Cover Slide
The American
Pageant
Chapter 3
Settling the Northern
Colonies, 1619-1700
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The Protestant Reformation
Produces Puritanism
• 1517 - Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to
the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral
– Included several explosive ideas including
– Bible alone was the source of God’s word (not the
Bible and the church or pope)
– People are saved simply by faith in Christ alone (not
by faith and good works)
– Actions ignited the Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation
Produces Puritanism
• John Calvin preached Calvinism which stressed
“predestination” (those going to Heaven or hell has already
been determined by God).
– Doctrines were stated in the 1536 document entitled Institutes
of the Christian Religion
– Stated that all humans were weak and wicked
– Only the predestined could go to heaven, no matter what
– Calvinists were expected to seek “conversions,” signs that
they were one of the predestined, and afterwards, lead
“sanctified lives”
– Calvinists famous for working hard, dusk to dawn, to “prove”
their worthiness
– Impact of Calvinism - vividly stamped on the psyche of
Americans, and been called the “Protestant Work Ethic”
The Protestant Reformation
Produces Puritanism
• In 1530s England, King Henry VIII - breaking ties with the Holy
Roman Catholic Church
• Puritans - influenced to totally reform (“purify”) the Church of
England
• The Puritans
– Believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to
church membership
– Separatists vowed to break away from the Church of
England (AKA, the Anglican Church) because the “saints”
would have to sit with the “damned.” (became the Pilgrims)
– King James I, father of the beheaded Charles I, harassed the
Separatists out of England
• he thought that if people could defy him as their spiritual
leader, they might defy him as their political ruler
The Pilgrims End Their
Pilgrimage at Plymouth
• The Pilgrims (Separatists) - from Holland - fled to after they had
left England
– Concerned that their children were getting too “Dutchified”
– Wanted a place where they were free to worship their own
religion and could live and die as good Pilgrims
• Negotiated with the Virginia Company
– Separatists left Holland and sailed for 65 days at sea on the Mayflower
– Arrived 1620 off the rocky coast of New England (only one person died
and one person was born)
– Less than half of the pilgrims on the Mayflower were actually
Separatists
– Contrary to myth, the Pilgrims undertook a few surveys before
deciding to settle at Plymouth, an area far from Virginia
– The Pilgrims became squatters - people without legal right to
land and without specific authority to establish government
The Pilgrims End Their
Pilgrimage at Plymouth
• Captain Myles Standish (AKA, “Captain Shrimp”) proved to be
a great Indian fighter and negotiator
• Before leaving the ship - Pilgrims signed the Mayflower
Compact - a set of rules to obey
– Wasn’t a constitution but did set the standard for later
constitutions
– Set the first step toward self-rule in the Northern colonies
• Winter of 1620-21, only 44 of the 102 survived
• 1621 brought bountiful harvests and the first Thanksgiving
• William Bradford
– chosen governor of Plymouth 30 times in the annual elections
– great leader
– helped Plymouth to survive and trade fur, fish, and lumber
• 1691 - Plymouth merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Bay Colony Bible
Commonwealth
• 1629 - non-Separatist Puritans got a royal charter from England
to settle in the New World
– Secretly, they took the charter with them and later used it as a
type of constitution
• Was a well-equipped group of 11 ships that carried about 1,000
people to Massachusett
• John Winthrop was
– elected governor or deputy governor for 19 years
– helped Massachusetts prosper in fur trading, fishing, and
shipbuilding
Building the Bay Colony
• After the establishment of the colony
– Franchise (right to vote) was extended to all “freemen” - adult
males who belonged to the Puritan congregations (later called
the Congregational Church)
• two fifths of the male population
– Un-churched men and women weren’t allowed into matters of
government
• The provincial government was not a democracy
– Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted the common people,
calling democracy the “meanest and worst” of all forms of
government
• Religious leaders wielded powerful influence over the admission
