1. Describe the central
action of this image?
Who are the people
depicted, and what
are they doing?
2. What does the
image suggest
about who was
attracted by central
figure’s
appearances and
his message?
I. New England’s Freehold Society
A. Farm Families: Women in the Household Economy
1. Husband the head of the household
a) In The Well-Ordered Family (1712), Reverend
Benjamin Wadsworth of Boston told women that it
was their duty “to love and reverence” their husbands
b) girls learned from their mothers to be subordinate to
their fathers
c) courts prosecuted more women than men for the
crime of fornication.
2. Wife as the “helpmate”
a) Women assumed the role of dutiful helpmates
b) they tended gardens, spun thread and yard from flax and
wool, wove cloth, knitted sweaters and stockings, made
candles and soap, churned milk into butter, fermented malt for
beer, preserved meats, and mastered dozens of other
household tasks.
3. Motherhood
a) Most women married in their early twenties
and had given birth six or seven times by their
early forties.
b) Fear of death during childbirth and the
importance of baptism for the new baby were
believed to be a reason many Puritan women
clung to the church even when fewer men
were attending.
4. Restrictions
a) No equality for women within the church
b) most women accepted such restrictions as social
norms.
I. New England’s Freehold Society
B. Farm Property: Inheritance
1. Family authority
a) Emigrants wanted farms to provide for them and their
grown children
b) landless children could be placed as indentured
servants until age 18 or 21
c) landless men hoped to climb from laborer to tenant to
freeholder.
2. Children of wealthy parents
a) Marriage portion was given when children of well-todo farmers were in their early twenties
b) consisted of land, livestock, or farm equipment
c) enabled parents to choose their children’s spouses
because economic concerns outweighed love in the
long-term interests of the extended family.
3. Marriage
a) Bride gave her husband legal ownership of her
property
b) she received a dower (a widow's share for life of her
husband's estate) right to use but not sell one-third
of the property if her husband died
c) this portion went to her children if she died or
remarried.
4. Father’s duty
a) Was to provide an inheritance for his children or
lose status in the community.
b) Some men moved their families to the frontier
where land was cheap and abundant
c) on the frontier, these men created communities of
independent property owners.
I. New England’s Freehold Society
C. Freehold Society in Crisis
1. Population increase
a) Rapid natural increase doubled New England’s population each
generation from 100,000 people in Puritan colonies in 1700 to
nearly 400,000 in 1750
b) resulted in the division and subdivision of family farms to 50
acres or less.
2. Changes in family life
a) Parents could now only provide one child with an inheritance
of land, which resulted in parents having less control over their
children
b) increase in premarital sex and marriages arranged quickly due
to pregnancy.
c) Couples tried to limit family size or moved their new families
into the frontiers of central Massachusetts, western
Connecticut, and New Hampshire and Vermont.
d) Wheat and barley were replaced with corn because it could
feed people and provide nourishment for cattle and pigs.
3. “Household mode of production”
a) System of community exchange in which families
swapped labor and goods
b) participants recorded debits and credits and
“balanced” their accounts by exchanging only small
amounts of currency, which was in short supply.
II. Diversity in the Middle Colonies
A. Economic Growth, Opportunity, and Conflict
1. Tenancy in New York
a) To attract migrants to an area inhabited largely by
wealthy Dutch and English families, landowners
granted long leases and the rights to sell
improvements (houses, barns) to subsequent
tenants
b) population grew slowly because migrants desired
to own land
c) new tools such as the cradle scythe (1750s)
increased the amount of grain produced but not
enough to enable quick profits and land
ownership.
2. Conflict in the Quaker
Colonies
a) Early Quakers had settled in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey, building simple homes and getting by with
little.
b) By the 1760s, wealthy landowners in eastern
Pennsylvania were using slaves and poor
immigrants on their farms
c) a new class of “agricultural capitalists” was
forming out of men who were landlords, speculators,
storekeepers, and large-scale farmers and whose
presence marked the growing divisions between
the social classes in the region.
II. Diversity in the Middle Colonies
B. Cultural Diversity
1. Religious and ethnic diversity
a) The city of Philadelphia had more than 12 religious
denominations present in 1748, migrants married within their
ethnic groups
b) large population of wealthy Quakers helped to shape the culture
of Pennsylvania and western New Jersey
c) pacifists purchased land from Native Americans rather than
seizing it, advocated the abolition of slavery.
2. The German Influx
a) More than 100,000 German migrants settled in the
Pennsylvania/western New Jersey region in the 17th and 18th
centuries-settled in Lutheran and Reformed communities
b) discouraged from marrying outside of their ethnicity
c) advocated married women having the legal right to hold property
and write wills, as they did in Germany.
