Hist 110
American Civilization I
Instructor: Dr. Donald R. Shaffer
Upper Iowa University
Lecture 4
Rural Society in New England
 The farmers of New England succeeded
in creating a society of yeoman farmers,
in which the vast majority of farmers
owned the land they worked
 Women
Had a distinctly inferior place compared
to men in rural New England
 Their status was decided by the doctrine
of coverture—a women’s legal existence
was subsumed by her father until she
married and her husband thereafter
 Any property a woman inherited became
her husband’s property
 Only widows existed legally under 18th
century law, receiving a “dower” the right
to use 1/3 of their husband’s property
during the remainder of their lifetime

 The main concern of most rural families,
beyond subsistence and the
accumulation of wealth was acquiring
enough property to provide the next
generation with a start as adults
Colonial women
engaged in quilting
Lecture 4
Decline of the Yeoman Farmer in New England

The main weakness of the New England
yeomanry was their own high fertility



New Englanders in the 18th century
tended to have large families, which
made it hard to have enough property for
each child to have a viable farm when
family land was divided between them
Some families dealt with the problem
through primogeniture, but that left the
problem of what to do for the other
children
The crisis of population growth had
certain social ramifications


Parents lost control over their older
children, as they had no or an
inadequate inheritance as leverage
Manifestations of this trend included a
decline in arranged marriages and a rise
in premarital sex and out-of-wedlock
births
Lecture 4
Inequality in the Mid-Atlantic
 It was more common for farmers in the
Mid-Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania) to be landless

About half of adult men in the MidAtlantic owned no land
 Factors explaining inequality
In New York, land in the fertile Hudson
Valley was owned by a small number of
wealthy, influential families who would
take on farmers as tenants but not sell
them the land they farmed
 In Pennsylvania, an influx of poor
immigrants and the desirability of
economies of scale in growing wheat
helped to produce inequality

 Manifestations of growing inequality in
the Mid-Atlantic included a rising crime
rate and the emergence of a
manufacturing outwork system that
sought to exploit property-less laborers
Map of the
huge estates
or “manors”
in colonial
New York’s
Hudson Valley
Lecture 4
Diversity in the Mid-Atlantic
 The Mid-Atlantic colonies became
notable for their ethnic and religious
diversity
At least 12 religious denominations in
Philadelphia in the mid-1700s
 With the exception of the Huguenots the
different groups didn’t tend to intermarry

 The tolerance of the Quakers attracted
many different groups to Pennsylvania,
but particularly:
Germans escaping military conscription,
religious persecution, and high taxes who
became a dominant group in eastern
Pennsylvania and south into the
Shenandoah Valleys
 Scots-Irish, escaping the hostility of Irish
Catholics and English officials and
landlords, became perhaps the most
significant group in frontier regions

 Increasing Quaker dominance came
under challenge in Pennsylvania
Cartoon from 1760s
questioning Quaker
dominance in Pennsylvania
Lecture 4
The Enlightenment in America
 The Enlightenment was an intellectual
movement that emphasized the ability of
human reason to understand and shape
the world
 The movement began in Europe in the
17th century but spread in the cities of
colonial America by the 18th century
 The English philosopher John Locke was
particularly influential in America in
terms of Enlightenment thought
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690): human character not fixed but can
change according to impact of
environment and experience
 Two Treatises of Government (1690):
government organized to defend natural
rights and people have a responsibility to
overthrow leaders not performing that
function
John
Locke

 Benjamin Franklin embodied the home
grown Enlightenment in America
Benjamin
Franklin
Lecture 4
The Great Awakening
 Although the Enlightenment was quite
influential in shaping American politics
and in other ways it did not have the
deep or vast impact of religion on 18thcentury Americans outside elites
 The Great Awakening was sparked by a
rise in pietism in the 1720s and 1730s,
imported from Europe and which arose
independently among New England
Congregationalists that led to religious
revivals
Jonathan
Edwards
 Key personalities in the revival
Jonathan Edwards: minister in
Northampton, Mass. who sparked a
revival with his 1741 sermon, “Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God”
 George Whitefield: traveling Anglican
minister who spread the revival in the
colonies with his preaching tours in the
1730s and 1740s

