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APUSH Part 1 Folunding the New Nation c. 33,000 BCE - 1783 CE #new england colonies #middle colonies WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY
Who started the Protestant Reformation and why? What were the effects of the Protestant Reformation?
It was Martin Luther. The Reformation began in 1517 when he nailed his protests against Catholic doctrines to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral. He denounced the authority of priests and popes and declared that the Bible alone was the source of God’s word. He ignited a fire of religious reform that licked its way across Europe for over a century, dividing peoples, toppling sovereigns, and kindling the spiritual fervor of millions of men and women—some of whom helped to found America.
Who was John Calvin and what did he do?
He was a French man and a major leader in the Protestant Reformaiton. He elaborated Martin Luther’s ideas in ways that profoundly affected the thought and character of generations of Americans yet unborn. He created Calvinism, which became the religion of the New England Puritans and other American settlers as well.
What is Calvinism?
It’s a Protestant religious tradition that emphasizes God's sovereignty, the authority of the Bible, and predestination and a branch of Protestanism. It has many branches, including the New England Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and the Dutch Reformed Church. All of these branches had settlers move to America. It provided comfort to the economically disadvantaged.
What are the Institutes of the Christain Religion?
Calvin spelled out his basic doctrine in a learned Latin tome of 1536, entitled Institutes of the Christian Religion. God, Calvin argued, was all-powerful and all-good. Humans, because of the corrupting effect of original sin, were weak and wicked. God was also all-knowing—and he knew who was going to heaven and who was going to hell.
What is predestination?
It’s the belief that since the first moment of creation, some souls—the elect—had been destined for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment. Good works could not save those whom predestination had marked for hell. However, the elected couldn’t count on their predetermined slavation and lead lives of wild, immoral abandon as no one could be sure of their status in the heavenly ledger.
What is conversion?
The receipt of God’s free gift of saving grace. Calvinists constantly sought in themselves and others for signs of conversion. It was thought to be an intense, identifiable personal experience in which God revealed to the elect their heavenly destiny. Thereafter they were expected to lead “sanctified” lives, demonstrating by their holy behavior that they were among the “visible saints.”
Who was King Henry VIII and what did he do?
He was king of England and broke ties with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s during the Protestant Reformation and made himself head of the Church of England.
Who are the Puritans?
People who wanted to undertake a total purification of English Christianity. Many of them came from the commercially depressed woolen districts. As time went on, Puritans grew increasingly unhappy over the slow progress of the Protestant Reformation in England. They wanted to see the Church of England wholly de-catholicized.
Who were the Separatists?
The most devout Puritans, including those who eventually settled New England, believed that only “visible saints” (that is, persons who felt the stirrings of grace in their souls and could demonstrate its presence to their fellow Puritans) should be admitted to church membership. But the Church of England enrolled all the king’s subjects, which meant that the “saints” had to share pews and communion rails with the “damned.” Appalled by this unholy fraternizing, a tiny group of dedicated Puritans, known as Separatists, vowed to break away entirely from the Church of England. The most famous of them were the Pilgrims, who were dedicated extremists—the purest Puritans.
Who was King James I?
He was a Scotsman and head of both the state and the church in England from 1603 to 1625. He saw that if his subjects could defy him as their spiritual leader, they might one day defy him as their political leader (as in fact they would later defy and behead his son, Charles I). He therefore threatened to harass the more bothersome Separatists out of the land.
What did the PIlgrims do to try and escape the royal wrath of King James I? Why did it fail?
A congregation of them departed for Holland in 1608. During the ensuing twelve years of toil and poverty, they were increasingly distressed by the “Dutchification” of their children. They wanted to find a place where they could live and die as English men and women—and as purified Protestants.
How did the Pilgrims end up creating the Plymouth colony when they originally wanted to go to Virginia?
After negotiating with the Virginia Company, a group of the Separatists in Holland secured the right to settle under its jurisdiction in search of religious freedom. But their crowded Mayflower, sixty-five days at sea, missed its destination and arrived off the coast of New England in 1620, with a total of 102 people. Fewer than half of the entire party were Separatists. The Pilgrims took several preliminary surveys and finally chose for their site the shore of Plymouth Bay. This area was outside the domain of the Virginia Company, and consequently, the settlers became squatters. They were without legal right to the land and without specific authority to establish a government.
What is the Mayflower Compact and why is it important?
