AP U.S. History Notes

Chapter 3: Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619-1700

  1. The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism
    1. Denouncing the authority of priests and popes, Martin Luther, in 1517, ignited a fire of religious reform (the Protestant Reformation) that spread throughout Europe for more than a century, kindling the spiritual fervor of millions—some of whom helped to found America
    2. John Calvin of Geneva elaborated Luther’s ideas in ways that profoundly affected thought and character of generations of Americans
      1. Calvinism became the dominant theological credo not only of New England Puritans but of other American settlers including Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and the Dutch Reformed church
      2. Calvin spelled out his basic doctrine in 1536 in Institutes of Christian Religion in which he argued that God was all-powerful and all-good; humans were weak and wicked because of sin
      3. Since the first moment of creation, some souls—the elect—had been destined for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment
      4. Good works could not save those whom predestination was hell
      5. But neither could the elect count on their predetermined salvation and lead lives of wild, immoral abandon and thus, gnawing doubts about their eternal fate plagued Calvinists (signs of conversion)
      6. Conversion was thought to be an intense, identifiable personal experience in which God revealed to elect their heavenly destiny
    3. The Calvinists doctrines swept into England just as King Henry VIII was breaking his ties with the Roman Catholic church in the 1530s, making himself the head of the Church of England
    4. Henry’s action stimulated some English religious reformers to undertake a total purification of English Christianity (“Puritans”)
      1. Many Puritans came from the commercially depressed woolen districts and Calvinism with its message of reassuring order in the divine plan, fed on this social unrest and provided spiritual comfort
      2. As time went on, Puritans grew increasingly unhappy over the slow progress of the Protestant Reformation in England; they burned with zeal to see the Church of England wholly de-Catholicized
      3. All Puritans agreed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership but the Church of England enrolled all subjects
      4. This meant that the “saints” had to hare pews with the “damned” and a tiny group of extreme Puritans, known as Separatists, vowed to break away entirely from the Church of England
    5. King James I, a shrewd Scotsman, was head of both the state and the church in England from 1603 to 1625 and he quickly perceived that if his subjects could defy him as their spiritual leader they might one day defy him as political leader (in fact they beheaded his son, Charles I)
    6. James therefore threatened to harass the Separatists out of the land
  2. The Pilgrims End Their Pilgrimage at Plymouth
    1. The most famous congregation of Separatists, fleeing royal wrath, departed for Holland in 1608; they longed to find a haven where they could live and die as English men and women as purified Protestants
      1. America was the logical refuge, despite the early ordeals of Jamestown, and despite tales of New World cannibals
      2. A group of the Separatists in Holland, after negotiating with the Virginia Company, at length secured rights to settle under its rule
    2. The crowded Mayflower, sixty-five days at sea, missed its destination and arrived off the rocky coast of New England in 1620 with a total of 102 people; one had died en route and one had been born (Oceanus)
      1. Fewer than half of the entire party were Separatists; prominent among the nonbelongers was Captain Myles Standish who later rendered indispensable service as an Indian fighter and negotiator
      2. The Pilgrims did not make their initial landing at Plymouth Rock, as commonly supposed, but undertook a number of surveys
      3. They finally chose for their site the shore of inhospitable Plymouth Bay; this area was outside the domain of the Virginia Company, and consequently, the settlers became squatters because they were without legal right to the land and without specific authority
    3. Before landing the Pilgrim leaders signed the brief Mayflower Compact
      1. Although setting an invaluable precedent for later written constitutions, this document was not a constitution at all
      2. It was a simple agreement to form a crude government and to submit to the will of the majority under the regulations agreed upon
      3. The compact was signed by 41 adult males, eleven of them with the exalted rank of “mister” though not by the servants and two seamen
      4. The pact was a promising step toward genuine self-government, for soon the males were assembling to make their own laws in the open-discussion town meetings—a great laboratory of liberty
    4. The Pilgrims’ first winter of 1620-1621 was harsh and only 44 out of the 102 survived but when the Mayflower sailed back to England in the spring, not a single one of the band of Separatists left to go back
    5. God made his children prosperous so the Pilgrims believed; the next fall brought bountiful harvests and with them the first Thanksgiving Day in New England; in time the colony found its economy in fur, fish, and lumber—the beaver and the Bible were the early mainstays
    6. Plymouth proved that the English could maintain themselves in this uninviting region; the Pilgrims were extremely fortunate in their leaders
