The Catholic Church also played a significant role in the administration of Spanish colonies, frequently exert- ing its authority on matters of faith, morals, and treatment of the Indians.
Successive kings kept elected assemblies out of Spain’s New World empire. Royal officials were generally appointees from Spain, rather than criollos, as persons born in the colonies of European ancestry were called. But as Spain’s power declined in Europe beginning in the seventeenth century, the local elite came to enjoy more and more effective authority over colonial affairs.
Colonists and Indians in Spanish America
Despite the decline in the native population, Spanish America remained populous enough that, with the exception of the West Indies and a few cit- ies, large-scale importations of African slaves were unnecessary. Instead, the Spanish forced tens of thousands of Indians to work in gold and silver mines, which supplied the empire’s wealth, and on large-scale farms, or haciendas, controlled by Spanish landlords. In Spanish America, unlike other New World empires, Indians performed most of the labor.
The opportunity for social advancement drew numerous colonists from Spain—225,000 in the sixteenth century and a total of 750,000 in the three centuries of Spain’s colonial rule. Eventually, a significant num- ber came in families, but at first the large majority were young, single men, many of them laborers, craftsmen, and soldiers. Many also came as gov- ernment officials, priests, professionals, and minor aristocrats, all ready to direct the manual work of Indians, since living without having to labor was a sign of noble status. The most successful of these colonists enjoyed lives of luxury similar to those of the upper classes at home.
Unlike in the later British empire, Indian inhabitants always out- numbered European colonists and their descendants in Spanish America, and large areas remained effectively under Indian control for many years.
Labor in Spanish America
Authority in Spanish America
Chapter 1 A New World22
Spanish authorities granted Indians certain rights within colonial society and looked forward to their eventual assimilation. Indeed, the success of the Spanish empire depended on the nature of the native societies on which it could build. In Florida, the Amazon, and Caribbean islands like Jamaica, which lacked major Indian cities and large native populations, Spanish rule remained tenuous.
The Spanish crown ordered wives of colonists to join them in America and demanded that single men marry. But with the population of Spanish women remaining low, the intermixing of the colonial and Indian peoples soon began. As early as 1514, the Spanish government formally approved of such marriages, partly as a way of bringing Christianity to the native population. By 1600, mestizos (persons of mixed origin) made up a large part of the urban population of Spanish America. Over time, Spanish America evolved into a hybrid culture, part Spanish, part Indian, and in some areas part African, but with a single official faith, language, and governmental system.
Justifications for Conquest
The Europeans who crossed the Atlantic in the wake of Columbus’s voy- age had immense confidence in the superiority of their own cultures to those they encountered in America. They expected these societies to aban- don their own beliefs and traditions and embrace those of the newcomers. Failure to do so reinforced the conviction that these people were uncivi- lized “heathens” (non-Christians). In addition, Europeans brought with them a long history of using violence to subdue their foes and a missionary zeal to spread the benefits of their own civilization to others, while reaping the benefits of empire. Spain was no exception.
To further legitimize Spain’s claim to rule the New World, a year after Columbus’s first voyage Pope Alexander VI divided the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal. The line was subsequently adjusted to give Portugal control of Brazil, with the remainder of the Western Hemisphere falling under Spanish authority. Its missionary purpose in colonization was already familiar because of the long holy war against Islam within Spain itself and Spain’s 1492 order that all Muslims and Jews had to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. But missionary zeal was power- fully reinforced in the sixteenth century, when the Protestant Reformation divided the Catholic Church. In 1517, Martin Luther, a German priest, posted his Ninety-Five Theses, which accused the Church of worldliness and cor- ruption. Luther wanted to cleanse the Church of abuses such as the sale of indulgences (official dispensations forgiving sins). He insisted that all
The Virgin of Guadalupe, a symbol
of Mexican culture, in an image
from 1770. She is portrayed as the
protector of the Indians.
A hybrid culture
23T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
believers should read the Bible for themselves, rather than relying on priests to interpret it for them. His call for reform led to the rise of new Protestant churches independent of Rome and plunged Europe into more than a cen- tury of religious and political strife.
Spain, the most powerful bastion of orthodox Catholicism, redoubled its efforts to convert the Indians to the “true faith.” Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism.
Piety and Profit
To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver for the mother country. The tension between these two outlooks would mark Spanish rule in America for three centuries. On the one hand, religious orders established missions throughout the empire, and over time millions of Indians were converted to Catholicism. On the other hand, Spanish rule, especially in its initial period, decimated the Indian population and subjected Indians to brutal labor conditions. The conquistadores and subsequent governors, who required conquered peoples to acknowledge the Catholic Church and provide gold and silver,
Spanish conquistadores murdering
Indians at Cuzco, in Peru. The
Dutch-born engraver Theodor de Bry
and his sons illustrated ten volumes
about New World exploration
published between 1590 and 1618.
A Protestant, de Bry created vivid
images that helped to spread the
Black Legend of Spain as a uniquely
cruel colonizer.
Converting Indians
Tensions in the empire
Chapter 1 A New World24
saw no contradiction between serving God and enriching themselves. Others, however, did.
As early as 1537, Pope Paul III, who hoped to see Indians become devout subjects of Catholic monarchs, outlawed Indians’ enslavement (an edict never extended to apply to Africans). Fifteen years later, the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas published an account of the decimation of the Indian population with the compelling title A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
Las Casas’s writings denounced Spain for causing the death of millions of innocent people and for denying Indians their freedom. He narrated in shocking detail the “strange cruelties” carried out by “the Christians,” including the burning alive of men, women, and children and the imposition of forced labor. “The entire human race is one,” he pro- claimed, and while he continued to believe that Spain had a right to rule in America, largely on religious grounds, he called for Indians to enjoy “all guarantees of liberty and justice” from the moment they became subjects of Spain. Las Casas also suggested, however, that importing slaves from Africa would help to protect the Indians from exploitation.
Reforming the Empire
Largely because of Las Casas’s efforts, Spain in 1542 promulgated the New Laws, commanding that Indians no longer be enslaved. In 1550, Spain abolished the encomienda system, under which the first settlers had been
granted authority over conquered Indian lands with the right to extract forced labor from the native inhab- itants. In its place, the government established the repartimiento system, whereby residents of Indian villages remained legally free and entitled to wages, but were still required to perform a fixed amount of labor each year. The Indians were not slaves—they had access to land, were paid wages, and could not be bought and sold. But since the requirement that they work for the Spanish remained the essence of the system, it still allowed for many abuses by Spanish landlords and by priests who required Indians to toil on mission lands as part of the conversion process.
Over time, Spain’s brutal treatment of Indi- ans improved somewhat. But Las Casas’s writings, translated almost immediately into several European languages, contributed to the spread of the Black
TABLE 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500
North America 3,800,000
Mexico 17,200,000
Central America 5,625,000
Hispaniola 1,000,000
The Caribbean 3,000,000
The Andes 15,700,000
South America 8,620,000
54,945,000
Las Casas
25T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
Legend—the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This image would provide a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World.
Exploring North America
While the Spanish empire centered on Mexico, Peru, and the West Indies, the hope of finding a new kingdom of gold soon led Spanish explorers into territory that now forms part of the United States. Juan Ponce de León, who had conquered Puerto Rico, entered Florida in 1513 in search of slaves, wealth, and a fabled fountain of youth, only to be repelled by local Indians. In the late 1530s and 1540s, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast as far north as present-day Oregon, and expeditions led by Hernando de Soto, Cabeza de Vaca, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, and others marched through the Gulf region and the Southwest, fruitlessly searching for another Mexico or Peru. These expeditions, really mobile communities with hundreds of adventurers, priests, potential settlers, slaves, and livestock, spread disease and dev- astation among Indian communities. De Soto’s was particularly brutal. His men tortured, raped, and enslaved countless Indians and transmitted deadly diseases. When Europeans in the seventeenth century returned to colonize the area traversed by de Soto’s party, little remained of the societ- ies he had encountered.
