3

Settling the Northern Colonies

!"!

1619–1700

God hath sifted a nation that he might send Choice Grain into this Wilderness.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON [OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY], 1699

Although colon ists both north and south werebound together by a com m on language and a

com m on allegiance to Mother England, they estab-lished differen t patterns of settlem en t, differen teconom ies, differen t political system s, and even dif-feren t sets of values—defin ing distinctive regionalcharacteristics that would persist for generations.The prom ise of riches—especially from golden-leaved tobacco—drew the first settlers to the south-ern colon ies. But to the north , in the fertile valleys ofthe m iddle Atlan tic region and especially along therocky shores of New England, it was not worldlywealth but religious devotion that principallyshaped the earliest settlem en ts.

The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism

Little did the Germ an friar Martin Luther suspect,when he nailed h is protests against Catholic doc-trines to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral in 1517,

that he was shaping the destiny of a yet unknownnation . Denouncing the authority of priests andpopes, Luther declared that the Bible alone was thesource of God’s word. He ign ited a fire of religiousreform (the “Protestan t Reform ation”) that licked itsway across Europe for m ore than a cen tury, dividingpeoples, toppling sovereigns, and kindling the sp iri-tual fervor of m illions of m en and wom en—som e ofwhom helped to found Am erica.

The reform ing flam e burned especially brigh tlyin the bosom of John Calvin of Geneva. This som beran d severe religious leader elaborated MartinLuther’s ideas in ways that p rofoun dly affected thethought and character of generations of Am ericansyet unborn . Calvin ism becam e the dom inan t theological credo not on ly of the New England Puritan s bu t of other Am erican settlers as well, including the Scottish Presbyterians, FrenchHuguenots, and com m un ican ts of the Dutch Re-form ed Church .

Calvin spelled ou t h is basic doctrine in alearned Latin tom e of 1536, en titled In stitu tes of theChristian Religion . God, Calvin argued, was all-

43

powerfu l and all-good. Hum ans, because of thecorrup ting effect of original sin , were weak andwicked. God was also all-knowing—and he knewwho was going to heaven and who was going tohell. Since the first m om en t of creation , som esouls—the elect—had been destined for eternalbliss and others for eternal torm en t. Good workscould not save those whom “predestination” hadm arked for the in fernal fires.

But neither could the elect coun t on their pre-determ ined salvation and lead lives of wild,im m oral abandon . For one th ing, no one could becertain of h is or her status in the heaven ly ledger.Gnawing doubts about their eternal fate p laguedCalvin ists. They constan tly sought, in them selvesand others, signs of “conversion ,” or the receip t ofGod’s free gift of saving grace. Conversion wasthought to be an in tense, iden tifiable personalexperience in which God revealed to the elect theirheaven ly destiny. Thereafter they were expected to lead “sanctified” lives, dem onstrating by theirholy behavior that they were am ong the “visiblesain ts.”

These doctrines swept in to England just as KingHenry VIII was breaking h is ties with the Rom anCatholic Church in the 1530s, m aking h im self thehead of the Church of England. Henry would havebeen con ten t to retain Rom an rituals and creeds,but h is action powerfully stim ulated som e Englishreligious reform ers to undertake a total purificationof English Christian ity. Many of these “Puritans,” asit happened, cam e from the com m ercially de-pressed woolen districts (see p. 28). Calvin ism , withits m essage of stark but reassuring order in thedivine p lan , fed on th is social un rest and providedspiritual com fort to the econom ically disadvan-taged. As tim e wen t on , Puritans grew increasinglyunhappy over the snail-like progress of the Protes-tan t Reform ation in England. They burned withpious zeal to see the Church of England wholly de-catholicized.

The m ost devout Puritans, including those whoeven tually settled New England, believed that on ly“visible sain ts” (that is, persons who felt the stir-rings of grace in their souls and could dem onstrateits presence to their fellow Puritans) should beadm itted to church m em bership. But the Church ofEngland en rolled all the king’s subjects, whichm ean t that the “sain ts” had to share pews and com -m union rails with the “dam ned.” Appalled by th isunholy fratern izing, a tiny group of dedicated Puri-

tans, known as Separatists, vowed to break awayen tirely from the Church of England.

King Jam es I, a shrewd Scotsm an , was head ofboth the state and the church in England from 1603to 1625. He quickly perceived that if h is subjectscould defy h im as their sp iritual leader, they m ightone day defy h im as their political leader (as in factthey would later defy and behead h is son , Charles I).He therefore threatened to harass the m ore bother-som e Separatists out of the land.

The Pilgrims End TheirPilgrimage at Plymouth

The m ost fam ous congregation of Separatists, flee-ing royal wrath , departed for Holland in 1608. Dur-ing the ensuing twelve years of toil and poverty, theywere increasingly distressed by the “Dutchification”of their children . They longed to find a haven wherethey could live and die as English m en andwom en—and as purified Protestan ts. Am erica wasthe logical refuge, despite the early ordeals ofJam estown , and despite tales of New World cann i-bals roasting steaks from their white victim s overopen fires.

A group of the Separatists in Holland, afternegotiating with the Virgin ia Com pany, at lengthsecured rights to settle under its jurisdiction . Buttheir crowded Mayflower, sixty-five days at sea,m issed its destination and arrived off the stonycoast of New England in 1620, with a total of 102persons. One had died en route—an unusually shortcasualty list—and one had been born and appropri-ately nam ed Oceanus. Fewer than half of the en tireparty were Separatists. Prom inen t am ong the non-belongers was a peppery and stocky soldier of for-tune, Captain Myles Standish , dubbed by one of h iscritics “Captain Shrim p.” He later rendered indis-pensable service as an Indian fighter and negotiator.

The Pilgrim s did not m ake their in itial landingat Plym outh Rock, as com m only supposed, butundertook a num ber of prelim inary surveys. Theyfinally chose for their site the shore of inhospitablePlym outh Bay. This area was outside the dom ain ofthe Virgin ia Com pany, and consequen tly the settlersbecam e squatters. They were without legal right tothe land and without specific authority to establisha governm ent.

44 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

Before disem barking, the Pilgrim leaders drewup and signed the brief Mayflower Com pact.Although setting an invaluable preceden t for laterwritten constitutions, th is docum ent was not a con-stitution at all. It was a sim ple agreem ent to form acrude governm ent and to subm it to the will of them ajority under the regulations agreed upon . Thecom pact was signed by forty-one adult m ales, elevenof them with the exalted rank of “m ister,” though notby the servan ts and two seam en. The pact was aprom ising step toward genuine self-governm ent, for soon the adult m ale settlers were assem bling tom ake their own laws in open-discussion town m eet-ings—a great laboratory of liberty.

The Pilgrim s’ first win ter of 1620–1621 took agrisly toll. On ly 44 out of the 102 survived. At onetim e on ly 7 were well enough to lay the dead in theirfrosty graves. Yet when the Mayflower sailed back toEngland in the spring, not a single one of the coura-geous band of Separatists left. As one of them wrote,“It is not with us as with other m en , whom sm allth ings can discourage.”

God m ade h is children prosperous, so the Pil-grim s believed. The next autum n, that of 1621,brought boun tifu l harvests and with them the firstThanksgiving Day in New England. In tim e the frailcolony found sound econom ic legs in fur, fish , andlum ber. The beaver and the Bible were the early

m ainstays: the one for the sustenance of the body,the other for the sustenance of the soul. Plym outhproved that the English could m ain tain them selvesin th is un inviting region .

The Pilgrim s were extrem ely fortunate in theirleaders. Prom inen t am ong them was the culturedWilliam Bradford, a self-taught scholar who readHebrew, Greek, Latin , French, and Dutch. He waschosen governor th irty tim es in the annual elec-tions. Am ong his m ajor worries was h is fear thatindependen t, non-Puritan settlers “on their particu-lar” m ight corrupt h is godly experim en t in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony 45

William Bradford (1590–1657) wrote in OfPlym outh Plan tation ,“Thus out of small beginnings greater thingshave been produced by His hand that madeall things of nothing, and gives being to allthings that are; and, as one small candlemay light a thousand, so the light herekindled hath shone unto many, yea in somesort to our whole nat ion.”

wilderness. Bustling fish ing villages and other set-tlem en ts did sprout to the north of Plym outh , onthe storm -lashed shores of Massachusetts Bay,where m any people were as m uch in terested in codas God.

