84 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution 1700–1775 Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum. SAMUEL ADAMS, 1776 T he common term thirteen original colonies is misleading. Britain ruled thirty-two colonies in North America by 1775, including Canada, the Flori- das, and various Caribbean islands. But only thir- teen of them unfurled the standard of rebellion. A few of the nonrebels, such as Canada and Jamaica, were larger , wealthier , or more populous than some of the revolting thirteen. Why , then, did some British colonies eventually strike for their independence, while others did not? Part of the answer is to be found in the distinctive social, economic, and politi- cal structures of the thirteen Atlantic seaboard colonies—and in the halting, gradual appearance of a recognizably American way of life. Conquest by the Cradle Among the distinguishing characteristics that the eventually rebellious settlements shared was lusty population growth. In 1700 they contained fewer than 300,000 souls, about 20,000 of whom were black. By 1775, 2.5 million people inhabited the thirteen colonies, of whom about half a million were black. White immigrants made up nearly 400,000 of the increased number , and black “ forced immigrants” accounted for almost as many again. But most of the spurt stemmed from the remarkable natural fertility of all Americans, white and black. T o the amazement and dismay of Europeans, the colonists were doubling their numbers every twenty-five years. Unfriendly Dr . Samuel J ohnson, back in England, growled that the Americans were multiplying like their own rattlesnakes. They were also a youthful people, whose average age in 1775 was about sixteen. This population boom had political conse- quences. In 1700 there were twenty English subjects for each American colonist. By 1775 the English advantage in numbers had fallen to three to one— setting the stage for a momentous shift in the bal- ance of power between the colonies and Britain. The bulk of the population was cooped up east of the Alleghenies, although by 1775 a vanguard of
Transcript
84
5
Colonial Society onthe Eve of Revolution
!"!
1700–1775
Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought andthe right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their
course to this happy country as their last asylum.
SAMUEL ADAMS, 1776
The common term thirteen original colonies ismisleading. Britain ruled thirty-two colonies in
North America by 1775, including Canada, the Flori-das, and various Caribbean islands. But only thir-teen of them unfurled the standard of rebellion. Afew of the nonrebels, such as Canada and Jamaica,were larger, wealthier, or more populous than someof the revolting thirteen. Why, then, did some Britishcolonies eventually strike for their independence,while others did not? Part of the answer is to befound in the distinctive social, economic, and politi-cal structures of the thirteen Atlantic seaboardcolonies—and in the halting, gradual appearance ofa recognizably American way of life.
Conquest by the Cradle
Among the distinguishing characteristics that theeventually rebellious settlements shared was lustypopulation growth. In 1700 they contained fewer
than 300,000 souls, about 20,000 of whom were black.By 1775, 2.5 million people inhabited the thirteencolonies, of whom about half a million were black.White immigrants made up nearly 400,000 of theincreased number, and black “forced immigrants”accounted for almost as many again. But most of thespurt stemmed from the remarkable natural fertilityof all Americans, white and black. To the amazementand dismay of Europeans, the colonists were doubling their numbers every twenty-five years.Unfriendly Dr. Samuel Johnson, back in England,growled that the Americans were multiplying liketheir own rattlesnakes. They were also a youthfulpeople, whose average age in 1775 was about sixteen.
This population boom had political conse-quences. In 1700 there were twenty English subjectsfor each American colonist. By 1775 the Englishadvantage in numbers had fallen to three to one—setting the stage for a momentous shift in the bal-ance of power between the colonies and Britain.
The bulk of the population was cooped up eastof the Alleghenies, although by 1775 a vanguard of
pioneers had trickled into the stump-studded clear-ings of Tennessee and Kentucky. The most populouscolonies in 1775 were Virginia, Massachusetts,Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Maryland—inthat order. Only four communities could properlybe called cities: Philadelphia, including suburbs,was first with about 34,000 residents, trailed by NewYork, Boston, and Charleston. About 90 percent ofthe people lived in rural areas.
A Mingling of the Races
Colonial America was a melting pot and had beenfrom the outset. The population, although basicallyEnglish in stock and language, was picturesquelymottled with numerous foreign groups.
Heavy-accented Germans constituted about 6percent of the total population, or 150,000, by 1775.Fleeing religious persecution, economic oppres-sion, and the ravages of war, they had flocked toAmerica in the early 1700s and had settled chiefly inPennsylvania. They belonged to several differentProtestant sects—primarily Lutheran—and thusfurther enhanced the religious diversity of thecolony. Known popularly but erroneously as thePennsylvania Dutch (a corruption of the Germanword Deutsch, for “German”), they totaled aboutone-third of the colony’s population. In parts ofPhiladelphia, the street signs were painted in bothGerman and English.
These German newcomers moved into thebackcountry of Pennsylvania, where their splendidstone barns gave—and still give—mute evidence ofindustry and prosperity. Not having been broughtup English, they had no deep-rooted loyalty to theBritish crown, and they clung tenaciously to theirGerman language and customs.
The Scots-Irish (see “Makers of America: TheScots-Irish,” pp. 88–89), who in 1775 numbered about175,000, or 7 percent of the population, were animportant non-English group, although they spokeEnglish. They were not Irish at all, but turbulent ScotsLowlanders. Over many decades, though, they hadbeen transplanted to Northern Ireland, where theyhad not prospered. The Irish Catholics already there,hating Scottish Presbyterianism, resented the intrud-ers and still do. The economic life of the Scots-Irishwas severely hampered, especially when the Englishgovernment placed burdensome restrictions on theirproduction of linens and woolens.
Early in the 1700s, tens of thousands of embit-tered Scots-Irish finally abandoned Ireland andcame to America, chiefly to tolerant and deep-soiled Pennsylvania. Finding the best acres alreadytaken by Germans and Quakers, they pushed out
Immigration to the Colonies 85
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Extent of areas se t t led by 1770are represented by pa t terns be low:
AfricansGermans& SwissDutchFrench
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Immigrant Groups in 1775America was already a nation of diverse nationalities in thecolonial period. This map shows the great variety ofimmigrant groups, especially in Pennsylvania and New York. Italso illustrates the tendency of later arrivals, particularly the Scots-Irish, to push into the backcountry.
onto the frontier. There many of them illegally butdefiantly squatted on the unoccupied lands andquarreled with both Indian and white owners. Whenthe westward-flowing Scots-Irish tide lapped upagainst the Allegheny barrier, it was deflectedsouthward into the backcountry of Maryland, downVirginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and into the westernCarolinas. Already experienced colonizers and agi-tators in Ireland, the Scots-Irish proved to be superb
frontiersmen, though their readiness to visit vio-lence on the Indians repeatedly inflamed the west-ern districts. By the mid-eighteenth century, a chainof Scots-Irish settlements lay scattered along the“great wagon road,” which hugged the easternAppalachian foothills from Pennsylvania to Georgia.
It was said, somewhat unfairly, that the Scots-Irish kept the Sabbath—and all else they could laytheir hands on. Pugnacious, lawless, and individual-istic, they brought with them the Scottish secrets ofwhiskey distilling and dotted the Appalachian hillsand hollows with their stills. They cherished no lovefor the British government that had uprooted themand still lorded over them—or for any other govern-ment, it seemed. They led the armed march of thePaxton Boys on Philadelphia in 1764, protesting theQuaker oligarchy’s lenient policy toward the Indi-ans, and a few years later spearheaded the Regulatormovement in North Carolina, a small but nastyinsurrection against eastern domination of thecolony’s affairs. Many of these hotheads—includingthe young Andrew Jackson—eventually joined theembattled American revolutionists. All told, about adozen future presidents were of Scots-Irish descent.