      1. Prominent among them was the cultured William Bradford who was chosen governor thirty times in the annual elections; among his worries was his fear that independent, non-Puritan settlers might corrupt his godly experiment in the wilderness
      2. Bustling fishing villages and other settlements did sprout to the north of Plymouth on the storm-lashed shores of Massachusetts Bay
    7. ​Quiet and quaint, the little colony of Plymouth was never important economically or numerically; its population numbered only seven thousand by 1691—Plymouth would merge in 1691 still unimportant
  3. The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth
    1. The Separatist Pilgrims were dedicated extremists—the purest Puritans
      1. More moderate Puritans sought to reform the Church of England from within; though resented by bishops and monarchs, they slowly gathered support, especially in the Parliament
      2. When Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1629 and sanctioned the anti-Puritan persecutions of the reactionary Archbishop William Laud, many Puritans saw catastrophe in the making
    2. In 1629 a group of non-Separatist Puritans fearing for the faith and the future, secured a royal charter to form the Massachusetts Bay Company
      1. They proposed to establish a sizable settlement in the infertile Massachusetts area and the newcomers brought their charter along
      2. For many years, they used it as a kind of constitution, out of reach of royal authority and they denied that they wanted to separate from the Church of England, only from its impurities (Bay Colonists)
    3. ​​​The Massachusetts Bay enterprise was singularly blessed
      1. The expedition of 1630, with eleven vessels carrying nearly a thousand immigrants, started the colony off on a larger scale than any of the other English settlements; continuing turmoil in England tossed up additional enriching waves of Puritans in the next decade
      2. During the Great Migration of the 1630s, about 75,000 refugees left England; not all of them were Puritans and only about 14,000 came to Massachusetts—many were attracted to the warm and fertile West Indies, especially the sugar-rich island of Barbados
    4. Many prosperous, educated people immigrated to the Bay Colony, including John Winthrop, who became the colony’s first governor
      1. Winthrop accepted the offer to become governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, believing that he had a “calling”
      2. He served as governor or deputy governor for 19 years and the resources and skills of talented settlers like Winthrop helped Massachusetts prosper, as fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding blossomed into important industries, especially fish and ships
      3. Massachusetts Bay Colony shot to the fore as both the biggest and the most influential of the New England outposts
    5. Massachusetts benefited from a shared sense of purpose among most of the first settlers; the Puritan bay colonists believed that they had a covenant with God, an agreement to build a holy society
  4. Building the Bay Colony
    1. ​After arrival the franchise was extended to all “freemen”—adult males who belonged to the Puritan congregations (Congregational church)
      1. Unchurched men remained voteless in provincial elections as did women; on this basis about two-fifths of adult males enjoyed the franchise in provincial affairs far larger proportions than in England
      2. Town governments, which conducted much important business were even more inclusive; there all male property holders and some cases other residents, enjoyed the benefit of publicly discussing local issues often with much heat and of voting by majority-rule
      3. The provincial government, somewhat liberal, was not a democracy
      4. Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted commons and democracy
    2. Although freemen annually elected the governor and assistants, as well as a representative assembly called the General Court, only Puritans who alone were eligible for church membership could be freedmen
    3. The purposed of government was believed to enforce God’s laws; still, nonbelievers as well as believers paid taxes for the supported church
    4. Religious leaders wielded enormous influence in the Massachusetts “Bible Commonwealth” as part of the government-supported church
      1. Religious leaders influenced admission to church membership, by conducting public interrogations of people claiming to have gone through conversion; John Cotton was a prominent clergy member
      2. Educated at Cambridge University, a Puritan citadel, he emigrated to Massachusetts to avoid persecution for his criticism of the Church of England (he defended the government’s religious duty)
    5. A congregation had the right to hire and fire its minister and to set his salary; clergymen were also barred from holding formal political office
    6. In a limited way, the bay colonists thus endorsed the idea of separation of church and state (from the experience of Puritans of England)
    7. The Puritans were a worldly group, despite their spiritual intensity
      1. Puritans believed in the doctrine of a “calling” to do God’s work on earth and shared what was later called the “Protestant ethic,” which involved serious commitment to work and engagement in pursuits
      2. They also enjoyed simple pleasures; like other people, they passed laws aimed at making sure these pleasures stayed simple by repressing certain human instincts (Connecticut—Blue Law State)
