Colonial history of the United States
- For other American colonies, see European colonization of the Americas or British colonization of the Americas.
Starting in the late 16th century, the English, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch began to colonize eastern North America. The first English attempts, notably the Lost Colony of Roanoke, ended in failure, but successful colonies were soon established. The colonists who came to the New World were by no means a homogeneous band, but rather came from a variety of different social and religious groups who settled in different locations on the seaboard. The Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Puritans of New England, the gold-hungry settlers of Jamestown, and the convicts of Georgia each came to the new continent for vastly different reasons, and they created colonies with very different social, religious, political and economic structures.
Historians typically recognize four distinct regions in the lands that later became the eastern United States. Listed from north to south, they are: New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies and the Southern Colonies. Some historians add a fifth region, the frontier, which had certain unifying features no matter what sort of colony it sprang from. The colonies of New France (later the Province of Quebec) and Spanish Florida adjoined these regions, but developed separately for many years.
Motives for exploration and colonization
During the 15th and 16th centuries, portions of Western Europe emerged from the Middle Ages and entered the Renaissance and then Early Modern period, a development that encouraged exploration and colonization in many ways. A revival in classical learning sparked an interest in geography and a revived intellectual curiosity about the world that had subsided during the Middle Ages. At the same time, the intellectual growth of the Renaissance led to the development of seafaring technologies needed to make long voyages across open water.
As the "New Monarchs" began to forge nations, they acquired the degree of centralized wealth and power necessary to begin systematic attempts at exploration. Not all exploratory undertakings, however, were done by central governments. Charter companies and joint stock companies played a crucial role in exploration. Also, as the economy of Europe began to revive, it became clear that the first nation to find a direct trade route to the "Indies" would benefit immensely. It was in this atmosphere that Christopher Columbus left Spain on his famous westward voyage. He sought Asia, but the lands he came upon were found to belong to an entirely different landmass. Spain and Portugal quickly mounted an effort of colonization and conquest. Within a few years, they had divided up lucrative South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a new generation of colonial powers arose: England, France, and the Netherlands. The lands that now make up the eastern United States presented themselves for these new powers as an attractive place to establish colonies. In spite of these lands' relative proximity to Europe, Spain and Portugal had taken little interest in them, so as far as the other Europeans were concerned, they were still free for the taking.
England made its first successful efforts at the start of the 17th century for several reasons. During this era, English proto-nationalism and national assertiveness blossomed under the threat of Spanish invasion, assisted by a degree of Protestant militarism and adoration of Queen Elizabeth. At this time, however, there was no official attempt by the English government to create a colonial empire. Rather, the motivation behind the founding of colonies was piecemeal and variable. Practical considerations such as commercial enterprise, over-population and the desire for religious freedom played their parts.
Early colonial failures
In the closing decades of the sixteenth century, the English made many failed ventures to settle the eastern seaboard, which they named "Virginia" (in honor of Queen Elizabeth I of England, the "Virgin Queen").
One of the more nearly successful of these attempts was the "Lost Colony of Roanoke", established in 1587 on the Outer Banks of modern-day North Carolina, then part of Virginia. Sir Walter Raleigh financed the expedition, and John White acted as governor. Due to circumstances in England, no resupply ship could reach the colony for three years. An expedition in 1590 found only a deserted settlement and the mysterious word "Croatoan" carved on a palisade wall, and the letters "CRO" on a nearby tree. Though previous attempts to colonize the area had involved conflict with neighboring Native American tribes, no evidence of a struggle was found.
In 1607, the Virginia Company of Plymouth established the Popham Colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River in present-day Maine. The settlement was founded in the same year that the London Company had established the Jamestown Settlement, but unlike Jamestown, the Popham settlement was abandoned after only one year.
The company thus fell into disuse and in 1609, the Virginia Colony charter was reorganized to grant the London Company exclusive rights to most of the previously shared territory along the coast.
The Chesapeake
The first truly successful English colony was established in 1607, on a small river near Chesapeake Bay. It was named Jamestown, after the recently enthroned James I. The venture was financed and coordinated by the London Virginia Company, a joint stock company which hoped to follow in the footsteps of the Spanish conquistadores by finding gold.
The colony nearly ruined itself. With an eye toward finding precious metals, the Virginia Company sent jewelers, goldsmiths, aristocrats, and the like--but not a single farmer. As the company had expected them to, the settlers spent their time searching for gold, and hoped to obtain all of their food by trading with the nearby Powhatan tribes. This made their settlement neither profitable nor socially stable, since individual colonists felt little attachment to their community but instead sought individual wealth. A lack of social bonds in the community was further exacerbated by the fact that all the initial colonists, and most of the later arrivals, were male. Without wives or children to protect, the colonists had little incentive to protect their settlement or work towards its long-term growth.