Before disembarking, the Pilgrim leaders drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact. It set a precedent for later written constitutions but it wasn’t a constitution at all. l. It was a simple agreement to form a crude government and to submit to the will of the majority under the regulations agreed upon. The pact was a promising step toward genuine self-government.
What happened to the PIlgrims between the winter of 1620 and 1621?
Only 44 out of the 102 survived. Yet when the Mayflower sailed back to England in the spring, not a single one of the Separatists left.
What was the economy like in early Plymouth?
It relied on fur, fish, and lumber.
Who was William Bradford?
He was a leader of the Pilgrims and a self-taught scholar who read many languages. He was chosen governor 30 times in the annual elections. Among his major worries was his fear that independent, nonPuritan settlers “on their particular” might corrupt his godly experiment in the wilderness.
What happened in 1691?
The charterless Plymouth colony merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
What did moderate Puritans want to do and why did it not work out?
More moderate Puritans sought to reform the Church of England from within. Though resented by bishops and monarchs, they slowly gathered support, especially in Parliament. But Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1629 and sanctioned the anti-Puritan persecutions of the Archbishop William Laud.
What happened in 1629?
A group of non-Separatist Puritans secured a royal charter to form the Massachusetts Bay Company. They proposed to establish a sizable settlement in the infertile Massachusetts area, with Boston soon becoming its hub. When leaving for Massachusetts, they brought their charter with them. For many years they used it as a kind of constitution, out of easy reach of royal authority. They denied that they wanted to separate from the Church of England, only from its impurities.
What happened in 1630?
The Puritans left for Massachusetts well-equipped, with 11 vessels carrying almost 1,000 immigrants. Thy started the colony off on a larger scale than any of the other Englsih settlements.
What was the Great Migration of the 1630s?
About 70,000 refugees left England. But not all of them were Puritans, and only about 20,000 came to Massachusetts. Many y were attracted to the warm and fertile West Indies, especially the sugar-rich island of Barbados. More Puritans came to this Caribbean islet than to all of Massachusetts.
Who was John Winthrop?
He immigrated to the Bay Colony and become its first governor. He was a successful attorney and manor lord in England. He served as governor or deputy governor for nineteen years. The resources and skills that he had helped Massachusetts prosper. He declared that the colony would “be as a city upon a hill,” a beacon to humanity, meaning it would be a holy society that would be a model for humankind.
What were important industries of the Massachusetts Bay Colony?
They were fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding.
What was the Congregational Church?
It was made up of the adult males who belonged to the Puritan congregations and all of them were considered freemen, meaning they had the right to vote in both town and provincial affairs.
Who couldn’t vote in the Bay Colony?
Unchruched men and women couldn’t vote in provincial elections. However, town governments allowed all male property holders, and in some cases, other residents as well, to publicly discuss local issues and vote on them.
What was the provincial government of the Bay Colony like?
It was not a democracy. Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted the “commons” as the “meaner sort” and thought that democracy was the worst of all forms of government. The freemen did annually elect the governor and his assistants, as well as a representative assembly, called the General Court. However, only Puritans could be freemen. According to the doctrine of the covenant, the whole purpose of government was to enforce God’s laws—which applied to believers and nonbelievers alike.
Who was John Cotton?
He was one of the many religious leaders that held enormous influence in the Bay Colony. He was educated at England’s Cambridge University. He emigrated to Massachusetts to avoid persecution for his criticism of the Church of England. In the Bay Colony, he devoted his considerable learning to defending the government’s duty to enforce religious rules. He sometimes preached and prayed up to 6 hours in a single day.
What limited the powers of the preachers and why?
A congregation had the right to hire and fire its minister and to set his salary. Clergymen were also barred from holding formal political office. . Puritans in England had suffered too much at the hands of a “political” Anglican clergy to allow in the New World another unholy union of religious and government power. In a limited way, the bay colonists endorsed the idea of the separation of church and state.
What were the Puritans like?
They believed they had a calling to do God’s work on earth and followed the Protestant ethic, which involved commitment to work and to engagement in worldly pursuits. However, they also enjoyed simple pleasures. To them, life was serious business, and hellfire was real.
How were the Quakers treated in the Bay Colony?
Because they defied the authority of the Puritan clergy, they were persecuted with fines and banishment.
Who was Anne Hutchinson and what did she do?