Spain in Florida and the Southwest
Nonetheless, these explorations established Spain’s claim to a large part of what is now the American South and Southwest. The first region to be col- onized within the present-day United States was Florida. Spain hoped to establish a military base there to combat pirates who threatened the trea- sure fleet that each year sailed from Havana for Europe loaded with gold and silver from Mexico and Peru. Spain also wanted to forestall French incursions in the area. In 1565, Philip II of Spain authorized the noble- man Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to lead a colonizing expedition to Florida. Menéndez destroyed a small outpost at Fort Caroline, which a group of Huguenots (French Protestants) had established in 1562 near present-day
TABLE 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations: The World, ca. 1500
India 110,000,000
China 103,000,000
Other Asia 55,400,000
Western Europe 57,200,000
The Americas 55,000,000
Russia and Eastern Europe 34,000,000
Sub-Saharan Africa 38,300,000
Japan 15,400,000
467,300,000
De Soto
Florida as military base
Chapter 1 A New World26
Mexico City
St. Augustine
Santa Fe
Roanoke
Acoma
Pi za
rro
Cort és
Ponce de León
Cabeza de Vaca
de Soto Coronado
Oñate
Ca br
illo
Fort Caroline
Pueblo Revolt, 1680
PERU
Hispan io la
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
A tl an ti c O cean
Paci f ic Ocean
0 0
500 500
1,000 miles 1,000 kilometers
Cabrillo Oñate Coronado de Soto Cabeza de Vaca Ponce de León Cortés Pizarro Extent of Incan peoples Extent of Aztec peoples
By around 1600, New Spain had become a vast empire stretching from the modern-day American
Southwest through Mexico, Central America, and into the former Inca kingdom in South America.
This map shows early Spanish exploration, especially in the present-day United States, Mexico,
and Peru.
E A R L Y S P A N I S H C O N Q U E S T S A N D E X P L O R A T I O N S I N T H E N E W W O R L D
27T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
Jacksonville. Menéndez and his men went on to establish Spanish forts on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and at St. Augustine, Florida. The latter remains the oldest site in the United States continuously inhabited by European settlers and their descendants. In general, though, Florida failed to attract settlers, remaining an isolated military settlement, in effect a fortified outpost of Cuba. As late as 1763, Spanish Florida had only 4,000 inhabitants of European descent.
Spain took even longer to begin the colonization of the American Southwest. It was not until 1598 that Juan de Oñate led a group of 400 soldiers, colonists, and missionaries north from Mexico to establish a per- manent settlement. While searching for fabled deposits of precious met- als, Oñate’s nephew and fourteen soldiers were killed by inhabitants of Acoma, the “sky city” located on a high bluff in present-day New Mexico.
Oñate decided to teach the local Indians a lesson. After a two-day siege, his forces scaled the seemingly impregnable heights and destroyed Acoma, killing more than 800 of its 1,500 or so inhabitants, including 300 women. Of the 600 Indians captured, the women and children were consigned to servitude in Spanish families, while adult men were punished by the cutting off of one foot. Oñate’s message was plain—any Indians who resisted Spanish authority would be crushed. In 1606, how- ever, Oñate was ordered home and punished for his treatment of New Mexico’s Indians. In 1610, Spain established the capital of New Mexico at Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest.
The Pueblo Revolt
In 1680, New Mexico’s small and vulnerable colonist population numbered less than 3,000. Relations between the Pueblo Indians and colonial author- ities had deteriorated throughout the seventeenth century, as governors, settlers, and missionaries sought to exploit the labor of an Indian population that declined from about 60,000 in 1600 to some 17,000 eighty years later. Franciscan friars worked relentlessly to convert Indians to Catholicism, often using intimidation and violence. As the Inquisition—the persecution of non-Catholics—became more and more intense in Spain, so did the friars’ efforts to stamp out traditional religious ceremonies in New Mexico. At the same time, the Spanish assumed that the Indians could never unite against the colonizers. In August 1680, they were proven wrong.
Little is known about the life of Popé, who became the main orga- nizer of an uprising that aimed to drive the Spanish from the colony and restore the Indians’ traditional autonomy. Under Popé’s leadership, New Mexico’s Indians joined in a coordinated uprising. Ironically, because
Juan de Oñate in New Mexico
Popé
Religious tensions
V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M
Las Casas was the Dominican priest who condemned the treatment of Indians in the
Spanish empire. His widely disseminated History of the Indies helped to establish
the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty.
The Indians [of Hispaniola] were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the fields. But our Spaniards gave no such opportunity to Indians and truly considered them perpetual slaves, since the Indians had not the free will to dispose of their persons but instead were disposed of according to Spanish greed and cruelty, not as men in captivity but as beasts tied to a rope to prevent free movement. When they were allowed to go home, they often found it deserted and had no other recourse than to go out into the woods to find food and to die. When they fell ill, which was very frequently because they are a delicate people unaccustomed to such work, the Spaniards did not believe them and pitilessly called them lazy dogs and kicked and beat them; and when illness was apparent they sent them home as useless. . . . They would go then, falling into the first stream and dying there in desperation; others would hold on longer but very few ever made it home. I sometimes came upon dead bodies on my way, and upon others who were gasping and moaning in their death agony, repeating “Hungry, hungry.” And this was the freedom, the good treatment and the Christianity the Indians received.
About eight years passed under [Spanish rule] and this disorder had time to grow; no one gave it a thought and the multitude of people who originally lived on the island . . . was consumed at such a rate that in these eight years 90 per cent had perished. From here this sweeping plague went to San Juan, Jamaica, Cuba and the continent, spreading destruction over the whole hemisphere.
From Bartolomé de Las Casas,
History of the Indies (1528)
Chapter 1 A New World28
Josephe was a Spanish-speaking Indian questioned by a royal attorney in Mexico
City investigating the Pueblo Revolt. The revolt of the Indian population, in 1680,
temporarily drove Spanish settlers from present-day New Mexico.
Asked what causes or motives the said Indian rebels had for renouncing the law of God and obedience to his Majesty, and for committing so many of crimes, [he answered] the causes they have were alleged ill treatment and injuries received from [Spanish authorities], because they beat them, took away what they had, and made them work without pay. Thus he replies.
Asked if he has learned if it has come to his notice during the time that he has been here the reason why the apostates burned the images, churches, and things pertaining to divine worship, making a mockery and a trophy of them, killing the priests and doing the other things they did, he said that he knows and had heard it generally stated that while they were besieging the villa the rebellious traitors burned the church and shouted in loud voices, “Now the God of the Spaniards, who was their father, is dead, and Santa Maria, who was their mother, and the saints, who were pieces of rotten wood,” saying that only their own god lived. Thus they ordered all the temples and images, crosses and rosaries burned, and their function being over, they all went to bathe in the rivers, saying that they thereby washed away the water of baptism. For their churches, they placed on the four sides and in the center of the plaza some small circular enclosures of stone where they went to offer flour, feathers, and the seed of maguey [a local plant], maize, and tobacco, and performed other superstitious rites, giving the children to understand that they must all do this in the future. The captains and the chiefs ordered that the names of Jesus and Mary should nowhere be uttered. . . . He has seen many houses of idolatry which they have built, dancing the dance of the cachina [part of a traditional Indian religious ceremony], which this declarant has also danced. Thus he replies to the question.
From “Declaration of Josephe”
(December 19, 1681)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why does Las Casas, after describ-
ing the ill treatment of Indians, write,
“And this was the freedom, the good
treatment and the Christianity the
Indians received”?
2. What role did religion play in the
Pueblo Revolt?
3. What ideas of freedom are apparent in
the two documents?
