Founding the Midlands

Founding the Midlands

• Overview: The Midlands is described as the most prototypically American nation, one of the last to be founded, with origins in the 1680s. It is portrayed as tolerant, multicultural, multilingual, and populated by families of modest means—many religious—whose primary desire was to be left alone by their government and leaders. Over three centuries, Midlands culture has westwardly expanded from around Philadelphia, leaping over the Appalachians, to cover a vast portion of the American heartland while retaining core traits. It is depicted as Middle America, the era’s mainstream national culture, and historically the kingmaker in national politics.
  

• Founding paradox: Despite its later central role, Midlands’ beginnings were far from ordinary. Like Yankeedom, it was intended as a model utopian society guided by an unorthodox religious conviction. The colony that would become Pennsylvania was founded by a religious group contemporaries labeled radical and dangerous: the Quakers. They were accused of undermining peace and order and jeopardizing religion and state.
  

• Quaker beliefs and practices: Quakers rejected social hierarchies and formal church services, argued for spiritual equality of men and women, and questioned slavery. They promoted the Inner Light—the belief that every person carries the Holy Spirit within—and sought God through personal mystical experience rather than through scripture or clergy. They maintained that all humans are essentially good and should be treated as they would wish to be treated, regardless of sect, race, or gender, and they viewed earthly authority as eventually illegitimate. By the 1690s, their developing pacifism became so absolute that it would undermine the Midlands’ security and governance.
  