3. Scots-Irish Settlers
a) Largest group of migrants
came from Ireland, numbering
about 115,000.
b) Some were Irish and Catholic,
but most were Scots and
Presbyterians who had faced
religious and economic
repression by the English
c) settled in Pennsylvania region
for religious tolerance
d) retained cultural practices.
II. Diversity in the Middle Colonies
C. Religion and Politics
1. Religious diversity
a) Orthodox church officials of several religions brought
intolerance to the colonies.
b) In America, religious groups enforced acceptable behavior
through communal self-discipline.
c) Quaker marriage rules maintained that couples have land
and livestock
d) wealthy Quakers encouraged marriage among their children,
while the poor remained single or married later in life.
e) As Quaker population declined by 1750s, religious groups
seeking increased political power (Lutherans and Baptists)
had bitter conflicts raging among them.
III. Commerce, Culture, and Identity
A. Transportation and the Print Revolution
1. Improved transportation networks
a) From 1700 to 1750, colonies transformed by dramatic increases
in shipping in the north Atlantic and construction of new networks
of roads
b) transportation networks carried people, merchandise,
information, and printed matter.
2. Print revolution
a) In 1695, British government surrendered the power to censor all
printed materials
b) printers in England responded with a flood of newspapers,
pamphlets, handbills, advertisements, scientific treatises, novels,
and other printed matter
c) publications crossed the Atlantic and colonies began to create
their own new publications, which facilitated the development of
colonial identity and solidarity.
III. Commerce, Culture, and Identity
B. The Enlightenment in America
1. The European Enlightenment
a) Emphasized the power of human reason
b) appealed to urban artisans, well-educated from merchant
and planter families
c) 17th-century teachings of Copernicus (earth traveled
around the sun).
d) Philosophers used empirical research and scientific
reasoning to study social institutions and human behavior
e) four fundamental principles: law-like order of the natural
world, power of human reason, natural rights of
individuals (self-government), and the improvement of
society through progress.
2. John Locke
a) English philosopher
b) wrote Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690), stressing the importance of environment and
experience on human beliefs and behavior
c) argued that change was possible through education,
thought, and action
d) His Two Treatises on Government (1690) argued
that political authority did not come from divine
right but from social compacts with the people
who have the power to change their government.
3. Franklin’s Contributions
a) Born in Boston in 1706, Franklin was the exemplar of
the American Enlightenment
b) shaped by Enlightenment literature and not the
Bible.
c) Franklin became a “deist” and believed that a
Supreme Being (or Grand Architect) had created the
world and then allowed it to operate by natural laws
but did not intervene in people’s lives
d) rejected the divinity of Christ and the authority of the
Bible
e) instead relied on “natural reason,” or the innate
moral sense to define right and wrong.
III. Commerce, Culture, and Identity
C. American Pietism and the Great Awakening
1. Pietism
a) An evangelical Christian movement that stressed a personal
relationship with God
b) attracted farmers and urban laborers; appealed to “believers
hearts rather than their minds.”
2. New England Revivalism
a) In the 1730s, Jonathan Edwards in the Connecticut River
Valley preached the helplessness of men and women
b) his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741),
spoke of “Hell’s wide gaping mouth” and his promotion of
conversions
c) successfully incited religious fervor in the region.
3. Whitefield’s Great Awakening
a) Spoke from memory about the power
of God and the need to seek
salvation
b) followers were called “New Lights” for
their claim that they felt a new light in
them after hearing Whitefield preach.
New Lights vs. Old Lights
Old Lights
New lights
• More modern• simply orthodox
members of the clergy thinking members of
who believed that the the clergy who
strongly believed in
new ways of revivals
the Great
and emotional
Awakening
preaching were
unnecessary
III. Commerce, Culture, and Identity
D. Religious Upheaval in the North
1. Old Lights and New Lights
a) Old Lights (conservative ministers) condemned the crying and
fainting of New Lights in revival meetings and the New Light
practice of women speaking in public
b) New Lights withheld tax payments from Old Light churches
c) new enthusiasm for religion led to the founding of schools for
ministers (Princeton, Columbia, Brown, and Rutgers)
d) people felt new power to be part of the religious experience.
2. Challenges to authority
a) Great Awakening challenged authority of all ministers
b) gave new sense of authority to the many who felt more
justified in expressing religious and political opinions.
III. Commerce, Culture, and Identity
E. Social and Religious Conflict in the South
1. The Presbyterian Revival
a) New Lights challenged the Church of England in the South
b) ritual displays of wealth became less meaningful as competition
existed between the churches
c) Virginia governor denounced New Lights as offering “false
teachings.”