VOICES OF FREEDOM 2929
Chapter 1 A New World30
the Pueblos spoke six different languages, Spanish became the revolt’s “lingua franca” (a common means of communication among persons of different linguistic backgrounds). Some 2,000 warriors destroyed isolated farms and missions, killing 400 colonists, including 21 Franciscan missionaries. Most of the Spanish survivors, accompanied by several hundred Christian Indians, made their way south out of New Mexico. Within a few weeks, a century of colonization in the area had been destroyed.
The Pueblo Revolt was the most complete victory for Native Americans over Europeans and the only wholesale expulsion of settlers in the history of North America. Cooperation among the Pueblo peoples, how- ever, soon evaporated. By the end of the 1680s, warfare had broken out among several villages, even as Apache and Navajo raids continued. Popé died around 1690. In 1692, the Spanish launched an invasion that recon- quered New Mexico. Some communities welcomed them back as a source of military protection. But Spain had learned a lesson. In the eighteenth century, colonial authorities adopted a more tolerant attitude toward traditional religious practices and made fewer demands on Indian labor.
T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
If the Black Legend inspired a sense of superiority among Spain’s European rivals, the precious metals that poured from the New World into the Spanish treasury aroused the desire to match Spain’s success. The establishment of Spain’s American empire transformed the balance of power in the world economy. The Atlantic replaced the overland route to Asia as the major axis of global trade. During the seventeenth century, the French, Dutch, and English established colonies in North America. England’s mainland colonies, to be discussed in the next chapter, consisted of agricultural settlements with growing populations whose hunger for land produced incessant conflict with native peoples. New France and
St. Anthony and the Infant Jesus,
painted on a tanned buffalo hide by a
Franciscan priest in New Mexico in the
early eighteenth century. This was not
long after the Spanish reconquered
the area, from which they had been
driven by the Pueblo Revolt.
31T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
Quebec
Manhattan
Albany
New York Harbor
St . La
w re
nc e R
iv er
Oh io R
iver
M is
sis sip
pi R
iv er
Lak e Superior
La ke
M ic
hi ga
n
Lak e E
rie
L. O ntario
L. H
uron
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Gulf of St. Lawrence
Atlantic Ocean
0
0
200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers
New France New Netherland
T H E N E W W O R L D — N E W F R A N C E A N D N E W N E T H E R L A N D , c a . 1 6 5 0
Chapter 1 A New World32
New Netherland were primarily commercial ventures that never attracted large numbers of colonists. More dependent on Indians as trading partners and military allies, these French and Dutch settlements allowed Native Americans greater freedom than the English.
French Colonization
The first of Spain’s major European rivals to embark on New World explorations was France. The explorer Samuel de Champlain, sponsored by a French fur-trading company, founded Quebec in 1608. In 1673, the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and the fur trader Louis Joliet located the Mississippi River, and by 1681 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, had descended to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire Mississippi River valley for France. New France eventually formed a giant arc along the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers.
By 1700, the number of white inhabitants of New France had risen to only 19,000. With a far larger population than England, France sent many fewer emigrants to the Western Hemisphere. The government at home feared that significant emigration would undermine France’s role as a European great power and might compromise its effort to establish trade and good relations with the Indians. Unfavorable reports about America cir- culated widely in France. Canada was widely depicted as an icebox, a land of savage Indians, a dumping ground for criminals. Most French who left their homes during these years preferred to settle in the Netherlands, Spain, or the West Indies. The revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, which had extended religious toleration to French Protestants, led well over 100,000 Huguenots to flee their country. But they were not welcome in New France, which the crown desired to remain an outpost of Catholicism.
New France and the Indians
With its small white population and emphasis on the fur trade rather than agricultural settlement, the viability of New France depended on friendly relations with local Indians. The French prided themselves on adopting a more humane policy than their imperial rivals. “Only our nation,” declared one French writer, “knows the secret of winning the Indians’ affection.” The French worked out a complex series of military, commercial, and diplomatic connections, the most enduring alliances between Indians and settlers in colonial North America. They neither appropriated substantial amounts of Indian land, like the English, nor conquered native inhabit- ants militarily and set them to forced labor, like the Spanish. Samuel de Champlain, the intrepid explorer who dominated the early history of New
Settlement in New France
Alliances with Indians
33T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
France, denied that Native Americans were intellectually or culturally inferior to Europeans. Although he occasionally engaged in wars with local Indians, he dreamed of creating a colony based on mutual respect between diverse peoples. The Jesuits, a missionary religious order, did seek, with some success, to convert Indians to Catholicism. But unlike Spanish mis- sionaries in early New Mexico, they allowed Christian Indians to retain a high degree of independence and much of their traditional social structure, and they did not seek to suppress all traditional religious practices.
Like other colonists throughout North America, however, the French brought striking changes in Indian life. Contact with Europeans was inevitably followed by the spread of disease. Participation in the fur trade drew natives into the burgeoning Atlantic economy, introducing new goods and transform- ing hunting from a search for food into a quest for marketable commodities. Indians were soon swept into the rivalries among European empires.
As in the Spanish empire, New France witnessed considerable cultural exchange and intermixing between colonial and native populations. On the “middle ground” of the upper Great Lakes region in French America, Indians and whites encountered each other for many years on a basis of relative equality. And métis, or children of marriages between Indian women and French traders and officials, became guides, traders, and inter- preters. Like the Spanish, the French seemed willing to accept Indians as part of colonial society. Indians who converted to Catholicism were prom- ised full citizenship. In fact, however, it was far rarer for natives to adopt French ways than for French settlers to become attracted to the “free” life of the Indians. “It happens more commonly,” one official complained, “that a Frenchman becomes savage than a savage becomes a Frenchman.”
This engraving, which appears in
Samuel de Champlain’s 1613 account
of his voyages, is the only likeness
of the explorer from his own time.
Champlain, wearing European armor
and brandishing an arquebus (an
advanced weapon of the period),
stands at the center of this pitched
battle between his Indian allies and
the hostile Iroquois.
The middle ground
Movement between societies
Jesuits
Chapter 1 A New World34
The Dutch Empire
In 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch East India Company, sailed into New York Harbor searching for a northwest passage to Asia. Hudson and his crew became the first Europeans to sail up the river that now bears his name. Hudson did not find a route to Asia, but he did encounter abundant fur-bearing animals and Native Americans more than willing to trade furs for European goods. He claimed the area for the Netherlands, and his voyage planted the seeds of what would eventu- ally become a great metropolis, New York City. In 1624, the Dutch West India Company, which had been awarded a monopoly of Dutch trade with America, settled colonists on Manhattan Island.
These ventures formed one small part in the rise of the Dutch over- seas empire. In the early seventeenth century, the Netherlands dominated international commerce, and Amsterdam was Europe’s foremost shipping and banking center. The small nation had entered a golden age of rapidly accumulating wealth and stunning achievements in painting, philosophy, and the sciences. With a population of only 2 million, the Netherlands established a far-flung empire that reached from Indonesia to South Africa and the Caribbean and temporarily wrested control of Brazil from Portugal.
Dutch Freedom
The Dutch prided themselves on their devotion to liberty. Indeed, in the early seventeenth century they enjoyed two freedoms not recognized elsewhere in Europe—freedom of the press and of private religious prac- tice. Amsterdam became a haven for persecuted Protestants from all over Europe and for Jews as well.
Despite the Dutch reputation for cherishing freedom, New Netherland was hardly governed democratically. New Amsterdam, the main population center, was essentially a fortified military outpost controlled by appointees of the West India Company. Although the governor called on prominent citizens for advice from time to time, neither an elected assembly nor a town council, the basic unit of government at home, was established.
In other ways, however, the colonists enjoyed more liberty than their counterparts elsewhere in North America. Even their slaves possessed rights. Some enjoyed “half-freedom”—they were required to pay an annual fee to the company and work for it when called upon, but they were given land to support their families. Settlers employed slaves on family farms or for household or craft labor, not on large plantations as in the West Indies.