Approximately 5 percent of the multicoloredcolonial population consisted of other Europeangroups. These embraced French Huguenots, Welsh,Dutch, Swedes, Jews, Irish, Swiss, and Scots High-landers—as distinguished from the Scots-Irish. Ex-cept for the Scots Highlanders, such hodgepodgeelements felt little loyalty to the British crown. By farthe largest single non-English group was African,accounting for nearly 20 percent of the colonial popu-lation in 1775 and heavily concentrated in the South.
The population of the thirteen colonies, thoughmainly Anglo-Saxon, was perhaps the most mixedto be found anywhere in the world. The South, hold-ing about 90 percent of the slaves, already displayedits historic black-and-white racial composition.New England, mostly staked out by the originalPuritan migrants, showed the least ethnic diversity.The middle colonies, especially Pennsylvania,received the bulk of later white immigrants andboasted an astonishing variety of peoples. Outsideof New England, about one-half the population wasnon-English in 1775. Of the fifty-six signers of theDeclaration of Independence in 1776, eighteen werenon-English and eight had not been born in thecolonies.
As these various immigrant groups mingled andintermarried, they laid the foundations for a new
86 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
49%
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Dutch
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Ethnic and Racial Composition of the American People,1790 Based on surnames. (Source: Adapted from theAmerican Council of Learned Societies, “Report of Committeeon Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of theUnited States,” 1932. Percentages total more than 100percent due to rounding.)
The young Frenchman Michel-GuillaumeJean de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813) wrote of thediverse population in about 1770:
“They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish,French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. Fromthis promiscuous breed, that race now calledAmericans have arisen. . . . I could point outto you a family whose grandfather was anEnglishman, whose wife was Dutch, whoseson married a French woman, and whosepresent four sons have now four wives ofdifferent nations.’’
multicultural American national identity unlikeanything known in Europe. The French settlerMichel-Guillaume de Crèvecoeur saw in America inthe 1770s a “strange mixture of blood, which youwill find in no other country,” and he posed his clas-sic question, “What then is the American, this newman?” Nor were white colonists alone in creatingnew societies out of diverse ethnic groups. TheAfrican slave trade long had mixed peoples frommany different tribal backgrounds, giving birth toan African-American community far more varie-gated in its cultural origins than anything to befound in Africa itself. Similarly, in the New England“praying towns,” where Indians were gathered to beChristianized, and in Great Lakes villages such asDetroit, home to dozens of different displacedindigenous peoples, polyglot Native American com-munities emerged, blurring the boundaries of indi-vidual tribal identities.
The Structure of Colonial Society
In contrast with contemporary Europe, eighteenth-century America was a shining land of equality andopportunity—with the notorious exception of slav-ery. No titled nobility dominated society from onhigh, and no pauperized underclass threatened itfrom below. Most white Americans, and even somefree blacks, were small farmers. Clad in buckskinbreeches, they owned modest holdings and tilledthem with their own hands and horses. The citiescontained a small class of skilled artisans, with theirwell-greased leather aprons, as well as a few shop-keepers and tradespeople, and a handful ofunskilled casual laborers. The most remarkable fea-ture of the social ladder was the rags-to-riches easewith which an ambitious colonist, even a formerindentured servant, might rise from a lower rung toa higher one, a rare step in old England.
Yet in contrast with seventeenth-century Amer-ica, colonial society on the eve of the Revolution was beginning to show signs of stratification andbarriers to mobility that raised worries about the“Europeanization” of America. The gods of war con-tributed to these developments. The armed con-flicts of the 1690s and early 1700s had enriched anumber of merchant princes in the New Englandand middle colonies. They laid the foundations oftheir fortunes with profits made as military suppli-ers. Roosting regally atop the social ladder, theseelites now feathered their nests more finely. Theysported imported clothing and dined at tables laidwith English china and gleaming silverware. Promi-nent individuals came to be seated in churches andschools according to their social rank. By midcen-tury the richest 10 percent of Bostonians andPhiladelphians owned nearly two-thirds of the tax-able wealth in their cities.
The plague of war also created a class of widowsand orphans, who became dependent for their sur-vival on charity. Both Philadelphia and New York builtalmshouses in the 1730s to care for the destitute. Yetthe numbers of poor people remained tiny comparedto the numbers in England, where about a third of thepopulation lived in impoverished squalor.
In the New England countryside, the descen-dants of the original settlers faced more limitedprospects than had their pioneering forebears. As the supply of unclaimed soil dwindled and fami-lies grew, existing landholdings were repeatedly
Colonial Social Classes 87
The Scots-Irish
As the British Empire spread its dominion acrossthe seas in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, great masses of people poured forth to popu-late its ever-widening realms. Their migrationunfolded in stages. They journeyed from farms totowns, from towns to great cities like London andBristol, and eventually from the seaports to Ireland,the Caribbean, and North America. Among theseintrepid wanderers, few were more restless than theScots-Irish, the settlers of the first American West.Never feeling at home in the British Empire, theseperennial outsiders always headed for its most dis-tant outposts. They migrated first from their nativeScottish lowlands to Northern Ireland and then onto the New World. And even in North America, theScots-Irish remained on the periphery, ever distanc-ing themselves from the reach of the English crownand the Anglican Church.
Poverty weighed heavily on the Scottish Low-lands in the 1600s; one observer winced at the sightof the Scots, with “their hovels most miserable,made of poles, wattled and covered with thin sods,”their bodies shrunken yet swollen with hunger. ButScotland had long been an unyielding land, and itwas not simply nature’s stinginess that drove theLowlanders to the ports. The spread of commercialfarming forced many Scots from the land and sub-jected others to merciless rent increases at thehands of the landowning lairds (lords)—a practicecalled rack-renting. Adding insult to injury, theBritish authorities persecuted the PresbyterianScots, squeezing taxes from their barren purses tosupport the hated Anglican Church.
Not surprisingly, then, some 200,000 Scotsimmigrated to neighboring Ireland in the 1600s. Sogreat was the exodus that Protestant Scots eventu-ally outnumbered Catholic natives in the severalnorthern Irish counties that compose the provinceof Ulster. Still, Ireland offered only slender and tem-porary relief to many Scots. Although the north was
prosperous compared with the rest of that unhappynation, making a living was still devilishly hard inIreland. Soon the Scots discovered that their migra-tion had not freed them from their ancient woes.Their Irish landlords, with British connivance,racked rents just as ferociously as their Scottishlairds had done. Under such punishing pressure,waves of these already once-transplanted Scots,now called Scots-Irish, fled yet again across the seathroughout the 1700s. This time their destinationwas America.
