APUSH Units 1-2

225 Million Years Ago - Pangaea started to break apart.

10 Million Years Ago - North America was shaped by nature - Canadian Shield

2 Million Years Ago- Great Ice Age

35,000 Years Ago  - The oceans were glaciers and the sea level dropped, leaving an isthmus connecting Asia and North America.  The Bering Isthmus was crossed by people going into North America.

10,000 Years Ago  - Ice started to retreat and melt, raising the sea levels and covering up the Bering Isthmus.

Peopling the Americas

Evidence suggests that early people may have come to the Americas in crude boats, or across the Bering Isthmus.

By the time Columbus arrived in America in 1492, over 54 million people may have been living in North & South America.

The Earliest Americans

Unlike in Mexico with the Aztecs, dense populations did not exist in North America. This may have made it easier for the Europeans to colonize the continent.

Europeans Enter Africa

People of Europe were able to reach sub-Saharan Africa around 1450 when the Portuguese invented the caravel, a ship that could sail into the wind.  This ship allowed sailors to sail back up the western coast of Africa and back to Europe.

The Portuguese set up trading posts along the African beaches trading with slaves and gold, trading habits that were originally done by the Arabs and Africans.  The Portuguese shipped the slaves back to Spain and Portugal where they worked on the sugar plantations.

Columbus Comes upon a New World

Columbus was actually looking for a new trading route with the Indies when he stumbled upon the Americas.

When Worlds Collide

Possibly 3/5 of the crops cultivated around the world today originated in the Americas.

The Columbian Exchange refers to the increase of global commerce (globalization).

Within 50 years of the Spanish arrival in Hispaniola, the Taino natives decreased from 1 million people to 200 people due to diseases brought by the Spanish. 

In centuries following Columbus's landing in the Americas, as much as 90% of the Indians had died due to the diseases.

The Conquest of Mexico and Peru

In the 1500's, Spain became the dominant exploring and colonizing power. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

The Spanish conquerors came to the Americas in the service of God as well as in search of gold and glory.

Encomienda: The process by which the Spanish government allowed Indians to be enslaved by colonists as long as the colonists promised to Christianize them.

The islands of the Caribbean Sea served as offshore bases for the staging of the Spanish invasion of the mainland Americas.

By the 1530s in Mexico and the 1550s in Peru, colorless colonial administrators had replaced the conquistadores.

The Spanish arrived in Tenochtitlan, the Azetec capital, with the intention of stealing all of the gold and other riches.

On June 30, 1520, the Aztecs attacked the Spanish because of the Spaniards' lust for riches.  The Spanish countered, though, and took over the capital and the rest of the Aztec empire on August 13, 1521.

Due to the rule of the Spanish, the Indian population in Mexico went from 20 million to 2 million in less than a century.

The influx of precious metal from South America helped grow the European economy.

Some of the conquistadores wed Indian women and had children.  These offspring were known as mestizos and formed a cultural and biological bridge between Latin America's European and Indian races.

Exploration and Imperial Rivalry

In 1565, the Spanish built a fortress at St. Augustine, Florida to protect the sea-lanes to the Caribbean.

In 1680, after the Spanish captured an area known today as New Mexico in 1609, the natives launched a rebellion known as Pueblo Revolt of 1680.  The natives burned down churches and killed priests.  They rebuilt a kiva, or ceremonial religious chamber, on the ruins of the Spanish plaza at Santa Fe.

The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New World led to the birth of the "Black Legend."  This false concept stated that the conquerors just tortured and killed the Indians, stole their gold, infected them with smallpox, and left little but misery behind.

The Spanish were at Santa Fe in 1610.

The French were at Quebec in 1608.

The English were at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

France Finds a Foothold in Canada
France issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which provided tolerance for French Protestants, who had been persecuted in France up to that point. After this, France transformed into a strong European power and began exploration of the New World.
Quebec was where France established their foothold in the New World (in 1608).
Samuel de Champlain was considered the “Father of New France” (present-day Canada).

New France Fans Out
French trappers in New France spread out in search of beavers for their fur.
French explorers spread south into the New World in attempt to limit Spanish expansion. Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit in 1701. Robert de La Salle named the basin along the Mississippi River “Louisiana”.

The Spanish in North America
The Spanish founded St. Augustine (in present-day Florida) in 1565, making it the first permanent European settlement in North America. The Spanish also spread into the west of North America, expanding north from Mexico.