Archaeological findings have indicated that the entire region was, at the time, struck by the most severe drought in centuries. American Indians were not very willing to give away their corn, leaving the colonists without a ready food supply. Only a third of the colonists survived the first winter, which they named the "Starving Times". In fact, documents indicate that some turned to cannibalism. However, the colony survived, in large part due to the efforts of an enigmatic figure named John Smith. Smith made himself the benevolent, if uncompromising, autocrat of the colony. His motto was "No work, no food," and his strict martial attitude was enough to bring the independent-minded settlers into line. He put the colonists to work, and befriended Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, who was able to supply the colony with more food.
John Smith had saved the colony, but it had yet to turn a profit. Gold was nowhere to be found. Finally, in 1612, John Rolfe hit upon the cultivation of tobacco as a cash crop. The new product earned fabulously high profits in the first year for the Virginia Colony, and substantially lower, but still extraordinary ones in the second year. This state of economic affairs did not last, but tobacco continued to be the mainstay of the region's economy for two centuries.
Tobacco cultivation is labor-intensive and plantation agriculture came early to this region. At first, plantation owners employed white indentured servants, who would sign on as laborers for a period of time. There were few other choices available for a poor laborer, so most indentured servants renewed their contracts for as long as they could. This led to the creation of the plantation owners' greatest fear: a permanent class of poor, unhappy, and armed laborers. After their fears were realized with Bacon's Rebellion, a revolt led by the gentryman Nathaniel Bacon that succeeded in burning Jamestown to the ground, plantation owners sought a less rebellious form of labor--African slaves. Starting in 1619, Virginia colonists tapped into the slave trade, which was already bringing large numbers of Africans to the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean. 1619 also marked the year in which the first European females arrived in Jamestown.
As cash crop producers, these plantations were heavily dependent on trade. Without the ability to construct roads, and with irrigation needs, the planters were confined to the banks of rivers. However, because rivers and creeks were abundant, the plantations could spread out. Individual workers on the plantation fields were usually without family and separated from their nearest neighbors by miles. This meant that little social infrastructure developed for the commoners of Virginia society, in contrast with the highly developed social infrastructure of colonial New England.
Another cause of social decentralization in the Chesapeake region was that Virginia society was predominantly secular. The lucrative tobacco business attracted unmarried men eager to make a living--not the sort of audience that is usually receptive to the call of religion. It did not attract many ministers, and even if it had, they would have had a difficult time building their congregations out of the far-flung tobacco planters. Thus, unlike in Puritan New England, there were few churches to serve as social and religious centers.
The colonial assembly that had governed the colony since its establishment was dissolved, but reinstated in 1630. It shared power with a royally appointed governor. On a more local level, governmental power was invested in county courts, also not elected.
New England
For details on each specific colony, see Connecticut Colony, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Province of New Hampshire, and Colony of Rhode Island.
The next successful English colonial venture was of an entirely different sort than the Chesapeake settlements. New England was founded by two separate groups of religious dissenters, the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Both demanded greater church reform and elimination of Catholic elements remaining in the Church of England. But whereas the Pilgrims sought to leave the Church of England, the Puritans wanted to reform it by setting an example of a holy community through the society they were to build in the New World.
The Pilgrims
The first in Scrooby Manor, England, whose members sailed in 1605 for the Netherlands. At this time, the Netherlands were gaining a reputation as a safe haven for those facing persecution. The emigrants grew dissatisfied with the heavy Dutch influence on their children and with poor economic conditions. They also experienced some persecution, motivated by the Dutch government's alliance with James I of England. As a result, some of them joined a larger group of Separatists who had remained in England, and sailed for the New World, taking the name Pilgrims.
Finally, these men and women sailed to America on the Mayflower, intending to arrive in the northern parts of what was known as Virginia--somewhere in the area of today's New York. Blown off course, they came instead to what is now Massachusetts, and landed on the west side of Lower Cape Cod. Before disembarking, they drew up the Mayflower Compact, by which they gave themselves broad powers of self-governance. They later relocated to Plymouth Colony on the mainland, establishing that settlement on December 21, 1620. (The first settlement there is the site of present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts).
Like the settlers at Jamestown, the Pilgrims had a difficult first winter, having had no time to plant crops. Most of the settlers died of starvation, including the leader, John Carver. William Bradford was chosen to replace him in the spring of 1621. Later that year, the colonists enlisted the aid of Squanto and Samoset, two Native Americans who had learned to speak some English. That autumn brought a bountiful harvest, and the first Thanksgiving was held.
The Puritans
A second group of colonists established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. This group was the Puritans, who sought to reform the Church of England by creating a new, pure church in the New World. This expedition consisted of 400 Puritans organized by the Massachusetts Bay Company. Within two years, an additional 2,000 had arrived in America in waves of emigration known as the "Great Migration." In the New World, the Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit and politically innovative culture that still lingers on in the modern United States.