to church membership
Building the Bay Colony
• John Cotton, a prominent clergy member, was educated at
Cambridge and had immigrated to Massachusetts to avoid
persecution for his criticism of the Church of England
• Congregations could hire and fire their ministers at will
• There were laws to limit Earthly pleasures
– a fine of twenty shillings for couples caught kissing in public
• The Puritan concept of Hell was very serious, frightening,
and very real
– Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom,” written in
1662, sold one copy for every twenty people
Trouble in the Bible
Commonwealth
• Tensions arose in Massachusetts
• Quakers were fined, flogged, and/or banished
• Anne Hutchinson - very intelligent, strong-willed, talkative
woman
– claimed that a holy life was no sure sign of salvation and that
the truly saved need not bother to obey the law of either God
or man. A notion known as “antinomianism”
– Tried in 1638 - boasted that her beliefs were directly from God
– Banished from the colony and eventually made her way to
Rhode Island
– Died in New York after an attack by Indians
Trouble in the Bible
Commonwealth
• Roger Williams
– Radical idealist
– Hounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean and
complete break with the Church of England
– Went on to deny that civil government could and
should govern religious behavior
– Banished in 1635, and led the way for the Rhode Island
colony
The Rhode Island “Sewer”
• People who went to Rhode Island weren’t necessarily similar
– Were unwanted everywhere else
– Were against special privilege
• “Little Rhody” later known as “the traditional home of the
otherwise minded”
• Secured a charter in 1644
New England Spreads Out
• 1635 - Hartford, Connecticut founded
• Reverend Thomas Hooker
– led an energetic group of Puritans west into Connecticut
• 1639 - settlers of the new Connecticut River colony drafted the
Fundamental Orders
– Basically a modern constitution
• 1638 - New Haven founded and merged into Connecticut
• 1623 - Maine absorbed by Massachusetts and remained so for
nearly a century and a half
• 1641 - New Hampshire absorbed into Massachusetts
– 1679 - king separated the two and made New Hampshire a
royal colony
Puritans Versus Indians
• Before 1620 - epidemic swept through the Indians, killing over ¾
• Indians tried to befriend the Whites
– Squanto, a Wampanoag, helped keep relative peace
• 1637 - after mounting tensions exploded
– English settlers and the Pequot tribe fought - Pequot War
• English set fire to a Pequot village on CT’s Mystic River
• Annihilating the Indians and bringing about forty years of
tentative peace
– Puritans did try to convert some of the Indians
• 1675, Metacom (called King Philip by the English) united
neighboring Indians in a last-ditched attack that failed
– King Philip’s War slowed the colonial western march
• Metacom was beheaded and quartered and
• His head was stuck on a sharp pike for all to see, his wife
and son sold to slavery
Seeds of Colonial Unity and
Independence
• 1643 - four colonies banded together to form the New England
Confederation
– Almost all Puritan
– Weak, but still a notable milestone toward American unity
• Colonies - basically allowed to be semiautonomous
commonwealths
• Charles II - restored to the British throne
– Hoped to control his colonies more firmly
– Shocked to find how much his orders were ignored by
Massachusetts
– Punishment, a sea-to-sea charter was given to rival
Connecticut (1662), and a charter was given to Rhode Island
(1663)
– 1684, Massachusetts’ charter was revoked
Andros Promotes the First
American Revolution
• 1686 - Dominion of New England created
– To bolster the colonial defense against Indians and
– To tie the colonies closer to Britain by enforcing the hated
Navigation Acts - Acts forbade American trade with
countries other than Britain
• Result - smuggling became common
• Head of the Dominion - Sir Edmund Andros
– Headquarters in Boston
– Openly showed association with the hated Church of England
– Soldiers were vile-mouthed and despised by Americans
– Responded to opposition by curbing town meetings,
restricting the courts and the press, and revoking all land
titles
– Taxed the people without their consent
Andros Promotes the First
American Revolution
• People of England staged the Glorious Revolution,
instating William and Mary to the crown
– Dominion of New England collapsed
– Massachusetts - new charter in 1691
• allowed all landowners to vote, as opposed to the