She became a challenge to the Puritan orthodoxy. She was intelligent, strong-willed, and talkative. Swift and sharp in theological argument, she carried to logical extremes the Puritan doctrine of predestination. She 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. This assertion, known as antinomianism, was high heresy. She was brough to trial in 1638. There, she bamboozled her clerical inquisitors for days until she eventually boasted that she had come to her beliefs through a direct revelation from God, whch was even higher heresy. She was then banished and set out on foot with her family for Rhode Island. She finally moved to New York, where she and all but one of her household were killed by Indians.
Who was Roger Williams?
He was a Salem minister and a threat to the Puritan leaders. He was a young man with radical ideas. An extreme Separatist, he hounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean break with the corrupt Church of England. He also challenged the legality of the Bay Colony’s charter, which he condemned for expropriating the land from the Indians without fair compensation. He also went on to deny the authority of civil government to regulate religious behavior—a seditious blow at the Puritan idea of government’s very purpose.
How did Roger Williams establish the Rhode Island Colony?
In 1635, the authorities found Williams guilty of spreading dangerous opinions and ordered him to be banished. He was allowed to remain several months longer due to illness, but he kept up his criticisms. The magistrates feared that he might organize a rival colony and made plans to exile him to England. However, Williams foiled them. Aided by friendly Indians, he fled to the Rhode Island area in 1636. At Providence, later the capital of Rhode Island, he built a Baptist church, probably the first in America. He established complete freedom of religion, even for Jews and Catholics. He demanded no oaths regarding religious beliefs, no compulsory attendance at worship, and no taxes to support a state church. He even sheltered the Quakers, although he disagreed with their views. His endorsement of religious tolerance made Rhode Island more liberal than any of the other English settlements in the New World, and more advanced than most Old World communities as well. The settlers there had freedom of opportunity.
What were the settlers of Rhode Island like and how did the Puritan clergy in Boston view them?
The consisted largely of malcontents and exiles, some of whom couldn’t bear the theological atmosphere of the Bay Colony. The clergy in Bostonsaw Rhode Island as “that sewer” in which the e “Lord’s debris” had collected and rotted. Planted by dissenters and exiles, Rhode Island became strongly individualistic and stubbornly independent. This state was later known as “the traditional home of the otherwise minded.”
When did Rhode Island get a charter from Parliament?
Begun as a squatter colony in 1636 without legal standing, it finally established rights to the soil when it secured a charter from Parliament in 1644.
What attracted the Dutch and English settlers to New England?
It was the valley of the Connecticut River, which was one of the few highly fertile expanses of any size in all New England. Hartford, the capital of Conneticut,was founded in 1635.
How was the Conneticut River Colony founded in 1636?
Boston Puritans led by Revend Thomas Hooker went to the Hartford area. The Connecticut River Colony later become known as just Conneticut.
What was the document knwon as the Fundamental orders?
It was made in 1639 by the settlers of the new Connecticut River Colony. It was in effect a modern costitution, which established a regime democratically controlled by the citizens. Essential features of the Fundamental Orders were later borrowed by Connecticut for its colonial charter and its state constituion.
What was the settlement at New Haven like?
It appeared in 1638. It was a prosperous community founded by PUritans who contrived to set up an even closer church-government alliance than in Massachusetts. Although they were squatters without a charte,r thye dreamed of making New Haven a bustling seaport. However, they fell into disfavor with Charles II by sheltering 2 of the judges who had condmened his father, Charles I, to death. In 1662, to the dismay of the New Havenites, the crown granted a charter to Connecticut that merged New Haven with the more democratic settlements in the Connecticut Valley./
What was Maine like?
Furtraders and fishermen were on the coast for a dozen or so years before the founding of Plymouth. After failed attemps at colonization in 1623 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, this land was absored by Massachusetts Bay after a formal purchase in 1677 from the Gorges heirs. It remained a part of Massachusetts for almost a century and a half before becoming a separate state.
How was New Hampshire established?
It sprang from the fishing and trading activities along its coast. It was absorbed in 1641 by the Bay Colony under a strained interpretation of the Massachusetts Charter. The king, annoyed by this display of greed, arbitrarily separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts in 1679 and made it a royal colony
What happened to the Indians after the spreading of English settlements?
There were clashes between the colonists and the Indians, who were weak in New Engalnd. Before the arrival of the Pilgrms, an epidemic had swept through the coastal tribes and killed more than ¾ of the natives.
What did the Wampanoag Indians do?