      3. Yet life was serious business and hellfire was real—a hell where sinners shriveled and shrieked in vain for divine mercy (a very popular poem in New England was Wigglesworth’s Day of Doom)
  5. ​​Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth
    1. The Bay Colony enjoyed a high degree of social harmony, stemming from common beliefs in the early years, but dissension soon appeared
      1. The Quakers who flouted the authority of the Puritan clergy were persecuted with fines, floggings, and banishment (even hangings)
      2. A sharp challenge to Puritan orthodoxy came from Anne Hutchison who was swift and sharp in theological argument and carried to logical extremes the Puritan doctrine of predestination
      3. She claimed that a holy life was no sure sign of salvation and that the truly saved need not bother to obey the law of either God or man (assertion known as antinomianism was high heresy)
      4. Brought to trial in 1638, Hutchinson deceived her clerical inquisitors for days until she boasted that she had come by her beliefs through a direct revelation from God (higher heresy)
      5. The Puritan magistrates had little choice but to banish her, lest she pollute the entire Puritan experiment; She finally moved to New York where she and all but one of her household were killed by Indians; back in the Bay Colony, Winthrop saw “God’s hand”
    2. More threatening to the Puritan leaders was a personable and popular Salem minister, Roger Williams—a young man with radical ideas
      1. An extreme Separatist, he hounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean break with the corrupt Church of England and also challenged the legality of the Bay Colony’s charter, which he condemned for expropriating the land from the Indians without fair compensation
      2. Williams would go on to deny the authority of civil government to regulate religious behavior—a seditious blow at the Puritan idea of government’s very purpose, patience exhausted by 1635
      3. The Bay Colony authorities found Williams guilty of disseminating new and dangerous opinions and ordered him banished; the outraged magistrates fearing that he might organize a rival colony of malcontents, made plans to exile him to England (plans foiled)
  6. The Rhode Island “Sewer”
    1. Aided by Indians, Roger Williams fled to the Rhode Island area in 1636
      1. At Providence Williams built a Baptists church, probably the first in America and established complete freedom of religion, even for Jews and Catholics (he went far ahead of his age in this respect)
      2. He demanded no oaths regarding one’s religious beliefs, no compulsory attendance at worship, no taxes to support a state church, and sheltered the abused Quakers (disagreed with views)
    2. Those outcasts who clustered about Roger Williams enjoyed additional blessings; they exercised simple manhood suffrage from the start (but this would later be modified by a property qualification)
    3. Other scattered settlements soon dotted Rhode Island; they consisted largely of malcontents and exiles, some whom could not bear the stifling theological atmosphere of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
      1. ​​​Many of these restless souls in Rogues’ Island had little in common with Roger Williams—except banishment and the Puritan clergy back in Boston sneered at Rhode Island as “that sewer” in which the “Lord’s debris” had collected and rotted
      2. Planted by dissenters and exiles, Rhode Island became strongly individualistic and stubbornly independent
      3. “Little Rhody” was later known as “the traditional home of the otherwise minded”; beginning as a squatter colony in 1636 without legal standing, it finally established rights to the soil when it secured a charter from Parliament in 1644 (Independent statue)
  7. ​​New England Spreads Out
    1. The valley of the Connecticut River, one of the few fertile expanses of land in New England, had attracted some Dutch and English settlers
      1. Hartford was founded in 1635 and in 1636 a spectacular beginning of the centuries-long westward movement across the continent
      2. An energetic group of Boston Puritans, led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker, swarmed as a body into the Hartford area
    2. In 1639, the settlers of the new Connecticut River colony drafted in open meeting a document known as the Fundamental Orders; it was in effect a modern constitution, which established a regime democratically controlled by the “substantial” citizens (features borrowed for charter)
    3. Another flourishing Connecticut settlement began to spring up at New Haven in 1638; it was a prosperous community founded by Puritans who contrived to set up an even closer church-government alliance
      1. Although they were without a charter, the colonists dreamed of making New Haven a flourishing seaport but fell into disfavor with Charles II as a result of having sheltered two of the judges who had condemned his father, King Charles I of England, to death
      2. In 1662, the crown granted a charter that merged New Haven with the more democratic settlements in the Connecticut Valley
    4. Far to the north, fishermen and fur traders had been active on the coast of Maine for a dozen years before the founding of Plymouth
    5. After attempts at colonization in 1623 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the land was absorbed by Massachusetts Bay after a purchase in 1677 from the Gorges Heirs (remained part of Massachusetts for 150 years)