previous law of voting belonging only to the church
members
Old Netherlanders at New
Netherland
• 17th Century - Netherlands revolted against Spain
– Britain helped them gain independence
• The Dutch East India Company established
– army of 10,000 men and a fleet of 190 ships
• Dutch West India Company raided rather than traded
• 1609 - Henry Hudson ventured into Delaware and New York
Bay and claimed the area for the Netherlands
• Dutch West India Company bought Manhattan Island
• New Amsterdam a company town, run by and for the Dutch
company and in the interests of stockholders
• Dutch gave patroonships (large areas of land) to promoters who
agreed to settle at least 50 people on them
• New Amsterdam attracted people of all types and races
– One French Jesuit missionary counted 18 different languages
being spoken on the street
Friction with English and
Swedish Neighbors
• Indian’s attacked the Dutch for their cruelties
• New England hostile against Dutch growth
• Swedes trespassed Dutch reserves from 1638 to 1655
– planting the anemic colony of New Sweden on the Delaware
River
• Dutch erected a wall in New Amsterdam - for which Wall Street
is named today
• 1655 - Dutch sent one-legged Peter Stuyvesant to besiege the
main Swedish fort and he won
– ended Swedish colonial rule and left only Swedish log cabins
and place names as evidence that the Swedes were ever in
Delaware
Dutch Residues in New York
• 1664 - Charles II granted the area of modern-day New York to
his brother, the Duke of York
– British troops landed and defeated the Dutch, kicking them
out, without much violence
• New Amsterdam was renamed New York
• Dutch Legacy
– People of New York retained their autocratic spirit
– Dutch names of cities remained, like Harlem, Brooklyn, and
Hell Gate
– Architecture left its mark on buildings
– Dutch also gave us Easter eggs, Santa Claus, waffles,
sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skating, and golf
Penn’s Holy Experiment in
Pennsylvania
• Quakers (characteristics)
– “Quaked” under deep religious emotion
– Offensive to religious and civil rule
– Addressed everyone with simple “thee”s and “thou”s and
didn’t swear oaths because Jesus had said “Swear not at all,”
this last part creating a problem, since you had to swear a test
oath to prove that you weren’t Roman Catholic
– Stubborn and unreasonable, they were simple, devoted,
democratic people against war and violence
• William Penn - well-born Englishman, embraced Quaker faith
• 1681 - secured an immense grant of fertile land from the king
– Called Pennsylvania, in honor of Penn
• Modest person he insisted that it be called Sylvania
– Best advertised of all the colonies
Quaker Pennsylvania and Its
Neighbors
• Thousands of squatters lived in Pennsylvania
• Philadelphia carefully planned with beautiful, wide streets
• Penn bought land from the Indians (Chief Tammany)
– Patron saint of New York’s political Tammany Hall
– Treatment of the Indians was gentle
• Quakers could walk through Indian territory unarmed
without fear of being hurt
– Non-Quakers came to PA - mistreated the Indians
• Freedom of worship - available to everyone except for Jews and
Catholics (only because of pressure from London)
• Death penalty for murder and treason
• No restrictions on immigration, and naturalization was easy
• Quakers developed a dislike toward slavery
Quaker Pennsylvania and Its
Neighbors
• PA attracted a variety of people from all races, class, and religion
– 1700, only VA was more populous and richer
• Penn not well-liked
– Friendliness towards James II, the deposed Catholic king
– Jailed at times, and also suffered a paralytic stroke, dying full
of sorrows
• New Jersey and Delaware prospered
The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies
• New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania
– All had fertile soil and broad expanse of land
– All except for Delaware exported lots of grain
– Susquehanna River tapped the fur trade of the interior, and the
rivers were gentle, with little cascading waterfalls
– Middle colonies the middle way between New England and the
southern plantation states
• Landholdings were generally intermediate in size
– Middle colonies more ethnically mixed than other colonies
– Considerable amount of economic and social democracy
– Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, entered Philadelphia as a
seventeen-year-old in 1720 with a loaf of bread under each arm
and immediately found a congenial home in the urbane, open
atmosphere of the city.
