James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson
Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage
Susan M. Hartmann
The American Promise
A History of the United States
Fifth Edition
CHAPTER 4
The Northern Colonies in the
Seventeenth Century,
1601–1700
Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's
I. Puritans and the Settlement of New England
A. Puritan Origins: The English Reformation
1. Henry VIII and the English Reformation
2. Puritans
• were Protestants who called for a genuine, thoroughgoing
Reformation; Puritanism was less an organized movement
than a set of ideals and religious principles that appealed to
dissenting members of the Church of England; they sought
to eliminate what they saw as the offensive features of
Catholicism that remained in the Church of England, such as
hierarchy and rituals
3. Waxing and Waning of Protestantism in
England
• in 1629 Charles I dissolved Parliament, where Puritans were
well represented, and initiated aggressive anti-Puritan
policies; many Puritans chose to emigrate, with the largest
number going to America.
B. The Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony
1. Pilgrims
•
endorsed separatism; they wanted to withdraw from the Church of
England, which they considered hopelessly corrupt; they first
moved to Holland in 1608.
2. William Bradford
•
leader of the Pilgrims, and he believed that America promised to
better protect their children’s piety and preserve their community;
separatists obtained permission to settle in the territory granted
to the Virginia Company; 102 immigrants boarded the Mayflower
in August 1620, and after eleven weeks at sea, they arrived in
present-day Massachusetts.
3. Mayflower Compact
4. Plymouth settlement
•
settled at Plymouth and elected Bradford their governor; the first winter was
devastating, and half of the settlers died; Wampanoag Indians rescued the
settlement that spring; Squanto taught the settlers to grow corn and told them
how to get fish; celebrated in the fall of 1621 with a feast of Thanksgiving
attended by Chief Massasoit and other Wampanoags; the settlement remained
precarious and failed to attract many other English Puritans.
I. Puritans and the Settlement of New England
C. The Founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony
1. Massachusetts Bay Company
• 1629, a group of Puritan merchants and country gentlemen
obtained a royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company
• granted land for colonization in present-day Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and upstate New York; a unique
provision permitted the government of Massachusetts to be
located in the colony rather than in England
• Puritans went from oppressed minority to self-government.
2. John Winthrop
• delivered his famous “city on a hill” sermon that proclaimed the
Puritans’ colony would set a religious example for the rest of the
world.
3. Early New England
• strengthened colonists’ desire to obey God’s laws
• more than 20,000 Puritans came to Massachusetts
• by 1640, New England had one of the highest ratios of preachers
to population in all of Christendom
• on the whole, immigrants came from the middle ranks of English
society; most were farmers or tradesmen
• only one-fifth came as indentured servants; also unlike the
Chesapeake, most immigrants arrived as families
II. The Evolution of New England Society
A. Church, Covenant, and Conformity
1. Puritan Protestantism
•
•
•
•
believed that the church consisted of men and women who had entered into a solemn
covenant with one another and with God
derived from Calvinism; Puritans believed in predestination, that God had decided before
the creation of the world which humans would receive eternal life;
only God knew the identity of these fortunate individuals, known as the “elect” or
“saints”; nothing a person did could alter his or her fate, but Puritans believed if a person
lived a godly life that his or her behavior would reflect his or her status as one of God’s
chosen few; Puritans thought that visible saints—people who passed tests of conversion
and church membership—probably, but not certainly, were among God’s elect.
2. Church
3. Strict moral laws
fines were issued for Sabbath-breaking activities such as working, traveling, or playing a
flute; religious wedding ceremonies were outlawed; elaborate clothing and finery were
prohibited.
B. Government by Puritans for Puritanism
1. General Court-made the laws needed to govern the company’s affairs.
2. Freemen and “inhabitants”
•
•
1631, all male church members were deemed freemen; only freemen could vote for
governor, deputy governor, and colonial officials; all other men were classified as
“inhabitants”; they could vote, hold office, and participate fully in town government
3. “Town meeting”
4. Land distribution
town founders apportioned land among themselves and any newcomers they permitted
to join them; the physical layout of towns encouraged settlers to look inward toward
their neighbors.
II. The Evolution of New England Society
C. The Splintering of Puritanism
1. Different visions of godliness
2. Roger Williams
• argued that forcing non-Christians to attend church constituted “false worshipping”
and “spiritual rape”
• he argued that since only God knew the truth, New England should practice
religious toleration; Winthrop banished him from the colony; he escaped
deportation back to England and settled Rhode Island.
3. Anne Hutchinson
• she expounded on the sermons of John Cotton, which stressed the covenant of
grace, the idea that individuals could be saved only by God’s grace in choosing
them to be in the elect, which contrasted to the covenant of works, the belief that
behavior can bring salvation
• Cotton’s sermons hinted that many Puritans were guilty of embracing Arminianism,
or a belief in the covenant of works; Hutchinson agreed her lectures alarmed
Winthrop, who believed she was subverting social order;
• Winthrop referred to Hutchinson and her followers as antinomians, or people
opposed to God’s law as set forth in the Bible and as interpreted by the colony’s
leaders; elders accused her of the heresy of prophesy and excommunicated her in
1638.
4. Thomas Hooker
• clashed with Winthrop over the constitution of the church;
• he believed that men and women who lived godly lives should be admitted to
church membership even if they had not experienced conversion;
• this argument had political ramifications, as only church members could vote;
Hooker led an exodus of more than 800 colonists to the Connecticut River Valley
• founded Hartford and neighboring towns which, in 1639, adopted the Fundamental
Orders of Connecticut, a quasi-Constitution.