Quiet and quain t, the little colony of Plym outhwas never im portan t econom ically or num erically.Its population num bered on ly seven thousand by1691, when , still charterless, it m erged with its gian tneighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But thetiny settlem en t of Pilgrim s was big both m orally andspiritually.

The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth

The Separatist Pilgrim s were dedicated extrem ists—the purest Puritans. More m oderate Puritans soughtto reform the Church of England from with in .Though resen ted by bishops and m onarchs, theyslowly gathered support, especially in Parliam en t.But when Charles I dism issed Parliam en t in 1629and sanctioned the an ti-Puritan persecutions of thereactionary Archbishop William Laud, m any Puri-tans saw catastrophe in the m aking.

In 1629 an energetic group of non-SeparatistPuritans, fearing for their faith and for England’sfuture, secured a royal charter to form the Massa-chusetts Bay Com pany. They proposed to establisha sizable settlem en t in the in fertile Massachusettsarea, with Boston soon becom ing its hub. Stealing am arch on both king and church , the newcom ersbrought their charter with them . For m any yearsthey used it as a kind of constitu tion , out of easyreach of royal authority. They steadfastly den iedthat they wan ted to separate from the Church ofEngland, on ly from its im purities. But back in Eng-land, the h ighly orthodox Archbishop Laud snortedthat the Bay Colony Puritans were “swine whichrooted in God’s vineyard.”

The Massachusetts Bay en terprise was singu-larly blessed. The well-equipped expedition of 1630,with eleven vessels carrying nearly a thousandim m igran ts, started the colony off on a larger scalethan any of the other English settlem en ts. Con tinu-ing turm oil in England tossed up additional en riching waves of Puritans on the shores of Massa-chusetts in the following decade (see “Makers ofAm erica: The English ,” pp. 50–51). During the “GreatMigration” of the 1630s, about seven ty thousand

refugees left England. But not all of them were Puri-tans, and on ly about twen ty thousand cam e toMassachusetts. Many were attracted to the warmand fertile West Indies, especially the sugar-richisland of Barbados. More Puritans cam e to th isCaribbean islet than to all of Massachusetts.

Many fairly prosperous, educated personsim m igrated to the Bay Colony, including JohnWin throp, a well-to-do p illar of English society, whobecam e the colony’s first governor. A successfulattorney and m anor lord in England, Win thropeagerly accepted the offer to becom e governor ofthe Massachusetts Bay Colony, believing that he hada “calling” from God to lead the new religious exper-im en t. He served as governor or deputy governor forn ineteen years. The resources and skills of talen tedsettlers like Win throp helped Massachusetts pros-per, as fur trading, fish ing, and shipbuilding blos-som ed in to im portan t industries, especially fish andships. Massachusetts Bay Colony rapidly shot to thefore as both the biggest and the m ost in fluen tial ofthe New England outposts.

Massachusetts also benefited from a sharedsense of purpose am ong m ost of the first settlers.

46 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

C a r i b b e a n S e a

A T L A N T I CO C E A N

FromEnglandc. 70,000

To West In

dies

c.48

,000

To New Englandc. 20,000

The Great English Migrat ion, c. 1630–1642 Much of the early history of the United States was written byNew Englanders, who were not disposed to emphasize thelarger exodus of English migrants to the Caribbean islands.When the mainland colonists declared independence in 1776,they hoped that these island outposts would join them, but theexistence of the British navy had a dissuading effect.

“We shall be as a city upon a h ill,” a beacon tohum anity, declared Governor Win throp. The Puritanbay colon ists believed that they had a covenan t withGod, an agreem en t to build a holy society thatwould be a m odel for hum ankind.

Building the Bay Colony

These com m on convictions deeply shaped thein fan t colony’s life. Soon after the colon ists’ arrival,the franchise was extended to all “freem en”—adultm ales who belonged to the Puritan congregations,which in tim e cam e to be called collectively the Congregational Church. Unchurched m enrem ained voteless in provincial elections, as didwom en . On th is basis about two-fifths of adultm ales en joyed the franchise in provincial affairs, afar larger proportion than in con tem porary Eng-land. Town governm ents, which conducted m uchim portan t business, were even m ore inclusive.There all m ale property holders, and in som e casesother residen ts as well, en joyed the priceless boonof publicly discussing local issues, often with m uchheat, and of voting on them by a m ajority-ru le showof hands.

Yet the provincial governm en t, liberal by thestandards of the tim e, was not a dem ocracy. Theable Governor Win throp feared and distrusted the“com m ons” as the “m eaner sort” and thought thatdem ocracy was the “m eanest and worst” of all form sof governm ent. “If the people be governors,” askedone Puritan clergym an , “who shall be governed?”True, the freem en annually elected the governorand h is assistan ts, as well as a represen tative assem -bly called the General Court. But on ly Puritans—the“visible sain ts” who alone were eligible for churchm em bership—could be freem en . And according tothe doctrine of the covenan t, the whole purpose ofgovernm ent was to en force God’s laws—whichapplied to believers and nonbelievers alike. More-over, nonbelievers as well as believers paid taxes forthe governm ent-supported church.

Religious leaders thus wielded enorm ous in flu-ence in the Massachusetts “Bible Com m onwealth .”They powerfully in fluenced adm ission to churchm em bership by conducting public in terrogations ofpersons claim ing to have experienced conversion .Prom inen t am ong the early clergy was fiery John

Cotton . Educated at England’s Cam bridge Univer-sity, a Puritan citadel, he em igrated to Massachu-setts to avoid persecution for h is criticism of theChurch of England. In the Bay Colony he devotedhis considerable learn ing to defending the govern -m en t’s duty to en force religious ru les. Profoundlypious, he som etim es preached and prayed up to sixhours in a single day.

But the power of the preachers was notabsolute. A congregation had the right to h ire andfire its m in ister and to set h is salary. Clergym enwere also barred from holding form al politicaloffice. Puritans in England had suffered too m uch atthe hands of a “political” Anglican clergy to perm itin the New World another unholy un ion of religiousand governm ent power. In a lim ited way, the baycolon ists thus endorsed the idea of the separation ofchurch and state.

The Puritans were a worldly lot, despite—oreven because of—their sp iritual in tensity. Like JohnWin throp, they believed in the doctrine of a “calling”to do God’s work on earth . They shared in what waslater called the “Protestan t eth ic,” which involvedserious com m itm en t to work and to engagem ent inworldly pursuits. Legend to the con trary, they alsoen joyed sim ple p leasures: they ate p len tifu lly, drankheartily, sang songs occasionally, and m ade lovem onogam ously. Like other peoples of their tim e inboth Am erica and Europe, they passed laws aim edat m aking sure these p leasures stayed sim ple byrepressing certain hum an instincts. In New Haven ,for exam ple, a young m arried couple was finedtwen ty sh illings for the crim e of kissing in public,and in later years Connecticut cam e to be dubbed“the Blue Law State.” (It was so nam ed for the bluepaper on which the repressive laws—also known as“sum ptuary laws”—were prin ted.)

Yet life was serious business, and hellfire wasreal—a hell where sinners shriveled and shrieked invain for divine m ercy. An im m ensely popular poemin New England, selling one copy for every twen typeople, was clergym an Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom” (1662). Especially horrifying werehis descrip tions of the fate of the dam ned:

They cry, they roar for angu ish sore,and gnaw their tongues for horrour.

Bu t get away withou t delay,Christ pitties not your cry:

Depart to Hell, there m ay you yell,and roar Eternally.

Religion in the Bay Colony 47

Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth

The Bay Colony en joyed a h igh degree of social har-m ony, stem m ing from com m on beliefs, in its earlyyears. But even in th is tightly kn it com m unity, dis-sension soon appeared. Quakers, who flouted theauthority of the Puritan clergy, were persecutedwith fines, floggings, and ban ishm en t. In oneextrem e case, four Quakers who defied expulsion ,one of them a wom an , were hanged on the BostonCom m on.