Women in the Dutch settlement enjoyed far more independence than in other colonies. According to Dutch law, married women retained their
Dutch trade
New Netherland
Henry Hudson
35T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?
separate legal identity. They could go to court, borrow money, and own property. Men were used to sharing property with their wives.
New Netherland attracted a remarkably diverse population. As early as the 1630s, at least eighteen languages were said to be spoken in New Amsterdam, whose residents included not only Dutch settlers but also Africans, Belgians, English, French, Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians.
The Dutch and Religious Toleration
The Dutch long prided themselves on being uniquely tolerant in religious matters compared to other European nations and their empires. It would be wrong, however, to attribute modern ideas of religious freedom to either the Dutch government and company at home or the rulers of New Netherland. Both Holland and New Netherland had an official religion, the Dutch Reformed Church, one of the Protestant national churches to emerge from the Reformation. The Dutch commitment to freedom of conscience extended to religious devotion exercised in private, not public worship in nonestablished churches.
When Jews, Quakers, Lutherans, and others demanded the right to practice their religion openly, Governor Petrus Stuyvesant adamantly refused, seeing such diversity as a threat to a godly, prosperous order. Twenty-three Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from Brazil and the Caribbean. Referring to them as “members of a deceitful race,” Stuyvesant ordered the newcomers to leave. But the company overruled him, noting that Jews at home had invested “a large amount of capital” in its shares.
Nonetheless, it is true that the Dutch dealt with religious pluralism in ways quite different from the practices common in other New World empires. Religious dissent was tolerated as long as it did not involve open and public worship. No one in New Netherland was forced to attend the official church, nor was anyone executed for holding the wrong religious beliefs (as would happen in Puritan New England).
A view of New Amsterdam from 1651
illustrates the tiny size of the outpost.
Religious pluralism
Denial of religious freedom
Chapter 1 A New World36
Settling New Netherland
During the seventeenth century, the Netherlands sent 1 million people overseas (many of them recent immigrants who were not in fact Dutch) to populate and govern their far-flung colonies. Very few, however, made North America their destination. By the mid-1660s, the European population of New Netherland numbered only 9,000. New Netherland remained a tiny backwater in the Dutch empire. So did an even smaller outpost near present-day Wilmington, Delaware, established in 1638 by a group of Dutch merchants. To circumvent the West India Company’s trade monopoly, they claimed to be operating under the Swedish flag and called their settlement New Sweden. Only 300 settlers were living there when New Netherland seized the colony in 1655.
Features of European Settlement
The Dutch came to North America to trade, not to conquer. Mindful of the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty, the Dutch determined to treat the native inhabitants more humanely than the Spanish. Having won their own independence from Spain after the longest and bloodiest war of sixteenth- century Europe, many Dutch identified with American Indians as fellow victims of Spanish oppression.
From the beginning, Dutch authorities recognized Indian sovereignty over the land and forbade settlement in any area until it had been pur- chased. But they also required tribes to make payments to colonial authori- ties. Near the coast, where most newcomers settled, New Netherland was hardly free of conflict with the Indians. With the powerful Iroquois Confederacy of the upper Hudson Valley, however, the Dutch established friendly commercial and diplomatic relations.
Thus, before the planting of English colonies in North America, other European nations had established various kinds of settlements in the New
World. Despite their differences, the Spanish, French, and Dutch empires shared certain features. All brought Christianity, new forms of technol-
ogy and learning, new legal systems and family relations, and new forms of economic enterprise and wealth creation. They also brought savage warfare and widespread disease. These empires were aware of one another’s existence. They studied and borrowed from one another, each lauding itself as superior to the others.
From the outset, dreams of freedom—for Indians, for settlers, for the entire world through the spread of Christianity—inspired and justi-
fied colonization. It would be no different when, at the beginning of the sev- enteenth century, England entered the struggle for empire in North America.
The seal of New Netherland, adopted
by the Dutch West India Company in
1630, suggests the centrality of the
fur trade to the colony’s prospects.
Surrounding the beaver is wampum,
a string of beads used by Indians in
religious rituals and as currency.
Sparse European settlement in New Netherland
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Describe why the “discovery” of America was one of the “most important events recorded in the history of mankind,” according to Adam Smith.
2. Describe the different global economies that Europeans participated in or created during the European age of expansion.
3. One of the most striking features of Indian societies at the time of the encounter with Europeans was their diversity. Support this statement with several examples.
4. Compare and contrast European values and ways of life with those of the Indians. Consider addressing religion, views about ownership of land, gender relations, and notions of freedom.
5. What were the main factors fueling the European age of expansion?
6. Compare the different economic and political systems of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France in the age of expansion.
7. Compare the political, economic, and religious motiva- tions behind the French and Dutch empires with those of New Spain.
8. How would European settlers explain their superiority to Native Americans and justify both the conquest of Native lands and terminating their freedom?
K E Y T E R M S
Tenochtitlán (p. 3)
Cahokia (p. 5)
Iroquois (p. 7)
“Christian Liberty” (p. 12)
caravels (p. 14)
reconquista (p. 16)
Columbian Exchange (p. 19)
mestizos (p. 22)
repartimiento system (p. 24)
Black Legend (p. 24)
Pueblo Revolt (p. 30)
métis (p. 33)
C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S
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1215 Magna Carta
1584 Hakluyt’s A Discourse Con- cerning Western Planting
1585 Roanoke Island settlement
1607 Jamestown established
1619 First Africans arrive in Virginia
1619 House of Burgesses convenes
1620 Pilgrims found Plymouth
1622 Uprising led by Opechan- canough against Virginia
1624 Virginia becomes first royal colony
1630s Great Migration to New England
1630 Massachusetts Bay Colony founded
1632 Maryland founded
1636 Roger Williams banished from Massachusetts to Rhode Island
1637 Anne Hutchinson placed on trial in Massachusetts
1637– Pequot War 1638
1639 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
1641 Body of Liberties
1642– English Civil War 1651
1649 Maryland adopts an Act Concerning Religion
1662 Puritans’ Half-Way Covenant
1691 Virginia outlaws English- Indian marriages
The Armada Portrait of Queen
Elizabeth I, by the artist George Gower,
commemorates the defeat of the
Spanish Armada in 1588 and appears
to link it with English colonization of the
New World. England’s victorious navy
is visible through the window, while the
queen’s hand rests on a globe, with her
fingers pointing to the coast of North
America.
B E G I N N I N G S O F
E N G L I S H A M E R I C A
C H A P T E R 2
1 6 0 7 – 1 6 6 0
39B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A
O n April 26, 1607, three small ships carrying colonists from England sailed into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. After exploring the area for a little over two weeks, they chose a site sixty miles inland on the James River for their settlement, hoping to protect themselves from marauding Spanish warships. Here they established Jamestown (named for the king of England) as the capital of the colony of Virginia (named for his predecessor, Elizabeth I, the “virgin queen”). But despite these bows to royal authority, the voyage was sponsored not by the English government, which in 1607 was hard-pressed for funds, but by the Virginia Company, a private business organization whose shareholders included merchants, aristocrats, and members of Parliament, and to which the queen had given her blessing before her death in 1603.
When the three ships returned home, 104 settlers remained in Virginia. All were men, for the Virginia Company had more interest in searching for gold and in other ways exploiting the area’s natural resources than in establishing a functioning society. Nevertheless, Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the area that is now the United States. The settlers were the first of tens of thousands of Europeans who crossed the Atlantic during the seventeenth century to live and work in North America. They led the way for new empires that mobilized labor and economic resources, reshaped societies throughout the Atlantic world, and shifted the balance of power at home from Spain and Portugal to the nations of northwestern Europe.