Most debarked in Pennsylvania, seeking thereligious tolerance and abundant land of WilliamPenn’s commonwealth. But these unquiet peopledid not stay put for long. They fanned out fromPhiladelphia into the farmlands of western Pennsyl-vania. Blocked temporarily by the Allegheny Moun-tains, these early pioneers then trickled south alongthe backbone of the Appalachian range, slowly fill-
88
ing the backcountry of Virginia, the Carolinas, andGeorgia. There they built farms and towns, andthese rickety settlements bore the marks of Scots-Irish restlessness. Whereas their German neighborstypically erected sturdy homes and cleared theirfields meticulously, the Scots-Irish satisfied them-selves with floorless, flimsy log cabins; theychopped down trees, planted crops between thestumps, exhausted the soil fast, and moved on.
Almost every Scots-Irish community, howeverisolated or impermanent, maintained a Presbyter-ian church. Religion was the bond that yoked theseotherwise fiercely independent folk. In backcountrytowns, churches were erected before law courts, and
clerics were pounding their pulpits before civilauthorities had the chance to raise their gavels. Inmany such cases, the local religious court, known asthe session, passed judgment on crimes like bur-glary and trespassing as well as on moral and theo-logical questions. But the Scots-Irish, despite theirintense faith, were no theocrats, no advocates ofreligious rule. Their bitter struggles with the Angli-can Church made them stubborn opponents ofestablished churches in the United States, just astheir seething resentment against the king of Eng-land ensured that the Scots-Irish would be well rep-resented among the Patriots in the AmericanRevolution.
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subdivided. The average size of farms shrank drasti-cally. Younger sons, as well as daughters, wereforced to hire out as wage laborers, or eventually toseek virgin tracts of land beyond the Alleghenies. By1750 Boston contained a large number of homelesspoor, who were supported by public charity andcompelled to wear a large red “P” on their clothing.
In the South the power of the great planterscontinued to be bolstered by their disproportionateownership of slaves. The riches created by the grow-ing slave population in the eighteenth century werenot distributed evenly among the whites. Wealthwas concentrated in the hands of the largest slave-owners, widening the gap between the prosperousgentry and the “poor whites,” who were more andmore likely to become tenant farmers.
In all the colonies, the ranks of the lower classeswere further swelled by the continuing stream ofindentured servants, many of whom ultimatelyachieved prosperity and prestige. Two became sign-ers of the Declaration of Independence.
Far less fortunate than the voluntary inden-tured servants were the paupers and convicts invol-untarily shipped to America. Altogether, about fiftythousand “jayle birds” were dumped on thecolonies by the London authorities. This riffraffcrowd—including robbers, rapists, and murderers—was generally sullen and undesirable, and not bub-bling over with goodwill for the king’s government.But many convicts were the unfortunate victims ofcircumstances and of a viciously unfair Englishpenal code that included about two hundred capitalcrimes. Some of the deportees, in fact, came to behighly respectable citizens.
Least fortunate of all, of course, were the blackslaves. They enjoyed no equality with whites anddared not even dream of ascending, or evenapproaching, the ladder of opportunity. Oppressedand downtrodden, the slaves were America’s closestapproximation to Europe’s volatile lower classes,and fears of black rebellion plagued the whitecolonists. Some colonial legislatures, notably SouthCarolina’s in 1760, sensed the dangers present in aheavy concentration of resentful slaves andattempted to restrict or halt their importation. Butthe British authorities, seeking to preserve the sup-ply of cheap labor for the colonies, especially theWest Indies sugar plantations, repeatedly vetoed allefforts to stem the transatlantic traffic in slaves.Many North American colonists condemned thesevetoes as morally callous, although New Englandslave traders benefited handsomely from the British
policy. The cruel complexity of the slavery issue wasfurther revealed when Thomas Jefferson, himself aslaveholder, assailed the British vetoes in an earlydraft of the Declaration of Independence, but wasforced to withdraw the proposed clause by a torrentof protest from southern slavemasters.
Clerics,Physicians, and Jurists
Most honored of the professions was the Christianministry. In 1775 the clergy wielded less influencethan in the early days of Massachusetts, when pietyhad burned more warmly. But they still occupied aposition of high prestige.
Most physicians, on the other hand, were poorlytrained and not highly esteemed. Not until 1765 wasthe first medical school established, although Euro-pean centers attracted some students. Aspiringyoung doctors served for a while as apprentices toolder practitioners and were then turned loose ontheir “victims.” Bleeding was a favorite and fre-quently fatal remedy; when the physician was notavailable, a barber was often summoned.
Epidemics were a constant nightmare. Espe-cially dreaded was smallpox, which afflicted one outof five persons, including the heavily pockmarkedGeorge Washington. A crude form of inoculationwas introduced in 1721, despite the objections ofmany physicians and some of the clergy, whoopposed tampering with the will of God. Powdereddried toad was a favorite prescription for smallpox.Diphtheria was also a deadly killer, especially ofyoung people. One epidemic in the 1730s took the
90 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
On doctors and medicine, Poor Richard’sAlmanack by Benjamin Franklin(1706–1790) offered some homely advice:
“God heals and the doctor takes the fee.’’
“He’s the best physician that knows theworthlessness of most medicines.’’
“Don’t go to the doctor with every distemper,nor to the lawyer with every quarrel, nor tothe pot for every thirst.’’
lives of thousands. This grim reminder of their mor-tality may have helped to prepare many colonists intheir hearts and minds for the religious revival thatwas soon to sweep them up.
At first the law profession was not favorablyregarded. In this pioneering society, which requiredmuch honest manual labor, the parties to a disputeoften presented their own cases in court. Lawyerswere commonly regarded as noisy windbags ortroublemaking rogues; an early Connecticut lawclassed them with drunkards and brothel keepers.When future president John Adams was a young lawstudent, the father of his wife-to-be frowned uponhim as a suitor.
Workaday America
Agriculture was the leading industry, involvingabout 90 percent of the people. Tobacco continuedto be the staple crop in Maryland and Virginia,though wheat cultivation also spread through theChesapeake, often on lands depleted by the over-growth of tobacco. The fertile middle (“bread”)colonies produced large quantities of grain, and by1759 New York alone was exporting eighty thousandbarrels of flour a year. Seemingly the farmer hadonly to tickle the soil with a hoe, and it would laughwith a harvest. Overall, Americans probably enjoyeda higher standard of living than the masses of anycountry in history up to that time.
Fishing (including whaling), though ranking farbelow agriculture, was rewarding. Pursued in all the American colonies, this harvesting of the seawas a major industry in New England, whichexported smelly shiploads of dried cod to theCatholic countries of Europe. The fishing fleet alsostimulated shipbuilding and served as a nursery for the seamen who manned the navy and mer-chant marine.
A bustling commerce, both coastwise and over-seas, enriched all the colonies, especially the NewEngland group, New York, and Pennsylvania. Com-mercial ventures and land speculation, in theabsence of later get-rich-quick schemes, were thesurest avenues to speedy wealth. Yankee seamenwere famous in many climes not only as skilledmariners but as tightfisted traders. They provi-sioned the Caribbean sugar islands with food andforest products. They hauled Spanish and Por-tuguese gold, wine, and oranges to London, to be
exchanged for industrial goods, which were thensold for a juicy profit in America.