They at first befriended the settlers of Plymouth. Cultural accommodation was facilitated by Squanto, a Wampanoag who had learned English from a ship’s captain who had kidnapped him some years earlier. The Wampanoag chieftain Massasoit signed a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621 and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgiving after the autumn harvests that same year
What ruptured the peaceful relations between the Indians and whites?
It occurred as more English settlers arrived and pushed inland into the Connecticut River valley, causing confrontations between Indians and whites. Hostilities exploded in 1637 between the English settlers and the powerful Pequot tribe. Besieging a Pequot village on Connecticut’s Mystic River, English militiamen and their Narragansett Indian allies set fire to the Indian wigwams and shot the fleeing survivors. The slaughter wrote a brutal finish to the Pequot War, virtually annihilated the Pequot tribe, and inaugurated four decades of uneasy peace between Puritans and Indians.
Waht did the Puritans do to the remaining Indians?
Lashed by critics in England, the Puritans made some feeble efforts at converting the remaining Indians to Christianity, although Puritan missionary zeal never equaled that of the Catholic Spanish and French. A mere handful of Indians were gathered into Puritan “praying towns” to make the acquaintance of the English God and to learn the ways of English culture.
What was the Indians’ only hope for resisting English encroachment?
It laid in intertribal unity—a pan-Indian alliance against the spreading English settlements. In 1675 Massasoit’s son, Metacom, called King Philip by the English, forged such an alliance and mounted a series of coordinated assaults on English villages throughout New England. This was known as King Phillip’s War. When the war ended in 1676, fifty-two Puritan towns had been attacked, and twelve were destroyed entirely. Metacom’s wife and son were sold into slavery; he himself was captured, beheaded, and drawn and quartered. His head was carried on a pike back to Plymouth, where it was mounted on grisly display for years.
What was were the effects of King PIlip’s War?
It slowed the westward march of English settlement in New England for several decades. But the war inflicted a lasting defeat on New England’s Indians. Drastically reduced in numbers, dispirited, and disbanded, they thereafter posed only sporadic threats to the New England colonists.
What was the New England Confederation?
It was an experiment in union that was launched in 1643 and was made up of four colonies. The English Civil War was then deeply distracting old England, throwing the colonists upon their own resources. The primary purpose of the confederation was defense against foes or potential foes, notably the Indians, the French, and the Dutch. Purely intercolonial problems, such as runaway servants and criminals who had fled from one colony to another, also came within the jurisdiction of the confederation. Each member colony, regardless of size, wielded two votes—an arrangement highly displeasing to the most populous colony, Massachusetts Bay. It was essentially an exclusive Puritan club. It consisted of the two Massachusetts colonies (the Bay and Plymouth Colonies) and the two Connecticut colonies (Connecticut River Colony and New Haven). This was the first milestone on the road toward colonial unity. The delegates took steps toward acting together on matters of intercolonial importance.
Why weren’t Rhode Island and Maine in the New England Confederation?
THe Puritan leaders believed they harbored too manyheretical or otherwise undesirable characteer.
Why were the American colonies allowed to become semiautonomous commonwealths?
In Engalnd the king had paid little attention to the American colonies during the early years of their planting. Tihs era of neglect was prolonged when the crown became enmeshed during the 1640s in civil wars iwth the parliamentarians.
What happened when Charles II came into power in 1660?
The royalists and their Church of England allies were in control again. PUritan hopes of purifyign the English Church withered. Also, Charles II was determined to take an active hadn in the management of the colonies. His plans were against the habits that decades of relative independence had bred in the colonists.
Why and how did Charles II punish Massachusetts?
There was a lot of colonial defiance in Massachusetts. One of the king’s agetns in Boston was horrified to find that royal orders weren’t being followed. Charles II punished Massachusetts by giving rival Connecticut in 1662 a sea-to-sea charter grant, which legalized the squatter settlements. The very next year, the outcasts in Rhode Island received a new charter, which gave kingly sanction to the most religiously tolerant government yet devised in America. A final and crushing blow fell on the Bay Colony in 1684, when its charter was revoked by the London authorities.
What happened in 1686?
The Dominion of New England was created by royal authority and humiliated Massachusetts. Unlike the New England Confederation, it was imposed from London. Embracing at first all of New England, it was expanded two years later to include New York and East and West Jersey. The dominion also aimed at bolstering colonial defense in the event of war with the Indians and hence, from the imperial viewpoint of Parliament, was a statesmanlike move. It was s designed to promote urgently needed efficiency in the administration of the English Navigation Laws, which severely restricted Massachusett’s trade.