English North America in the seventeenth century was a place where entrepreneurs sought to make fortunes, religious minorities hoped to worship without governmental interference and to create societies based on biblical teachings, and aristocrats dreamed of re-creating a vanished world of feudalism. For ordinary men and women, emigration offered an escape from lives of deprivation and inequality. “No man,” wrote John Smith, an early leader of Jamestown, “will go from [England] to have less freedom” in America. The settlers of English America came to enjoy greater rights than colonists of other empires, including the power to choose members of elected assemblies, protections of the common law such as the right to trial by jury, and access to land, the key to economic independence. In some colonies, though by no means all, colonists enjoyed considerably more religious freedom than existed in Europe.
Many degrees of freedom coexisted in seventeenth-century North America, from the slave, stripped completely of liberty, to the independent landowner, who enjoyed a full range of rights. The settlers’ success, however, rested on depriving Native Americans of their land and, in some colonies, on importing large numbers of African slaves as laborers. Freedom and lack of freedom expanded together in seventeenth-century America.
What were the main
contours of English
colonization in the
seventeenth century?
What challenges did the
early English settlers
face?
How did Virginia and
Maryland develop in their
early years?
What made the English
settlement of New England
distinctive?
What were the main
sources of discord in early
New England?
How did the English Civil
War affect the colonies in
America?
F O C U S Q U E S T I O N S
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America40
E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D
Unifying the English Nation
As the case of Spain suggests, early empire building was, in large part, an extension of the consolidation of national power in Europe. But during the sixteenth century, England was a second-rate power racked by inter- nal disunity. Henry VIII, crowned in 1509, launched the Reformation in England. When the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry severed the nation from the Catholic Church. In its place he established the Church of England, or Anglican Church, with himself at the head. Decades of religious strife followed, as did considerable perse- cution of Catholics under Henry’s successor, Edward VI. In 1553, Edward’s half sister Mary became queen. She temporarily restored Catholicism as the state religion and executed a number of Protestants. Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603), restored the Anglican ascendancy and executed more than 100 Catholic priests.
England and Ireland
England’s long struggle to conquer and pacify Ireland, which lasted well into the seventeenth century, absorbed money and energy that might have been directed toward the New World. In subduing Ireland, whose Catholic population was deemed a threat to the stability of Protestant rule in England, the government employed a variety of approaches, including military conquest, the slaughter of civilians, the seizure of land and introduction of English economic practices, and the dispatch of large numbers of settlers. Rather than seeking to absorb the Irish into English society, the English excluded the native population from a ter- ritory of settlement known as the Pale, where the colonists created their own social order.
The methods used in Ireland anticipated policies England would undertake in America. Some sixteenth- century English writers directly compared the allegedly barbaric “wild Irish” with American Indians.
England and North America
Not until the reign of Elizabeth I did the English turn their attention to North America, although sailors and adventurers still showed more interest in raiding Spanish cities and treasure fleets in the Caribbean than establishing settlements. The government granted charters (grants of
Religious strife in England
Subduing Ireland
41
What were the main contours of English colonization in the seventeenth century?
E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D
exclusive rights and privileges) to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, authorizing them to establish colonies in North America at their own expense.
With little or no support from the crown, both ventures failed. Gilbert, who had earned a reputation for brutality in the Irish wars by murdering civilians and burning their crops, established a short-lived settlement on Newfoundland in 1582. Three years later, Raleigh dispatched a fleet of five ships with some 100 colonists to set up a base on Roanoke Island, off the North Carolina coast. But the colonists, mostly young men under mili- tary leadership, abandoned the venture in 1586 and returned to England. A second group of 100 settlers, composed of families who hoped to estab- lish a permanent colony, was dispatched that year. Their fate remains a mystery. When a ship bearing supplies arrived in 1590, the sailors found the colony abandoned. Raleigh, by now nearly bankrupt, lost his enthu- siasm for colonization. To establish a successful colony, it seemed clear, would require more planning and economic resources than any individual could provide.
Motives for Colonization
As in the case of Spain, national glory, profit, and religious mission merged in early English thinking about the New World. The Reformation heightened the English government’s sense of Catholic Spain as its mortal enemy (a belief reinforced in 1588 when a Spanish naval armada unsuc- cessfully attempted to invade the British Isles). By the late sixteenth cen- tury, anti-Catholicism had become deeply ingrained in English popular culture. Reports of the atrocities of Spanish rule were widely circulated. English translations of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s writings appeared during Elizabeth’s reign.
Although atrocities were hardly confined to any one nation—as England’s own conduct in Ireland demonstrated—the idea that the empire of Catholic Spain was uniquely murderous and tyrannical enabled the English to describe their own imperial ambitions in the language of freedom. In A Discourse Concerning Western Planting, written in 1584, the Protestant minister and scholar Richard Hakluyt listed twenty-three rea- sons that Queen Elizabeth I should support the establishment of colonies. Among them was the idea that English settlements would strike a blow against Spain’s empire and therefore form part of a divine mission to res- cue the New World and its inhabitants from the influence of Catholicism and tyranny.
The failed Roanoke settlement
Religion and imperial purpose
Richard Hakluyt
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America42
But bringing freedom to Indians was hardly the only motivation Hakluyt and other writers advanced. National power and glory, they argued, could be achieved through colonization. England, a relatively minor power at the end of the sixteenth century, could come to rival great nations like Spain and France.
Yet another motivation was that colonists could enrich the mother country and themselves by provid- ing English consumers with goods now supplied by foreigners and opening a new market for English prod- ucts. Unlike early adventurers such as Raleigh, who thought of wealth in terms of deposits of gold, Hakluyt insisted that trade would be the basis of England’s empire.
The Social Crisis
Equally important, America could be a refuge for England’s “surplus” population, benefiting mother country and emigrants alike. The late sixteenth century was a time of social crisis in England, with economic growth unable to keep pace with the needs of a population that grew from 3 million in 1550 to about 4 million in 1600. In the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, landlords sought profits by raising sheep for the expand- ing trade in wool and introducing more modern farming practices such as crop rotation. They evicted small farmers and fenced in “commons” previously open to all.
While many landlords, farmers, and town merchants benefited from the enclosure movement, as this process was called, thousands of persons were uprooted from the land. Many flooded into England’s cities. Others, denounced by authorities as rogues, vagabonds, and vagrants, wandered the roads in search of work. “All our towns,” wrote the Puritan leader John Winthrop in 1629, shortly before leaving England for Massachusetts, “com- plain of the burden of poor people and strive by all means to rid any such as they have.” England, he added somberly, “grows weary of her inhabitants.”
For years, the government struggled to deal with this social crisis, sometimes resorting to extreme measures, such as whipping or hanging the unemployed or forcing them to accept any job offered to them. Another solution was to encourage the unruly poor to leave for the New World. As colonists, they could become productive citizens, contributing to the nation’s wealth.
An engraving by Theodor de Bry
depicts colonists hunting and fishing
in Virginia. Promotional images such
as this emphasized the abundance of
the New World and suggested that
colonists could live familiar lives there.
From poverty to emigration
43T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
What were the main contours of English colonization in the seventeenth century?
Masterless Men
Although authorities saw wandering or unemployed “masterless men” as a danger to society, working for wages was itself widely associated with servility and loss of liberty. Only those who controlled their own labor could be regarded as truly free. Indeed, popular tales and ballads roman- ticized the very vagabonds, highwaymen, and even beggars denounced by the propertied and powerful, since despite their poverty they at least enjoyed freedom from wage work.
The image of the New World as a unique place of opportunity, where the English laboring classes could regain economic independence by acquiring land and where even criminals would enjoy a second chance, was deeply rooted from the earliest days of settlement. John Smith had scarcely landed in Virginia in 1607 when he wrote that in America “every man may be the master and owner of his own labor and land.” The main lure for emigrants from England to the New World was not so much riches in gold and silver as the promise of independence that followed from own- ing land. Economic freedom and the possibility of passing it on to one’s children attracted the largest number of English colonists.