• The question of founding Pennsylvania: How could such an unpopular group gain permission to found a colony? The answer lies in the way opportunity and favors intersected in the era. Admiral William Penn—a self-made man who navigated the political winds—accumulated favors that his son would later cash in. During the English Civil War, he fought for Parliament, supported the Restoration, and was financially rewarded by confiscated Irish estates. He loaned £$16{,}000$to Charles II and groomed his son William Penn (the future colonial founder). The son’s trajectory was rocked in 1667 when he joined the Quakers, leading to a lifelong advocacy for the sect, including hard-driving missionary activity in Europe.<br></p></li><li><p><strong>William Penn:</strong> Penn became one of the period’s most famous Quakers, publishing many aggressive pamphlets on Quakerism, enduring multiple imprisonments, and traveling widely as a missionary. Upon his father’s death in$1670$, William Penn was very wealthy and deeply committed to Quaker ideals. He envisioned a country where diverse creeds and ethnic backgrounds could live in harmony, guided by moral principles rather than coercive authority.<br></p></li><li><p><strong>The “holy experiment”:</strong> In$1680$, Penn settled his father’s debt to the Crown in exchange for a grant of$45{,}000$square miles of land between Lord Baltimore’s Maryland and the Duke of York’s New York. The province would be named Pennsylvania after the late admiral, and Penn would have wide latitude to govern. The project aimed to stress liberty, pacific relations with Native peoples, and democratic norms:<br></p><ul><li><p>No standing army; peaceful relations with Indians; land purchases and respect for Indigenous land interests.<br></p></li><li><p>Voting extended to almost all free residents; no special status for the Quaker religion within government; the Quaker aim was to lead by example, not by coercion.<br></p></li><li><p>Philadelphia would be the capital, centered on a centrally planned grid with a gridiron street pattern, standardized street names, and uniform building distances. Philadelphia would become the Midlands’ model city, the City of Brotherly Love.<br></p></li><li><p>The broader territorial scope included West Jersey (now southern New Jersey), the Delaware settlements along Delaware Bay (now Delaware), and northwestern Maryland (which Penn mistakenly believed to be part of his royal grant).<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Marketing and financing the colony: Penn’s colonization program was extraordinarily well organized. He advertised political and religious liberty and land on favorable terms, printing pamphlets in England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and large portions of what is now Germany. He presold approximately$750{,}000$acres to around$600$investors, providing capital to seed colonization, establish Philadelphia, and sustain the colonial government for several years without immediate taxation.<br></p></li><li><p>First wave of colonists (1682–1686): In$1682$, Penn dispatched$23$ships carrying about$2{,}000$colonists with tools, provisions, and livestock. By$1686$, around$8{,}000$people lived in and around Philadelphia, a population milestone achieved in much less time than Tidewater, New France, or other contemporaneous colonies.<br></p></li><li><p>German immigration and cultural imprint: The second wave came from the Palatinate (German-speaking peasants and craftsmen). Many were Protestants escaping famine, persecution, and wars (a legacy of centuries of imperial and confessional conflict). They arrived as extended family groups or entire villages with distinct religious identities, including Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren of Christ.</p><ul><li><p>Between$1683$and$1726$, roughly$5{,}000$German speakers settled in the Midlands, imprinting German linguistic and cultural practices (Pennsylvania Deitsch, a Palatinate dialect) in Germantown and other settlements, and continuing well into the 20th century.</p></li><li><p>From$1727$to$1755$, another$57{,}000$Germans arrived, solidifying Pennsylvania as the only English-founded colony without an English majority.</p></li><li><p>Germans adapted well to Quaker governance, supporting Quaker candidates and policies. They contributed advanced farming techniques (soil selection, crop rotation, and selective livestock breeding) and crafts such as log cabins and the Conestoga wagon, which carried settlers across the Appalachians.</p></li><li><p>Their farming and craftsmanship earned wide recognition for tidy, prosperous farms and pragmatic rural economies.</p></li><li><p>Language and culture: tolerance of ethnic and religious diversity reinforced by practical settlement strategies.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Slavery and moral obstacles: Germans shared an aversion to slavery, a stance that helped differentiate the Midlands from other colonies (New Netherland, Tidewater, Deep South). The Germans commonly practiced small-scale farming with little need for slave labor. Nevertheless, some Quakers (including Penn) brought slaves to the colony, and the Friends later pressed for abolition:</p><ul><li><p>The first formal anti-slavery protest in North America was articulated by German Quakers in Germantown in$1712$: "We shall do to all men like as we will be done ourselves" (no matter generation, descent, or color).</p></li><li><p>In the early years, some Quaker slaveholders freed their slaves and attempted compensation for past labor; a 1712 import duty on slaves was imposed by the Quaker-led legislature but overturned by royal court. Another attempt to suppress slavery in$1773$was vetoed by the Crown.</p></li><li><p>By the time of the American Revolution, most Quaker slaveholders had freed their slaves or compensated them, shaping Midlands’ antislavery stance and contributing to a broader Yankeedom-aligned moral complex against Southern slavery.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Governance failures and the Delaware breakaway: Early Pennsylvania showcased a bold social experiment but encountered significant governance problems. The Quakers believed in self-government through inner discipline and the Golden Rule, but practical governance proved difficult due to doctrinal disputes and administrative lapses:</p><ul><li><p>Six governors in the colony’s first decade; failure to keep public records; weak legal infrastructure; struggles to pass essential laws.</p></li><li><p>The Dutch, Swedes, and Finns in the lower counties became desperate for governance and broke away to form Delaware in$1704$.</p></li><li><p>William Penn’s frustration with persistent quarrels and poor governance led him to appoint outsiders to run the colony, including a Yankee Puritan (John Blackwell), a Boston Anglican merchant (Edward Shippen), and an English gentleman (David Lloyd). None of these outsiders could compel the Quakers to assume responsibility; Philadelphia’s Quakers preferred to focus on their Inner Light rather than day-to-day administration. This pattern underscored the tension between idealistic governance and practical administration.</p></li><li><p>James Thomson’s lament and Penn’s own note reveal the frustration: public order and governance lagged behind the colony’s moral ideals.