The so-called triangular trade was infamouslyprofitable, though small in relation to total colonial
The Colonial Economy 91
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The Colonial Economy By the eighteenth century, thevarious colonial regions had distinct economic identities. Thenorthern colonies grew grain and raised cattle, harvestedtimber and fish, and built ships. The Chesapeake colonies andNorth Carolina were still heavily dependent on tobacco,whereas the southernmost colonies grew mostly rice andindigo. Cotton, so important to the southern economy in thenineteenth century, had not yet emerged as a major crop.
commerce. A skipper, for example, would leave aNew England port with a cargo of rum and sail tothe Gold Coast of Africa. Bartering the fiery liquorwith African chiefs for captured African slaves, hewould proceed to the West Indies with his sobbingand suffocating cargo sardined below deck. Therehe would exchange the survivors for molasses,which he would then carry to New England, where itwould be distilled into rum. He would then repeatthe trip, making a handsome profit on each leg ofthe triangle.
Manufacturing in the colonies was of only sec-ondary importance, although there was a surprisingvariety of small enterprises. As a rule, workers couldget ahead faster in soil-rich America by tilling theland. Huge quantities of “kill devil” rum were dis-tilled in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and even
some of the “elect of the Lord” developed an over-fondness for it. Handsome beaver hats were manu-factured in quantity, despite British restrictions.Smoking iron forges, including Pennsylvania’s ValleyForge, likewise dotted the land and in fact weremore numerous in 1775, though generally smaller,than those of England. In addition, household man-ufacturing, including spinning and weaving bywomen, added up to an impressive output. As in allpioneering countries, strong-backed laborers andskilled craftspeople were scarce and highly prized.In early Virginia a carpenter who had committed amurder was freed because his woodworking skillswere needed.
Lumbering was perhaps the most importantsingle manufacturing activity. Countless cartloadsof virgin timber were consumed by shipbuilders, at
92 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
first chiefly in New England and then elsewhere inthe colonies. By 1770 about four hundred vessels ofassorted sizes were splashing down the ways eachyear, and about one-third of the British merchantmarine was American-built.
Colonial naval stores—such as tar, pitch, rosin,and turpentine—were highly valued, for Britain wasanxious to gain and retain a mastery of the seas. Lon-don offered generous bounties to stimulate produc-tion of these items; otherwise Britain would havehad to turn to the uncertain and possibly hostileBaltic areas. Towering trees, ideal as masts for HisMajesty’s navy, were marked with the king’s broadarrow for future use. The luckless colonist who wascaught cutting down this reserved timber was sub-ject to a fine. Even though there were countless unre-served trees and the blazed ones were being savedfor the common defense, this shackle on free enter-prise engendered considerable bitterness.
Americans held an important flank of a thriving,many-sided Atlantic economy by the dawn of theeighteenth century. Yet strains appeared in this com-plex network as early as the 1730s. Fast-breedingAmericans demanded more and more British prod-ucts—yet the slow-growing British population earlyreached the saturation point for absorbing importsfrom America. This trade imbalance raised a ques-tion: how could the colonists sell the goods to makethe money to buy what they wanted in Britain? Theanswer was obvious: by seeking foreign (non-British) markets.
By the eve of the Revolution, the bulk of Chesa-peake tobacco was filling pipes in France and inother European countries, though it passed throughthe hands of British re-exporters, who took a slice ofthe profits for themselves. More important was thetrade with the West Indies, especially the Frenchislands. West Indian purchases of North Americantimber and foodstuffs provided the crucial cash forthe colonists to continue to make their own pur-chases in Britain. But in 1733, bowing to pressurefrom influential British West Indian planters, Parlia-ment passed the Molasses Act, aimed at squelchingNorth American trade with the French West Indies.If successful, this scheme would have struck a crip-pling blow to American international trade and tothe colonists’ standard of living. American mer-chants responded to the act by bribing and smug-gling their way around the law. Thus wasforeshadowed the impending imperial crisis, whenheadstrong Americans would revolt rather thansubmit to the dictates of the far-off Parliament,apparently bent on destroying their very livelihood.
Horsepower and Sailpower
All sprawling and sparsely populated pioneer com-munities are cursed with oppressive problems oftransportation. America, with a scarcity of bothmoney and workers, was no exception.
Colonial Commerce 93
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SOUTH AMERICAGold Coast
Colonial Trade Patterns, c. 1770 Future president John Adamsnoted about this time that “thecommerce of the West Indies is apart of the American system ofcommerce. They can neither dowithout us, nor we without them.The Creator has placed us uponthe globe in such a situation thatwe have occasion for each other.”
Not until the 1700s did roads connect even themajor cities, and these dirt thoroughfares weretreacherously deficient. A wayfarer could have rum-bled along more rapidly over the Roman highways inthe days of Julius Caesar, nearly two thousand yearsearlier. It took young Benjamin Franklin nine long,rain-drenched days in 1720 to journey from Bostonto Philadelphia, traveling by sailing sloop, rowboat,and foot. News of the Declaration of Independencein 1776 reached Charleston from Philadelphiatwenty-nine days after the Fourth of July.
Roads were often clouds of dust in the summerand quagmires of mud in the winter. Stagecoachtravelers braved such additional dangers as tree-strewn roads, rickety bridges, carriage overturns,and runaway horses. A traveler venturesomeenough to journey from Philadelphia to New York,for example, would not think it amiss to make a willand pray with the family before departing.
Where man-made roads were wretched, heavyreliance was placed on God-grooved waterways.Population tended to cluster along the banks of nav-igable rivers. There was also much coastwise traffic,and although it was slow and undependable, it wasrelatively cheap and pleasant.
Taverns sprang up along the main routes of travel,as well as in the cities. Their attractions customarilyincluded such amusements as bowling alleys, pooltables, bars, and gambling equipment. Before a cheer-ful, roaring log fire, all social classes would mingle,including the village loafers and drunks. The tavernwas yet another cradle of democracy.
Gossips also gathered at the taverns, whichwere clearinghouses of information, misinforma-tion, and rumor—frequently stimulated by alco-holic refreshment and impassioned political talk. Asuccessful politician, like the wire-pulling SamuelAdams, was often a man who had a large alehousefraternity in places like Boston’s Green Dragon Tav-ern. Taverns were important in crystallizing publicopinion and proved to be hotbeds of agitation as theRevolutionary movement gathered momentum.
An intercolonial postal system was establishedby the mid-1700s, although private couriersremained. Some mail was handled on credit. Servicewas slow and infrequent, and secrecy was problem-atic. Mail carriers, serving long routes, would some-times pass the time by reading the letters entrustedto their care.
Dominant Denominations
Two “established,” or tax-supported, churches wereconspicuous in 1775: the Anglican and the Congre-gational. A considerable segment of the population,surprisingly enough, did not worship in any church.And in those colonies that maintained an “estab-lished” religion, only a minority of the peoplebelonged to it.
The Church of England, whose members werecommonly called Anglicans, became the officialfaith in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia,Maryland, and a part of New York. Established alsoin England, it served in America as a major prop ofkingly authority. British officials naturally made vig-orous attempts to impose it on additional colonies,but they ran into a stone wall of opposition.
94 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
In America the Anglican Church fell distress-ingly short of its promise. Secure and self-satisfied,like its parent in England, it clung to a faith that wasless fierce and more worldly than the religion ofPuritanical New England. Sermons were shorter;hell was less scorching; and amusements, like Virginia fox hunting, were less scorned. So dismalwas the reputation of the Anglican clergy in seventeenth-century Virginia that the College ofWilliam and Mary was founded in 1693 to train abetter class of clerics.
