DIRECTIONS: Use the objective sheet below to read & understand the attached packet of information. This packet substitutes for the first 2 chapters of the textbook (designed by me and a few of the students from 02-03) and is all the information you
will need to know for our first test on Tuesday, Aug 19. The 2 readings at the end of the packet are from our textbook & will
expose you to the reading level of the text and questions. Pick 3 terms from the list below to describe in detail & explain
the significance of (about 3 sentences each) and bring them with you to class on the first day Thurs, Aug 14. I have included
a term answer (Headright System) to see how to write yours. We will spend the first day of school having students read aloud
one of their terms & practicing sample questions & answers for the test. This first test should be easy if you read & understand
the attached information. Your test on TUES, August 19 will ask you to describe in detail & explain the significance of 5 terms
I select from the list below and answer 25-30 multiple choice questions about the terms & questions listed below. If you have
problems or questions, email me starting the last week of July at
drzchowski@bssd.net
*You will receive a letter in early August explaining course fees and registration procedures for each semester—last year it was
$90.03/credit hr or $270.09 per semester. Even if fees go up, they are always 1/3 of what they are on campus. Some financial
assistance is available from UMKC based on economic need. You can start applying for this at the end of July at:
http://cas.umkc.edu/hscp/tuition-assistance.asp
**If you have questions about this reading or need help writing out your 3 terms, you may wish to come to a help session in
ST402 at BSHS anytime between 10 am & noon Wed, Aug 6 OR 3-6 pm Mon, Tues, or Wed Aug 11, 12, or 13.
You may also go to the class website (blackboard.umkc.edu); click on “Login”, type in s_amhist101 (all lower case) as User
Name, then student (all lower case) as Password. Click on HISTORY 101: American History to 1877 (FS2010 SANDBOX)
under MY COURSES. Then click on Course Content (on the left), then on Unit I (summer packet), then on “Self-Test”.
Keep answering “yes” until you see the Multiple Choice questions. Answer all the questions, then click “Submit”, then OK
until you see the answers. There is a 2nd self-test to try also—follow same procedures. To practice writing terms, click on
Quizzes on the left and choose Unit I Sample Terms. After typing in all your answers, click on “Submit” to see what a correct
response should look like. At some times the site will not be accessible because of maintenance from UMKC so try again
later.
UMKC American History 101
TEST (100 Pts) is TUES, August 19
Unit I Guide: Native Americans, European Exploration, & Colonial Settlement
Identification/Significance: Describe important characteristics & why it’s significant (important) to the period
Bering Strait
Vikings
Marco Polo
Columbus
Columbian exchange
Conquistadors
Encomienda
Primogeniture
John Smith
House of Burgesses
Roanoke (Croatoan)
Mayflower Compact
Salem Witch Trials
Joint Stock Company
FFV
established churches
Triangular Trade
power of the purse
Great Awakening
Ben Franklin
indentured servants
slave codes
John Peter Zenger
Questions to Consider: Practice writing complete answers to these so you can answer multiple choice questions on them.
1. What were the characteristics of the Native American cultures in N America and how did that make them easier to conquer?
2. Why did Europeans start exploration that led to the discovery of the New World and what impact did this have on both
cultures?
3. Compare & contrast English & Spanish exploration & settlement of the New World.
4. Compare & contrast the reasons for settlement, methods of settlement, and the religious backgrounds of the English colonies.
5. Compare & contrast the 3 groups of English colonies in terms of their physical features, economies, & cultural
characteristics.
6. What were the key characteristics of the population, economy, government, religion, culture, education, slavery, and the press
in the English colonies as a whole?
Chronology:
___
___
___
___
Vikings come to New World
Jamestown settled
Columbus arrives in New World
Asians cross land bridge into America
___
___
___
___
Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock
St. Augustine founded
Roanoke settled
“The Great Awakening”
The true discoverers of North & South
America crossed the land bridge across
the Bering Strait between Siberia &
Alaska. Then the sea level rose, isolating
the American continents. These Indians
emigrated throughout N & S America,
developing a different culture from their
distant relatives in Asia and becoming
the ancestors of the Indians with whom
Spanish explorers would later come into
contact.