T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
English Emigrants
Seventeenth-century North America was an unstable and dangerous environment. Diseases decimated Indian and settler populations alike. Without sustained immigration, most settlements would have collapsed. With a population of between 4 million and 5 million, about half that of Spain and a quarter of that of France, England produced a far larger num- ber of men, women, and children willing to brave the dangers of emigra- tion to the New World. In large part, this was because economic conditions in England were so bad.
Between 1607 and 1700, more than half a million people left England. North America was not the destination of the majority of these emigrants. Approximately 180,000 settled in Ireland, and about the same number migrated to the West Indies, where the introduction of sugar cultivation promised riches for those who could obtain land. Nonetheless, the popula- tion of England’s mainland colonies quickly outstripped that of their rivals. The Chesapeake area, where the tobacco-producing colonies of Virginia
A pamphlet published in 1609
promoting emigration to Virginia.
The New World as a land of opportunity
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America44
and Maryland developed a constant demand for cheap labor, received about 120,000 settlers. New England attracted 21,000 emigrants, nearly all of them arriving before 1640. In the second part of the seventeenth century, the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) attracted about 23,000 settlers. Although the arrivals to New England and the Middle Colonies included many families, the majority of newcomers were young, single men from the bottom rungs of English society, who had little to lose by emigrating.
Indentured Servants
Settlers who could pay for their own passage—government officials, cler- gymen, merchants, artisans, landowning farmers, and members of the lesser nobility—arrived in America as free persons. Most quickly acquired land. In the seventeenth century, however, nearly two-thirds of English settlers came as indentured servants, who voluntarily surrendered their freedom for a specified time (usually five to seven years) in exchange for passage to America.
Like slaves, servants could be bought and sold, could not marry with- out the permission of their owner, were subject to physical punishment, and saw their obligation to labor enforced by the courts. But, unlike slaves, servants could look forward to a release from bondage. Assuming they survived their period of labor, servants would receive a payment known as “freedom dues” and become free members of society.
Given the high death rate, many servants did not live to the end of their terms. Freedom dues were sometimes so meager that they did not enable recipients to acquire land. Many servants found the reality of life in the New World less appealing than they had anticipated. Employers constantly complained of servants running away, not working diligently, or being unruly, all manifestations of what one commentator called their “fondness for freedom.”
Land and Liberty
Access to land played many roles in seventeenth-century America. Land, English settlers believed, was the basis of liberty. Owning land gave men control over their own labor and, in most colonies, the right to vote. The promise of immediate access to land lured free settlers, and freedom dues that included land persuaded potential immigrants to sign contracts as indentured servants. Land in America also became a way for the king to
Landownership as the basis of liberty
Slavery and indentured servitude
Demographics of colonists
45T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
What challenges did the early English settlers face?
reward relatives and allies. Each colony was launched with a huge grant of land from the crown, either to a company or to a private individual known as a proprietor. Some grants, if taken literally, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
Without labor, however, land would have little value. Since emigrants did not come to America intending to work the land of others (except tem- porarily in the case of indentured servants), the very abundance of “free” land eventually led many property owners to turn to slaves as a workforce.
Englishmen and Indians
Land in North America, of course, was already occupied. And the arrival of English settlers presented the native inhabitants of eastern North America with the greatest crisis in their history. Unlike the Spanish, English colo- nists were chiefly interested in displacing the Indians and settling on their land, not intermarrying with them, organizing their labor, or making them subjects of the crown. The English exchanged goods with the native popu- lation, and Indians often traveled through colonial settlements. Fur trad- ers on the frontiers of settlement sometimes married Indian women, partly as a way of gaining access to native societies and the kin networks essen- tial to economic relationships. Most English settlers, however, remained obstinately separate from their Indian neighbors. Moreover, the aim of converting Indians to Christianity foundered on Indian indifference to the religious disputes that racked Europe and the unavoidable reality that churches transplanted to English America had their hands full providing religious services for European colonists.
Despite their insistence that Indians had no real claim to the land since they did not cultivate or improve it, most colonial authorities acquired land by purchase, often in treaties forced upon Indians after they had suffered military defeat. To keep the peace, some colonial govern- ments tried to prevent the private seizure or purchase of Indian lands, or they declared certain areas off-limits to settlers. But these measures were rarely enforced and ultimately proved ineffective. New settlers and freed servants sought land for themselves, and those who established families in America needed land for their children.
The seventeenth century was marked by recurrent warfare between colonists and Indians. These conflicts generated a strong feeling of supe- riority among the colonists and left them intent on maintaining the real and imagined boundaries separating the two peoples. Over time the English displaced the original inhabitants more thoroughly than any other European empire.
The English and Indian land
Failure of converting Indians
Recurrent warfare between colonists and Indians
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America46
The Transformation of Indian Life
Many eastern Indians initially welcomed the newcomers, or at least their goods, which they appreciated for their practical advantages. Items like woven cloth, metal kettles, iron axes, fishhooks, hoes, and guns were quickly integrated into Indian life. Indians also displayed a great desire for goods like colorful glass beads and copper ornaments that could be incorporated into their religious ceremonies.
As Indians became integrated into the Atlantic economy, subtle changes took place in Indian life. European metal goods changed their farming, hunting, and cooking practices. Men devoted more time to hunt- ing beaver for fur trading. Later observers would describe this trade as one in which Indians exchanged valuable commodities like furs and ani- mal skins for worthless European trinkets. In fact, both Europeans and Indians gave up goods they had in abundance in exchange for items in short supply in their own society. But as the colonists achieved military superiority over the Indians, the profits of trade mostly flowed to colo- nial and European merchants. Growing connections with Europeans stimulated warfare among Indian tribes, and the overhunting of beaver and deer forced some groups to encroach on territory claimed by others. And newcomers from Europe brought epidemics that decimated Indian populations.
A drawing by the artist John White
shows ten male and seven female
Native Americans dancing around
a circle of posts in a religious ritual.
White was a careful observer of their
clothing, body markings, and objects
used in the ceremony.
Changes in Indian farming, hunting, and cooking practices
47S E T T L I N G T H E C H E S A P E A K E
What challenges did the early English settlers face?
As settlers fenced in more and more land and introduced new crops and livestock, the natural environment changed in ways that undermined traditional Indian agriculture and hunting. Pigs and cattle roamed freely, trampling Indian corn- fields and gardens. The need for wood to build and heat homes and export to England depleted forests on which Indians relied for hunting. The rapid expansion of the fur trade diminished the population of beaver and other animals. In short, Indians’ lives were powerfully altered by the changes set in motion in 1607 when English colo- nists landed at Jamestown.
S E T T L I N G T H E
C H E S A P E A K E
The Jamestown Colony
The early history of Jamestown was, to say the least, not promising. The colony’s leadership changed repeatedly, its inhabitants suffered an extraordinarily high death rate, and, with the Virginia Company seeking a quick profit, supplies from England proved inadequate. The first settlers were “a quarrelsome band of gentlemen and servants.” They included few farmers and laborers and numerous sons of English gentry who preferred to prospect for gold rather than farm.
Disease and lack of food took a heavy toll. By the end of the first year, the original population of 104 had fallen by half. New arrivals (includ- ing the first two women, who landed in 1608) brought the numbers up to 400 in 1609, but by 1610, after a winter long remembered as the “starv- ing time,” only 65 settlers remained alive. At one point, the survivors abandoned Jamestown and sailed for England, only to be intercepted and persuaded to return to Virginia by ships carrying a new governor, 250 colonists, and supplies.
Only rigorous military discipline held the colony together. John Smith imposed a regime of forced labor on company lands. “He that will not work, shall not eat,” Smith declared. Smith’s autocratic mode of govern- ing alienated many of the colonists. After being injured in an accidental
The only known contemporary portrait
of a New England Indian, this 1681
painting by an unnamed artist was
long thought to represent Ninigret II, a
leader of the Narragansetts of Rhode
Island. It has been more recently
identified as David, an Indian who
saved the life of John Winthrop II,
a governor of colonial Connecticut.