The influential Congregational Church, whichhad grown out of the Puritan Church, was formallyestablished in all the New England colonies, exceptindependent-minded Rhode Island. At first Massa-chusetts taxed all residents to support Congrega-tionalism but later relented and exempted membersof other well-known denominations. Presbyterian-ism, though closely associated with Congregational-ism, was never made official in any colonies.
Ministers of the gospel, turning from the Bibleto this sinful world, increasingly grappled withburning political issues. As the early rumblings ofrevolution against the British crown could be heard,sedition flowed freely from pulpits. Presbyterian-ism, Congregationalism, and rebellion became a
neo-trinity. Many leading Anglican clergymen,aware of which side their tax-provided bread wasbuttered on, naturally supported their king.
Anglicans in the New World were seriouslyhandicapped by not having a resident bishop,whose presence would be convenient for the ordi-nation of young ministers. American students ofAnglican theology had to travel to England to beordained. On the eve of the Revolution there wasserious talk of creating an American bishopric, butthe scheme was violently opposed by many non-Anglicans, who feared a tightening of the royal reins.This controversy poured holy oil on the smolderingfires of rebellion.
Religious toleration had indeed made enor-mous strides in America, at least when comparedwith its halting steps abroad. Roman Catholics werestill generally discriminated against, as in England,even in officeholding. But there were fewerCatholics in America, and hence the anti-papistlaws were less severe and less strictly enforced. Ingeneral, people could worship—or not worship—asthey pleased.
Colonial Religion 95
Established (Tax-Supported) Churchesin the Colonies, 1775*
In all the colonial churches, religion was less fervidin the early eighteenth century than it had been acentury earlier, when the colonies were firstplanted. The Puritan churches in particular saggedunder the weight of two burdens: their elaboratetheological doctrines and their compromisingefforts to liberalize membership requirements.Churchgoers increasingly complained about the“dead dogs” who droned out tedious, overeruditesermons from Puritan pulpits. Some ministers, onthe other hand, worried that many of their parish-ioners had gone soft and that their souls were nolonger kindled by the hellfire of orthodox Calvinism.Liberal ideas began to challenge the old-time reli-gion. Some worshipers now proclaimed that humanbeings were not necessarily predestined to damna-tion and might save themselves by good works.Even more threatening to the Calvinist doctrine ofpredestination were the doctrines of the Arminians,followers of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius,who preached that individual free will, not divinedecree, determined a person’s eternal fate. Pres-sured by these “heresies,” a few churches grudginglyconceded that spiritual conversion was not neces-sary for church membership. Together, these twintrends toward clerical intellectualism and lay liber-alism were sapping the spiritual vitality from manydenominations.
The stage was thus set for a rousing religiousrevival. Known as the Great Awakening, it explodedin the 1730s and 1740s and swept through thecolonies like a fire through prairie grass. The Awak-ening was first ignited in Northampton, Massachu-setts, by a tall, delicate, and intellectual pastor,Jonathan Edwards. Perhaps the deepest theologicalmind ever nurtured in America, Edwards pro-claimed with burning righteousness the folly ofbelieving in salvation through good works andaffirmed the need for complete dependence onGod’s grace. Warming to his subject, he painted inlurid detail the landscape of hell and the eternal tor-ments of the damned. “Sinners in the Hands of anAngry God” was the title of one of his most famoussermons. He believed that hell was “paved with theskulls of unbaptized children.”
Edwards’s preaching style was learned andclosely reasoned, but his stark doctrines sparked awarmly sympathetic reaction among his parish-ioners in 1734. Four years later the itinerant English
96 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanackcontained such thoughts on religion as
“A good example is the best sermon.’’
“Many have quarreled about religion thatnever practiced it.’’
“Serving God is doing good to man, butpraying is thought an easier service, andtherefore more generally chosen.’’
“How many observe Christ’s birthday; how fewhis precepts! O! ’tis easier to keep holidaysthan commandments.’’
parson George Whitefield loosed a different style ofevangelical preaching on America and touched off aconflagration of religious ardor that revolutionizedthe spiritual life of the colonies. A former alehouseattendant, Whitefield was an orator of rare gifts. Hismagnificent voice boomed sonorously over thou-sands of enthralled listeners in an open field. One ofEngland’s greatest actors of the day commentedenviously that Whitefield could make audiencesweep merely by pronouncing the word Mesopota-mia and that he would “give a hundred guineas if Icould only say ‘O!’ like Mr. Whitefield.”
Triumphally touring the colonies, Whitefieldtrumpeted his message of human helplessness and divine omnipotence. His eloquence reducedJonathan Edwards to tears and even caused theskeptical and thrifty Benjamin Franklin to empty hispockets into the collection plate. During these roar-ing revival meetings, countless sinners professedconversion, and hundreds of the “saved” groaned,shrieked, or rolled in the snow from religious excita-tion. Whitefield soon inspired American imitators.Taking up his electrifying new style of preaching,they heaped abuse on sinners and shook enormousaudiences with emotional appeals. One preachercackled hideously in the face of hapless wrong-doers. Another, naked to the waist, leaped franti-cally about in the light of flickering torches.
Orthodox clergymen, known as “old lights,” weredeeply skeptical of the emotionalism and the theatri-cal antics of the revivalists. “New light” ministers, onthe other hand, defended the Awakening for its rolein revitalizing American religion. Congregationalistsand Presbyterians split over this issue, and many ofthe believers in religious conversion went over to theBaptists and other sects more prepared to make
room for emotion in religion. The Awakening leftmany lasting effects. Its emphasis on direct, emotivespirituality seriously undermined the older clergy,whose authority had derived from their educationand erudition. The schisms it set off in many denomi-nations greatly increased the numbers and the com-petitiveness of American churches. It encouraged afresh wave of missionary work among the Indiansand even among black slaves, many of whom alsoattended the mass open-air revivals. It led to thefounding of “new light” centers of higher learningsuch as Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth.Perhaps most significant, the Great Awakening wasthe first spontaneous mass movement of the Ameri-can people. It tended to break down sectional bound-aries as well as denominational lines and contributedto the growing sense that Americans had of them-selves as a single people, united by a common historyand shared experiences.
Schools and Colleges
A time-honored English idea regarded education asa blessing reserved for the aristocratic few, not forthe unwashed many. Education should be for lead-ership, not citizenship, and primarily for males.Only slowly and painfully did the colonists break thechains of these ancient restrictions.
Puritan New England, largely for religious rea-sons, was more zealously interested in education
Religious Revivals 97
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) preachedhellfire, notably in one famous sermon:
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell,much as one holds a spider or someloathsome insect over the fire, abhors you,and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towardyou burns like fire; he looks upon you asworthy of nothing else but to be cast into thefire.’’
John Adams (c. 1736–1826) the future secondpresident, wrote to his wife:
“The education of our children is never out ofmy mind. . . . I must study politics and warthat my sons may have the liberty to studymathematics and philosophy. My sons oughtto study mathematics and philosophy,geography, natural history, naval architecture,navigation, commerce, and agriculture, inorder to give their children a right to studypainting, poetry, music, architecture,statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.’’
than any other section. Dominated by the Congre-gational Church, it stressed the need for Bible read-ing by the individual worshiper. The primary goal ofthe clergy was to make good Christians rather thangood citizens. A more secular approach was evidentlate in the eighteenth century, when some childrenwere warned in the following verse:
He who ne’er learns his A.B.C.Forever will a blockhead be.But he who learns his letters fairShall have a coach to take the air.