Puritans came to America seeking religious freedom. However, they hoped this new land would serve as a "redeemer nation" (see exceptionalism). Though they fled from religious repression in England, their newly established society was not built on the virtues of religious tolerance by any means. The Puritan social ideal was that of the "nation of saints" or the "City upon a Hill," an intensely religious, thoroughly righteous community that would serve as an example for all of Europe and stimulate mass conversion to Puritanism. Roger Williams came to Massachusetts preaching religious toleration, separation of Church and State, and a complete break with the Church of England, but was banished from the colony as a result. He left and founded Rhode Island Colony, which was soon to become a haven for other religious refugees from the Puritan community. Another important example is Anne Hutchinson, a preacher of Antinomianism. Like Roger Williams, she believed in religious toleration and freedom of thought. She, too, was exiled to Rhode Island.
As for the political structure of the Puritan colonies, officials were elected by the community. However, only white males who were members of a Congregationalist church could vote. Officials had no responsibility to "the people"--their function was to serve God by best overseeing the moral and physical improvement of the community. However, it was not a theocracy--Congregationalist ministers had no special powers in the government. On the other hand, by contemporary European standards, it was quite politically liberal--arguably more so than that of any European power of the day. Thus, in the political structure of Puritan society could be seen both the democratic form and the emphasis on civic virtue that was to characterize post-Revolutionary American society.
Socially, the Puritan society was tightly knit. No one was allowed to live alone for fear that their temptation to sin would lead to the moral corruption of all of Puritan society. Because marriage generally took place within the geographic location of the family, within several generations many "towns" were more like clans, composed of several large, intermarried families. The strength of Puritan society was reflected through its institutions--specifically, its churches, town hall meetings, and militias. All members of the Puritan community were expected to be active in all three of these organizations, ensuring the moral, political, and military safety of their community. Although some characterize the strength of Puritan society as repressively communal, others point to it as the basis of the later American values of civil society and education, essential foundations for the development of democracy.
Economically, Puritan New England fulfilled the expectations of its founders. Unlike the cash-crop oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of individual farmers, who harvested enough crops to feed themselves and their families and to trade for goods they could not produce themselves. There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake. On the other hand, town leaders in New England could literally rent out the town's impoverished families for a year to anyone who could afford to board them, as a form of alms and as a form of cheap labor. Along with farming growth, New England became an important mercantile and shipbuilding center, often serving as the hub for trading between the South and Europe.
The Middle Colonies
For details on each specific colony, see Delaware Colony, Province of New Jersey, Province of New York, and Province of Pennsylvania.
The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity--religious, political, economic, and ethnic. Many Dutch and Irish immigrants settled in these areas, as well as in Long Island and Connecticut. (The Pennsylvania Dutch would stand out as a unique ethnic group.)
The Lower South
For details on each specific colony, see Province of Georgia, Province of North Carolina, Province of South Carolina.
The colonial South included the plantation colonies of the Chesapeake region (Virginia, Maryland, and, by some classifications, Delaware), which are discussed above, and the lower South (Carolina, which eventually split into North and South Carolina, and Georgia). After 1763, Florida also passed into British hands.
The Carolinas
The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina. It was a private venture, financed by a group of English Lords Proprietors, who obtained a Royal Charter to the Carolinas in 1663, hoping that a new colony in the south would become profitable like that of Jamestown. Carolina was not settled until 1670, and even then the first attempt failed, for the simple reason that there was no incentive for emigration to the south. However, eventually the Lords combined their remaining capital and financed a settlement mission to the area led by John West. The expedition located fertile and defensible ground at what was to become Charleston (originally Charles Town for Charles II of England), thus beginning the English colonization of the mainland. The original settlers in South Carolina established a lucrative trade in provisions, deerskins and Indian captives with the Caribbean islands. The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690s. North Carolina remained a frontier backwater through the early colonial period.
At first, South Carolina was politically divided. Its ethnic makeup included the original settlers, a group of rich, slave-owning English settlers from the island of Barbados; and Huguenots, a French-speaking community of Protestants. Nearly continuous frontier warfare during the era of King William's War and Queen Anne's War drove economic and political wedges between merchants and planters. The disaster of the Yamasee War in 1715 set off a decade of political turmoil. By 1729, the proprietary government had collapsed, and the Proprietors sold both colonies back to the British crown.
Georgia
James Oglethorpe, an 18th century British Member of Parliament, established Georgia Colony as a common solution to two problems. At that time, tension between Spain and Great Britain was high, and the British feared that Spanish Florida was threatening the British Carolinas. Oglethorpe decided to establish a colony in the contested border region of Georgia, and, in a creative twist, populate it with debtors, who would otherwise have been imprisoned according to standard British practice. This plan would both rid Great Britain of its undesirable elements and provide her with a base from which to attack Florida. The first colonists arrived in 1733.
Georgia was established on strict moralistic principles. Slavery was forbidden, as was alcohol and other forms of supposed immorality. However, the reality of the colony was far from ideal. The colonists were unhappy about the puritanical lifestyle, and complained that their colony could not compete economically with the Carolina rice plantations. Georgia initially failed to prosper, but eventually the restrictions were lifted, slavery was allowed, and it became as prosperous as the Carolinas.