Apart from the wampum beads
around his neck, everything the Indian
wears is of English manufacture.
John Smith’s iron rule
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America48
gunpowder explosion in 1609, he was forced to return to England. But his immediate successors continued his iron rule.
The Virginia Company slowly realized that for the colony to survive it would have to abandon the search for gold, grow its own food, and find a marketable commodity. It would also have to attract more settlers. With this end in view, it announced new policies in 1618. Instead of retaining all the land for itself, the company introduced the headright system, award- ing fifty acres of land to any colonist who paid for his own or another’s passage. Thus, anyone who brought in a sizable number of servants would immediately acquire a large estate. In place of the governor’s militaristic
regime, a “charter of grants and liberties” was issued, including the establishment of a House of Burgesses. When it convened in 1619, this became the first elected assem- bly in colonial America. Also in 1619, the first twenty blacks arrived in Virginia on a Dutch vessel. These events laid the foun- dation for a society that would one day be dominated economically and politically by slaveowning planters.
Powhatan and Pocahontas
When the English arrived at Jamestown, they landed in an area inhabited by some 15,000 to 25,000 Indians living in numerous small agricultural villages. Most acknowledged the rule of Wahunsonacock, a shrewd and forceful leader who had recently consolidated his authority over the region and collected tribute from some thirty subordinate tribes. Called Powhatan by the settlers after the Indian word for both his tribe and his title of paramount chief, he quickly realized the advantages of trade with the newcomers.
In the first two years of Jamestown’s existence, relations with Indians were mostly peaceful and based on a fairly equal give-and-take. At one point, Smith was
Jamestown
(1632)
(1632)
(1607) VIRGINIA
MARYLAND
MARYLAND
Roanoke I s land
ACCOMAC
ACCOHANNOCK
NANTAUGHTACUND ONAWMANIENT CHCHHCHICHICHIHHICHIHCHHHHCHH CACACACACACCACAACCACCACCACACCCACACACACACCACACACACACCCACACACACCCACACCACACCACCACCACACCACCACACCCACACAAACCCACCCAAAA OOAOAOAAOAAANNOAOAAAAAAAAAOOOCHICACOAN
RAPPAHANNOCK WICOCOMOCO
CUTTATOWOMEN
MATTAPONI
CHICKAHOMINY
PAMUNKEY CHISKIAK
APPOMATTOC
WEYANOCK
NANSEMOND
York R.
James R.
Roanoke R.
Chesapeake B ay
0 0
25 25
50 miles 50 kilometers
Date of settlement English settlement, ca. 1650
(1607)
E N G L I S H S E T T L E M E N T I N T H E C H E S A P E A K E , c a . 1 6 5 0
By 1650, English settlement in the
Chesapeake had spread well beyond
the initial colony at Jamestown, as
tobacco planters sought fertile land
near navigable waterways.
49S E T T L I N G T H E C H E S A P E A K E
How did Virginia and Maryland develop in their early years?
captured by the Indians and threatened with execution by Powhatan, only to be rescued by Pocahontas, reputedly the favorite among his many children by dozens of wives. The incident has come down in legend as an example of a rebellious, love-struck teenager defying her father. In fact, it was probably part of an elaborate ceremony designed by Powhatan to demonstrate his power over the colonists and incorporate them into his realm. Pocahontas subsequently became an intermediary between the two peoples, bringing food and messages to Jamestown. In 1614, she mar- ried the English colonist John Rolfe. Two years later, she accompanied her husband to England, where she caused a sensation in the court of James I as a symbol of Anglo-Indian harmony and missionary success. But she succumbed to disease in 1617. Her father died the following year.
The Uprising of 1622
Once it became clear that the English were interested in establishing a per- manent and constantly expanding colony, not a trading post, conflict with local Indians was inevitable. In 1622, Powhatan’s brother and successor, Opechancanough, led a brilliantly planned surprise attack that in a single day wiped out one-quarter of Virginia’s settler population of 1,200. The surviving 900 colonists organized themselves into military bands, which then massa- cred scores of Indians and devastated their villages. By going to war, declared Governor Francis Wyatt, the Indians had forfeited any claim to the land. Virginia’s policy, he continued, must now be nothing less than the “expulsion of the savages to gain the free range of the country.”
The unsuccessful uprising of 1622 fundamentally shifted the balance of power in the colony. The settlers’ supremacy was reinforced in 1644 when a last desperate rebellion led by Opechancanough, now said to be 100 years old, was crushed after causing the deaths of some 500 colonists. Virginia forced a treaty on the surviving coastal Indians, who now num- bered less than 2,000, that acknowledged their subordination to the gov- ernment at Jamestown and required them to move to tribal reservations to the west and not enter areas of European settlement without permission. Settlers spreading inland into the Virginia countryside continued to seize Indian lands.
The destruction caused by the Uprising of 1622 was the last in a series of blows suffered by the Virginia Company. Two years later, it surrendered its charter and Virginia became the first royal colony, its governor now appointed by the crown. Investors had not turned a profit, and although the company had sent 6,000 settlers to Virginia, its white population
Powhatan, the most prominent Indian
leader in the original area of English
settlement in Virginia. This image,
showing Powhatan and his court, was
engraved on John Smith’s map of
Virginia and included in Smith’s General
History of Virginia, published in 1624.
The only portrait of Pocahontas made
during her lifetime was engraved by
Simon van de Passe in England in
1616. After converting to Christianity,
Pocahontas took the name Rebecca.
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America50
numbered only 1,200 when the king assumed control. The government in London for years paid little attention to Virginia. Henceforth, the local elite, not a faraway company, controlled the colony’s development. And that elite was growing rapidly in wealth and power thanks to the cultiva- tion of a crop introduced from the West Indies by John Rolfe—tobacco.
A Tobacco Colony
King James I considered tobacco “harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs” and issued a spirited warning against its use. But increasing numbers of Europeans enjoyed smoking and believed the tobacco plant had medicinal benefits. Tobacco became Virginia’s substitute for gold. It enriched an emerging class of tobacco planters, as well as members of the colonial government who assigned good land to themselves. The crown profited from customs duties (taxes on tobacco that entered or left the kingdom). The spread of tobacco farming produced a dispersed society with few towns and inspired a frenzied scramble for land. By the middle of the seventeenth century, a new influx of immigrants with ample financial resources—sons of merchants and English gentlemen—had taken advan- tage of the headright system and governmental connections to acquire large estates along navigable rivers. They established themselves as the colony’s social and political elite.
The expansion of tobacco cultivation also led to an increased demand for field labor, met for most of the seventeenth century by young, male indentured servants. Despite harsh conditions of work in the tobacco fields, a persistently high death rate, and laws mandating punishments from whipping to an extension of service for those who ran away or were unruly, the abundance of land continued to attract migrants. Of the 120,000 English immigrants who entered the Chesapeake region dur- ing the seventeenth century, three-quarters came as servants. Virginia’s white society increasingly came to resemble that of England, with a wealthy landed gentry at the top; a group of small farmers, mostly former indentured servants who had managed to acquire land, in the middle; and an army of poor laborers—servants and landless former indentured servants—at the bottom.
Women and the Family
Virginia, however, lacked one essential element of English society— stable family life. Given the demand for male servants to work in the tobacco fields, men in the Chesapeake outnumbered women for most
Tobacco and social change in Virginia
An advertisement for tobacco
includes images of slaves handling
barrels and tobacco plants.
51S E T T L I N G T H E C H E S A P E A K E
How did Virginia and Maryland develop in their early years?
of the seventeenth century by four or five to one. The vast majority of women who emigrated to the region came as indentured servants. Since they usually had to complete their terms of service before marrying, they did not begin to form families until their mid-twenties. The high death rate, unequal ratio between the sexes, and late age of marriage retarded population growth and resulted in large numbers of single men, widows, and orphans.