II. The Evolution of New England Society
D. Religious Controversies and Economic Changes
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1. Puritan Revolution slows immigration to New England
2. New England’s economy
Fewer boats to New England increased the prices on scarce English goods
and cut off customers from colonial products; had to find domestic
products
fish became the most important export, and it stimulated colonial
shipbuilding.
3. Puritanism is challenged
Population continued to grow through natural increase, doubling every
twenty years
population grew faster than church membership; many children of “visible
saints” failed to experience conversion and attain full church membership
to solve this problem, in 1662, a synod of Massachusetts ministers
established the Halfway Covenant
allowed the unconverted children of visible saints to become “halfway”
church members—they could baptize their infants but could not
participate in communion or vote. New England still enforced piety,
however, as evidenced by the treatment of Quakers with ruthless severity
New England’s limited success in establishing a godly society undermined
the appeal of Puritanism
Salem witch trials only increased the gnawing doubt about the strength of
Puritan New Englanders’ faith.
III. The Founding of the Middle Colonies
A. From New Netherland to New York
1. Dutch East India Company and Henry Hudson
•
1609, the Dutch East India Company sent Hudson to look for a Northwest Passage to
Asia; he sailed the Atlantic coast and traveled up the river that now bears his name.
•
company director Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island from the Manhate Indians for
trade goods worth the equivalent of a dozen beaver pelts; New Amsterdam became the
central trading center in New Netherland but did not attract many European immigrants
were remarkably diverse in religious beliefs and ethnic origins compared to the English
settlers in New England and the Chesapeake
West India Company created resentment among the colonists by never allowing them to
form a representative government; New Netherland became New York when the English
demanded New Netherland governor Peter Stuyvesant surrender the area to the British;
•
•
2. New Netherland
B. New Jersey and Pennsylvania
1. Duke of York subdivides his grant
•
•
•
•
subdivided his land grant and gave the portion between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers
to two of his friends
the proprietors of this colony, New Jersey, quarreled and called in English Quaker William
Penn to arbitrate their dispute.
2. William Penn
settled the dispute and became interested in establishing a genuinely Quaker colony in
America
Quakers believed in an open, generous God who made his love equally available to all
people; Quaker leaders were ordinary men and women, and women assumed positions
of religious leadership; these beliefs and practices continually brought them into conflict
with the English government; Penn remained on good terms with Charles II; partly to rid
England of the Quakers, in 1681, Charles made Penn the proprietor of a new colony
called Pennsylvania.
III. The Founding of the Middle Colonies
C. Toleration and Diversity in Pennsylvania
1. English Quakers flock to Pennsylvania
• 1682 and 1685, nearly eight thousand immigrants arrived,
most of whom were artisans, farmers, and laborers.
2. Ethnic diversity
3. Peace with the Indians
• Penn was determined to live in peace with the Indians; he
dealt with Indians fairly as an expression of his Quaker
ideals; he instructed agents to purchase Indian land, respect
their claims, and deal with them fairly.
4. Religiously tolerant
• voters and officeholders had to be Christians, but the
government did not compel settlers to attend church or levy
taxes to maintain a state-sponsored church.
5. Evolution of local government
• used civil government to enforce religious morality; he had
extensive powers subject only to review by the king; he
stressed that the exact form of government mattered less
than the men who served in it.
IV. The Colonies and the English Empire
A. Royal Regulation of Colonial Trade
1. Navigation Acts
• Acts of 1650, 1651, 1660, and 1663 set forth two fundamental
rules governing colonial trade;
• first, goods shipped to and from the colonies had to be transported
in English ships using primarily English crews
• second, certain enumerated products could only be shipped to
England or to other English colonies
• affected Chesapeake tobacco more than New England and middle
colonies’ exports.
2. Colonial commerce regulated by royal supervision
• defined by regulations that subjected merchants and shippers to
royal supervision and gave them access to markets throughout the
English empire
• colonial goods counted for one-fifth of all English imports, and the
colonies absorbed more than one-tenth of English exports.
B. King Philip’s War and the Consolidation of Royal Authority
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1. Monarchy seeks greater control over colonies
Charles II took particular interest in harnessing Puritan New England; the opportunity for
a royal investigation arose after King Philip’s War.
2. King Philip’s War
1675, warfare between Indians and colonists erupted in the Chesapeake and New
England; colonists emerged triumphant from King Philip’s War; the war left New
Englanders with an enduring hatred of Indians, a large war debt, and a devastated
frontier.
3. Dominion of New England
royal investigation concluded that the colonists had deviated from English rules;
in 1684, an English court revoked the Massachusetts charter
two years later, royal officials incorporated Massachusetts and the other colonies north of
Maryland into the Dominion of New England, governed by Sir Edward Andros. In England
in 1688, the Glorious Revolution reasserted Protestant power and emboldened colonial
uprisings against royal authority in Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland
in 1689, the rebellious colonists destroyed the Dominion of New England, overthrew
Andros, and reestablished the former charter governments in both Massachusetts and
New York;
rebel governments did not last long, and the crown soon reestablished royal control of
the colonies; in 1691, Massachusetts became a royal colony, and landowners, rather than
church members, could vote in colony-wide elections.
4. Threats from New France
worried that the Catholic colony of New France menaced frontier regions by encouraging
Indian raids and by competing for the lucrative fur trade;
when the English colonies were distracted by the Glorious Revolution, the French
attacked villages in New England and New York in King William’s War
the war ended inconclusively, but it reminded colonists that along with English royal
government came a welcome measure of military security.