A sharp challenge to Puritan orthodoxy cam efrom Anne Hutchinson . She was an exceptionallyin telligen t, strong-willed, and talkative wom an , u lti-m ately the m other of fourteen children . Swift andsharp in theological argum ent, she carried to logical

extrem es the Puritan doctrine of predestination .She claim ed that a holy life was no sure sign of sal-vation and that the tru ly saved need not bother toobey the law of either God or m an . This assertion ,known as an tinom ian ism (from the Greek, “againstthe law”), was h igh heresy.

Brought to trial in 1638, the quick-wittedHutchinson bam boozled her clerical inquisitors fordays, un til she even tually boasted that she hadcom e by her beliefs through a direct revelation fromGod. This was even h igher heresy. The Puritan m ag-istrates had little choice but to ban ish her, lest shepollu te the en tire Puritan experim en t. With her fam -ily, she set out on foot for Rhode Island, thoughpregnan t. She finally m oved to New York, where sheand all but one of her household were killed by Indi-ans. Back in the Bay Colony, the p ious JohnWin throp saw “God’s hand” in her fate.

More threaten ing to the Puritan leaders was apersonable and popular Salem m in ister, RogerWilliam s. William s was a young m an with radicalideas and an unrestrained tongue. An extrem e Sepa-ratist, he hounded h is fellow clergym en to m ake aclean break with the corrupt Church of England. Healso challenged the legality of the Bay Colony’s char-ter, which he condem ned for expropriating the landfrom the Indians without fair com pensation . As if allth is were not enough, he wen t on to deny theauthority of civil governm ent to regulate religiousbehavior—a seditious blow at the Puritan idea ofgovernm ent’s very purpose.

Their patience exhausted by 1635, the BayColony authorities found William s guilty of dissem i-nating “newe & dangerous opin ions” and orderedhim ban ished. He was perm itted to rem ain severalm onths longer because of illness, but he kept up h iscriticism s. The outraged m agistrates, fearing that hem ight organ ize a rival colony of m alcon ten ts, m adeplans to exile h im to England. But William s foiledthem .

The Rhode Island “Sewer”

Aided by friendly Indians, Roger William s fled to theRhode Island area in 1636, in the m idst of a bitterwinter. At Providence the courageous and far-visioned William s built a Baptist church, probably thefirst in Am erica. He established com plete freedom ofreligion , even for Jews and Catholics. He dem anded

48 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

no oaths regarding religious beliefs, no com pulsoryattendance at worship, no taxes to support a statechurch. He even sheltered the abused Quakers,although disagreeing sharply with their views.William s’s endorsem ent of religious tolerance m adeRhode Island m ore liberal than any of the otherEnglish settlem ents in the New World, and m oreadvanced than m ost Old World com m unities as well.

Those outcasts who clustered about RogerWilliam s en joyed additional blessings. They exer-cised sim ple m anhood suffrage from the start,though th is broad-m inded practice was later nar-rowed by a property qualification . Opposed to spe-cial privilege of any sort, the doughty RhodeIslanders m anaged to achieve rem arkable freedomof opportun ity.

Other scattered settlem en ts soon dotted RhodeIsland. They consisted largely of m alcon ten ts andexiles, som e of whom could not bear the stifling the-ological atm osphere of the Bay Colony. Many ofthese restless souls in “Rogues’ Island,” includingAnne Hutchinson , had little in com m on with RogerWilliam s—except being unwelcom e anywhere else.The Puritan clergy back in Boston sneered at RhodeIsland as “that sewer” in which the “Lord’s debris”had collected and rotted.

Plan ted by dissen ters and exiles, Rhode Islandbecam e strongly individualistic and stubborn lyindependen t. With good reason “Little Rhody” waslater known as “the traditional hom e of the other-wise m inded.” Begun as a squatter colony in 1636without legal standing, it finally established rights tothe soil when it secured a charter from Parliam en tin 1644. A huge bronze statue of the “Independen tMan” appropriately stands today on the dom e of thestatehouse in Providence.

New England Spreads Out

The sm iling valley of the Connecticut River, one ofthe few highly fertile expanses of any size in all NewEngland, had m eanwhile attracted a sprinkling ofDutch and English settlers. Hartford was founded in1635. The next year witnessed a spectacular begin -n ing of the cen turies-long westward m ovem entacross the con tinen t. An energetic group of BostonPuritans, led by the Reverend Thom as Hooker,swarm ed as a body in to the Hartford area, with theailing Mrs. Hooker carried on a horse litter.

Three years later, in 1639, the settlers of the newConnecticut River colony drafted in open m eeting atrailblazing docum ent known as the Fundam entalOrders. It was in effect a m odern constitu tion ,which established a regim e dem ocratically con-trolled by the “substan tial” citizens. Essen tial fea-tures of the Fundam ental Orders were laterborrowed by Connecticut for its colon ial charterand ultim ately for its state constitu tion .

Another flourish ing Connecticut settlem en tbegan to spring up at New Haven in 1638. It was a prosperous com m unity, founded by Puritanswho con trived to set up an even closer church-governm ent alliance than in Massachusetts. Al-though on ly squatters without a charter, thecolon ists dream ed of m aking New Haven a bustlingseaport. But they fell in to disfavor with Charles II asa result of having sheltered two of the judges whohad condem ned his father, Charles I, to death . In1662, to the acute distress of the New Haven ites, thecrown gran ted a charter to Connecticut that m ergedNew Haven with the m ore dem ocratic settlem en tsin the Connecticut Valley.

The Expansion of New England 49

Conn

ectic

u tR

.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

1641

1679

1677

1691

Portsmouth

Salem

CambridgeBoston

Plymouth(Pilgrims)

ProvidencePortsmouth

New Haven

Springfield

Hartford

MAINE 1623

NEW HAMPSHIRE

CONNECTICUT 1635-1636

NEW HAVEN

1638

PLYMOUTH 1620

MASSACHUSETTS BAY 1630

RHODE ISLAND

1636

LONG ISLAND

Seventeenth-Century New England Set t lements The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the hub of New England.All earlier colonies grew into it; all later colonies grew out of it.

The English

During the late Middle Ages, the Black Death andother epidem ics that ravaged England kept the

island’s population in check. But by 1500 increasedresistance to such diseases allowed the populationto soar, and a cen tury later the island nation wasbursting at the seam s. This population explosion ,com bined with econom ic depression and religiousrepression , sparked the first m ajor European m igra-tion to England’s New World colon ies.

Som e of those who voyaged to Virgin ia andMaryland in the seventeenth century were independ-en t artisans or younger m em bers of English gen tryfam ilies. But roughly three-quarters of the Englishm igran ts to the Chesapeake during th is periodcam e as servan ts, signed to “inden tures” rangingfrom four to seven years. One English observer

described such inden tured servan ts as “idle, lazie,sim ple people,” and another com plained that m anyof those taking ship for the colon ies “have been pur-sued by hue-and-cry for robberies, burglaries, orbreaking prison .”

In fact, m ost inden tured servan ts were youngm en drawn from England’s “m iddling classes.”Som e fled the disastrous slum p in the cloth trade inthe early seven teen th cen tury. Many others hadbeen forced off the land as the dawning nationaleconom y prom pted landowners in southwesternEngland to convert from crop fields to pasture andto “enclose” the land for sheep grazing. Making theirway from town to town in search of work, they even-tually drifted in to port cities such as Bristol andLondon . There they boarded ship for Am erica,where they provided the labor necessary to cultivatethe Chesapeake’s stap le crop, tobacco.

Som e 40 percen t of these im m igran ts of them id-seven teen th cen tury died before they fin ishedtheir term s of inden ture. (Because of the h igh deathrate and the shortage of wom en , Chesapeake soci-ety was unable to reproduce itself naturally un til thelast quarter of the seven teen th cen tury.) The sur-vivors en tered Chesapeake society with on ly their“freedom dues”—usually cloth ing, an ax and hoe,and a few barrels of corn .