Unification of the British colonies
A common defense
Their diverse histories and economies made each of the colonies different from the others. However, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, several events and trends brought them together in various ways.
One event that reminded colonists of their shared identity as British subjects was the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in Europe). This conflict spilled over into the colonies, where it was known as "King George's War", in reference to George II of England. Although most of the fighting took place in Europe, British colonial troops attacked French Canada.
As the colonies grew closer together, they began to drift away from Great Britain. Colonial perceptions of the British Government's crushing of Jacobite Risings and a huge influx of dispossessed Scots and Irish Jacobites caused the colonies to swell with anti-governmental and anti-Hanoverian sentiment. Something of a rival court began to develop in the colonies, although just as dominated by the English as it was in the British Isles.
At the Albany Congress of 1754, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the colonies be united by a Grand Council overseeing a common policy for defense, expansion, and Indian affairs. While the plan was thwarted by colonial legislatures and King George II, it was an early indication that the British colonies of North America were headed towards unification. This enabled former Whigs in Britain to become Tories and former Tories in the colonies to become Whigs.
Former anti-French sentiment was changed to accommodate a French alliance, spurred by the exiled Scots and specifically against the Hanoverians instead of England, the last legs of the Auld Alliance. Jefferson's plan in the future War of 1812 to continue the French alliance, was popular among Scottish Americans in the South especially, but hated by New England Puritans.
The Great Awakening
One event that began to unify the religious background of the colonies was the Great Awakening, a Protestant revival movement that took place in the 1730s and 1740s. It began with Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts preacher who sought to return to the Pilgrims' strict Calvinist roots and to reawaken the "Fear of God". Edwards was a powerful speaker and attracted a large following with sermons such as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". The English preacher, George Whitefield, and other itinerant preachers continued the movement, traveling across the colonies and preaching in a dramatic and emotional style.
Followers of Edwards and other preachers of similar religiosity called themselves the "New Lights," as contrasted with the "Old Lights", who disapproved of their movement. To promote their viewpoints, the two sides established a number of universities, now counted among the Ivy League, including Kings College (now Columbia University) and Princeton University. The Great Awakening was perhaps the first truly "American" event, and as such represented at least a small step towards the unification of the colonies.
The Great Awakening may also be interpreted as the last major expression of the religious ideals on which the New England colonies were founded. Religiosity had been declining for decades, due in part to fallout from the Salem witch trials. After the Great Awakening, it subsided again, although later American history abounds with revival movements (most notably the Second Great Awakening). The forces driving the colonies' history for the next eighty years would be overwhelmingly secular, although America would remain a deeply religious nation for years to come (and many parts of it remain so to this day).
The French and Indian War
The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years' War (although it began two years before any fighting broke out in Europe, and lasted for nine years). The war in the European theater was motivated primarily by Austria's desire to reclaim land lost to Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) (discussed above).
This war is called the French and Indian because the Iroquois confederacy, which had been playing the British and the French against each other successfully for decades, saw that Britain was getting the upper hand and threw itself decisively into the French camp. The move did not succeed, and the French were defeated anyway. In the Treaty of Paris (1763), France surrendered its vast North American empire to Britain.
The French and Indian war took on a new significance for the North American colonists in Great Britain when William Pitt the elder decided that it was necessary to win the war against France at all costs. For the first time, North America was one of the main theatres of what could be termed a "world war". During the war, the thirteen colonies' position as part of the British Empire was made truly apparent, as British military and civilian officials took on an increased presence in the lives of Americans. The war also increased a sense of American unity in other ways. It caused men, who might normally have never left their colonies, to travel across the continent, fighting alongside men from decidedly different, yet still "American," backgrounds. Throughout the course of the war, British officers trained American ones (most notably George Washington) for battle, which would later benefit the American Revolution to come. Also, state legislatures and officials had to cooperate intensively, for arguably the first time, in pursuit of the continent-wide military effort.
The British and colonists triumphed jointly over a common foe. The colonists' loyalty to the mother country was stronger than ever before. However, the seeds of trans-Atlantic disunity had been sown. The British Prime Minister of the time, William Pitt the Elder, had decided to wage the war in the colonies with the use of troops from the colonies and tax funds from Britain itself. This was a successful wartime strategy, but after the war was over, each side believed that it had borne a greater burden than the other. The British populace, the most heavily taxed of any in Europe, pointed out angrily that the colonists paid little to the royal coffers. The colonists replied that their sons had fought and died in a war that served European interests more than their own. The British answered that the colonists' poor discipline made them inferior soldiers anyway. This dispute was a link in the chain of events that soon brought about the American Revolution.
Ties to the British Empire
Although the colonies were very different from one another, they were still a part of the British empire in more than just name.