What are the Nagivation Laws and what were the effects?
They were laws that reflected the intensifying colonial rivalries of the 17th century. They sought to stitch England’s overseas possessions more tightly to the motherland by throttling American trade with countries not ruled by the English crown. Like colonial peoples everywhere, the Americans chafed at such confinements, and smuggling became an increasingly common and honorable occupation.
Who was Sir Edmund Andros and what did he do?
He an English military man and head of the new Dominion of New England. Establishing headquarters in Puritanical Boston, he generated much hostility by his open affiliation with the despised Church of England. The colonists were also outraged by his noisy and Sabbath-profaning soldiers, who were accused of teaching the people “to drink, blaspheme, curse, and damn.” He stopped the cherished town meetings; laid heavy restrictions on the courts, the press, and the schools; and revoked all land titles. He taxed the people without the consent of their elected representatives. He also strove to enforce the unpopular Navigation laws and suppress smuggling. Liberty-loving colonists, accustomed to unusual privileges during long decades of neglect, were goaded to the verge of revolt.
What was the Glorious/BLoodless Revolution and what were the effects in America?
The revolution lasted from 1688-1689 and the people of England dethroned the unpopular Catholic James II and resisted his oppression. They enthroned the Protestant rulers of the Netherlands, the Dutch-born William III and his English wife, Mary II, daughter of James II. When the news of the Glorious Revolution reached America, the ramshackle Dominion of New England collapsed. A Boston mod rose against the existing regime. Sir Edmund Andros attempted to flee in women’s clothing but was betrayed by boots protruding beneath his dress. He was hastily shipped off to England. This revolution reverberated throughout the colonies from New England to the Chesapeake. Inspired, many colonists seized the occasion to strike against royal authority in America. Unrest rocked New York and Maryland from 1689 to 1691, until newly appointed royal governors restored a semblance of order. Most importantly, the new monarchs relaxed the royal grip on colonial trade, inaugurating a period of “salutary neglect” when the much-resented Navigation Laws were only weakly enforced.
What happened to Massachusetts after getting rid of Andros?
They didn’t gain as much from the upheaval as they’d hoped. In 1691 it was arbitrarily made a royal colony, with a new charter and a new royal governor. The permanent loss of the ancient charter was a staggering blow to the proud Puritans, who never fully recovered. Worst of all, the privilege of voting, once a monopoly of church members, was now to be enjoyed by all qualified male property holders.
What remained of Charles II’s attempt to assert tighter administrative control over his empire?
More English officials—judges, clerks, customs officials—now staffed the courts and strolled the wharves of English America. Many were incompetent, corrupt hacks who knew little and cared less about American affairs. Appointed by influential patrons in faroff England, they blocked the rise of local leaders to positions of political power by their very presence. Aggrieved Americans viewed them with mounting contempt and resentment as the eighteenth century wore on.
How did the Netherlands gain their indepedence from Spain in the late 16th century?
The oppressed people of the Netherlands rebelled against Catholic Spain. THey wer e able to win their independnece with the help of Protestant ENgland.
What was the golden age in Dutch history in the 17th century like?
The Netherlands emerged as a major commercial and naval power, and then it challenged the supremacy of its former benefactor, England. Three great Anglo-Dutch naval wars were fought in the seventeenth century, with as many as a hundred ships on each side. The sturdy Dutch dealt blows about as heavy as they received. The Dutch republic also became a leading colonial power, with by far its greatest activity in the East Indies. There it maintained an enormous and profitable empire for over three hundred years.
What was the Dutch East India Company and what did it do?
It was a joint-stock company that was virtually a state within a state and at one time supported an army of 10,000 men and a fleet of 190 ships, 40 of them men-of-war. Seeking greater riches, this enterprising company employed an English explorer, Henry Hudson. Disregarding orders to sail northeast, he ventured into Delaware Bay and New York Bay in 1609 and then ascended the Hudson River, hoping that at last he had chanced upon the coveted shortcut through the continent. But, as the event proved, he merely filed a Dutch claim to a magnificently wooded and watered area.
What was the Dutch West Indian Company and what did it do?