Nevertheless, m any of those who arrived earlyin the cen tury even tually acquired land and m ovedin to the m ainstream of Chesapeake society. After1660, however, opportun ities for the “freem en”declined. In England the population spurt ended,and the great London fire of 1666 sparked a buildingboom that soaked up job seekers. As the supply ofEnglish inden tured servan ts dried up in the late seven teen th cen tury, southern p lan ters looking forlaborers turned increasingly to black slaves.

Whereas English im m igration to the Chesa-peake was spread over nearly a cen tury, m ost

50

English voyagers to New England arrived with in asingle decade. In the twelve years between 1629 and1642, som e twen ty thousand Puritans swarm ed tothe Massachusetts Bay Colony. Fleeing a sustainedeconom ic depression and the cruel religious repres-sion of Charles I, the Puritans cam e to p lan t a godlycom m onwealth in New England’s rocky soil.

In con trast to the single inden tured servan ts of the Chesapeake, the New England Puritansm igrated in fam ily groups, and in m any cases wholecom m unities were transplan ted from England toAm erica. Although they rem ained un ited by thecom m on language and com m on Puritan faith theycarried to New England, their English baggage wasby no m eans un iform . As in England, m ost NewEngland settlem en ts were farm ing com m unities.But som e New England towns re-created the spe-cialized econom ies of particular localities in Eng-land. Marblehead, Massachusetts, for exam ple,becam e a fish ing village because m ost of its settlershad been fisherm en in Old England. The townsfolkof Rowley, Massachusetts, brought from Yorkshire innorthern England not on ly their town nam e but alsotheir distinctive way of life, revolving around textilem anufacturing.

Political practices, too, reflected the towns’ var-iegated English roots. In Ipswich, Massachusetts,

settled by East Anglian Puritans, the ru ling select-m en served long term s and ru led with an iron hand.By con trast, local politics in the town of Newburywere bitter and con ten tious, and officeholders werehard pressed to win reelection ; the town’s founderscam e from western England, a region with little tra-dition of local governm ent. Although the Puritans’im perial m asters in London even tually circum -scribed such precious local autonom y, th is diverseheritage of fiercely independen t New Englandtowns endured, reasserting itself during the Am eri-can Revolution .

51

Land Use in Rowley, Massachuset t s, c. 1650 The settlers of Rowley brought from their native Yorkshire thepractice of granting families very small farming plots andreserving large common fields for use by the entirecommunity. On the map, the yellow areas show private land;the green areas show land held in common.

Far to the north , en terprising fisherm en and furtraders had been active on the coast of Maine for adozen or so years before the founding of Plym outh .After d ishearten ing attem pts at colon ization in1623 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, th is land of lakesand forests was absorbed by Massachusetts Bayafter a form al purchase in 1677 from the Gorgesheirs. It rem ained a part of Massachusetts fornearly a cen tury and a half before becom ing a sepa-rate state.

Gran ite-ribbed New Ham pshire also sprangfrom the fish ing and trading activities along its nar-row coast. It was absorbed in 1641 by the graspingBay Colony, under a strained in terpretation of theMassachusetts charter. The king, annoyed by th isdisp lay of greed, arbitrarily separated New Ham p-shire from Massachusetts in 1679 and m ade it aroyal colony.

Puritans Versus Indians

The spread of English settlem en ts inevitably led toclashes with the Indians, who were particularlyweak in New England. Shortly before the Pilgrim shad arrived at Plym outh in 1620, an epidem ic, prob-ably triggered by con tact with English fisherm en ,had swept through the coastal tribes and killedm ore than three-quarters of the native people.Deserted Indian fields, ready for tillage, greeted thePlym outh settlers and scattered skulls and bonesprovided grim evidence of the im pact of the disease.

In no position to resist the English incursion ,the local Wam panoag Indians at first befriended thesettlers. Cultural accom m odation was facilitated bySquan to, a Wam panoag who had learned Englishfrom a sh ip’s captain who had kidnapped h im som eyears earlier. The Wam panoag chieftain Massasoitsigned a treaty with the Plym outh Pilgrim s in 1621and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgivingafter the autum n harvests that sam e year.

As m ore English settlers arrived and pushedin land in to the Connecticut River valley, confron ta-tions between Indians and whites ruptured thesepeaceful relations. Hostilities exploded in 1637between the English settlers and the powerfulPequot tribe. Besieging a Pequot village on Con-necticut’s Mystic River, English m ilitiam en and theirNarragansett Indian allies set fire to the Indian wig-wam s and shot the fleeing survivors. The slaughter

wrote a brutal fin ish to the Pequot War, virtuallyann ihilated the Pequot tribe, and inaugurated fourdecades of uneasy peace between Puritans andIndians.

Lashed by critics in England, the Puritans m adesom e feeble efforts at converting the rem ain ingIndians to Christian ity, although Puritan m issionaryzeal never equaled that of the Catholic Span ish andFrench. A m ere handful of Indians were gatheredin to Puritan “praying towns” to m ake the acquain -tance of the English God and to learn the ways ofEnglish culture.

The Indians’ on ly hope for resisting Englishencroachm ent lay in in tertribal un ity—a pan-Indianalliance against the swiftly spreading English settle-

52 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

m ents. In 1675 Massasoit’s son , Metacom , calledKing Philip by the English , forged such an allianceand m ounted a series of coordinated assaults onEnglish villages throughout New England. Fron tiersettlem ents were especially hard h it, and refugeesfell back toward the relative safety of Boston . Whenthe war ended in 1676, fifty-two Puritan towns hadbeen attacked, and twelve destroyed en tirely. Hun-dreds of colon ists and m any m ore Indians lay dead.Metacom’s wife and son were sold in to slavery; hehim self was captured, beheaded, and drawn andquartered. His head was carried on a p ike back toPlym outh , where it was m ounted on grisly displayfor years.

King Philip’s War slowed the westward m arch ofEnglish settlem ent in New England for severaldecades. But the war inflicted a lasting defeat on NewEngland’s Indians. Drastically reduced in num bers,dispirited, and disbanded, they thereafter posed onlysporadic threats to the New England colonists.

Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence

A path-breaking experim en t in un ion was launchedin 1643, when four colon ies banded together toform the New England Confederation . Old Englandwas then deeply involved in civil wars, and hencethe colon ists were thrown upon their own re-sources. The prim ary purpose of the confederationwas defense against foes or poten tial foes, notablythe Indians, the French, and the Dutch . Purely in ter-colon ial problem s, such as runaway servan ts andcrim inals who had fled from one colony to another,

also cam e with in the jurisdiction of the confedera-tion . Each m em ber colony, regardless of size,wielded two votes—an arrangem ent h ighly dis-p leasing to the m ost populous colony, Massachu-setts Bay.

The confederation was essen tially an exclusivePuritan club. It consisted of the two Massachusettscolon ies (the Bay Colony and ban tam -sized Ply-m outh) and the two Connecticut colon ies (NewHaven and the scattered valley settlem en ts). ThePuritan leaders blackballed Rhode Island as well asthe Maine outposts. These p laces, it was charged,harbored too m any heretical or otherwise undesir-able characters. Shockingly, one of the Maine townshad m ade a tailor its m ayor and had even shelteredan excom m unicated m in ister of the gospel.

Weak though it was, the confederation was thefirst notable m ilestone on the long and rocky roadtoward colon ial un ity. The delegates took totteringbut long-overdue steps toward acting together onm atters of in tercolon ial im portance. Rank-and-filecolon ists, for their part, received valuable experi-ence in delegating their votes to properly chosenrepresen tatives.

Back in England the king had paid little atten -tion to the Am erican colon ies during the early yearsof their p lan ting. They were allowed, in effect, tobecom e sem iautonom ous com m onwealths. Thisera of ben ign neglect was prolonged when thecrown , struggling to retain its power, becam eenm eshed during the 1640s in civil wars with theparliam en tarians.