Socially, the colonial elite of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia saw its identity as British. Although many had never been to England, they imitated British styles of dress, dance, and etiquette. This social upper crust built its mansions in the Georgian style, copied the furniture designs of Thomas Chippendale, and participated in the intellectual currents of Europe, such as the Enlightenment. To many of their inhabitants, the seaport cities of colonial America were truly British cities.
Many of the political structures of the colonies drew upon various English political traditions, most notably the Commonwealthmen and the Whig traditions (see also colonial government in America). Many Americans at the time saw the colonies' systems of governance as modeled after the British constitution of the time, with the king corresponding to the governor, the House of Commons to the colonial assembly, and the House of Lords to the Governor's council. The codes of law of the colonies were often drawn directly from English law; indeed, English common law survives even in the modern United States. Eventually, it was a dispute over the meaning of some of these political ideals, especially political representation, that led to the American Revolution.
Another point on which the colonies found themselves more similar than different was the booming import of British goods. The British economy had begun to grow rapidly at the end of the 17th century, and by the mid-18th century, small factories in Britain were producing much more than the island nation could consume. Finding a market for their goods in the British colonies of North America, Britain increased her exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770. Because British merchants offered generous credit to their customers, Americans began buying staggering amounts of English goods. From New England to Georgia, all British subjects bought similar products, creating and Anglicanizing a sort of common identity.
From unity to revolution
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The Royal Proclamation
The general sentiment of inequity that arose soon after the Treaty of Paris was solidified by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, on land which had been recently captured from France. In issuing this decree, the government was no doubt influenced by disgruntled taxpayers (see "The French and Indian War," above) who did not wish to bankroll the subjugation of the native people of the area to make room for colonists. In fact, there was still land available east of the mountains; for instance, the valley of the Mohawk River in western New York would not be fully settled until decades later.
The colonists resented the measure. To many Americans, it seemed unnecessary and draconian, an unproductive piece of legislation mandated by a far-away government that cared little for their needs. The latter was a reasonable assertion, since none of the Members of Parliament were elected by colonists. Parliament had generally been preoccupied with affairs in Europe, and let the colonies govern themselves. It was no longer willing to do so. A series of measures resulting from this policy change would continue to arouse opposition in the colonies over the next thirteen years:
- Sugar Act (1764)
- Stamp Act 1765
- First Quartering Act (1765)
- Declaratory Act (1766)
- Townshend Revenue Act (1767)
- Tea Act (1773)
- The Intolerable Acts, also called the Coercive or Punitive Acts
- Second Quartering Act (1774)
- Quebec Act (1774)
- Massachusetts Government Act (1774)
- Administration of Justice Act (1774)
- Boston Port Act (1774)
- Prohibitory Act (1776)
Life in Colonial America
New England
When settling New England, the Puritans created self-governing communities of religious congregations of farmers, or yeoman, and their families. High-level politicians gave out plots of land to male settlers, or proprietors, who then divided the land amongst themselves. Large portions were usually given to men of higher social standing, but every white man had enough land to support a family. Also important was the fact that every white man had a voice in the town meeting. The town meeting levied taxes, built roads, and elected officials to manage town affairs.
The Congregational Church, the church the Puritans founded, was not automatically joined by all New England residents because of Puritan beliefs that God singled out only a few specific people for salvation. Instead, membership was limited to those who could convincingly "test" before members of the church that had been saved. They were known as "the elect" or "Saints" and made up less than 40 percent of the population of New England.
Ways of life
Farm life
A majority of New England residents were small farmers. Within these small farm families, and English families as well, men had complete power over the property and his wife. When married, English women lost their maiden name and personal identity, meaning they could not own property, file lawsuits, or participate in political life, even when widowed. The role of wives was to raise and nurture healthy children and support their husbands. Most women carried out these duties. In the mid-18th century, women usually married in their early 20s and had 6 to 8 children, most of whom survived to adulthood. Farm women provided most of the materials needed by the rest of the family which includes spinning yarn from wool and knitting sweaters and stockings, making candles and soap, and churning milk into butter.
Most New England parents tried to help their sons establish farms of their own. When sons married, fathers gave them gifts of land, livestock, or farming equipment; daughters received household goods, farm animals, and/or cash. Arranged marriages were very unusual. Normally, children chose their own spouses from within a circle of suitable acquaintances who shared their religion and social standing. Parents retained veto power over their children's marriages.
New England farming families generally lived in wooden houses because of the abundance of trees. A typical New England farmhouse was one-and-a-half stories tall and had a strong frame (usually made of large square timbers) that was covered by wooden clapboard siding. A large chimney stood in the middle of the house that provided cooking facilities and warmth during the winter. One side of the ground-floor contained a hall, a general-purpose room where the family worked and ate meals. Adjacent to the hall was the parlor, a room used to entertain guests that contained the family's best furnishings and the parents bed. Children slept in a loft above the ground-floor, while the kitchen was either part of the hall or was located in a shed along the back of the house. Because colonial families were large, these small dwellings had much activity and there was little privacy.