Education, principally for boys, flourishedalmost from the outset in New England. Thisdensely populated region boasted an impressivenumber of graduates from the English universities,especially Cambridge, the intellectual center of Eng-land’s Puritanism. New Englanders, at a relativelyearly date, established primary and secondaryschools, which varied widely in the quality ofinstruction and in the length of time that their doorsremained open each year. Back-straining farm labordrained much of a youth’s time and energy.
Fairly adequate elementary schools were alsohammering knowledge into the heads of reluctant“scholars” in the middle colonies and in the South.Some of these institutions were tax-supported; oth-ers were privately operated. The South, with itswhite and black population diffused over wideareas, was severely handicapped by logistics inattempting to establish an effective school system.Wealthy families leaned heavily on private tutors.
The general atmosphere in the colonial schoolsand colleges continued grim and gloomy. Most ofthe emphasis was placed on religion and on theclassical languages, Latin and Greek. The focus wasnot on experiment and reason, but on doctrine anddogma. The age was one of orthodoxy, and independ-ence of thinking was discouraged. Discipline wasquite severe, with many a mischievous child beingsadistically “birched” with a switch cut from a birch tree. Sometimes punishment was inflicted by
98 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
Colonial Colleges
Original Name Opened or Name (If Different) Location Founded Denomination
1. Harvard Cambridge, Mass. 1636 Congregational2. William and Mary Williamsburg, Va. 1693 Anglican3. Yale New Haven, Conn. 1701 Congregational4. Princeton College of New Jersey Princeton, N.J. 1746 Presbyterian5. Pennsylvania The Academy Philadelphia, Pa. 1751 Nonsectarian6. Columbia King’s College New York, N.Y. 1754 Anglican7. Brown Rhode Island College Providence, R.I. 1764 Baptist8. Rutgers Queen’s College New Brunswick, N.J. 1766 Dutch Reformed9. Dartmouth (begun as Hanover, N.H. 1769 Congregational
an Indian missionary school)
indentured-servant teachers, who could themselvesbe whipped for their failures as workers and whotherefore were not inclined to spare the rod.
College education was regarded—at least at first in New England—as more important thaninstruction in the ABCs. Churches would wither if a new crop of ministers was not trained to lead thespiritual flocks. Many well-to-do families, especiallyin the South, sent their boys abroad to Englishinstitutions.
For purposes of convenience and economy,nine local colleges were established during the colonial era. Student enrollments were small, num-bering about 200 boys at the most; and at one time afew lads as young as eleven were admitted to Har-vard. Instruction was poor by present-day stan-dards. The curriculum was still heavily loaded withtheology and the “dead” languages, although by1750 there was a distinct trend toward “live” lan-guages and other modern subjects. A significantcontribution was made by Benjamin Franklin, whoplayed a major role in launching what became theUniversity of Pennsylvania, the first American col-lege free from denominational control.
A Provincial Culture
When it came to art and culture, colonial Americanswere still in thrall to European tastes, especiallyBritish. The simplicity of pioneering life had not yetbred many homespun patrons of the arts. Oneaspiring painter, John Trumbull (1756–1843) of Con-necticut, was discouraged in his youth by hisfather’s chilling remark, “Connecticut is notAthens.” Like so many of his talented artistic con-temporaries, Trumbull was forced to travel to Lon-don to pursue his ambitions. Charles Willson Peale(1741–1827), best known for his portraits of GeorgeWashington, ran a museum, stuffed birds, and prac-ticed dentistry. Gifted Benjamin West (1738–1820)and precocious John Singleton Copley (1738–1815)succeeded in their ambition to become famouspainters, but like Trumbull they had to go to Eng-land to complete their training. Only abroad couldthey find subjects who had the leisure to sit for theirportraits and the money to pay handsomely forthem. Copley was regarded as a Loyalist during theRevolutionary War, and West, a close friend of
George III and official court painter, was buried inLondon’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Architecture was largely imported from the OldWorld and modified to meet the peculiar climaticand religious conditions of the New World. Even thelowly log cabin was apparently borrowed from Swe-den. The red-bricked Georgian style, so common inthe pre-Revolutionary decades, was introducedabout 1720 and is best exemplified by the beauty ofnow-restored Williamsburg, Virginia.
Colonial literature, like art, was generally undis-tinguished, and for much the same reasons. Onenoteworthy exception was the precocious poetPhillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784), a slave girl broughtto Boston at age eight and never formally educated.Taken to England when twenty years of age, shepublished a book of verse and subsequently wroteother polished poems that revealed the influence ofAlexander Pope. Her verse compares favorably withthe best of the poetry-poor colonial period, but theremarkable fact is that she could overcome herseverely disadvantaged background and write anypoetry at all.
Versatile Benjamin Franklin, often called “thefirst civilized American,” also shone as a literarylight. Although his autobiography is now a classic,he was best known to his contemporaries for PoorRichard’s Almanack, which he edited from 1732 to1758. This famous publication, containing manypithy sayings culled from the thinkers of the ages,
Education and Culture 99
emphasized such homespun virtues as thrift, indus-try, morality, and common sense. Examples are“What maintains one vice would bring up two chil-dren”; “Plough deep while sluggards sleep”; “Hon-esty is the best policy”; and “Fish and visitors stinkin three days.” Poor Richard’s was well known inEurope and was more widely read in America thananything except the Bible. As a teacher of both oldand young, Franklin had an incalculable influencein shaping the American character.
Science, rising above the shackles of supersti-tion, was making some progress, though laggingbehind the Old World. A few botanists, mathemati-cians, and astronomers had won some repute, butBenjamin Franklin was perhaps the only first-rankscientist produced in the American colonies.Franklin’s spectacular but dangerous experiments,including the famous kite-flying episode provingthat lightning was a form of electricity, won himnumerous honors in Europe. But his mind also hada practical turn, and among his numerous inven-
tions were bifocal spectacles and the highly efficientFranklin stove. His lightning rod, not surprisingly,was condemned by some stodgy clergymen who feltit was “presuming on God” by attempting to controlthe “artillery of the heavens.”
Pioneer Presses
Stump-grubbing Americans were generally too poorto buy quantities of books and too busy to readthem. A South Carolina merchant in 1744 advertisedthe arrival of a shipment of “printed books, Pictures,Maps, and Pickles.” A few private libraries of fair sizecould be found, especially among the clergy. TheByrd family of Virginia enjoyed perhaps the largestcollection in the colonies, consisting of about fourthousand volumes. Bustling Benjamin Franklinestablished in Philadelphia the first privately sup-ported circulating library in America; and by 1776
100 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
there were about fifty public libraries and collec-tions supported by subscription.
Hand-operated printing presses cranked outpamphlets, leaflets, and journals. On the eve of theRevolution, there were about forty colonial newspa-pers, chiefly weeklies that consisted of a single largesheet folded once. Columns ran heavily to somberessays, frequently signed with such pseudonyms asCicero, Philosophicus, and Pro Bono Publico (“Forthe Public Good”). The “news” often lagged manyweeks behind the event, especially in the case ofoverseas happenings, in which the colonists weredeeply interested. Newspapers proved to be a pow-erful agency for airing colonial grievances and rally-ing opposition to British control.