But when Charles II was restored to the Englishthrone in 1660, the royalists and their Church ofEngland allies were once m ore firm ly in the saddle.Puritan hopes of even tually purifying the old

Indians and Colon ists in New England 53

The Stuart Dynasty in England*

Name, Reign Relation to America

Jam es I, 1603–1625 Va., Plym outh founded; Separatists persecutedCharles I, 1625–1649 Civil wars, 1642–1649; Mass., Md. founded(In terregnum , 1649–1660) Com m onwealth ; Protectorate (Oliver Crom well)Charles II, 1660–1685 The Restoration ; Carolinas, Pa., N.Y. founded; Conn . charteredJam es II, 1685–1688 Catholic trend; Glorious Revolution , 1688William & Mary, 1689–1702 King William’s War, 1689–1697(Mary died 1694)

*See p. 29 for predecessors; p. 110 for successors.

English church withered. Worse, Charles II wasdeterm ined to take an active, aggressive hand in them anagem ent of the colon ies. His p lans ran head-long against the habits that decades of relative inde-pendence had bred in the colon ists.

Deepen ing colon ial defiance was nowhere m oreglaringly revealed than in Massachusetts. One of theking’s agen ts in Boston was m ortified to find thatroyal orders had no m ore effect than old issues ofthe London Gazette. Pun ishm en t was soon forth-com ing. As a slap at Massachusetts, Charles II gaverival Connecticut in 1662 a sea-to-sea charter gran t,which legalized the squatter settlem en ts. The verynext year the outcasts in Rhode Island received anew charter, which gave kingly sanction to the m ostreligiously toleran t governm en t yet devised in

Am erica. A final and crushing blow fell on the stiff-necked Bay Colony in 1684, when its precious char-ter was revoked by the London authorities.

Andros Promotes the First American Revolution

Massachusetts suffered further hum iliation in 1686,when the Dom in ion of New England was created byroyal authority. Un like the hom egrown New Eng-land Confederation , it was im posed from London .Em bracing at first all New England, it was expandedtwo years later to include New York and East andWest Jersey. The dom in ion also aim ed at bolstering

54 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

colon ial defense in the even t of war with the Indiansand hence, from the im perial viewpoin t of Parlia-m en t, was a statesm an like m ove.

More im portan tly, the Dom in ion of New Eng-land was designed to prom ote urgen tly needed effi-ciency in the adm in istration of the EnglishNavigation Laws. Those laws reflected the in tensify-ing colon ial rivalries of the seven teen th cen tury.They sought to stitch England’s overseas posses-sions m ore tightly to the m otherland by throttlingAm erican trade with coun tries not ru led by theEnglish crown . Like colon ial peoples everywhere,the Am ericans chafed at such confinem en ts, andsm uggling becam e an increasingly com m on andhonorable occupation .

At the head of the new dom in ion stood auto-cratic Sir Edm und Andros, an able English m ilitarym an , conscien tious but tactless. Establish ing head-quarters in Puritan ical Boston , he generated m uchhostility by h is open affiliation with the despisedChurch of England. The colon ists were also out-raged by h is noisy and Sabbath-profan ing soldiers,who were accused of teaching the people “to drink,blasphem e, curse, and dam n.”

Andros was prom pt to use the m ailed fist. Heruth lessly curbed the cherished town m eetings; laidheavy restrictions on the courts, the press, and theschools; and revoked all land titles. Dispensing withthe popular assem blies, he taxed the people withoutthe consen t of their duly elected represen tatives. Healso strove to en force the unpopular NavigationLaws and suppress sm uggling. Liberty-lovingcolon ists, accustom ed to unusual privileges duringlong decades of neglect, were goaded to the verge ofrevolt.

The people of old England, likewise resistingoppression , stole a m arch on the people of NewEngland. In 1688–1689 they engineered the m em o-rable Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution . Dethron-ing the despotic and unpopular Catholic Jam es II,they en throned the Protestan t ru lers of the Nether-lands, the Dutch-born William III and h is Englishwife, Mary, daughter of Jam es II.

When the news of the Glorious Revolutionreached Am erica, the ram shackle Dom in ion of NewEngland collapsed like a house of cards. A Bostonm ob, catching the fever, rose against the existingregim e. Sir Edm und Andros attem pted to flee inwom an’s cloth ing but was betrayed by boots pro-truding beneath h is dress. He was hastily sh ippedoff to England.

Massachusetts, though rid of the despoticAndros, did not gain as m uch from the upheaval asit had hoped. In 1691 it was arbitrarily m ade a royalcolony, with a new charter and a new royal gover-nor. The perm anen t loss of the ancien t charter was astaggering blow to the proud Puritans, who neverfully recovered. Worst of all, the privilege of voting,once a m onopoly of church m em bers, was now tobe en joyed by all qualified m ale property holders.

England’s Glorious Revolution reverberatedthroughout the colon ies from New England to theChesapeake. Inspired by the challenge to the crownin old England, m any colon ists seized the occasionto strike against royal authority in Am erica. Unrestrocked both New York and Maryland from 1689 to1691, un til newly appoin ted royal governorsrestored a sem blance of order. Most im portan tly,the new m onarchs relaxed the royal grip on colon ialtrade, inaugurating a period of “salu tary neglect”when the m uch-resen ted Navigation Laws wereon ly weakly en forced.

Yet residues rem ained of Charles II’s effort toassert tighter adm in istrative con trol over h is

Confederation and Dom in ion in New England 55

Early Set t lements in the Middle Colonies, with FoundingDates

em pire. More English officials—judges, clerks, cus-tom s officials—now staffed the courts and strolledthe wharves of English Am erica. Many were incom -peten t, corrupt hacks who knew little and cared lessabout Am erican affairs. Appoin ted by in fluen tialpatrons in far-off England, by their very presencethey blocked the rise of local leaders to positions ofpolitical power. Aggrieved Am ericans viewed themwith m oun ting con tem pt and resen tm en t as theeighteen th cen tury wore on .

Old Netherlanders at New Netherland

Late in the sixteen th cen tury, the oppressed peopleof the Netherlands unfurled the standard of rebel-lion against Catholic Spain . After bloody and protracted fighting, they finally succeeded, with the aid of Protestan t England, in winn ing theirindependence.

The seven teen th cen tury—the era of Rem -brandt and other fam ous artists—was a golden agein Dutch h istory. This vigorous little lowland nationfinally em erged as a m ajor com m ercial and navalpower, and then it ungratefully challenged the

suprem acy of its form er benefactor, England. Threegreat Anglo-Dutch naval wars were fought in theseven teen th cen tury, with as m any as a hundredships on each side. The sturdy Dutch dealt blowsabout as heavy as they received.

The Dutch Republic also becam e a leadingcolon ial power, with by far its greatest activity in theEast Indies. There it m ain tained an enorm ous andprofitable em pire for over three hundred years. TheDutch East India Com pany was virtually a statewith in a state and at one tim e supported an arm y of10,000 m en and a fleet of 190 ships, 40 of them m en-of-war.

Seeking greater riches, th is en terprising com -pany em ployed an English explorer, Henry Hudson .Disregarding orders to sail northeast, he ven turedin to Delaware Bay and New York Bay in 1609 andthen ascended the Hudson River, hoping that at lasthe had chanced upon the coveted shortcut throughthe con tinen t. But, as the even t proved, he m erelyfiled a Dutch claim to a m agn ificen tly wooded andwatered area.

Much less powerful than the m ighty Dutch EastIndia Com pany was the Dutch West India Com pany,which m ain tained profitable en terprises in theCaribbean . At tim es it was less in terested in trading

56 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

than in raiding and at one fell swoop in 1628 cap-tured a fleet of Span ish treasure sh ips laden withloot worth $15 m illion . The com pany also estab-lished outposts in Africa and a thriving sugar indus-try in Brazil, which for several decades was itsprincipal cen ter of activity in the New World.

New Netherland, in the beautifu l Hudson Riverarea, was p lan ted in 1623–1624 on a perm anen tbasis. Established by the Dutch West India Com -pany for its quick-profit fur trade, it was never m orethan a secondary in terest of the founders. The com -pany’s m ost brillian t stroke was to buy ManhattanIsland from the Indians (who did not actually “own”it) for virtually worth less trinkets—twen ty-twothousand acres of what is now perhaps the m ostvaluable real estate in the world for penn ies peracre.