New England families worked on and cultivated their own farms. The household and their livestock consumed most of the crops grown on the farm; anything left was sold for needed manufactured goods. The first settlers of New England grew the traditional crops of wheat and barley (for bread and beer), but eventually over time they adapted their agricultural production to the new environment. After 1700, most New England farmers grew mainly corn and raised cattle and hogs. The ears of corn provide food for humans, and corn stalks and leaves supplied feed for the cattle, steers, and pigs. Cows, in turn, provided dairy products, and steers and hogs were slaughtered and their meat sold preserved.
By the middle of the 18th century, this way of life was facing a crisis as the region's population had nearly doubled each generation—- from 100,000 in 1700 to 200,000 in 1725, to 350,000 by 1750—-because farm households had many children and most people lived until they were 60 years old. As colonists in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island continued to subdivide their land between farmers, the farms became too small to support single families. This overpopulation threatened the New England ideal of a society of independent yeoman farmers.
Farm families responded creatively to this new crisis. Some farmers obtained land grants to create farms in undeveloped land in Massachusetts and Connecticut or bought plots of land from speculators in New Hampshire and what later became Vermont. Other farmers became agricultural innovators. They planted nutritious English grass such as red clover and timothy, which provided more feed for livestock, and potatoes, which provided a high production rate that was an advantage for small farms. Finally, many families increased their productivity by exchanging goods and labors with each other. They loaned livestock and grazing land to one another and worked together to spin yarn, sew quilts, and shuck corn. Migration, agricultural innovation, and economic cooperation were creative measures that preserved New England's yeoman society until the 19th century.
Town life
By 1750, a variety of artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants provided services to the growing farming population. Blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and furniture makers set up shops in rural villages. There they built and repaired goods needed by farm families. Stores selling English manufactures such as cloth, iron utensils, and window glass as well as West Indian products like sugar and molasses were set up by traders. The storekeepers of these shops sold their imported goods in exchange for crops and other local products including shingles, potash, and barrel staves. These local goods were shipped to towns and cities all along the Atlantic Coast. Enterprising men set up horse stables and taverns along wagon roads to service this transportation system.
After these products had been delivered to port towns such as Boston and Salem in Massachusetts, New Haven in Connecticut, and Newport and Providence in Rhode Island, merchants then exported them to the West Indies where they were traded for molasses, sugar, gold coins, and bills of exchange (credit slips). They carried the West Indian products to New England factories where the raw sugar was turned into granulated and sugar and the molasses distilled into rum. The gold and credit slips were sent to England where they were exchanged for manufactures, which were shipped back to the colonies and sold along with the sugar and rum to farmers.
Other New England merchants took advantage of the rich fishing areas along the Atlantic Coast and financed a large fishing fleet and transporting its catch of mackerel and cod to the West Indies and southern Europe. Some merchants exploited the vast amounts of timber along the coasts and rivers of northern New England. They funded sawmills that supplied cheap wood for houses and shipbuilding. Hundreds of New England shipwrights built oceangoing ships, which they sold to British and American merchants.
Many merchants became very wealthy by providing their goods to the agricultural population and ended up dominating the society of sea port cities. Unlike yeoman farmhouses, these merchants resembled the lifestyle of that of the upper class of England living in elegant two-and-a-half story houses designed the new Georgian style. These Georgian houses had a symmetrical façade with equal numbers of windows on both sides of the central door. The interior consisted of a passageway down the middle of the house with specialized rooms such as a library, dining room, formal parlour, and master bedroom off the sides. Unlike the multi-purpose halls and parlours of the yeoman houses, each of these rooms served a separate purpose. In a Georgian house, men mainly used certain rooms, such as the library, while women mostly used the kitchen. These houses contained bedrooms on the second floor that provided privacy to parents and children.
Culture and education
Unlike other colonial regions, elementary education was widespread in New England. Early Puritan settlers believed it was necessary to study the bible, so children were taught to read at an early age. It was also required that each town pay for a primary school. Most boys in England had some form of formal education on account of this law. About 10 percent enjoyed secondary schooling and funded grammar schools in larger towns. Most boys learned skills from their fathers on the farm or as apprentices to artisans. Few girls attended formal schools, but most were able to get some education at home or at so-called "Dame schools" where women taught basic reading and writing skills in their own houses. In 1750, nearly 90% of New England's women and almost all of its men could read and write. Many churches in New England established colleges to train ministers while Puritans founded many places of higher learning such as Harvard College in 1636 and Yale College in 1701. Later, Baptists founded Rhode Island College (near Brown University) in 1764 and a Congregationlist minister established Dartmouth College in 1769. Few people (no women and a small number of men) attended college, making higher education available only for wealthy merchant families.