England's Imperial Stirrings

King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, launching the English Protestant Reformation, and intensifying the rivalry with Catholic Spain.

Elizabeth Energizes England

In 1580, Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, plundering and returning with his ship loaded with Spanish booty.  He had a profit of about 4,600%. 

When the English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada, Spain's empirical dreams and fighting spirit had been weakened - helping to ensure the English's naval dominance over the North Atlantic.

England on the Eve of an Empire

An economic depression that hit England in the later part of the 1500s caused many people to lose their homes. This, coupled with peace with the Spanish, set the stage for the English to start moving to North America.

England Plants the Jamestown Seedling

In 1606, a joint-stock company, known as the Virginia Company of London, received a charter from King James I of England for a settlement in the New World.  The company landed in Jamestown on May 24, 1607.

In 1608, Captain John Smith took over the town and forced the settlers into line.

By 1609, of the 400 settlers who came to Virginia, only 60 survived the "starving winter" of 1609-1610.

Cultural Clashes in the Chesapeake

Lord De La Warr reached Jamestown in 1610 with supplies and military.  He started the First Anglo-Powhatan War when he started raiding and burning Indian villages.

The Indians were again defeated in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in 1644.

By 1685, the English considered the Powhatan people to be extinct.

Old Netherlands at New Netherland

Late in the 16^th Century, the Netherlands fought for and won its independence from Catholic Spain with the help of England.

In the 17^th Century, the Dutch (the Netherlands) became a power.  Golden Age.  It fought 3 great Anglo-Dutch naval battles.  The Dutch Republic became a leading colonial power, with by far its greatest activity in the East Indies. 

The Dutch East India Company was nearly 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.

This company hired an English explorer, Henry Hudson, to seek great riches.  He sailed into the Delaware Bay and New York Bay in 1609 and then ascended the Hudson River.  He filed a Dutch claim to a wooded and watered area.  The Dutch West India Company was less powerful than the Dutch East India Company, and was based in the Caribbean.  It was more interested in raiding than trading. 

In 1628, in raided a fleet of Spanish treasure ships and stole $15 million.

The company established outposts in Africa and Brazil.

In 1623-1624, the Dutch West India Company established New Netherland in the Hudson River area.  It was made for its quick-profit fur trade.  The company also purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for worthless trinkets. The island encompassed 22,000 acres.

New Amsterdam, later New York City, was a company town.  The Quakers were savagely abused.

Friction with English and Swedish Neighbors

New England was hostile to the growth of its Dutch neighbor, and the people of Connecticut finally ejected intruding Hollanders from their verdant valley.  3 of the 4 member colonies of the New England Confederation were eager to wipe out New Netherland with military force.  Massachusetts, providing most of the troops, rejected this.

From 1638-1655, the Swedish trespassed on Dutch preserves by planting the anemic colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River.

The Golden Age for Sweden was during and following the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, in which its brilliant King Gustavus Adolphus had carried the torch for Protestantism.

Resenting the Swedish intrusion, the Dutch dispatched a small military expedition in 1655.  It was led by the able of the directors-general, Peter Stuyvesant, who had lost a leg while soldiering in the West Indies and was dubbed "Father Wooden Leg" by the Indians.  The main fort fell after a bloodless siege, whereupon Swedish rule came to an abrupt end.

Dutch Residues in New York

In 1664, the Dutch were forced to surrender their territory (New Netherland) to the English when a strong English squadron appeared off the coast of New Amsterdam.  New Amsterdam was named New York, after the Duke of York.

The Indian's New World

Disease was the biggest killer of Indians and their cultures. It took a particularly high tool on elderly Indians, which led to the extinction of cultures.

The Thirteen Original Colonies

Virginia: Child of Tobacco

John Rolfe married Pocahontas in 1614, ending the First Anglo-Powhatan War.

In 1619, self-government was made in Virginia.  The London Company authorized the settlers to summon an assembly, known as the House of Burgesses. 

King James I didn't trust the House of Burgesses and so in 1624, he made Virginia a colony of England, directly under his control.

Maryland: Catholic Haven

Maryland was formed in 1634 by Lord Baltimore.

Maryland was made for a refuge for the Catholics to escape the wrath of the Protestant English government.