NATIVE AMERICAN SETLEMENTS — Unlike the large Indian empires (Inca, Aztec, & Mayan) in
South America, no large empires or settlements existed in North America. Most Plains Indians (Sioux, Pawnee)
migrated following the buffalo & had no permanent settlements. In the Southwest, tribes such as the Anasazi
built cliff dwellings (right) and the Pueblo (left) built permanent homes out of mud & brick because they
cultivated corn. However, most tribes were very scattered & impermanent making it easier for the Europeans to
later conquer them. The only group that was more powerful was the Iroquois Confederation in the Northeast
which kept itself in power by playing off one group of Europeans against another.
FIRST EUROPEANS —
Vikings from Scandinavia were the first Europeans
to come to the New World. But as they were mainly
adventurers & sailors, they didn’t publicize their voyage. Since they mainly traveled in bands/tribes, they
didn’t stay and make permanent colonies because no
strong nation-state was behind them to encourage
settlement. So it would be the Spanish who would
later claim (incorrectly) to be the first Europeans in
the New World.
People returning from fighting the Crusades brought
back silks, spices, & many other unusual products from
the Far East. By the late Middle Ages, trade fairs had
sprung up near villages to meet the increased demand by
Europeans for goods from the Far East.
Marco Polo (left), from an Italian merchant family, spent
20 years in the Far East and China. He wrote about his
travels and, because of the newly invented printing press,
more & more people read about the gold & silks of the
East, increasing demand for these products.
Powerful merchant & banking families in the Northern Italian citystates monopolized the sea routes across the Aegean to trade with
the East; Arab merchants monopolized the land routes. So other
Europeans had to pay inflated prices to get those goods from the
East. The rulers of Portugal & Spain were willing to finance voyages of exploration in order to find other routes to the East and
lower the cost of those products.
Dias & DaGama, both sponsored by Portugal, were the first to sail around Africa &
develop trade with India. From this point on the Portuguese monopolized trade with
the Indies, making Spain look for another route to the East.
New technology made it easier and safer to
travel long distances by sea. The astrolabe (left)
allowed sailors to more accurately plot a course
at sea. The caravel (right) was a ship with a
sturdier keel that could sail more closely into the
wind (making it safer to go longer distances).
Better & more accurate maps & compasses
made captains no longer fear that they would
“sail off the edge of the earth”.
Christopher Columbus was NOT the first to believe the
world was round (most educated Europeans did) but you
could argue that his voyage proved that. By suggesting
that he could sail West to reach the East (and by revealing
that he had secret maps with information about the trade
winds that would produce a safer & faster voyage), he
convinced Ferdinand & Isabella to pay for his voyage.
When he landed on what is now Cuba, he was convinced
that he had arrived in the East Indies (off the coast of
India). It was Amerigo Vespucci who later publicized
that a New World (North & South America) had actually
been discovered.
After Columbus’ discovery, more Spaniards flocked to the New World in search of gold, fame, & land. Called conquistadors,
they wanted to conquer quickly then return to Spain with their fortunes. Cortes (left) conquered the Aztecs by pretending to be
their returning god (who had been predicted to return on that date) and by using superior weapons such as cannon. It also
helped that many Aztecs died of smallpox passed along by the Spanish. Pizzaro (right) conquered the Inca in Peru by capturing
their leader Atahualpa. He promised to free him if the Inca filled a room to the ceiling with gold & silver. When they did,
Pizzaro still executed Atahualpa but agreed to kill him before burning him if he converted to Christianity first. For these
reasons, the legend of the “Black Spaniards” spread — men who conquered but brought no benefits to the New World.
A viceroy was appointed to rule over the Spanish territories in the New World. He had to be upper
class & born in Spain. Conquistadors who came to the New World were granted an encomienda (land grant) that they
could farm and the right to use all the Indians who lived there as slaves if they would convert them to Christianity. All
Spanish explorers brought a priest with them because this was one of King Philip II’s motives: “God, Glory, & Gold”.