New England produced many great literary works. In fact, more works were created in New England than all of the colonies combined. Most of these works were histories, sermons, and personal journals and were written by ministers or inspired by religious beliefs. Cotton Mather, a Boston minister published Magnalia Christi Americana (The Great Works of Christ in America, 1702), while revivalist Jonathan Edwards wrote his philosophical work, A Careful and Strict Enquiry Into...Notions of...Freedom of Will... (1754). Most music had a religious theme as well and was mainly the singing of Psalms. Because of New England's deep religious beliefs, artistic works that were not very religious or too "worldly" were banned. These endeavors included drama and other types of plays.
Mid-Atlantic Region
Unlike New England, the Mid-Atlantic Region gained much of its population from new immigration, and by 1750, the combined populations of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had reached nearly 300,000 people. By 1750, about 60,000 Scots-Irish and 50,000 Germans came to live in British North America, many of them settling in the Mid-Atlantic Region. William Penn, the man who founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1682, attracted an influx of immigrants with his policies of religious liberty and freehold ownership. "Freehold" meant that farmers owned their land free and clear of leases. The first major influx of immigrants came mainly from Ireland and consisted of Scots-Irish Presbyterians and a small number of Irish Catholics. The second major immigration came with Germans trying to escape the religious conflicts and declining economic opportunities in Germany and Switzerland.
Ways of life
Much of the architecture of the Middle Colonies reflects the diversity of its peoples. In Albany and New York City, New York, a majority of the buildings were Dutch style with brick exteriors and high gables at each end while many Dutch churches were shaped liked an octagon. Using cut stone to build their houses, German and Welsh settlers in Pennsylvania followed the way of their homeland and completely ignored the plethora of timber in the area. An example of this would be Germantown, Pennsylvania where 80 percent of the buildings in the town were made entirely of stone. On the other hand, the Scots-Irish took advantage of America's ample supply of timber and constructed sturdy log cabins.
Ethnic cultures also effected the styles of furniture. Rural Quakers preferred simple designs in furnishings such as tables, chairs, chests and shunned elaborate decorations. However, some urban Quakers had much more elaborate furniture. The city of Philadelphia became a major center of furniture-making because of its massive wealth from Quaker and British merchants. Philadelphian cabinet makers built elegant desks and highboys. German artisans created intricate carved designs on their chests and other furniture with painted scenes of flowers and birds. German potters also crafted a large array of jugs, pots, and plates, of both elegant and traditional design.
There were also ethnic differences in the treatment of women. Among Puritan settlers in New England, wives almost never worked in the fields with their husbands. In German communities in Pennsylvania, however, many women worked in fields and stables. In addition to these ethnic differences, German and Dutch immigrants granted women more control over property, which was not permitted in the local English law. Unlike English colonial wives, German and Dutch wives owned their own clothes and other items and were also given the ability to write wills disposing of the property brought into the marriage.
Finally, ethnicity made a difference in agricultural practice. As an example, German farmers generally preferred oxen rather than horses to pull their plows and Scots-Irish made a farming economy based on hogs and corn. In Ireland, Scots-Irish farmed intensively, working small pieces of land trying to get the largest possible production-rate from their crops. In the American colonies, Scots-Irish focused on mixed-farming. Using this technique, they grew corn for human consumption and as feed for hogs and other livestock. Many improvement-minded farmers of all different backgrounds began using new agricultural practices to raise their output. During the 1750s, these agricultural innovators replaced the hand sickles and scythes used to harvest hay, wheat, and barley with the cradle scythe, a tool with wooden fingers that arranged the stalks of grain for easy collection. This tool was able to triple the amount of work down by farmers in one day. Farmers also began fertilizing their fields with dung and lime and rotating their crops to keep the soil fertile.
Before 1720, most colonists in the mid-Atlantic region worked with small-scale farming and paid for imported manufactures by supplying the West Indies with corn and flour. In New York, a fur-pelt export trade to Europe flourished adding additional wealth to the region. After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming stimulated with the international demand for wheat. A massive population explosion in Europe brought wheat prices up. By 1770, a bushel of wheat cost twice as much as it did in 1720. Farmers also expanded their production of flaxseed and corn, as flax was a high demand in the Irish linen industry and a demand for corn existed in the West Indies. This economic boom made farmers very wealthy.
Some immigrants who just arrived purchased farms and shared in this export wealth, but many poor German and Scots-Irish immigrants were forced to work as agricultural wage laborers. Merchants and artisans also hired these homeless workers for a domestic system for the manufacture of cloth and other goods. Merchants often bought wool and flax from farmers and employed newly-arrived immigrants, who had been textile workers in Ireland and Germany, to work in their homes spinning the materials into yarn and cloth. Large farmers and merchants became extremely wealthy, while farmers with smaller farms and artisans only made enough for subsistence. The Mid-Atlantic region, by 1750, was divided by both ethnic background and wealth.