The Act of Toleration, which was passed in 1649 by the local representative group in Maryland, granted toleration to all Christians.

The West Indies: Way Station to mainland America

By the mid-17th Century, England had secured its claim to several West Indian Islands. 

Sugar was, by far, the major crop on the Indian Islands.

To support the massive sugar crops, millions of African slaves were imported.  By 1700, the ratio of black slaves to white settlers in the English West Indies was 4:1.  In order to control the large number of slaves, the Barbados Slave Code of 1661 denied even the most fundamental rights to slaves.

Colonizing the Carolinas

Civil war plagued England in the 1640s. 

In 1707, the Savannah Indians decided to end their alliance with the Carolinians and migrate to the back country of Maryland and Pennsylvania, where a new colony founded by Quakers under William Penn promised better relations.  Almost all of the Indians were killed in raids before they could depart - in 1710.

Rice became the primary export of the Carolinas.

Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony

The English founded Georgia to primarily serve as a buffer to protect the Carolinas from the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana.

Georgia was founded in 1733.

The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism

German friar Martin Luther denounced the authority of the priests and popes when he nailed his protests against Catholic doctrines to the door of Wittenberg's cathedral in 1517.  He declared that the Bible alone was the source of God's words.  He started the "Protestant Reformation."

John Calvin of Geneva elaborated Martin Luther's ideas.  He wrote his basic doctrine in Latin in 1536, entitled Institutes of the Christian Religion.  These ideas formed Calvinism. Calvanism supported the idea of predestination.

When King Henry VIII broke his ties with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, he formed the Protestant Church.  There were a few people who wanted to see the process of taking Catholicism out of England occur more quickly.  These people were called Puritans.

A tiny group of Puritans, called Separatists, broke away from the Church of England (Protestant).  Fearing that his subjects would defy him both as their political leader and spiritual leader, King James I, the head of state of England and head of the church from 1603-1625, threatened to kick the Separatists out of England.

The Pilgrims End Their Pilgrimage at Plymouth

Losing their identity as English, a group of Separatists in Holland came to America in search for religious freedom.  The group settled outside the domain of the Virginia Company and, without legal permission, settled in Plymouth Bay in 1620.

Captain Myles Standish- prominent among the non-belongers of the Mayflower who came to Plymouth Bay; an Indian fighter and negotiator.

Before disembarking from the Mayflower, the Pilgrim leaders drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact.  This was a simple agreement to form a crude government and to submit to the will of the majority under the regulations agreed upon.  It was signed by 41 adult males.  It was the first attempt at a government in America.

In the Pilgrims' first winter of 1620-1621, only 44 of the 102 survived.

In 1621, there was the first Thanksgiving Day in New England.

William Bradford- elected 30 times as governor of the Pilgrims in the annual elections; a self-taught scholar who read Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Dutch; Pilgrim leader.

The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth

Charles I dismissed English Parliament in 1629 and approved of anti-Puritan persecutions of Archbishop William Laud.

In 1629, an energetic group of non-Separatist Puritans, fearing for their faith and for England's future, secured a royal charter to form the Massachusetts Bay Company.  (Massachusetts Bay Colony) 

During the Great Migration of the 1630s, about 70,000 refugees left England for America.  Most of them were attracted to the warm and fertile West Indies, especially the sugar-rich island of Barbados.

John Winthrop- the Bay Colony's first governor - served for 19 years.

Building the Bay Colony

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was not a democracy because its governor (Winthrop) did not like Democracy. He did not think that the "commoners" could rule. 

The colony's religious residents (freemen) annually elected the governor and his assistants and a representative assembly called the General Court. Non-religious residents could not vote.

Visible Saints was another name for the Puritans.

John Cotton- a very devoted Puritan.

Michael Wigglesworth wrote the poem, "The Day of Doom," in 1662.

Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth

Anne Hutchinson- an intelligent woman who challenged the Puritan orthodoxy; was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of her challenges to the Church.

Roger Williams- popular Salem minister who also challenged the Church; an extreme Separatist; was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Rhode Island "Sewer"

Roger Williams fled to the Rhode Island area in 1636.  There, he established religious freedom for all kinds of people.

New England Spreads Out

Hartford was founded in 1635.  Boston Puritans settled into the Hartford area lead by Reverend Thomas Hooker.