George
Whitefield
Lecture 4
Consequences of the Great Awakening
 Clergy’s authority weakened

Traveling evangelists and lay exhorters
followed Whitefield’s example
 Helped destroy tie between
denominations and geographic regions
 Denominations split between “New
Lights” (supporters of the revival) and
“Old Lights” (opponents of the revival)
 Made American religion more
voluntaristic in character
 Quakers, Anglicans, and
Congregationalists lost influence
 Baptists and Methodists gained
influence
 Revival promoted a ecumenical spirit
 New colleges formed to train clergy from
revival factions excluded from
established schools
 Most African Americans became
Christians for the first time

In turn, they imparted an enthusiastic
character to American religion
Portable pulpit used by
George Whitefield
Why would Whitefield need
this piece of equipment?
Lecture 4
The French and Indian War

This conflict was the last contest
between the British and the French over
control of North America



1754-57: France winning


Braddock’s expedition to Ft. Duquesne
a disastrous failure
After 1757: Britain winning



Immediate cause: British penetration of
the Ohio Valley (a disputed region)
French defeat expedition under George
Washington into the Ohio country
William Pitt subsidized colonial forces
and British allies in continental Europe
Beginning in 1758, the British totally
victorious in America, culminating
with the capture of Montreal in 1760
Treaty of Paris (1763): French ceded
mainland colonies to keep Caribbean
possessions
William Pitt
Architect of
British Victory
Lecture 4
The Consumer Revolution
 A combination of dominance of the
world’s oceans and innovative
manufacturing by the mid-18th century
gave the Americans colonists access to a
plethora of new consumer goods
 With generous credit terms, the
Americans soon bought 30 percent of
British manufactures each year
 The colonists helped pay for British
manufactures by expanding exports of
their tobacco, rice, indigo, and wheat
 The problem was that American exports
paid for only about 80 percent of the
value of British imports
This left the Americans chronically in
debt to the British, exacerbating tensions
 By the years before the Revolution,
Americans would make up some of their
deficit through smuggling further
heightening tensions

Lecture 4
Land Conflicts
 Between 175o and 1775, the population of
British North America doubled from 1.2
million to 2.5 million
 The growing scarcity of land combined
with overlapping and disputed claims
was a recipe for conflict
 Connecticut and Pennsylvania in
conflict over the Wyoming Valley
 Three interrelated disputes in New
York’s Hudson Valley involving Dutch
tenant farmers, Wappinger Indians,
immigrants from New England, and
manorial landowners
 Further trouble by descendants of
manorial claimants and English nobles
attempting to assert rent claims based
on long dormant 17th century charters
 American colonists headed out of the
coastal plain into the interior to avoid
the exploitive treatment, putting them in
conflict with Native Americans and the
British Crown
What is the significance of this map?
(also see table on the next page)
Lecture 4
Population Composition, Colonial America
Ancestry Distribution of the
Colonies, 1700
Pop. %
English
80
African
11
Scottish
3
Dutch
4
Misc. European
2
Ancestry Distribution of the
Colonies, 1755
Pop. %
English
52
African
20
German
7
Scots-Irish
7
Irish
5
Scottish
4
Dutch
3
Misc. European
2
Lecture 4
Western Uprisings and Regulator Movements
 Movement of colonial settlers to the
interior away from the coastal plain led
to new conflicts in the 1760s, pitting
westerners against eastern elites, leading
to the formation of extralegal regulator
movements
 Paxton Boys (Pennsylvania)

Scots-Irish settlers marched on
Philadelphia to demand public funds to
expel Indians from Western Pennsylvania
 South Carolina Regulator Rebellion

Regulators demanded more courts, fairer
taxation, and more representation in the
assembly—and accepted a compromise
settlement
 North Carolina Regulator Rebellion

Debt crisis in the interior leads frontier
settlers to rebel against eastern creditors
and tax collectors—rebellion suppressed
by the royal governor in 1771
Gov. Tryon of North Carolina
confronts the Regulators
at Hillsborough, 1768