New Am sterdam —later New York City—was acom pany town . It was run by and for the Dutchcom pany, in the in terests of the stockholders. Theinvestors had no en thusiasm for religious tolera-tion , free speech, or dem ocratic practices; and thegovernors appoin ted by the com pany as directors-general were usually harsh and despotic. Religiousdissen ters who opposed the official DutchReform ed Church were regarded with suspicion ,and for a while Quakers were savagely abused. In

response to repeated protests by the aggravatedcolon ists, a local body with lim ited lawm akingpower was finally established.

This p icturesque Dutch colony took on astrongly aristocratic tinge and retained it for genera-tions. Vast feudal estates fron ting the Hudson River,known as patroonships, were gran ted to prom oterswho agreed to settle fifty people on them . Onepatroonship in the Albany area was slightly largerthan the later state of Rhode Island.

Colorful little New Am sterdam attracted a cos-m opolitan population , as is com m on in seaporttowns. A French Jesuit m issionary, visiting in the1640s, noted that eighteen differen t languages werebeing spoken in the streets. New York’s later babel ofim m igran t tongues was thus foreshadowed.

Friction with Englishand Swedish Neighbors

Vexations beset the Dutch com pany-colony fromthe beginn ing. The directors-general were largelyincom peten t. Com pany shareholders dem andedtheir dividends, even at the expense of the colony’swelfare. The Indians, in furiated by Dutch cruelties,

The Dutch Plan t New York 57

retaliated with horrible m assacres. As a defensem easure, the hard-pressed settlers on ManhattanIsland erected a stout wall, from which Wall Streetderives its nam e.

New England was hostile to the growth of itsDutch neighbor, and the people of Connecticutfinally ejected in truding Hollanders from their ver-dan t valley. Three of the four m em ber colon ies ofthe New England Confederation were eager to wipeout New Netherland with m ilitary force. But Massa-chusetts, which would have had to provide m ost ofthe troops, vetoed the proposed foray.

The Swedes in turn trespassed on Dutch pre-serves, from 1638 to 1655, by p lan ting the anem iccolony of New Sweden on the Delaware River. This

was the golden age of Sweden , during and followingthe Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648, in which its bril-lian t King Gustavus Adolphus had carried the torchfor Protestan tism . This outburst of energy in Swe-den caused it to en ter the costly colon ial gam e inAm erica, though on som ething of a shoestring.

Resen ting the Swedish in trusion on theDelaware, the Dutch dispatched a sm all m ilitaryexpedition in 1655. It was led by the ablest of thedirectors-general, Peter Stuyvesan t, who had lost aleg while soldiering in the West Indies and wasdubbed “Father Wooden Leg” by the Indians. Them ain fort fell after a bloodless siege, whereuponSwedish ru le cam e to an abrupt end. The colon istswere absorbed by New Netherland.

New Sweden , never im portan t, soon fadedaway, leaving behind in later Delaware a sprinklingof Swedish p lace nam es and Swedish log cabins (thefirst in Am erica), as well as an adm ixture of Swedishblood.

Dutch Residues in New York

Lacking vitality, and represen ting on ly a secondarycom m ercial in terest of the Dutch , New Netherlandlay under the m enacing shadow of the vigorousEnglish colon ies to the north . In addition , it washoneycom bed with New England im m igran ts.Num bering about one-half of New Netherland’s tenthousand souls in 1664, they m ight in tim e haveseized con trol from with in .

The days of the Dutch on the Hudson werenum bered, for the English regarded them as in trud-ers. In 1664, after the im perially am bitious CharlesII had gran ted the area to h is brother, the Duke ofYork, a strong English squadron appeared off thedecrepit defenses of New Am sterdam . A fum ingPeter Stuyvesan t, short of all m un itions exceptcourage, was forced to surrender without firing ashot. New Am sterdam was thereupon renam ed NewYork, in honor of the Duke of York. England won asplendid harbor, strategically located in the m iddleof the m ain land colon ies, and a stately HudsonRiver penetrating the in terior. With the rem oval ofth is foreign wedge, the English banner now wavedtrium phan tly over a solid stretch of territory fromMaine to the Carolinas.

58 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

The conquered Dutch province tenaciouslyretained m any of the illiberal features of earlierdays. An autocratic sp irit survived, and the aristo-cratic elem en t gained strength when certain corruptEnglish governors gran ted im m ense acreage to theirfavorites. In fluen tial landowning fam ilies—such asthe Livingstons and the De Lanceys—wielded dis-proportionate power in the affairs of colon ial NewYork. These m onopolistic land policies, com binedwith the lordly atm osphere, discouraged m anyEuropean im m igran ts from com ing. The physicalgrowth of New York was correspondingly retarded.

The Dutch peppered p lace nam es over the land,including Harlem (Haarlem ), Brooklyn (Breucke-len ), and Hell Gate (Hellegat). They likewise lefttheir im prin t on the gam brel-roofed architecture. Asfor social custom s and folkways, no other foreigngroup of com parable size has m ade so colorful acon tribution . Noteworthy were Easter eggs, San taClaus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skat-ing, and kolf (golf)—a dangerous gam e played withheavy clubs and forbidden in settled areas.

Penn’s Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania

A rem arkable group of dissen ters, com m only knownas Quakers, arose in England during the m id-1600s.Their nam e derived from the report that they“quaked” when under deep religious em otion . Offi-cially they were known as the Religious Society ofFriends.

Quakers were especially offensive to the author-ities, both religious and civil. They refused to sup-port the established Church of England with taxes.They built sim ple m eetinghouses, congregatedwithout a paid clergy, and “spoke up” them selves inm eetings when m oved. Believing that they were allchildren in the sight of God, they kept their broad-brim m ed hats on in the presence of their “betters”and addressed others with sim ple “thee”s and“thou”s, rather than with conven tional titles. Theywould take no oaths because Jesus had com -

The Quakers in Pennsylvan ia 59

m anded, “Swear not at all.” This peculiarity oftenem broiled them with governm ent officials, for “testoaths” were still required to establish the fact that aperson was not a Rom an Catholic.

The Quakers, beyond a doubt, were a people ofdeep conviction . They abhorred strife and warfareand refused m ilitary service. As advocates of passiveresistance, they would turn the other cheek andrebuild their m eetinghouse on the site where theirenem ies had torn it down . Their courage and devo-tion to princip le finally trium phed. Although attim es they seem ed stubborn and unreasonable,they were a sim ple, devoted, dem ocratic people,con tending in their own high-m inded way for reli-gious and civic freedom .

William Penn , a wellborn and ath letic youngEnglishm an , was attracted to the Quaker faith in1660, when on ly sixteen years old. His father, disap-proving, adm in istered a sound flogging. After vari-ous adven tures in the arm y (the best portrait of thepeaceful Quaker has h im in arm or), the youth firm lyem braced the despised faith and suffered m uchpersecution . The courts branded h im a “saucy” and“im pertinen t” fellow. Several hundred of h is less for-tunate fellow Quakers died of cruel treatm en t, and

thousands m ore were fined, flogged, or cast in todank prisons.

Penn’s thoughts naturally turned to the NewWorld, where a sprinkling of Quakers had alreadyfled, notably to Rhode Island, North Carolina, andNew Jersey. Eager to establish an asylum for h is peo-ple, he also hoped to experim en t with liberal ideasin governm ent and at the sam e tim e m ake a profit.Finally, in 1681, he m anaged to secure from the kingan im m ense gran t of fertile land, in consideration ofa m onetary debt owed to h is deceased father by thecrown . The king called the area Pennsylvan ia(“Penn’s Woodland”) in honor of the sire. The m od-est son , fearing that critics would accuse h im ofnam ing it after h im self, sought unsuccessfully tochange the nam e.