These “soldiers of fortune” came without wives or girlfriends so they often intermixed with native girls, creating a new race
of half-Spanish and half-Indian — the mestizos. Indians in the New World practiced a unique form of Catholicism which
incorporated many of their original native beliefs & legends.
Eventually, Indians rebelled against their forced conversion to Catholicism and other mistreatment by the Spanish. In 1680,
the Pueblo Indians revolted against Spanish rule in the Rio Grande valley (Pope’s Rebellion). This began when Pueblo Indians killed the Spanish Governor and the Spanish herded Indians inside the Catholic church and set it on fire, burning them
alive. (ruins shown above) In the resulting chaos, Pueblo Indians all over the Southwest burned Catholic churches and killed
Spanish settlers. It took the Spanish 50 years to regain control of their territory of New Mexico with Santa Fe as its capital.
Gold, Silver
Corn, potatoes, beans, vanilla, chocolate
syphilis
tobacco, cotton
wheat, sugar, rice, coffee
horses, cows, pigs
smallpox, measles, plague, influenza, typhus, scarlet fever
African slaves
The phrase Columbian Exchange
is used to explain the results of
contact between the New World (N
& S America) and the Old World
(Europe). As the Spanish controlled all of South America, Central America, & much of what is
now the southern US, they produced so much food for Europe
that Europeans became healthier &
lived longer. An unexpected negative consequence was the introduction of the syphilis disease to
Europe by conquistadors returning
home from the New World. Horses
sent from Europe revolutionized
the Plains Indian culture, giving
them an advantage in attacking
their enemies. But in the century
after Columbus, almost 90% of the
Native Indians were wiped out by
war and disease. Be familiar with
which products were sent in each
direction.
The Spanish did not have to fear competition from the Portuguese
because both Catholic nations had agreed to a compromise by the
Pope where they split the New World Empire — Portugal got
Brazil & islands off the coast of Africa but was much more interested in the slave trade than in settlement. Because the Spanish
were worried about the French moving in on their territory, they
built a fortress (Castello San Marco, to the right) & a Catholic
mission (Nombre de Dios) at St. Augustine (in what is now
Florida). St. Augustine has the distinction of being the oldest
permanent European settlement in North America.
Spain quickly amassed great wealth, draining the New World of all the
gold & silver the conquistadors could find: the king always got his cut.
But so much gold dumped onto the European market led to a huge inflation rate as Spaniards spent their wealth on luxuries imported from other
nations. This dependence on colonial gold & lack of economic development in Spain would eventually weaken the Spanish empire.
British sea dogs (glorified pirates) attacked Spanish galleons in the open
sea when they were on their way back heavy with New World gold. Sea
dogs such as Sir Francis Drake (far left) & Sir Walter Raleigh (near left)
were secretly supported by Queen Elizabeth because Britain did not
have the imperial wealth of Spain. She benefited from the thefts while
assuring Philip of Spain that she had nothing to do with the piracy.
In 1588, the English defeated
the Spanish Armada. England would now become the
#1 naval power in the world,
encouraging exploration.
Queen Elizabeth did not have
supplies of gold & silver to
finance exploration so jointstock companies were
formed to raise the money.
Like corporations, they sold
stock to finance the voyage,
then recruited people to settle
in the colony. These settlers
contracted to send goods
back to the company by ship;
investors got a share of the
profits based on their original
shares.
The Enclosure Acts
pushed small farmers
(especially Puritans)
off their land and into
the major cities where
they were spoken of as
a surplus population.
English laws of primogeniture
required that large landowners
(like of the manor to the right)
keep their estates intact by leaving everything to the oldest son
instead of dividing up the property. This meant that second or
third sons had to go elsewhere
to “make their fortunes”, such
as the New World.
Sir Walter Raleigh recruited the first group of settlers to colonize the
New World for England on a commission from Queen Elizabeth. They
settled on Roanoke Island, along the coast of what is now Virginia but
left in frustration after a few months. Raleigh found a new group of
settlers to repopulate the colony under the leadership of John White.