A celebrated legal case, in 1734–1735, involvedJohn Peter Zenger, a newspaper printer. Signifi-cantly, the case arose in New York, reflecting thetumultuous give-and-take of politics in the middlecolonies, where so many different ethnic groups jos-tled against one another. Zenger’s newspaper hadassailed the corrupt royal governor. Charged withseditious libel, the accused was hauled into court,where he was defended by a former indentured ser-vant, now a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer,Andrew Hamilton. Zenger argued that he hadprinted the truth, but the bewigged royal chief jus-tice instructed the jury not to consider the truth orfalsity of Zenger’s statements; the mere fact of print-ing, irrespective of the truth, was enough to convict.Hamilton countered that “the very liberty of bothexposing and opposing arbitrary power” was atstake. Swayed by his eloquence, the jurors defied
the bewigged judges and daringly returned a verdictof not guilty. Cheers burst from the spectators.
The Zenger decision was a banner achievementfor freedom of the press and for the health of democ-racy. It pointed the way to the kind of open publicdiscussion required by the diverse society that colo-nial New York already was and that all America wasto become. Although contrary to existing law andnot immediately accepted by other judges andjuries, in time it helped establish the doctrine thattrue statements about public officials could not beprosecuted as libel. Newspapers were thus eventu-ally free to print responsible criticisms of powerfulofficials, though full freedom of the press wasunknown during the pre-Revolutionary era.
The Great Game of Politics
American colonists may have been backward in nat-ural or physical science, but they were making note-worthy contributions to political science.
The thirteen colonial governments took a variety of forms. By 1775, eight of the colonies hadroyal governors, who were appointed by the king.Three—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware—were under proprietors who themselves chose thegovernors. And two—Connecticut and RhodeIsland—elected their own governors under self-governing charters.
Practically every colony utilized a two-houselegislative body. The upper house, or council, wasnormally appointed by the crown in the royalcolonies and by the proprietor in the proprietarycolonies. It was chosen by the voters in the self-governing colonies. The lower house, as the popularbranch, was elected by the people—or rather bythose who owned enough property to qualify as vot-ers. In several of the colonies, the backcountry ele-ments were seriously underrepresented, and theyhated the ruling colonial clique perhaps more thanthey did kingly authority. Legislatures, in which thepeople enjoyed direct representation, voted suchtaxes as they chose for the necessary expenses ofcolonial government. Self-taxation through repre-sentation was a precious privilege that Americanshad come to cherish above most others.
Governors appointed by the king were generallyable men, sometimes outstanding figures. Some,unfortunately, were incompetent or corrupt—broken-down politicians badly in need of jobs. The
The Press and Politics 101
Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676–1741) concludedhis eloquent plea in the Zenger case withthese words:
“The question before the court and you,gentlemen of the jury, is not of small norprivate concern. It is not the cause of a poorprinter, nor of New York alone, which you arenow trying. No! It may, in its consequence,affect every freeman that lives under aBritish government on the main [land] ofAmerica. It is the best cause. It is the causeof liberty.’’
worst of the group was probably impoverished LordCornbury, first cousin of Queen Anne, who wasmade governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702.He proved to be a drunkard, a spendthrift, a grafter,an embezzler, a religious bigot, and a vain fool, whowas accused (probably inaccurately) of dressing likea woman. Even the best appointees had troublewith the colonial legislatures, basically because theroyal governor embodied a bothersome transat-lantic authority some three thousand miles away.
The colonial assemblies found various ways toassert their authority and independence. Some ofthem employed the trick of withholding the gover-nor’s salary unless he yielded to their wishes. He wasnormally in need of money—otherwise he wouldnot have come to this godforsaken country—so thepower of the purse usually forced him to terms. Butone governor of North Carolina died with his salaryeleven years in arrears.
The London government, in leaving the colonialgovernor to the tender mercies of the legislature,was guilty of poor administration. In the interests ofsimple efficiency, the British authorities shouldhave arranged to pay him from independentsources. As events turned out, control over thepurse by the colonial legislatures led to prolongedbickering, which proved to be one of the persistentirritants that generated a spirit of revolt.*
Administration at the local level was also varied.County government remained the rule in the plan-tation South; town-meeting government predomi-nated in New England; and a modification of thetwo developed in the middle colonies. In the townmeeting, with its open discussion and open voting,
direct democracy functioned at its best. In this unri-valed cradle of self-government, Americans learnedto cherish their privileges and exercise their dutiesas citizens of the New World commonwealths.
Yet the ballot was by no means a birthright. Reli-gious or property qualifications for voting, witheven stiffer qualifications for officeholding, existedin all the colonies in 1775. The privileged upperclasses, fearful of democratic excesses, were unwill-ing to grant the ballot to every “biped of the forest.”Perhaps half of the adult white males were thus dis-franchised. But because of the ease of acquiringland and thus satisfying property requirements, theright to vote was not beyond the reach of mostindustrious and enterprising colonists. Yet some-what surprisingly, eligible voters often did not exer-cise this precious privilege. They frequentlyacquiesced in the leadership of their “betters,” whoran colonial affairs—though always reserving theright to vote misbehaving rascals out of office.
By 1775 America was not yet a true democracy—socially, economically, or politically. But it was farmore democratic than England and the Europeancontinent. Colonial institutions were giving freerrein to the democratic ideals of tolerance, educa-tional advantages, equality of economic opportu-nity, freedom of speech, freedom of the press,freedom of assembly, and representative govern-ment. And these democratic seeds, planted in richsoil, were to bring forth a lush harvest in later years.
Colonial Folkways
Everyday life in the colonies may now seem glam-orous, especially as reflected in antique shops. Butjudged by modern standards, it was drab andtedious. For most people the labor was heavy andconstant—from “can see” to “can’t see.”
Food was plentiful, though the diet could becoarse and monotonous. Americans probably atemore bountifully, especially of meat, than any peo-ple in the Old World. Lazy or sickly was the personwhose stomach was empty.
Basic comforts now taken for granted were lack-ing. Churches were not heated at all, except forcharcoal foot-warmers that the women carried.During the frigid New England winters, the preach-ing of hellfire may not have seemed altogether unat-tractive. Drafty homes were poorly heated, chieflyby inefficient fireplaces. There was no running
102 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
Junius, the pseudonym for a critic (or critics)of the British government from 1768 to 1772,published a pointed barb in criticizing onenew appointee:
“It was not Virginia that wanted a governorbut a court favorite that wanted a salary.’’
*Parliament finally arranged for separate payment of the governors through the Townshend taxes of 1767, but by thenthe colonists were in such an ugly mood over taxation that this innovation only added fresh fuel to the flames.
water in the houses, no plumbing, and probably nota single bathtub in all colonial America. Candlesand whale-oil lamps provided faint and flickeringillumination. Garbage disposal was primitive. Long-snouted hogs customarily ranged the streets to con-sume refuse, while buzzards, protected by law,flapped greedily over tidbits of waste.