Seaports, which expanded from wheat trade, had more social classes than anywhere else in the Middle Colonies. By 1750, the population of Philadelphia had reached 25,000, New York 15,000, and the port of Baltimore 7,000. Merchants dominated seaport society and about 40 merchants controlled half of Philadelphia's trade. Wealthy merchants in Philadelphia and New York, like their counterparts in New England, built elegant Georgian-style mansions.
Shopkeepers, artisans, shipwrights, butchers, coopers, seamstresses, cobblers, bakers, carpenters, masons, and many other specialized professions, made up the middle class of seaport society. Wives and husbands often worked as a team and taught their children their crafts to pass it on through the family. Many of these artisans and traders made enough money to create a modest life.
Laborers stood at the bottom of seaport society. These poor people worked on the docks unloading inbound vessels and loading outbound vessels with wheat, corn, and flaxseed. Many of these were African American; some were free while others were enslaved. In 1750, blacks made up about 10 percent of the population of New York and Philadelphia. Hundreds of seamen, some who were African American, worked as sailors on merchant ships.
The Southern Colonies
The Southern Colonies were mainly dominated by the wealthy slave-owning planters in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. These planters owned massive estates that were worked on by African slaves. Of the 650,000 inhabitants of the South in 1750, about 250,000 or 40 percent, were slaves. Planters used their wealth to dominate the local tenants and yeoman farmers. At election time, they gave these farmers gifts of rum, and promised to lower taxes to take control of colonial legislatures.
Ways of life
Planters
Beginning in the 1720s, after many years being poorly educated, hunting deer on foot, getting drunk, and gambling, the next generation of planters began to construct large Georgian-style mansions, wear bright red attire, and hunt deer from horseback. Wealthy women in the Southern colonies shared in the British culture. They read British magazines, wore fashionable clothing of British design, and served an elaborate afternoon tea.
Once women were married, they supervised the household slaves and put on elaborate dinners and festive balls. These efforts were the most successful in South Carolina, where wealthy rice planters lived in townhouses in Charleston, a busy port city. Active social seasons also existed in towns, such as Annapolis, Maryland, and on tobacco plantations along the James River in Virginia.
Slaves
Main article: Slavery in Colonial America
The African slaves who worked on the indigo, tobacco, and rice fields in the South came from western and central Africa. Slavery in Colonial America was very oppressive as it passed on from generation to generation, and slaves had no legal rights. In 1700, there were about 9,600 slaves in the Chesapeake region and a few hundred in the Carolinas. About 170,000 more Africans arrived over the next five decades. By 1750, there were more than 250,000 slaves in British America and in the Carolinas, they made up about 60 percent of the total population. Most slaves in South Carolina were born in Africa (reflective of the high higher death rate in Carolina), while half the slaves in Virginia and Maryland were born in the colonies.
Although rarely spoken of, slave-owners were known to have Stud Farms, with the aim of developing stronger slaves fit for heavy manual labor needed in farms. Slave breeding was not unheard of, and was actively pursued by many owners.
References
Monographs
- Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
- Andrews, Charles M. (1933). Our Earliest Colonial Settlements: Their Diversities of Origin and Later Characteristics. (discusses Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland)
- Andrews, Charles M. (1904). Colonial Self-Government, 1652-1689.
- Andrews, Charles M. (1932). The Colonial Background of the American Revolution.
- Andrews, Charles M. (1934–38). The Colonial Period of American History.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date format (link) (the standard overview in four volumes) - Becker, Carl (1917). The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776.
- Bonomi, Patricia U. (1988). Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America. (online at ACLS History e-book project)
- Bonomi, Patricia U. (1971). A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York.
- Breen, T. H (1980). Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America.
- Bruce, Philip A. (1896). Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records. New York: Macmillan.
- Cobb, Sanford H. (1902). The Rise of Religious Liberty in America: A History. New York: Macmillan.
- Crane, Verner W. (1920). The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732.
- Greene, Evarts Boutelle (1905). Provincial America, 1690-1740. New York, N.Y.: Harper and Brothers.
- Illick, Joseph E. (1976). Colonial Pennsylvania: A History.
- Kulikoff, Allan (2000). From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers.
- Morgan, Edmund S. (1975). American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.
- Osgood, Herbert L. (1904-07). The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|year=(help) - Taylor, Alan (2001). American Colonies. (authoritative overview of colonial America, including British, Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies)
- Weeden, William B. (1910). Early Rhode Island: A Social History of the People. New York: The Grafton Press.
- Wertenbaker, Thomas (1914). Virginia under the Stuarts, 1607-1688.
Journal articles
- Andrews, Charles M. (October 1914). "Colonial Commerce". American Historical Review. 20: 43–63.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: year (link) Also online at JSTOR - Beer, George Louis (March 1907). "British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765". Political Science Quarterly. 22: 1–48.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: year (link) - Crane, Verner W. (April 1919). "The Southern Frontier in Queen Anne's War". American Historical Review. 24: 379–95.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
Primary sources
- Kavenagh, W. Keith (1973). Foundations of Colonial America: A Documentary History.
Online sources
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