In 1639, the settlers of the new Connecticut River colony drafted a document known as the Fundamental Orders.  It was basically a constitution.

New Haven was established in 1638.

Part of Maine was purchased by Massachusetts Bay in 1677 from the Sir Ferdinando Gorges heirs.

In 1641, New Hampshire was absorbed by the greedy Massachusetts Bay.  The king took it back and made New Hampshire a royal colony in 1679.

Puritans versus Indians

The Wampanoag chieftain, Massasoit, signed a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621.  The Wampanoag helped the Pilgrims have the first Thanksgiving in that same year.

In 1637, hostilities exploded between the English settlers and the powerful Pequot tribe.  The English militiamen and their Narragansett Indian allies annihilated the Pequot tribe.

In 1675, Massasoit's son, Metacom (also nicknamed King Philip by the English) launched a series of attacks and raids against the colonists' towns.  The war ended in 1676.

English Interference and Neglect

In 1643, 4 colonies banded together to form the New England Confederation.  It was made to defend against foes or potential foes.  The confederation consisted of only Puritan colonies - two Massachusetts colonies (the Bay Colony and small Plymouth) and two Connecticut colonies (New Haven and the scattered valley settlements).

Each colony had 2 votes, regardless of size.

As a slap at the Massachusetts Bay Colony, King Charles II gave rival Connecticut in 1662 a sea-to-sea charter grant, which legalized the squatter settlements.

In 1663, the outcasts in Rhode Island received a new charter, which gave kingly sanction to the most religiously tolerant government yet devised in America.

In 1684, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's charter was revoked by London authorities.

In 1686, the Dominion of New England was created by royal authority.  Unlike the homegrown New England Confederation, it was imposed from London.  It embraced all of New England until in 1688 when it was expanded to New York and East and West Jersey.

The leader of the Dominion of New England was Sir Edmund Andros - an able English military man.  He established headquarters in Puritanical Boston.

Andros stopped the town meetings; laid heavy restrictions on the courts, the press, and schools; and revoked all land titles.

In 1688-1689, the people of old England engineered the Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution.  They dethroned Catholic James II and enthroned the Protestant rulers of the Netherlands, the Dutch-born William III and his English wife, Mary, daughter of James II.

In 1691, Massachusetts was made a royal colony.

There was unrest in New York and Maryland from 1689-1691, until newly appointed royal governors restored a semblance of order.

Penn's Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania

A group of dissenters, commonly known as Quakers, arose in England in the mid-1600s.  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.

William Penn was attracted to the Quaker faith in 1660.  In 1681, he managed to secure from King Charles II an immense grant of fertile land, in consideration of a monetary debt owed to his deceased father by the crown.  The king called the area Pennsylvania. 

Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors

The Quakers treated the Indians very well.  Many immigrants came to Pennsylvania seeking religious freedom.

"Blue Laws" prevented "ungodly revelers" from staging plays, playing cards, dice, games, and excessive hilarity.

By 1700, Pennsylvania surpassed all but Massachusetts and Virginia as the most populous and wealthy colony.

William Penn was never fully liked by his colonists because of his friendly relations with James II.  He was arrested for treason thrice and thrown into prison.

In 1664, New Netherland, a territory along the Hudson River, was taken by the English and granted to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. This grant that was given to Carteret and Berkeley divided the region into East and West New Jersey, respectively.

Berkeley sold West New Jersey in 1674 to a William Penn and his group of Quakers, who set up a sanctuary before Pennsylvania was launched.

In 1681 (the same year that Penn was given the region of Pennsylvania from King Charles II), William Penn and his Quakers purchased East New Jersey from Carteret's widow.

In 1702, the proprieters of East and West New Jersey voluntarily surrendered their governmental powers over the region to the royal crown after confusion began to arise over the large number of landowners and growing resentment of authority. England combined the two territories (East and West New Jersey) into one colony in 1702.

The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies

The middle colonies New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, were known as the "bread colonies" because of their heavy exports of grain.

These colonies were more ethnically mixed than any of the other colonies.  The people were given more religious tolerance than in any other colonies.

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1706. He moved to Philadelphia at the age of 17.

The Stuart Dynasty in England

The Unhealthy Chesapeake

Half the people born in early Virginia and Maryland did not survive past age 20 due to widespread disease.