Pennsylvan ia was by far the best advertised ofall the colon ies. Its founder—the “first Am ericanadvertising m an”—sen t out paid agen ts and distrib-uted coun tless pam phlets prin ted in English ,Dutch , French, and Germ an . Un like the lures ofm any other Am erican real estate prom oters, thenand later, Penn’s inducem ents were generally tru th-ful. He especially welcom ed forward-looking sp iritsand substan tial citizens, including industrious car-

60 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

pen ters, m asons, shoem akers, and other m anualworkers. His liberal land policy, which encouragedsubstan tial holdings, was instrum en tal in attractinga heavy in flow of im m igran ts.

Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors

Penn form ally launched h is colony in 1681. His taskwas sim plified by the presence of several thousand“squatters”—Dutch, Swedish , English , Welsh—whowere already scattered along the banks of theDelaware River. Philadelphia, m ean ing “brotherlylove” in Greek, was m ore carefully p lanned thanm ost colon ial cities and consequen tly en joyed wideand attractive streets.

Penn farsightedly bought land from the Indians,including Chief Tam m any, later patron sain t of NewYork’s political Tam m any Hall. His treatm en t of thenative peoples was so fair that the Quaker “broadbrim s” wen t am ong them unarm ed and evenem ployed them as baby-sitters. For a brief period,Pennsylvan ia seem ed the prom ised land of am ica-ble Indian -white relations. Som e southern tribeseven m igrated to Pennsylvan ia, seeking the Quakerhaven . But iron ically, Quaker tolerance proved theundoing of Quaker Indian policy. As non-QuakerEuropean im m igran ts flooded in to the province,they underm ined the Quakers’ own benevolen t pol-icy toward the Indians. The feisty Scots-Irish wereparticularly unpersuaded by Quaker idealism .

Penn’s new proprietary regim e was unusuallyliberal and included a represen tative assem blyelected by the landowners. No tax-supported statechurch drained coffers or dem anded allegiance.

Freedom of worship was guaran teed to all residen ts,although Penn , under pressure from London , wasforced to deny Catholics and Jews the privilege ofvoting or holding office. The death penalty wasim posed on ly for treason and m urder, as com paredwith som e two hundred capital crim es in England.

Am ong other noteworthy features, no provisionwas m ade by the peace-loving Quakers of Pennsyl-van ia for a m ilitary defense. No restrictions wereplaced on im m igration , and naturalization wasm ade easy. The hum ane Quakers early developed astrong dislike of black slavery, and in the gen ial glowof Pennsylvan ia som e progress was m ade towardsocial reform .

With its m any liberal features, Pennsylvan iaattracted a rich m ix of ethn ic groups. They includednum erous religious m isfits who were repelled by theharsh practices of neighboring colon ies. ThisQuaker refuge boasted a surprisingly m odernatm osphere in an unm odern age and to an unusualdegree afforded econom ic opportun ity, civil liberty,and religious freedom . Even so, “blue laws” prohib-ited “ungodly revelers,” stage p lays, p laying cards,dice, gam es, and excessive h ilarity.

Under such generally happy auspices, Penn’sbrainchild grew lustily. The Quakers were shrewdbusinesspeople, and in a short tim e the settlers wereexporting grain and other foodstuffs. With in twoyears Philadelphia claim ed three hundred housesand twen ty-five hundred people. With in n ineteenyears—by 1700—the colony was surpassed in popu-lation and wealth on ly by long-established Virgin iaand Massachusetts.

William Penn , who altogether spen t about fouryears in Pennsylvan ia, was never fu lly appreciatedby h is colon ists. His governors, som e of themincom peten t and tactless, quarreled bitterly withthe people, who were constan tly dem anding greaterpolitical con trol. Penn h im self becam e too friendlywith Jam es II, the deposed Catholic king. Thricearrested for treason , thrust for a tim e in to a debtors’prison , and afflicted by a paralytic stroke, he diedfull of sorrows. His enduring m onum ent was noton ly a noble experim en t in governm ent but also anew com m onwealth . Based on civil and religiousliberty, and dedicated to freedom of conscience andworship, it held aloft a hopeful torch in a world ofsem idarkness.

Sm all Quaker settlem en ts flourished next doorto Pennsylvan ia. New Jersey was started in 1664,when two noble proprietors received the area from

Colon ial Pennsylvan ia 61

In a Boston lecture in 1869, Ralph WaldoEm erson (1803–1882) declared,“The sect of the Quakers in their bestrepresentat ives appear to me to have comenearer to the sublime history and genius ofChrist than any other of the sects.”

the Duke of York. A substan tial num ber of New Eng-landers, including m any whose weary soil hadpetered out, flocked to the new colony. One of theproprietors sold West New Jersey in 1674 to a groupof Quakers, who here set up a sanctuary even beforePennsylvan ia was launched. East New Jersey wasalso acquired in later years by the Quakers, whosewings were clipped in 1702 when the crown com -bined the two Jerseys in a royal colony.

Swedish-tinged Delaware consisted of on lythree coun ties—two at h igh tide, the witticismgoes—and was nam ed after Lord De La Warr, theharsh m ilitary governor who had arrived in Virgin iain 1610. Harboring som e Quakers, and closely asso-ciated with Penn’s prosperous colony, Delaware wasgran ted its own assem bly in 1703. But un til theAm erican Revolution , it rem ained under the gover-nor of Pennsylvan ia.

The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies

The m iddle colon ies—New York, New Jersey,Delaware, and Pennsylvan ia—enjoyed certain fea-tures in com m on.

In general, the soil was fertile and the expanseof land was broad, un like rock-bestrewn New Eng-land. Pennsylvan ia, New York, and New Jersey cam eto be known as the “bread colon ies,” by virtue oftheir heavy exports of grain .

Rivers also p layed a vital role. Broad, languidstream s—notably the Susquehanna, the Delaware,and the Hudson—tapped the fur trade of the in te-rior and beckoned adven turesom e spirits in to thebackcoun try. The rivers had few cascading water-falls, un like New England’s, and hence presen ted lit-tle inducem ent to m illing or m anufacturing withwater-wheel power.

A surprising am oun t of industry nonethelesshum m ed in the m iddle colon ies. Virginal forestsabounded for lum bering and shipbuilding. Thepresence of deep river estuaries and landlockedharbors stim ulated both com m erce and the growthof seaports, such as New York and Philadelphia.Even Albany, m ore than a hundred m iles up theHudson , was a port of som e consequence in colo-n ial days.

The m iddle colon ies were in m any respectsm idway between New England and the southernplan tation group. Except in aristocratic New York,the landholdings were generally in term ediate insize—sm aller than in the big-acreage South butlarger than in sm all-farm New England. Local governm ent lay som ewhere between the personal-ized town m eeting of New England and the diffusedcoun ty governm ent of the South . There were fewerindustries in the m iddle colon ies than in New Eng-land, m ore than in the South .

Yet the m iddle colon ies, which in som e wayswere the m ost Am erican part of Am erica, couldclaim certain distinctions in their own right. Gener-ally speaking, the population was m ore ethn icallym ixed than that of other settlem en ts. The peoplewere blessed with an unusual degree of religious tol-eration and dem ocratic con trol. Earnest and devoutQuakers, in particular, m ade a com passionate con-tribution to hum an freedom out of all proportion totheir num bers. Desirable land was m ore easilyacquired in the m iddle colon ies than in New Eng-land or in the tidewater South . One result was that aconsiderable am oun t of econom ic and socialdem ocracy prevailed, though less so in aristocraticNew York.

Modern -m inded Ben jam in Franklin , oftenregarded as the m ost represen tative Am erican per-sonality of h is era, was a child of the m iddlecolon ies. Although it is true that Franklin was born aYankee in puritan ical Boston , he en tered Philadel-phia as a seven teen-year-old in 1720 with a loaf ofbread under each arm and im m ediately found acongen ial hom e in the urbane, open atm osphere ofwhat was then North Am erica’s biggest city. OnePennsylvan ian later boasted that Franklin “cam e tolife at seven teen , in Philadelphia.”