It was a joint-stock company that was weaker than the Dutch East India Company. It maintained profitable enterprises in the Caribbean. At times it was less interested in trading than in raiding and at one fell swoop in 1628 captured a fleet of Spanish treasure ships laden with loot worth $15 million. The company also established outposts in Africa and a thriving sugar industry in Brazil, which for several decades was its principal center of activity in the New World. They established New Netherland and bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for worthless trinkets.
What was New Netherland?
It was a Dutch colony that was platned it 1623-1624 in the Hudson River area on a permanent basis. It was established by the Dutch West India Company for its quick-profit fur trade. However, it was never more than a secondary interest of the founders.
What was New Amsterdam like?
New Amsterdam—later New York City—was a company town and capital of New Netherland. It was run by a group the Dutch company in the interests of the stockholders. The investors had no enthusiasm for religious toleration, free speech, or democratic practices. The governors appointed by the company as directors-general were usually harsh and despotic. Religious dissenters who opposed the Dutch Reformed Church were regarded with suspicion, and for a while, Quakers were abused. In response to repeated protests by the aggravated colonists, a local body with limited lawmaking power was finally established. This colony took on a strongly aristocratic tint and retained it for generations. Vast feudal estates fronting the Hudson River, known as patroonships, were granted to promoters who agreed to settle fifty people on them. One patroonship in the Albany area was slightly larger than the later state of Rhode Island. It attracted a cosmopolitan population, as is common in seaport towns.
What problems occured in the Dutch company-colony?
The directors-general were incompetent. Company shareholders demanded their dividends, even at the expense of the colony’s welfare. The Indians, infuriated by Dutch cruelties, retaliated with horrible massacres. As a defense measure, the hard-pressed settlers on Manhattan Island erected a stout wall, from which Wall Street derives its name. New England was hostile to the growth of its Dutch neighbor, and the people of Connecticut finally ejected Hollanders from their valley. The Swedes also trespassed on Dutch preserves, from 1638 to 1655, by planting the colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River.
How did New Amsterdam become New York?
New Netherland lacked vitality and represented only a secondary commercial interest of the Dutch. The English also regarded the Dutch as intruders. In 1665, after Charles II had granted the area to his brother, the Duke of York, an English squadron appeared off the weak defenses of New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant, a Dutch director-general, was forced to surrender. New Amsterdam was renamed New York in honor of the Duke of York. England won a great harbor, strategically located in the middle of the mainland colonies, and the Hudson River penetrating the interior. With the removal of the Dutch, the English had territories from Maine to the Carolinas.
What features did New Amsterdam, now New York, retain?
The autocratic spirit survived, and the aristocratic element gained strength when corrupt English governors granted lands to their favorites. Influential lnad-owning families—such as the Livingstons and the DeLanceys——wielded disproportionate power in the affairs of colonial New York. These monopolistic land policies, combined with the lordly atmosphere, discouraged many European immigrants from coming. The physical growth of New York was correspondingly retarded.
Who were the Quakers and why were they hated in England?
They were a group of dissenters of a Protestant denomination that arose in England during the mid-1600s. Their name derived from the report that they “quaked” when under deep religious emotion. Officially they were known as the Religious Society of Friends. Quakers were especially offensive to the authorities, both religious and civil. They refused to support the Church of England with taxes. They built meetinghouses, congregated without a paid clergy, and “spoke up” themselves in meetings when moved. Believing that they were all children in the sight of God, they kept their broad-brimmed hats on in the presence of their “betters” and addressed others with simple “thee”s and “thou”s, rather than with conventional titles. They would take no oaths because Jesus had commanded, “Swear not at all.” This peculiarity often embroiled them with government officials, for “test oaths” were still required to establish the fact that a person was not a Roman Catholic. They hated strife and warfare and refused military service. As advocates of passive resistance, they would turn the other cheek and rebuild their meetinghouse on the site where their enemies had torn it down.
Who was William Penn?
He was a Quaker and Englishman. However, his father did not like that. Because he was a Quaker, he suffered much persecution. Penn’s thoughts naturally turned to the New World, where a sprinkling of Quakers had already fled, notably to Rhode Island, North Carolina, and New Jersey. He wanted to establish an asylum for his people and hoped to experiment with liberal ideas in government and at the same time make a profit. In 1681 he managed to secure from the king a grant of fertile land, in consideration of a monetary debt owed to his deceased father by the crown. The king called the area Pennsylvania (“Penn’s Woodland”) in honor of the sire. However, he became too friendly with James II. He was arrested for treason three times and placed into debtors jail. Afflicted by a stroke, he died full of sorrows.