White sailed back to England, planning on returning with more supplies
but in the meantime the Spanish Armada was attacking England and he
stayed to help defend England. When he finally returned to the colony,
he found that it had been deserted and there was no sign of the original
settlers except for the word “Croatoan” carved on one of the poles of the
overgrown fort. Even though they searched, no one ever found the settlers.
One theory is that they were attacked by Indians (but the Croatoan Indians had been a friendly tribe). Another theory is that there had been a
drought so the colonists voluntarily joined with an Indian tribe & migrated elsewhere in order to survive. The drought theory is supported
by tree ring evidence and there are descendants of the Hatterat Indians
who had blue eyes (signs of intermarriage with the colonists). All that
survived were Captain John White’s sketches of the local Indians from
his first trip to Roanoke.
Another settlement was started a few years later by the Virginia Company, further inland along the James
River. Most of the settlers were “second sons” of aristocrats who were unused to physical labor. The colony
might have starved in the harsh winter had it not been for John Smith (below right) who took charge with the
cry “He who shall not work shall not eat.” This is the same John Smith who had been saved from execution
by Chief Powhatan of the neighboring Indians by Pocahontas, the chief’s daughter. But relations with
Powhatan’s tribe soon worsened as colonists stole food from the Indians when bad times came. According to
the record, crops were so bad that settlers ate dogs, cats, & rats and even dug up corpses. English settlers
raided Indian supplies, burned their village, & eventually kicked them out of the area. War with the Indians
was only ended by an arranged marriage between Pocahontas and local tobacco planter John Rolfe. Tobacco
ended up saving Virginia, becoming its main crop (below left) and a sure seller back home in Europe but it
needed a plantation system. Indians were an unreliable labor source so the colonists imported the first black
slaves to do the work. Ironically, Pocahontas would die of smallpox a few years later on a trip to England.
SPANISH
Who could settle
Catholics only
ENGLISH
All religions
Relations with
Indians
Slavery-intermarriageconvert to Catholicism
Push off land
Role of family
Brought no women
Brought family
Amount of selfgovernment
Viceroy-encomienda
How financed
Where
Similarities
Ruler
SE to SW
Chartered
Joint Stock
SE to NE
•Both failed to appreciate native culture
•Europeans tried to conquer nature,
Indians tried to live within it & respect it
English colonies in the New
World differed from Spanish colonies because the English encouraged the minority religions to
leave England & settle in the New
World. Instead of mixing with the
Indians, English settlements
tended to isolate themselves from
the Indians (except when they
needed food) & then took their
land. Many English settlers came
as entire families, looking to make
a new start in life. Once in the
New World, they had a high degree of independence from the
British government as long as they
supplied the required products.
Although land was granted by the
ruler, the voyages were financed
by private companies rather than
the ruler.
The Pilgrims, like all Puritans, were upset with the Church of
England because it admitted all as members, not just “visible
saints”. They were called “Separatists” because they wanted to
separate from the Church total instead of reforming it. Led by
William Bradford, they first traveled to Holland, then contracted
with the Virginia Company to settle in the New World. During
the voyage in 1620, they were blown off course & ended up in
New England instead where they established their colony. Before leaving their ship “The Mayflower”, all the Pilgrims (others
came with them who were not of their religion) signed “The
Mayflower Compact”. This was not actually a constitution but
as an agreement to go by majority rule, it was a step toward selfgovernment. From this came town meetings where the males
made their own laws for the colony. Since they brought their
families with them, they never considered returning to England
(where they had faced persecution) despite the harsh conditions
of the New World. After being helped by a friendly Indian tribe
and introduced to corn, they celebrated the first Thanksgiving.
The Salem
witch trials inspired the
phrase “witch
hunt” for government persecution with little
or no evidence.
Unlike the Pilgrims, the settler at Massachusetts Bay were not Separatists but
remained a part of the Church of England, hoping to “purify it” from within.