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Borderlands influx and the crisis of defense: Beginning in$1717$, a new migration wave arrived—warrior-borderlanders from Scotland, Ulster, and the Scots-Irish-dominated north of Ireland—whose values conflicted with Quaker pacifism:</p><ul><li><p>The Borderlanders poured into Philadelphia’s docks in large numbers (over$100{,}000$by$1775$), moving into the western frontier and establishing a powerful regional culture beyond the immediate control of colonial capitals.</p></li><li><p>They occupied Indian lands without payment, launched preemptive attacks on Indian villages, and pushed peaceful tribes into alliances with New France, which supplied weapons to attack British rivals during the eighteenth century imperial wars.</p></li><li><p>The Quaker government’s response was weak due to internal divisions and a preference for pacifism; defense was largely funded by private donations and sporadic private efforts, not by a centralized colonial program. Benjamin Franklin, a Yankee who settled in Philadelphia, criticized the Friends for their inaction and called for defenses to be funded and organized.</p></li><li><p>The Lenni Lenape attack campaign of$1755$intensified the crisis: western towns were wiped out, refugees flooded into Philadelphia, and the Quaker-led assembly faced a system-wide crisis without adequate arms or funding to defend settlers.</p></li><li><p>The Quakers’ inability to defend their settlements led to resignations of key officials and the eventual replacement by partisan, interest-group-ism and influence from Franklin and allied non-Quaker factions. London Quakers were appalled by the inaction.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Path to revolution and sectional reshaping: By the eve of the American Revolution, the Midlands faced a divided future. Yankee Connecticut settlers pressed to retain control of northern Wyoming Valley; in the west, borderland power spread southward, reshaping governance and identity across the Midlands and its neighbors. The Midlands thus found itself part of a broader federation of colonial nations, with rising tensions between the Quaker-founded model and the borderland-influenced frontier world.<br></p></li><li><p>Key implications and themes:</p><ul><li><p>The Midlands exemplified a practical utopia: religious liberty, political liberty for a broad spectrum of people, and a policy of land purchases and fair dealings with Indigenous nations.</p></li><li><p>The role of German immigration gave the Midlands a strong agrarian, craftsman, and anti-slavery ethos, helping to shape its distinctive social and economic culture.</p></li><li><p>The Quaker governance model highlighted the practical challenges of running a colony that aspired to moral perfection; governance problems and external pressures foreshadowed tensions between idealism and political efficiency in colonial America.</p></li><li><p>The borderland influx generated a culturally distinct frontier civilization (Borderlanders) that would become a powerful force in the Midlands’ future political evolution and would influence the broader North American political landscape.<br></p></li></ul></li></ul><ul><li><p>Overview: Greater Appalachia is described as the last nation founded in the colonial period, a Dan-ic, borderland warrior culture that emerged on the backcountry frontier and rapidly disrupted the Midlands, Tidewater, and Deep South. It represents a volatile insurgent force that would remain a persistent presence in North American society.<br></p></li><li><p>Origins and characteristics: Greater Appalachia originated from Borderlanders who entered the colonial space seeking sanctuary from a devastated homeland. They arrived without state sponsorship or direction from colonial authorities, often against the wishes of officials, and chose the isolation of the eighteenth-century frontier. This culture was profoundly opposed to foreign rule, committed to independence, and skeptical of centralized authority.<br></p></li><li><p>Foundational population and ancestry: The Borderlanders traced their roots to the war-torn borderlands of northern Britain—lowland Scotland, the Marches of northern England, and the Scots-Irish north of Ireland. They carried an 800-year history of warfare and conflict, which persisted on the North American frontier as they established a frontier society beyond the reach of formal colonial law.<br></p></li><li><p>The frontier society: Appalachia emerged as a society initially beyond formal legal control—an 'anarchical' world transplanted from the borderlands. The Borderlanders’ social organization prioritized autonomy, self-reliance, and resistance to external governance, with a culture of violence and militancy that contrasted sharply with the Midlands’ pacifist and orderly ideal.<br></p></li><li><p>Significance for the American nations: Greater Appalachia would later reshape the political map of the continent, challenging the Midlands’ political control and reframing the relationships among the different colonial nations within the nascent United States. Its independence-minded, militarized culture stood in tension with the Midlands’ more peaceful, inclusive, and governance-focused model, setting the stage for enduring regional differences in political values and state-building approaches.<br></p></li><li><p>Notable thematic notes:</p><ul><li><p>Greater Appalachia’s emergence demonstrates how frontier societies can redefine political landscapes by introducing alternative norms around governance, violence, and social order.</p></li><li><p>The interaction between Midlands’ established governance and Appalachia’s frontier independence would help explain later regional divisions and alliances within the early United States.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Key contrasts to recall:</p><ul><li><p>Midlands = organized, peaceable, inclusive, Quaker-founded civic ideals, strong emphasis on land-purchase fairness, anti-slavery (early), and a planned urban model (Philadelphia).</p></li><li><p>Greater Appalachia = frontier-based, lawless at origin, warrior-culture, highly independent, suspicious of external control, and capable of destabilizing established colonial arrangements.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Concluding note on the colonial federation: The Midlands and Greater Appalachia (along with Tidewater and other nations) would come to form a complex federation of American nations, each with its own founding story, cultural norms, and political trajectories. The boundary between these nations—yet overlapping in space and influence—would shape the early political and cultural landscape of what would become the United States.<br></p></li><li><p>Quotes and metaphors to remember:</p><ul><li><p>The Midlands’ self-understanding as a model, mainstream culture, and kingmaker in national politics.</p></li><li><p>Greater Appalachia’s description as a civilization without a government at its inception, formed by refugees seeking sanctuary and isolation on the frontier, illustrating a stark contrast to the Midlands’ planned and orderly approach to colonization.<br></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Formulas and numerical anchors to note (LaTeX):</p><ul><li><p>Grant size:$45{,}000$square miles</p></li><li><p>Population milestones:$2{,}000$colonists aboard$23$ships;$8{,}000$residents around Philadelphia by$1686$$