At the beginning of the 18^th Century, Virginia was the most populous colony with 59,000 people.  Maryland was the 3^rd largest, after Massachusetts, with 30,000.

The Tobacco Economy

By the 1630s, 1.5 million pounds of tobacco were being shipped out of the Chesapeake Bay every year and almost 40 million by the end of the century.

Because of the massive amounts of tobacco crops planted by families, "indentured servants" were brought in from England to work on the farms.  In exchange for working, they received transatlantic passage and eventual "freedom dues", including a few barrels of corn, a suit of clothes, and possibly a small piece of land.

Virginia and Maryland employed the "headright" system to encourage the importation of servant workers.  Under its terms, whoever paid the passage of a laborer received the right to acquire 50 acres of land.

Chesapeake planters brought some 100,000 indentured servants to the region by 1700.  These "white slaves" represented more than 3/4 of all European immigrants to Virginia and Maryland in the 17^th Century.

Frustrated Freemen and Bacon's Rebellion

In 1676, about 1,000 Virginians, led by a 29-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon, revolted against the Virginia government. They resented Virginia's Governor William Berkeley for his friendly policies towards the Indians.  When Berkeley refused to retaliate for a series of savage Indian attacks on frontier settlements (due to his monopolization of the fur trading with them), the crowd attacked Indians and chased Berkeley from Jamestown, Virginia. They torched the capitol.

During the civil war in Virginia, Bacon suddenly died from disease.  Berkeley took advantage of this and crushed the uprising, hanging more than 20 rebels.  Charles II complained of the penalties dealt by Berkeley.

Due to the rebellions and tensions started by Bacon, planters looked for other, less troublesome laborers to work their tobacco plantations.  They soon looked to Africa.

Colonial Slavery

Africans had been brought to Jamestown as early as 1619, but as late as 1670, there were only about 2,000 in Virginia - about 7% of the total population of the South.

In the 1680s, the wages in England rose, therefore decreasing the number of indentured servants coming to America.  By the mid-1680s, black slaves outnumbered white servants among the plantation colonies' new arrivals. 

In 1698, the Royal African Company, first chartered in 1672, lost its monopoly on carrying slaves to the colonies.  Due to this, many Americans, including many Rhode Islanders, rushed to cash in on the slave trade.  (Eventually, Rhode Island became the first state to abolish slavery.) 

Blacks accounted for half the population of Virginia by 1750.  In South Carolina, they outnumbered whites 2:1.

Most of the slaves came from the west coast of Africa, especially stretching from present-day Senegal to Angola.

Starting in 1662, Virginia enacted "slave codes" (laws) made blacks and their children the property of the white masters for life.

Southern Society

Just before the Revolutionary War, 70% of the leaders of the Virginia legislature came from families established in Virginia before 1690.

Social Scale:

- Planters: owned gangs of slaves and vast domains of land; ruled the region's economy and monopolized political power.

- Small Farmers: largest social group; tilled their own modest plots and may have owned one or two slaves.

- Landless Whites: many were former indentured servants.

- Black Slaves

The New England Family

In contrast with the Chesapeake, the New Englanders tended to migrate in families as opposed to single individuals.

Family came first with New Englanders.

There were low premarital pregnancy rates, in contrast with the Chesapeake.

Because southern men frequently died young, leaving widows with small children to support, the southern colonies generally allowed married women to retain a separate title their property and gave widows the right to inherit their husband's estates.  But in New England, Puritan lawmakers worried that recognizing women's separate property rights would undercut the unity of married persons by acknowledging conflicting interests between husband and wife.  When a man died in the North, the Church inherited the property, not the wife.

New England women usually gave up their property rights when they married (to maintain the unity of marriage).  In contrast to old England, the laws of New England made provisions for the property of widows and even extended important protections to women with marriage.

Above all, the laws of Puritan New England sought to defend the integrity of marriages.

Life in the New England Towns

Massachusetts was at the front of the colonies attempting to abolish black slavery.

New towns were legally chartered by the colonial authorities, and the distribution of land was entrusted to proprietors.  Every family received several parcels of land.

Towns of more than 50 families had to have an elementary school. 

Just 8 years after Massachusetts was formed, the colony established Harvard College, in 1636.  Virginia established its first college, William and Mary, in 1693.

Puritans ran their own churches, and democracy in Congregational Church government led logically to democracy in political government.

