Chapter 5
Colonial Society on the
Eve of Revolution,
1700 – 1775
Conquest by the Cradle
• Population growth
• 1700 – fewer than
300,000 people
• 1775 – 2.5 million
people (500,000 were
Africans)
• Colonist population
doubles every twentyfive years
A Mingling of the Races
• Colonial America - a
melting pot
• Foreign Groups:
• Germans – 150,000
by 1775
• Scots-Irish – 175,000
by 1775
• Africans – accounted for
nearly 20 percent by 1775
The Structure of Colonial Society
• Eighteenth-century America – a land of equality and
opportunity
• Farmers, artisans, shopkeepers and tradespeople
• The social ladder – from rags-to-riches
• Worries about the “Europeanization” of America
• Merchant princes of the New England
• Aristocratic planters in the South
The Great Awakening
• The Puritan churches and its two burdens:
• Elaborate theological doctrines
• Compromising efforts to liberalize membership
requirements
• 1730s religious movement
• Jonathan Edwards,
pastor of Northampton,
MA church began
preaching about the
concern of salvation
• George Whitefield
• Old Lights versus New
Lights
• New belief: the way to
salvation lay NOT in faithful
performance of sacraments
and rituals but simply in
opening the heart to God
through prayer.
Impact of the Great Awakening
• Ministers lost some of their authority among those who
instead studied the Bible in their own homes
• It caused a major division within churches such as the
Congregational and Presbyterian
• The “New Lights” and “Old Lights” emerged
A Provincial Culture
• Colonial art and culture largely
modeled after European tastes
• John Trumbull (1756–1843)
• John Singleton Copley (1738–
1815)
• Architecture – imported from the Old World and modified
to meet the conditions of the New World
• Benjamin Franklin – “the first civilized American”
Pioneer Presses
• Hand-operated printing presses produced pamphlets,
leaflets, and journals
• Around forty colonial newspapers were in circulation
before the time of the revolution
• “News” often lagged many weeks behind the event
• The Zenger Trial
• John Peter Zenger’s newspaper criticized New York's
royal governor
• Zenger decision – base for freedom of the press
The Great Game of Politics
• Colonial government
• Two-house legislative body
• The upper house, or council
• The lower house, or popular branch
• Self-taxation through representation
• Power of the purse
• Governors appointed by the king
• Generally able men
• Local administration
• County government – in the plantation South
• Town-meeting government – in New England
• The ballot
• Religious or property qualifications for voting
• Colonial institutions – based on democratic ideals
• Tolerance, educational advantages, equality of
economic opportunity, freedom of speech, freedom of
the press, freedom of assembly, and representative
government