They got a royal charter to establish the Massachusetts Bay Company and over
1000 sailed to New England to establish a “city upon a hill” where they would
build a holy society as a model for mankind led by Governor John Winthrop. But
this was not a democracy. Non-church members could not vote but still had to
pay taxes to the government-supported church. Persecuted themselves back in
England, the Puritans did not tolerate dissenters in their colony. They fined &
flogged Quakers and banished Anne Hutchinson (who said the truly saved didn’t
need to obey God’s laws) and Roger Williams (a minister who demanded separation from the Church of England, total separation of Church & States, & payment
to the Indians for stolen land). Williams would go on to found Rhode Island the
first colony to allow total religious freedom.
The Scarlet Letter describes the
abuses & hypocrisy of Puritan society.
Began when young girls accused older
women of bewitching them.
Tried & convicted by religious court.
130 tried & imprisoned; 19 hanged,
1 pressed to death, 2 dogs hanged
Accusers were from the poorer families,
accused witches were prosperous merchant class
Ended when governor’s wife accused
CONTRIBUTING FACTORS
—Jeremiads - fiery sermons from pulpit
—English rulers extended voting rights to
non-Puritans
—Halfway Covenant - extended partial
church membership to those not converted
The first of England’s colonies was Virginia,
which began with the Jamestown settlement. The
settlers planted tobacco, incredibly popular back in
England. They planted so much of that, leading to
the plantation system, that they often had to import
their own food. Virginia also created the first
representative government in the New World, the
House of Burgesses (below), a colonial assembly
where land-owning colonists elected others to
represent them in making local
Virginia, like most of the Southern colonies, was dominated by the
laws.
planter aristocracy. In Virginia, these large plantation owners were
called the FFV (First Families of Virginia). They relied almost entirely on slave labor, making it almost impossible for small farmers to
successfully compete with them, and dominated the government and
the economy.
Other Virginians resented the control of the FFV (they made up 70%
of the legislature). In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a large group of frontiersmen (& former indentured servants) in Bacon’s Rebellion
(above). Complaining that the governor did not provide enough protection from the Indians, they drove him out of the capital, Jamestown,
& burned it to the ground. Clearly a strong social class structure was
developing and colonists who came to the New World to escape that
resented it. The new capital was built at Williamsburg (below).
Georgia began as an experimental colony under the leadership of
James Oglethorpe. He received a royal charter to establish Georgia
(named for the king) as a buffer colony to protect the English
colonies from attack from Spanish Florida and from French
Louisiana. Oglethorpe used much of his personal fortune to
establish Georgia as a place for people imprisoned back in England
to “get a fresh start in the New World”. In England they had been
humiliated in the stocks & pillories (right) and then imprisoned
when they couldn’t pay their debts.
Quakers were discriminated against in England because
they refused to pay taxes to the Church of England and
refused to serve in the military. William Penn converted
to this religion and, when granted a large area of land in
the New World in payment for a loan that his father had
made to the English king, he decided to establish Pennsylvania as a haven for the Society of Friends (Quakers).
He recruited craftsman & immigrants to his colony by
giving away land. Pennsylvania had a representative
assembly & freedom of worship, with the death penalty
only given for treason & murder. The Quakers were
known for their Sunday “meetings” (right) where they
worshipped democratically with no leader and for their
friendly relations with the Indians. Its easy policy
toward immigrants made it one of the most ethnically
diverse colonies.
Henry Hudson originally claimed
this area for the Dutch. The Dutch
East India Company then bought
Manhattan Island from the local Indians for some beads and renamed
it New Amsterdam. It was run as a
company town and dominated by
patroons, large local landowners.
Governor Peter Stuyvesant & these
aristocrats refused to allow any
form of representative government.
When the English took over in
1664, they were welcomed by the
locals. The English renamed the
area New York and gained one of
the most important ports in the
colonies. Large landowning families still dominated the colony.