The Half-Way Covenant and the Salem Witch Trials

About the middle of the 17^th century, a new form of sermon began to be heard from Puritan pulpits - the "jeremiad."

Troubled ministers in 1662 announced a new formula for church membership, the Half-Way Covenant.  This new arrangement modified the covenant, or the agreement between the church and its adherents, to admit to baptism-but not "full communion"-the unconverted children of existing members.  This move increased the churches' memberships.  This boost in aided the money-stricken church.

A group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts, claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women.  A witch hunt ensued, leading to the legal lynching of 20 women in 1692.

In 1693, the witchcraft hysteria ended when the governor of Massachusetts prohibited any further trials and pardoned those already convicted.  In 1713, the Massachusetts legislature annulled the "conviction" of the "witches" and made reparation to their heirs.

The New England Way of Life

The soil of New England was stony and hard to plant with. 

There was less diversity in New England than in the South because European immigrants did not want to come to a place where there was bad soil.  The summers in New England were very hot and the winters very cold.

The Native Americans recognized their right to USE the land, but the concept of OWNING was unknown.

The people of New England became experts at shipbuilding and commerce due to the timber found in the dense forests.  They also fished for cod off the coasts.

The combination of Calvinism, soil, and climate in New England made for energy, purposefulness, sternness, stubbornness, self-reliance, and resourcefulness.

The Early Settlers' Days and Ways

Women, slave or free, on southern plantations or northern farms, wove, cooked, cleaned, and care for children.  Men cleared land; fenced, planted, and cropped the land; cut firewood; and butchered livestock as needed.

Resentment against upper-class pretensions helped to spark outbursts like Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 in Virginia and the uprising of Maryland's Protestants toward the end of the 17^th century.  In New York, animosity between lordly landholders and aspiring merchants fueled Leisler's Rebellion, an ill-starred and bloody insurgence that rocked New York City from 1689-1691.

In 1651, Massachusetts prohibited poorer folk from "wearing gold or silver lace," and in 18^th century Virginia, a tailor was fined and jailed for arranging to race his horse-"a sport only for gentlemen." 

Britain governed most of North America by 1775 (32 colonies), but only 13 colonies had rebelled against the crown by this time. Canada, Jamaica, and others did not rebel. This was due to the social, economic, and political differences between the colonies.

Conquest by the Cradle

Over the course of the 1700s, the population in the North American colonies exploded. By the end of the century, Britain no longer hadmore people than its colonies.

In 1775, the most populous colonies were Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Maryland.

About 90% of people lived in rural areas.

A Mingling of the Races

Colonial America was a melting pot.

Germans were 6% of the total population in 1775.  Many Germans settled in Pennsylvania, fleeing religious persecution, economic oppression, and the ravages of war.

Scots-Irish were 7% of the population in 1775.  They were lawless individuals.

By the mid 18^th century, a series of Scots-Irish settlements were scattered along the "great wagon road", which hugged the eastern Appalachian foothills from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

The Scots-Irish led the armed march of the Paxton Boys in Philadelphia in 1764, protesting the Quaker oligarchy's lenient policy toward the Indians. A few years later, they led the Regulator movement in North Carolina, a small but nasty insurrection against eastern domination of the colony's affairs.

About 5% of the multicolored colonial population consisted of other European groups- French Huguenots, Welsh, Dutch, Swedes, Jews, Irish, Swiss, and Scots Highlanders.

Africans in America

By about 1720, the proportion of females in the Chesapeake area soon began to rise, and the number of families increased.

On the Sea Islands off South Carolina's coast, blacks evolved a language, Gullah.  It blended English with several African languages, including Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa.

In New York City in 1712, a slave revolt killed 12 whites and caused the execution of 21 blacks.

In 1739 in South Carolina along the Stono River, a revolt exploded.  The rebels tried to march to Spanish Florida but were stopped by a local militia.

The Structure of Colonial Society

By the mid 1700s, the richest 10% of Bostonians and Philadelphians owned 2/3 of the taxable wealth in their cities.

By 1750, Boston contained a large number of homeless poor, who were forced to wear a large red "P" on their clothing.

In all the colonies, the influx of indentured servants added to the population of the lower classes.

The black slaves were the lowest class in society.

Workday America

Agriculture was the leading industry, involving about 90% of the people.  The staple crop in Maryland and Virginia was tobacco.  The fertile middle (bread) colonies produced large quantities of grain. 