In the colonies as in England, a married woman possessed certain rights before the law, including a claim to “dower rights” of one-third of her husband’s property in the event that he died before she did. When the widow died, however, the property passed to the husband’s male heirs. (English law was far less generous than in Spain, where a woman could hold independently any property inherited from her parents, and a man and wife owned jointly all the wealth accumulated during a marriage.)
Social conditions in the colonies, however, opened the door to roles women rarely assumed in England. A widow or one of the few women who never married could sometimes take advantage of her legal status as a femme sole (a woman alone, who enjoyed an independent legal iden- tity denied to married women) to make contracts and conduct business. Margaret Brent, who emigrated to the Chesapeake in 1638, acquired land,
Processing tobacco was as labor
intensive as caring for the plant in
the fields. Here slaves and female
indentured servants work with the
crop after it has been harvested.
Women’s lives
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America52
managed her own plantation, and acted as a lawyer in court. But because most women came to Virginia as indentured servants, they could look forward only to a life of hard labor in the tobacco fields and early death.
The Maryland Experiment
The second Chesapeake colony, Maryland, followed a similar course of development. As in Virginia, tobacco came to dominate the economy and tobacco planters the society. But in other ways, Maryland’s history was strikingly different.
Maryland was established in 1632 as a proprietary colony, that is, a grant of land and governmental authority to a single individual. This was Cecilius Calvert, the son of a recently deceased favorite of King Charles I. The charter granted him “full, free, and absolute power,” including control of trade and the right to initiate all legislation, with an elected assembly confined to approving or disapproving his proposals. Although Calvert disliked representative institutions, the charter guaranteed to colonists “all privileges, franchises, and liberties” of Englishmen. While these were not spelled out, they undoubtedly included the idea of a government lim- ited by the law. Here was a recipe for conflict, and Maryland had more than its share during the seventeenth century.
Religion in Maryland
Further aggravating instability in the colony was the fact that Calvert, a Catholic, envisioned Maryland as a refuge for his persecuted coreligion- ists in England, especially the younger sons of Catholic gentry who had few economic or political prospects in England. In Maryland, he hoped, Protestants and Catholics could live in a harmony unknown in Europe. Most appointed officials were Catholic, including relatives of the propri- etor. But Protestants always formed a majority of the settlers. Most, as in Virginia, came as indentured servants.
As in Virginia, the death rate remained very high. Almost 70 percent of male settlers in Maryland died before reaching the age of fifty, and half the children born in the colony did not live to adulthood. But at least initially, Maryland seems to have offered servants greater opportunity for landown- ership than Virginia. Unlike in the older colony, freedom dues in Maryland included fifty acres of land. As tobacco planters engrossed the best land later in the century, however, the prospects for landless men diminished.
Maryland as a refuge for persecuted Catholics
Proprietary colony
53T H E N E W E N G L A N D W A Y
T H E N E W E N G L A N D W A Y
The Rise of Puritanism
As Virginia and Maryland evolved toward societies dominated by a small aristocracy ruling over numerous bound laborers, a very different social order emerged in seventeenth-century New England. The early history of that region is intimately connected to the religious movement known as “Puritanism,” which arose in England late in the sixteenth century. The term was initially coined by opponents to ridicule those not satisfied with the progress of the Protestant Reformation in England. Puritans differed among themselves on many issues. But all shared the conviction that the Church of England retained too many elements of Catholicism in its reli- gious rituals and doctrines. Puritans saw elaborate church ceremonies, the rule that priests could not marry, and ornate church decorations as vestiges of “popery.” Many rejected the Catholic structure of religious authority descending from a pope or king to archbishops, bishops, and priests. Only independent local congregations, they believed, should choose clergymen and determine modes of worship. These Puritans were called “Congregationalists.” They believed that neither the church nor the nation was living up to its ideals.
Puritans considered religious belief a complex and demanding matter and urged believers to seek the truth by reading the Bible and listening to sermons by educated ministers, rather than devoting themselves to sacra- ments administered by priests and to what Puritans considered formulaic prayers. The sermon was the central rite of Puritan practice. In the course of a lifetime, according to one estimate, the average Puritan listened to some 7,000 sermons. In their religious beliefs, Puritans followed the ideas of the French-born Swiss theologian John Calvin. The world, Calvin taught, was divided between the elect and the damned, but no one knew who was destined to be saved, which had already been determined by God. Nevertheless, leading a good life and prospering economically might be indications of God’s grace, whereas idleness and immoral behavior were sure signs of damnation.
Moral Liberty
Puritanism was characterized by a zeal that alienated many who held differing religious views. A minority of Puritans (such as those who settled in Plymouth Colony) became separatists, abandoning the Church of England entirely to form their own independent churches. Most,
The Bible and the sermon
John Calvin
What made the English settlement of New England distinctive?
Puritanism and the Protestant Reformation in England
Chapter 2 Beginnings of English America54
however, hoped to purify the church from within. But in the 1620s and 1630s, as Charles I seemed to be moving toward a restoration of Catholic ceremonies and the Church of England dismissed Puritan ministers and censored their writings, many Puritans decided to emigrate. When Puritans emigrated to New England, they hoped to escape what they believed to be the religious and worldly corruptions of English society. They would establish a “city set upon a hill,” a Bible Commonwealth whose influence would flow back across the Atlantic and rescue England from godlessness and social decay.
Like so many other emigrants to America, Puritans came in search of liberty, especially the right to worship and govern themselves in what they deemed a truly Christian manner. Freedom certainly did not mean unrestrained action, improper religious practices, or sinful behavior, of which, Puritans thought, there were far too many examples in England. In a 1645 speech to the Massachusetts legislature explaining the Puritan conception of freedom, John Winthrop, the colony’s governor, distin- guished sharply between two kinds of liberty. “Natural” liberty, or acting without restraint, suggested “a liberty to do evil.” This was the false idea of freedom supposedly adopted by the Irish, Indians, and bad Christians generally. Genuine “moral” liberty meant “a liberty to that only which is good.” It was quite compatible with severe restraints on speech, religion, and personal behavior. True freedom, Winthrop insisted, depended on “subjection to authority,” both religious and secular; otherwise, anarchy was sure to follow. To Puritans, liberty meant that the elect had a right to establish churches and govern society, not that others could challenge their beliefs or authority.
The Pilgrims at Plymouth
The first Puritans to emigrate to America were a group of separatists known as the Pilgrims. They had already fled to the Netherlands in 1608. A decade later, fearing that their children were being corrupted by the surrounding culture, they decided to emigrate to Virginia. In September 1620, the Mayflower, carrying 150 settlers and crew (among them many non-Puritans), embarked from England. Blown off course, they landed not in Virginia but hundreds of miles to the north, on Cape Cod. Here the 102 who survived the journey established the colony of Plymouth. Before landing, the Pilgrim leaders drew up the Mayflower Compact, in which the adult men going ashore agreed to obey “just and equal laws” enacted by representatives of their own choosing. This was the first written frame of government in what is now the United States.
A portrait of John Winthrop, first
governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, painted in the 1640s.
Freedom and subjection to authority
Plymouth colony
55T H E N E W E N G L A N D W A Y
What made the English settlement of New England distinctive?
The Pilgrims arrived in an area whose native population had recently been decimated by smallpox. They established Plymouth on the site of an abandoned Indian village whose fields had been cleared before the epi- demic and were ready for cultivation. Nonetheless, the settlers arrived six weeks before winter without food or farm animals. Half died during the first winter, and the remaining colonists survived only through the help of local Indians. In the autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims invited their Indian allies to a harvest feast celebrating their survival, the first Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims hoped to establish a society based on the lives of the early Christian saints. Their government rested on the principle of con- sent, and voting was not restricted to church members. All land was held in common until 1627, when it was divided among the settlers. Plymouth survived as an independent colony until 1691, but it was soon overshad- owed by Massachusetts Bay to its north.
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