Religious
freedom
Little religious tolerance; mostly Puritans
Most live in cities
Town meetings allowed
input from locals
Protestant work ethic
Subsistence agriculture
Fishing, shipbuilding, &
trading
Stressing the importance of
education
Slavery impractical,
farms too small,
indentured servants
used
Economic
opportunity
Economic
opportunity
Penn: Religious
Freedom
Few large cities; more
rural
Main religion was
Church of England
Controlled by aristocracy
(FFV)
Most ethnically
diverse region
More religious
tolerance & more
democratic than
others
Plantation Agriculture
Cash crops: tobacco, cotton,
rice
First Families of Virginia —
aristocrats who controlled the
government & economy, descended from first settlers
Breadbasket of the 13
colonies — wheat,
corn, other grains
Mix of rural & urban
Slavery, first
Indians then
Africans; some
colonies had more
blacks than whites
Mostly
indentured
servants,
few slaves
The English New World colonies were a place of abundance and growth. The
overall American population doubled every 25 years, reaching 2.5 million by
1775. The average age in 1776 was 16, showing that people were having lots
of children. The largest American cities were Philadelphia, Boston, and New
York City. The South remained mostly rural & agricultural. Roads & travel
were long & dangerous. Travelers often said a prayer before leaving on a journey.
Americans had a much better standard of living than many Europeans at the
time. They had plenty of meat (game from the forests) when most Europeans
did not. Food was so plentiful, it was once said that “Hungry people are lazy
or sickly.” Jobs such as carpentry were in high demand due to American expansion. Many carpenters earned 3 times their European wages. In such a lush
economic environment, rags to riches stories were common. It was easy to
move up in economic status in the New World.
Ministers were at the top of the social scale, and the most respected. Lawyers were viewed with suspicion & were not considered useful until more conflicts with Britain developed. Doctors were poorly trained and used bleeding to “cure” most diseases. So many of their patients died that they were not high on
the social scale either.
Taverns were the major gathering place for
gossip, socializing, & political discussions
and would later become the plotting ground
for the American Revolution.
In the America colonies, 90% of the people were farmers.
New Englanders were paid a bounty to sell tar, pitch,
resin and turpentine to England, which was very dependent on these products for its navy.
Americans needed a market to sell their plentiful raw
materials. England expected the colonies to provide raw
materials for the industries of England. Therefore, manufacturing was discouraged in the British colonies.
The most famous trade route was the triangular trade.
New England rum
was used to purchase
African
slaves. The slaves
were then
sold in the West
Indies for molasses,
which was then
shipped back to New
England to make
more rum.
By 1776, each colony had become a British royal colony
The colonial governments consisted of a governor as well as a bicameral (two house) legislature. The lower house was elected; the
upper was appointed. Citizens also had self-taxation through this
legislative representation to pay for needs of people in the colony.
Most colonies had voter restrictions based upon
religion and/or property ownership.
Many New England colonies held town meetings.
The Virginia House of Burgesses (below right) was the first
representative government in the New World.
Colonial legislatures had the
power of the purse. Colonial
governors were appointed by the
English king but he allocated no
money for their salaries. Since
colonial legislatures paid the
governor’s salary, they could
effectively blackmail him by
refusing to pay his salary unless he
agreed not to veto laws they
passed.
Many colonial governments had established
churches, meaning you had to pay taxes to them
whether or not you were a member. The Congregationalist Church (from the Puritan) was the established church in most New England colonies.
The Anglican Church (Church of England) was
the established religion of Southern colonies.
In the 1700’s, America experienced a “Great
Awakening” in the religious world. It was the
first mass movement of the Colonial Era.
Contrary to the belief that good works were necessary to attain God’s grace, “New Light” revivalists relied on emotional revival meetings &
mass conversions. Thought, belief, & trust in
God was all that was needed. These revivalists
(led by George Whitefield, left) led to the Baptist
& Methodist religions in the colonies.
A prominent Puritan preacher
of the time was Jonathan
Edwards (right), who penned
the famous sermon “Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God.”
He used his powerful, “fire and
brimstone” speeches to
frighten sinners onto the
straight and narrow path.
Indians
Ever since arriving in the new world, Indians had not been a reliable work force for
the Europeans. As soon as Indian populations came in contact with whites, they
would contract diseases and die in large
numbers. Indians also did not do well in
captivity, causing many problems for the
slave owners. They also could easily escape
& join neighboring tribes who later became
a threat to white settlements (right). This
lead to the importation of some indentured
servants and numerous slaves from Africa.
Below, indentured servants harvest tobacco.