Fishing was not nearly as prevalent as agriculture, but it was financially rewarding.

Trade was popular in the New England group - New York and Pennsylvania.

Triangular Trade: a ship would leave a New England port with rum and sail to Africa. It would pick up slaves and then sail to the West Indies. It would pick up molasses and take this to New England where it would be converted to rum.

Manufacturing in the colonies was of only secondary importance. 

Lumbering was the most important manufacturing activity. By 1770, about 1/3 of the British merchant marine was American built.

As early as the 1730s, fast-breeding Americans demanded more and more British products-yet the slow growing British population early reached the saturation point for absorbing imports from America.  This trade imbalance prompted the Americans to look for foreign markets to get money to pay for British products.

In 1773, bowing to pressure from British West Indian planters, Parliament passed the Molasses Act, aimed at crushing North American trade with the French West Indies.  The colonists got around this by smuggling.

Clerics, Physicians, and Jurists

A position in the Christian ministry held the highest prestige.

Most physicians were poorly trained and not highly esteemed. The first medical school opened in 1765.

Epidemics were a constant nightmare.  A crude form of inoculation was introduced in 1721.  Powdered dried toad was a favorite prescription for smallpox.  Diphtheria was also a killer, especially of young people. 

Lawyers were also not held in high regard.

Horsepower and Sailpower

The roadways in the colonies were in terrible condition.

An intercolonial postal system was established by the mid-1700s.

Dominant Denominations

Two established, or tax-supported, churches were prominent in 1775: the Anglican and the Congregational. 

The Church of England (Anglicans) became the official faith in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and a part of New York.  The College of William and Mary was founded in 1693 to train a better class of clerics for the Anglican Church.

The Congregational Church had grown out of the Puritan Church, and was formally established in all the New England colonies except independent-minded Rhode Island.  Presbyterianism was never made official in any of the colonies.

Religious toleration had made tremendous strides in America.  There were fewer Catholics in America; hence anti-Catholic laws were less severe and less strictly enforced.  In general, people could worship or not worship as they pleased.

The Great Awakening

A few churches grudgingly said that spiritual conversion was not necessary for church membership.

Jacobus Arminius was a Dutch theologian who preached that individual free will, not divine decree, determined a person's eternal fate (Arminianism). This challenged the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.

The Great Awakening exploded in the 1730s and 1740s. The Awakening was started in Northampton, Massachusetts by Jonathan Edwards.  He said that through faith in God, not through doing good works, could one attain eternal salvation.  He had an alive-style of preaching.

George Whitefield gave America a different kind of enthusiastic type of preaching.  The old lights, orthodox clergymen, were skeptical of the new ways of preaching.  New lights, on the other hand, defended the Awakening for its role in revitalizing American religion.

The Awakening had an emphasis on direct, emotive spirituality and seriously undermined the older clergy.  It started many new denominations and greatly increased the numbers and the competitiveness of American churches.

Schools and Colleges

Puritan New England was more interested in education than any other section.  Dominated by the Congregational Church, it stressed the need for Bible reading by the individual worshipper.

College education was regarded very highly in New England. In New England, the schools were focused on training men for the ministry.

9 local colleges were established during the colonial era.

A Provincial Culture

The red-bricked Georgian style was introduced in 1720.

Art & architecture were popular in the colonies.

Scientific progress in the colonies lagged behind progress in Britain.  Ben Franklin was considered the only first-rank scientist in the New World.

Pioneer Presses

A celebrated legal case in 1734-1735 involved John Peter Zenger, a newspaper printer.  He was charged with printing things that assailed the corrupt royal governor of New York.  The jury voted him not guilty to the surprise of the judge and many people.  This paved the way for freedom of the press.

The Great Game of Politics

By 1775, 8 of the colonies had royal governors, who were appointed by the king.  3 of the colonies (Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) were under proprietors who themselves chose the governors.  2 colonies (Connecticut and Rhode Island) elected their own governors under self-governing characters.

Nearly every colony used a two-house legislative body.  The upper house, or council, was appointed by the crown in the royal colonies and by the proprietor in the proprietary colonies.  The lower house, as the popular branch, was elected by the people.

Lord Cornbury: made governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702.  He was a drunkard, a spendthrift, and a bad person.