By the tim e Franklin arrived in the City of Broth-erly Love, the Am erican colon ies were them selves“com ing to life.” Population was growing robustly.Transportation and com m unication were graduallyim proving. The British , for the m ost part, con tinuedtheir hands-off policies, leaving the colon ists tofashion their own local governm ents, run their ownchurches, and develop networks of in tercolon ialtrade. As people and products crisscrossed thecolon ies with increasing frequency and in increas-ing volum e, Am ericans began to realize that—farrem oved from Mother England—they were notm erely surviving, but tru ly thriving.

62 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

Exam in ing the Evidence 63

A Seventeenth-Century Valuables Cabinet In1999 a boatyard worker on Cape Cod and h is sister,a New Ham pshire teacher, inherited a sm all(twen ty-pound, sixteen and a half inch h igh) chestthat had always stood on their grandm other’s halltable, known in the fam ily as the “Franklin Chest.”Eager to learn m ore about it, they set out to dis-cover the original owner, tracing their fam ilygenealogy and consulting with furn iture experts.In January 2000 th is rare seven teen th-cen tury cab-inetry, its fu ll provenance now known, appearedon the auction block and sold for a record $2.4 m il-lion to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem , Mass-achusetts. No less extraordinary than the price wasthe h istory of its creator and its owners em bodiedin the p iece. Salem cabinetm aker Jam es Sym onds(1636–1726) had m ade the chest for h is relatives,Joseph Pope (1650–1712) and Bathsheba Folger(1652–1726), to com m em orate their 1679 m ar-

riage. Sym onds carved the Popes’ in itials and thedate on the door of the cabinet. He also put elabo-rate S curves on the sides rem arkably sim ilar to theMannerist carved oak paneling produced in Nor-folk, England, from where h is own cabinetm akerfather had em igrated. Behind the chest’s door areten drawers where the Popes would have kept jew-elry, m oney, deeds, and writing m aterials. Surelythey prized the chest as a sign of refinem en t to beshown off in their best room , a sen tim en t passeddown through the next th irteen generations evenas the Popes’ iden tities were lost. The chest m ayhave becom e known as the “Franklin Chest”because Bathsheba was Ben jam in Franklin’s aun t,but also because that iden tification appealed m oreto descendan ts asham ed that the Quaker Popes,whose own paren ts had been persecuted for theirfaith , were viru len t accusers during the Salemwitch trials of 1692.

64 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colon ies, 1619–1700

Chronology

1517 Martin Luther begins Protestan t Reform ation

1536 John Calvin of Geneva publishes Institu tes ofthe Christian Religion

1620 Pilgrim s sail on the Mayflower to Plym outhBay

1624 Dutch found New Netherland

1629 Charles I dism isses Parliam en t and persecutes Puritans

1630 Puritans found Massachusetts Bay Colony

1635- Roger William s convicted of heresy and 1636 founds Rhode Island colony

1635- Connecticut and New Haven colon ies 1638 founded

1637 Pequot War

1638 Anne Hutchinson ban ished fromMassachusetts colony

1639 Connecticut’s Fundam ental Orders drafted

1642-1648 English Civil War

1643 New England Confederation form ed

1655 New Netherland conquers New Sweden

1664 England seizes New Netherland from DutchEast and West Jersey colon ies founded

1675-1676 King Philip’s War

1681 William Penn founds Pennsylvan ia colony

1686 Royal authority creates Dom in ion of NewEngland

1688- Glorious Revolution overthrows Stuarts and 1689 Dom in ion of New England

VARYING VIEWPOINTSEuropeanizing America or Americanizing Europe?

The h istory of discovery and colon ization raisesperhaps the m ost fundam ental question about

all Am erican h istory. Should it be understood as theextension of European civilization in to the NewWorld or as the gradual developm ent of a un iquely“Am erican” culture? An older school of thoughttended to em phasize the European ization of Am er-ica. Historians of that persuasion paid close atten -tion to the situation in Europe, particularly Englandand Spain , in the fifteen th and sixteen th cen turies.They also focused on the exportation of the valuesand institu tions of the m other coun tries to the newlands in the western sea. Although som e historiansalso exam ined the transform ing effect of Am ericaon Europe, th is approach, too, rem ained essen tiallyEurocen tric.

More recen tly, h istorians have concen trated onthe distinctiveness of Am erica. The concern withEuropean origins has evolved in to a com parativetreatm en t of European settlem en ts in the NewWorld. England, Spain , Holland, and France nowattract m ore atten tion for the divergen t kinds ofsocieties they fostered in Am erica than for the waythey com m only pursued Old World am bitions in theNew. The newest trend to em erge is a transatlan tichistory that views European em pires and theirAm erican colon ies as part of a process of culturalcross-fertilization affecting not on ly the colon iesbut Europe and Africa as well.

This less Eurocen tric approach has alsochanged the way historians explain the colon ialdevelopm ent of Am erica. Rather than telling the

story of colon ization as the im position of European ways of life through “discovery” and “con-quest,” h istorians increasingly view the colon ialperiod as one of “con tact” and “adaptation”between European , African , and Native Am ericanways of life. Scholars including Richard White,Alfred Crosby, William Cronon , Karen Kupperm an ,and Tim othy Silver have enhanced understandingof the cultural as well as the physical transform a-tions that resulted from con tact. An environm ent offorests and m eadows, for exam ple, gave way to alandscape of fields and fences as Europeans soughtto replicate the agricultural villages they had knownin Europe. Aggressive deforestation even producedclim atic changes, as treeless tracts m ade for colderwin ters, hotter sum m ers, and earth-gouging floods.Ram on Gutierrez’s When Jesus Cam e, the CornMothers Wen t Away (1991) has expanded the colo-n ial stage to include in teractions between Span ishsettlers and Native Am ericans in the Southwest.

The variety of Am erican societies that em ergedout of the in teraction of Europeans and NativeAm ericans has also becom e better appreciated.Early h istories by esteem ed historians like PerryMiller exaggerated the exten t to which the New Eng-land Puritan experience defined the essence ofAm erica. Not on ly did these h istorians overlooknon-English experiences, they failed to recogn izethe diversity in m otives, m ethods, and conse-quences that existed even with in English colon iza-tion . The num bers alone tell an in teresting story. By1700 about 220,000 English colon ists had em igratedto the Caribbean , about 120,000 to the southernm ain land colon ies, and on ly about 40,000 to them iddle Atlan tic and New England colon ies(although by the m id-eighteen th cen tury, thoseheaded for the latter destination would accoun t form ore than half the total). Studies such as Richard S.

Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves (1972) em phasize theim portance of the Caribbean in early English colo-n ization efforts and m ake clear that the desire foreconom ic gain , m ore than the quest for religiousfreedom , fueled the m igration to the Caribbeanislands. Sim ilarly, Edm und S. Morgan’s Am ericanSlavery, Am erican Freedom (1975) stresses the role ofeconom ic am bition in explain ing the English peo-pling of the Chesapeake and the even tual im porta-tion of African slaves to that region . Studies byBernard Bailyn and David Hackett Fisher dem on-strate that there was scarcely a “typical” Englishm igran t to the New World. English colon istsm igrated both singly and in fam ilies, and for eco-nom ic, social, political, and religious reasons.

Recen t studies have also paid m ore atten tion tothe conflicts that em erged out of th is diversity insettler populations and colon ial societies. This per-spective em phasizes the con tests for econom ic andpolitical suprem acy with in the colon ies, such as theefforts of the Massachusetts Bay elite to ward off thechallenges of religious “heretics” and the pressuresthat an increasingly restless lower class put onwealthy m erchan ts and large landowners. Nowherewas in ternal conflict so prevalen t as in the ethn i-cally diverse m iddle colon ies, where factionalan tagon ism s becam e the defin ing feature of publiclife.

The p icture of colon ial Am erica that is em ergingfrom all th is new scholarship is of a societyun ique—and diverse—from inception . No longersim ply Europe transplan ted, Am erican colon ialsociety by 1700 is now viewed as an outgrowth of m any in tertwin ing roots—of differen t Europeanand African heritages, of varied encoun ters withnative peoples and a wilderness environm ent, andof com plicated m ixtures of settler populations, eachwith its own distinctive set of am bitions.

Varying Viewpoin ts 65

For further reading, see page A2 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

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