Indentured Servants
Many settlers came to America to get a new
start because of low wages & a poor economy in England. If they could not pay their
passage, they could become indentured servants by agreeing to work for so many
years to pay off the cost of their trip. Under the Headright system, For every person that a colonist paid the ocean voyage
for and took as a servant, the colonist
would receive 50 acres of land. At first,
when a servant had worked off his indenture, he was given an acre of land or could
buy it at low cost. But as the good land
was being used up, sponsors were less
likely to give land away. Some indentured
servants who broke the rules were given
more years to serve. Once freed, these
indentured servants became the new lower
class. It was former indentured servants
who had led Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia.
However as soon as wages in England
began to increase, indentured servitude
declined in popularity, forcing an increase
in the importation of African slaves so that
they became the major labor source in the
South.
As indentured servitude & convict labor declined, the need for slaves rapidly increased.
Africans were captured by enemy tribes in their native lands and sold to Portuguese slave
traders who brought them across the ocean (in the ship’s hold packed head to foot—see
below) over a route called the Middle Passage. Many slaves perished on the ocean voyage due to disease and horrible living conditions. Once in the New World, slaves were
sold at auction (below left). Slaves were needed in America, especially the South, in order to work on tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton plantations. At first, slavery wasn’t permanent, following a format much like indentured servitude where blacks could buy their way
out of slavery or where slavery only lasted for their lifetime.
But by 1650, most British New World colonies passed slave codes:
Slavery was for life.
A child of a slave would also become a slave
It was illegal to teach a slave to read or white
Slaves were also at the mercy of their owners. If a master needed to sell a slave for extra income, it would
often be done without regard to a slave’s family. Slaves were Christianized in order to convince them to
obey their owners.
Slaves also made many contributions to today’s American culture, including jazz, spirituals, instruments
like the banjo, and words that are today common in everyday speech (below right). In South Carolina,
slaves outnumbered whites 2 to 1 and in Virginia they were half the population.
In southern colonies, wealthy aristocrat slave owners with large plantations could dominate the economy &
government compared to most of the population who were small farmers with no slaves.
During the colonial era, the arts were not a major
part of life; Many people were too poor to buy
books and too busy working to read them.
One rare author of this time was Phyllis
Wheatley, a former slave turned poet. She was
taught to read by her master’s mistress, despite
legal restrictions on slaves.
Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was one
of the few widely-read books of the time. It emphasized thrift, industry, morality, and common
sense with his humorous sayings about life.
Typical Franklinisms were:
“Fish and visitors stink
after three days” and
“Honesty is the best
policy.” Franklin was also
known as the first American scientists with inventions such as bifocal
glasses, the Franklin stove,
& the lightning rod.
As the population grew, so did
the need for education. The first
colonial schools were places to
train ministers. Universities and
schools emphasized discipline,
the study of classical languages,
and above all, religion. Many
New England colonies required
towns and provinces to establish
public schools at taxpayer expense
but the rural South was more likely
to use private tutors so only the
wealthy were educated.
Harvard—America’s First University,
established to train Puritan ministers
Since entire books were difficult to obtain and
rather expensive in the American Colonies, the
common man often turned to literature produced
by hand-operated printing presses in their home
town. These presses were responsible for the production of pamphlets, leaflets, journals, and
newspapers (and Franklin’s Almanac). By the
time of the Revolution, there were about 40
weekly, one sheet newspapers available in America. Despite this, news, especially overseas happenings, lagged weeks behind.
During this time, freedom of the
press was questioned. In 1734, John
Peter Zenger and his New York
newspaper were charged with seditious libel for printing an embarrassing story about that state’s governor.
Zenger and his attorney argued that
as long as the information printed
was true, the story was not libel. The
jury went against existing laws and
sided with Zenger, establishing our
American tradition of freedom of the
press. This would later become the
basis for our first amendment belief
that a free press is necessary for a democracy to work. In England today
it is still considered libel if it harms
the person’s reputation, even if it is
true, and you may have to pay him
damages.