What was Pennsylvania like?
It was formally launched in 1681 and by far the best advertised of all the colonies. Its founder—the “first American advertising man”—sent out paid agents and distributed pamphlets printed in English, Dutch, French, and German. Unlike the lures of many other American real estate promoters, Penn’s inducements were generally truthful. He especially welcomed forward-looking spirits and substantial citizens, including industrious carpenters, masons, shoemakers, and other manual workers. His liberal land policy, which encouraged substantial holdings, was instrumental in attracting a heavy inflow of immigrants. Its city, Philadelphia, was the biggest city out of all the 13 colonies during colonial times.
What were Indian and white relations like in Pennsylvania?
Pen bought land from the Indians, including Chief Tammany. His treatment of the native peoples was so fair that the Quaker went among them unarmed. For a brief period, Pennsylvania seemed the promised land of amicable Indian–white relations. Some southern tribes even migrated to Pennsylvania. However, Quaker tolerance proved the undoing of Quaker Indian policy. As non-Quaker European immigrants flooded into the province, they undermined the Quakers’ own benevolent policy toward the Indians. The feisty Scots-Irish were particularly unpersuaded by Quaker idealism.
What was Pennsylvania like politically?
It was liberal and included a representative assembly elected by the landowners. No tax-supported state church drained coffers or demanded allegiance. However, Penn’s governors, some of them incompetent and tactless, quarreled bitterly with the people, who were constantly demanding greater political control.
What was religion like in Pennsylvania?
Freedom of worship was guaranteed to all residents, although Penn, under pressure from London, was forced to deny Catholics and Jews the privilege of voting or holding office.
What were some notable features of Pennsylvania?
No provision was made by the Quakers of Pennsylvania for a military defense. No restrictions were placed on immigration, and naturalization was made easy. The Quakers developed a strong dislike of black slavery, and in Pennsylvania, some progress was made toward social reform. With its many liberal features, Pennsylvania attracted a rich mix of ethnic groups. They included numerous religious misfits who were repelled by the harsh practices of neighboring colonies. This Quaker refuge boasted a surprisingly modern atmosphere in an unmodern age and to an unusual degree afforded economic opportunity, civil liberty, and religious freedom.
What were the blue laws of Pennsylvania?
It prohibited “ungoldly revelers,” stage plays, playing cards, dice, games, and excessive hilarity. Unde
What was Pennsylvania like economically?
The Quakers were shrewd bussiness-people. The settlers exported grain and other foodstuffs. Philadelphia, a city of Pennsylvania grew a lot. By 1700 the colony was surpassed in population and wealth only by Virginia and Massachusetts.
How was the colony of New Jersey establsied in 1664?
Two noble proprietors received the area from the Duke of York in 1664. A substantial number of New Englanders went to the colony. One of the proprietors sold West New Jersey in 1674 to a group of Quakers before Pennsylvania was launched. East New Jersey was also acquired in later years by the Quakers. However, in 1702, the crown combined the two Jerseys in a royal colony
What was the colony of Delaware like? (middle colony)
After the Dutch kicked out the Swedens in 1655, New Sweden soon faded away. It harbored som Quakers and was closely associated with the colony of Pensylvania. It was granted its own assembly in 1703. But until the American Revolution, it remained under the governor of Pennsylvania..
What did the middle colonies have in common?
The soil was fertile and the expanse of land was broad, unlike rock-bestrewn New England. Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey were called the “bread colonies” because they exported grain. Rivers also played a vital role. For example, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and the Hudson tapped the fur trade of the interior. There was industry in the middle colonies. Their forests allowed for lumbering and shipbuilding. Rivers and landlocked harbors stimulated commerce and the growth of seaports such as New York, Philadelphia, and Albany. Except in New York, the landholdings were intermediate in size—smaller than in the south but larger in small-farm New England. Local government lay somewhere between the personalized town meetings of New England and the diffused county government of the South. There were fewer industries in the middle colonies than in New England, more than in the South. The population was more ethnically mixed than that of other settlements. There was an unusual degree of religious toleration and democratic control. Quakers in particular made a contribution to human freedom out of all proportion to their numbers. Desirable land was more easily acquired in the middle colonies than in New England or the South. One result was that a considerable amount of economic and social democracy prevailed, though less so in aristocratic New York.