2. The Baptist Insurgency
a) In the 1760s, thousands of white farmers converted to Baptist (adult
baptism)
b) Whitefield encouraged slaveholders to bring the enslaved to church,
but many whites opposed
c) free blacks in Virginia embraced the church’s teachings
d) Baptist churches continued to grow in spite of these pressures
e) ministers spread teachings among slaves and began to shrink the
cultural divide between white and black.
1.Who is the figure in
this portrait?
2.How did Hendrick’s
clothing express his
status and
allegiances?
3.This portrait was
painted in England.
Do you think an
American artist might
have painted
Hendrick differently?
IV. The Midcentury Challenge: War, Trade, and Social
Conflict, 1750–1763
A. The French and Indian War
1. Conflict in the Ohio Valley
a) In the 1750s, French authorities, alarmed by British inroads into
Ohio, build a string of defensive forts
b) British Gov. Dinwiddie dispatched military expedition led by George
Washington to reassert British claims
c) result was an international incident that prompted Virginian and
British expansionists to demand war.
2. The Albany Congress
a) In June 1754, delegates from British colonies met in Albany to
discuss relations with the Iroquois and French expansion
b) Franklin proposed a “Plan of Union” with a continental assembly to
manage trade, Indian policy, and defense in the western territories
to counter French expansion
c) Franklin’s effort failed; war between France and England seemed
imminent.
IV. The Midcentury Challenge: War, Trade, and Social
Conflict, 1750–1763
B. The Great War for Empire
1. The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)
a) Pitt directed the war successfully from England,
controlling both the commercial and military
strategies
b) British had stunning successes and acquired Cuba
and the Philippines from Spain, French Senegal,
Martinique and Guadeloupe (eventually returned to
France).
c) The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ending the war gave
Britain control of over half of North America, including
French Canada.
2. Pontiac’s Rebellion
a) British acquisitions in North America frightened the
Native American population, who believed that they
would lose more territory to Anglo-American
migrants
b) Inspired by a Delaware prophet (Neolin), the Ottawa
chief Pontiac, with a group of loosely affiliated tribes,
launched an uprising against the British.
c) Though Pontiac’s rebellion was put down, the
Proclamation of 1763 prohibited white
settlement west of the Appalachians
d) this edict was largely ignored by colonists.
IV. The Midcentury Challenge: War, Trade, and Social
Conflict, 1750–1763
C. British Industrial Growth and the Consumer Revolution
1. Resources
a) Since 1700, Britain had become the dominant
commercial power in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
b) By 1750, it was also becoming the first nation to use
manufacturing technology and work discipline to
expand output.
c) Mechanical power was key to Britain’s Industrial
Revolution
d) artisans designed and built water mills and steam
engines that powered a wide array of machines
a) lathes for shaping wood, jennies and looms for spinning
and weaving textiles, and hammers for iron forging.
2. American consumers
a) Soon Americans were purchasing 30 percent of all
British exports.
b) To pay for British manufactures, mainland colonists
exported tobacco, rice, indigo, and wheat
c) New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia
supplied wheat to Europeans
d) profits from exports enabled colonists to buy goods
from England.
e) Americans became more dependent on overseas
credit and markets.
IV. The Midcentury Challenge: War,
Trade, and Social Conflict, 1750–1763
D. The Struggle for Land in the East
1. Land disputes
a) Rising population of colonies meant more land
needed
b) disputes over land and tenant uprisings broke out in
Hudson River Valley of New York, in New Jersey, and
in some southern colonies.
c) Courts favored wealthy landowners
d) increasingly, the landless moved west to the
Appalachian Mountains region.
IV. The Midcentury Challenge: War, Trade,
and Social Conflict, 1750–1763
E. Western Rebels and Regulators
1. The South Carolina Regulators
a) During Seven Years’ War, Anglo-American and
Scottish settlers in South Carolina clashed with
Cherokee
b) so-called Regulators were vigilante landowners who
demanded that South Carolina’s eastern-controlled
government provide western districts with more
courts, fairer taxation, and greater representation in
the assembly for those who had settled the region.
c) The South Carolina Regulators were unsuccessful in
gaining power from the eastern elite.
2. Civil Strife in North Carolina
a) 1766 saw a significant economic crisis in North
Carolina as tobacco prices fell.
b) To avoid losing their land, mobs of farmers
(also called “Regulators”) closed the courts
and intimidated judges
c) the Regulators proposed a series of reforms,
including legislation to lower their legal fees
and taxes.
d) In May 1771, North Carolina’s royal governor
sought to suppress the rebellion;
e) violence ensued, ending with thirty men dead
and seven Regulator leaders executed.