– Americans realize that not only were they surviving, but that
they were also thriving
Makers of America: The English
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1600s - England undergoing a massive population boom
About 75% of English immigrants were indentured servants
Most of them were young men from the “middling classes”
Some fled during the cloth trade slump while others were forced
off their land due to enclosure
40% of indentured servants died before seven years were over
17th century - supply of indentured servants ran out, southerners
resolved to employ black slaves
1629 – 1642 - Puritans swarmed to Massachusetts Bay Colony
Puritans migrated in family groups, not alone
Puritans brought the way of life from England with them
– Marblehead, Mass. mostly fishermen because immigrants had
been fisherman in England
Beaver as Worker and Prey, from Chatelain's Carte Tres Curieuse de la Mer du Sud, Atlas Historique, vol. VI
Beaver as Worker and Prey, from Chatelain's Carte Tres Curieuse de la Mer du
Sud, Atlas Historique, vol. VI
This French engraving illustrates beavers' environmental impact and Indian methods
of hunting them for commercial purposes. (National Archives of Canada)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Petition for bail from accused witches, 1692
Petition for bail from accused witches,
1692
This is a copy of the actual petition
signed by the accused witches of the
Salem witchcraft trials. (Library of
Congress)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The Stadthuys of New York, 1679
The Stadthuys of New York, 1679
Its location at the mouth of the Hudson River made the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam a particularly
important colonial trading center. Furs flowed down the river from Fort Orange (near modern Albany, New
York) while guns, tools, and other trade goods traveled the other way. Both river and sea traffic were central
to the city's existence as shown in this painting of the Dutch statehouse (stadthuys) from 1679, which
overlooked the harbor. (Prints Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and
Photography. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
View of Quebec, 1699, showing Canadian Indians
View of Quebec, 1699, showing
Canadian Indians
New France's security was built on its
rising commercial economy and its close
ties to Canada's Indians. (National
Archives of Canada)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Map: Atlantic Trade Routes
Atlantic Trade Routes
By the late seventeenth century, an elaborate trade network linked the countries and colonies bordering the Atlantic Ocean.
The most valuable commodities exchanged were enslaved people and the products of slave labor.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Map: Louisiana, c. 1720
Louisiana, c. 1720
By 1720 French forts and settlements dotted the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the interior of North America. Two
isolated Spanish outposts were situated near the Gulf of Mexico.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Map: New York Manors and Land Grants
New York Manors and Land Grants
Between 1684 and 1703, English governors awarded most of the best land east of the Hudson River as manors to prominent
politicians--the majority of them Dutch--whose heirs became the wealthiest elite in the rural northern colonies.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Map: The Geography of Witchcraft: Salem Village, 1692
The Geography of Witchcraft: Salem Village, 1692
Geographic patterns of witchcraft testimony mirrored tensions within Salem Village. Accused witches and their defenders
lived mostly in the village's eastern division or in Salem town, whereas their accusers overwhelmingly resided in the
village's western sector.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Map: The Middle Colonies
The Middle Colonies
This map shows the major towns, cities, and forts in the colonies of New York, Pennsylvania (including Delaware), and New
Jersey. The prosperity of the region was based on the thriving commerce of its largest cities, Philadelphia and New York, and
on the commercial production of wheat.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Map: The Settlements of the Lower South
The Settlements of the Lower South
This map shows the towns and fortifications of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, as well as the overlapping
claims by the Spanish and the English to the territory south and west of Fort King George. The many Georgia forts reflect
that colony's role as a buffer state between rice-rich South Carolina and the Spanish troops stationed in Florida.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.