English in language & customs
mostly Protestant (except Catholics in Maryland)
Some degree of ethnic & religious tolerance (except Massachusetts
Bay)
Great social mobility (easy to move up in class & economic
opportunity
Fairly cheap land, plentiful, always could move west
All had some type of representative government (not democratic by
our standards today but much more so than in Europe of the time)
Isolated from British rule & control by 3000 miles but expected to
benefit England economically by providing needed raw materials
All except Pennsylvania had little tolerance for Indians, viewing
them as savages & heathens who needed to be Christianized but
needed to be pushed off their land so that the “new Americans”
Here is a sample answer for the term HEADRIGHT SYSTEM:
Some people wanted to come to the New World but didn’t have the money to pay for the passage. So the
Headright System was started where a colonist already living in the New World could sponsor the way of
a person who could not otherwise afford to come. The sponsor would then benefit in two ways: he received 50 acres of land in the New World from the British government and the person he sponsored
would have to work for him for a set number of years to pay off the cost of the trip. Significance:
This allowed more people to come to the New World and provided a major labor source there.
Below is a section from our textbook describing & analyzing Bacon’s Rebellion. The vocabulary and sentence structure is typical
of what you will find throughout your textbook — above a 12th grade reading level. You should use a dictionary to look up words
you do not understand as this may make a big difference in how you interpret the meaning of a sentence or paragraph in your textbook. We will not be discussing in class all items from the textbook that will be on each test, so it is very important that you keep
up with all of the reading and that you understand it. As you read this section, ask yourself “What were the causes of Bacon’s Rebellion, what happened in it, and what were the significant consequences of it?” Then answer the questions following the reading.
_____ 1. Bacon’s Rebellion took place due to
(A) African American slaves escaping and creating an insurrection
(B) American elites critical of legislation by the British parliament
(C) the land needs of impoverished white freeholders and aspiring tenants
(D) French attempts to dislodge English colonists from Virginia
_____ 2. Bacon’s Rebellion was
(A) a protest by New Yorkers against their loss of civil rights in the Dominion of New England
(B) a slave revolt that so frightened Southerners that they instituted harsher laws for protection
(C) an Indian uprising
(D) generated by class conflict and exacerbated by political corruption
_____ 3. Bacon’s Rebellion inadvertently contributed to
(A) the decline of the planter elite in Virginia
(B) the end of representative government in the House of Burgesses
(C) the expansion of African slavery
(D) better relations with local Indian tribes
_____ 4. Bacon’s Rebellion resulted in all of the following EXCEPT
(A) equality between the landed planters and yeomen
(B) tax cuts for yeomen
(C) the expansion of African slavery
(D) the expansion of English settlement on Indian lands
One of the skills you will practice regularly in this course is reading primary and secondary
sources and interpreting them to draw conclusions about and gain insight into a specific
topic. The next page is a primary source about the Atlantic slave trade . Read this carefully
and then try to answer the questions under ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE. As you read,
think about:
Who is the author & what is his background?
What is the purpose of the document? What do you think is the goal of the author & how can you tell?
Who was involved in the slave trade & what were the steps in it?
What was this man’s reaction to the slave trip & his passage?
Why didn’t Africans escape before arriving in the New World (Barbados)?
____ 1. What BEST describes the controversy about Olaudah Equiano’s writing?
(A) He actually participated in the slave
trade and captured and sold slaves himself
(B) He might not have been born in Africa
and may not have experienced the Middle Passage
(C) He was never a slave at all and was
born a free man in the northern colonies
(D) He greatly exaggerated the conditions
of the Middle Passage
_____ 2. According to this passage, all of
the following are true of Equiano’s experience with slavery EXCEPT
(A) His family owned slaves themselves
(B) He was unable to eat because of the
smell & fear, then was punished for not
eating
(C) He jumped over the side of the ship and
tried to swim to shore
(D) He was first captured by other Africans
and was sold as a slave several times
before being shipped to the New World
_____ 3. From the tone of this passage and
from what you know about Equiano’s later
life, what does he want people who read this
to do?
(A) help work to end slavery
(B) go to Africa to see how much better life
there is for blacks
(C) become a ship’s captain
(D) work to improve conditions on the
slave ships