Amusement was eagerly pursued where timeand custom permitted. The militia assembled peri-odically for “musters,” which consisted of severaldays of drilling, liberally interspersed with merry-making and flirting. On the frontier, pleasure wasoften combined with work at house-raisings, quilt-ing bees, husking bees, and apple parings. Funeralsand weddings everywhere afforded opportunitiesfor social gatherings, which customarily involvedthe swilling of much strong liquor.
Winter sports were common in the North,whereas in the South card playing, horse racing,cockfighting, and fox hunting were favorite pas-times. George Washington, not surprisingly, was asuperb rider. In the nonpuritanical South, dancingwas the rage—jigs, square dances, the Virginiareel—and the agile Washington could swing his fairpartner with the best of them.
Other diversions beckoned. Lotteries were uni-versally approved, even by the clergy, and were usedto raise money for churches and colleges, includingHarvard. Stage plays became popular in the Southbut were frowned upon in Quaker and Puritancolonies and in some places forbidden by law. Manyof the New England clergy saw playacting as time-consuming and immoral; they preferred religious
lectures, from which their flocks derived much spir-itual satisfaction.
Holidays were everywhere celebrated in theAmerican colonies, but Christmas was frownedupon in New England as an offensive reminder of“Popery.” “Yuletide is fooltide” was a common Puri-tan sneer. Thanksgiving Day came to be a trulyAmerican festival, for it combined thanks to Godwith an opportunity for jollification, gorging, andguzzling.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain’s severalNorth American colonies, despite their differences,revealed some striking similarities. All were basicallyEnglish in language and customs, and Protestant inreligion, while the widespread presence of other peo-ples and faiths compelled every colony to cede atleast some degree of ethnic and religious toleration.Compared with contemporary Europe, they allafforded to enterprising individuals unusual oppor-tunities for social mobility. They all possessed somemeasure of self-government, though by no meanscomplete democracy. Communication and trans-portation among the colonies were improving.British North America by 1775 looked like a patch-work quilt—each part slightly different, but stitchedtogether by common origins, common ways of life,and common beliefs in toleration, economic devel-opment, and, above all, self-rule. Fatefully, all thecolonies were also separated from the seat of imper-ial authority by a vast ocean moat some three thou-sand miles wide. These simple facts of shared history,culture, and geography set the stage for the colonists’struggle to unite as an independent people.
Chronology 103
C hro n o l o g y
1693 College of William and Mary founded
1701 Yale College founded
1721 Smallpox inoculation introduced
1732 First edition of Franklin’s Poor Richard’sAlmanack
1734 Jonathan Edwards begins Great Awakening
1734-1735 Zenger free-press trial in New York
1738 George Whitefield spreads Great Awakening
1746 Princeton College founded
1760 Britain vetoes South Carolina anti–slave trademeasures
1764 Paxton Boys march on PhiladelphiaBrown College founded
1766 Rutgers College founded
1768 -1771 Regulator protests
1769 Dartmouth College founded
104 CHAPTER 5 Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700–1775
VA RY I N G VIEWPOINTS
Colonial America: Communities of Conflict or Consensus?
The earliest historians of colonial society por-trayed close-knit, homogeneous, and hierarchi-
cal communities. Richard Bushman’s From Puritanto Yankee (1967) challenged that traditional viewwhen he described colonial New England as anexpanding, opening society. In this view thecolonists gradually lost the religious discipline andsocial structure of the founding generations, as theypoured out onto the frontier or sailed the seas insearch of fortune and adventure. Rhys Isaac viewedthe Great Awakening in the South as similar evi-dence of erosion in the social constraints and defer-ence that once held colonial society together.Unbridled religious enthusiasm, North and South,directed by itinerant preachers, encouraged the sortof quest for personal autonomy that eventually ledAmericans to demand national independence.
Other scholars have focused on the negativeaspects of this alleged breakdown in the traditionalorder, particularly on the rise of new social inequali-ties. Social historians like Kenneth Lockridge haveargued that the decline of cohesive communities,population pressure on the land, and continued dom-inance of church and parental authority gave rise to alandless class, forced to till tenant plots in the coun-tryside or find work as manual laborers in the cities.Gary Nash, in The Urban Crucible (1979), likewisetraced the rise of a competitive, individualistic socialorder in colonial cities, marking the end of the patron-age and paternalism that had once bound communi-ties together. Increasingly, Nash contended, classantagonisms split communities. The wealthy aban-doned their traditional obligations toward the poorfor more selfish capitalistic social relations thatfavored their class peers. The consequent politiciza-tion of the laboring classes helped motivate their par-ticipation in the American Revolution.
Some scholars have disputed that “declension”undermined colonial communities. Christine Heyr-
man, in particular, has argued in Commerce andCulture (1984) that the decline of traditional moreshas been overstated; religious beliefs and commer-cial activities coexisted throughout the late seven-teenth and early eighteenth centuries. Similarly,Jack Greene has recently suggested that the obses-sion with the decline of deference has obscured thefact that colonies outside of New England, like Vir-ginia and Maryland, actually experienced a consoli-dation of religious and social authority throughoutthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, becom-ing more hierarchical and paternalistic.
Like Greene, many historians have focused onsectional differences between the colonies, and thepeculiar nature of social equality and inequality ineach. Much of the impetus for this inquiry stemsfrom an issue that has long perplexed students ofearly America: the simultaneous evolution of a rigidracial caste system alongside democratic politicalinstitutions. Decades ago, when most historianscame from Yankee stock, they resolved the apparentparadox by locating the seeds of democracy in NewEngland. The aggressive independence of the peo-ple, best expressed by the boisterous town meetings,spawned the American obsession with freedom. Onthe other hand, this view holds, the slave societies ofthe South were hierarchical, aristocratic communi-ties under the sway of a few powerful planters.
More recently, some historians have attackedthis simple dichotomy, noting many undemocraticfeatures in colonial New England and arguing thatwhile the South may have been the site of tremen-dous inequality, it also produced most of the found-ing fathers. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison—the architects of American government with itsfoundation in liberty—all hailed from slaveholdingVirginia. In fact, nowhere were republican princi-ples stronger than in Virginia. Some scholars,notably Edmund S. Morgan in American Slavery,
Varying Viewpoints 105
American Freedom (1975), consider the willingnessof wealthy planters to concede the equality andfreedom of all white males a device to ensure racialsolidarity and to mute class conflict. In this view theconcurrent emergence of slavery and democracywas no paradox. White racial solidarity muffled ani-mosity between rich and poor and fostered thedevotion to equality among whites that became ahallmark of American democracy.
Few historians still argue that the coloniesoffered boundless opportunities for inhabitants,white or black. But scholars disagree vigorously overwhat kinds of inequalities and social tensions mostshaped eighteenth-century society and contributed
to the revolutionary agitation that eventually con-sumed—and transformed—colonial America. Evenso, whether one accepts Morgan’s argument that“Americans bought their independence with slavelabor,” or those interpretations that point to risingsocial conflict between whites as the salient charac-teristic of colonial society on the eve of the Revolu-tion, the once-common assumption that Americawas a world of equality and consensus no longerreigns undisputed. Yet because one’s life chanceswere still unquestionably better in America thanEurope, immigrants continued to pour in, imbuedwith high expectations about America as a land ofopportunity.
For further reading, see page A3 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.