    6. Granite-ribbed New Hampshire also sprang from the fishing and trading activities along its narrow coast; it was absorbed in 1641 by the grasping Bay Colony, under a strained interpretation of the Massachusetts charter; the king annoyed by this greed, separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts in 1670 making it a royal colony
  8. Puritans Versus Indians
    1. The spread of English settlements inevitably led to clashes with the Indians, who were particularly weak in New England
      1. Before the Pilgrims had arrived at Plymouth in 1620, an epidemic probably triggered by contact with English fishermen, had swept through the coastal tribes and killed more than 75% of the natives
      2. Deserted Indian fields, ready for tillage, as well as bones greeted the Plymouth settlers and provided grim evidence of the disease
    2. In no position to resist the English incursion, the local Wampanoag Indians at first befriended the settlers; cultural accommodation was facilitated by Squanto, a Wampanoag who had learned English
    3. The Wampanoag chieftain Massasoit signed a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621 and helped celebrate the first Thanksgiving in 1621
    4. As more English settlers arrived and pushed inland into the Connecticut River valley, confrontation between Indians and whites ruptured peace
      1. Hostilities exploded in 1637 between the English settlers and the powerful Pequot tribe; besieging a Pequot village on the Mystic River, English militiamen and their Narragansett Indian allies set fire to the Indian homes and shot the fleeing survivors
      2. The slaughter wrote a brutal finish to the Pequot War, virtually annihilated the Pequot tribe, and brought four decades of uneasy peace between the Puritans and the Indians
    5. Lashed by critics in England, the Puritans made feeble efforts at converting the remaining Indians to Christianity (only a few joined)
    6. The Indians’ only hope for resisting English encroachment lay in intertribal unity—a pan-Indian alliance against the swiftly spreading English settlements; in 1675 Massasoit’s son, Metacom, called King Philip by the English, forged an alliance and mounted attacks
      1. During a series of coordinated assaults on English villages throughout New England; frontier settlements were especially hard hit and refugees fell back toward the relative safety of Boston
      2. When the war ended in 1676, 52 Puritan towns had been attacked and twelve destroyed entirely; hundreds of colonists and many more Indians lay dead (Metacom’s wife and son sold into slavery)
      3. Metacom was captured, beheaded, and drawn and quartered, and his head was carried on a pike back to Plymouth (it was displayed)
    7. King Philip’s War slowed the westward march of English settlement in New England for several decades but the war inflicted a lasting defeat on New England’s Indians; drastically reduced in numbers, dispirited, and disbanded, they never again seriously threatened New England
  9. ​​​Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence
    1. A new experiment in union was launched in 1643, when four colonies banded together to form the New England Confederation
      1. Because Old England was in civil war, the colonials used their own resources; the primary purpose of the confederation was defense against potential foes—the Indians, the French, and the Dutch
      2. Intercolonial problems, such as runaway servants and criminals who had fled from one colony to another, also came within the jurisdiction of the confederation; each member colony wielded two votes—an arrangement highly displeasing the Massachusetts Bay
    2. The confederation was essentially an exclusive Puritan club and consisted of the two Massachusetts colonies (the Bay Colony and Plymouth) and the two Connecticut colonies (New Haven and valley)
      1. The Puritan leaders left out Rhode Island as well as the Maine outposts as these places, as decided, harbored too many heretics
      2. One of the Maine towns had made a tailor its mayor and had even sheltered an excommunicated minister of the gospel
    3. The Confederation was the first notable milestone on the long and rocky road toward colonial unity; the delegates took tottering but urgently needed steps toward acting together on matters of importance
      1. Rank-and-file colonists received valuable experience in delegating their votes to properly chosen representatives
      2. Back in England, the king had paid little attention to the American colonies during the early years of their planting
      3. They were allowed to become semiautonomous commonwealths
      4. This era of neglect was prolonged when the crown, struggling to retain its power, became enmeshed during the 1640s in civil wars
    4. But when Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, the royalists and their Church of England allies were once more in control
      1. Puritan hopes of eventually purifying the old English church withered and worse, Charles II was determined to take an active, aggressive hand in the management of the colonies
      2. His plans ran headlong against the habits that decades of relative independence had bred in the colonists
    5. Deepening colonial defiance was nowhere more glaringly revealed than in Massachusetts; royal orders had no more effect than a newspaper
    6. As a slap at Massachusetts, Charles II gave rival Connecticut in 1662 a sea-to-sea charter grant, which legalized the squatter settlements
    7. The very next year the outcasts in Rhode Island received a new charter, which gave kingly sanction to the most religiously tolerant government yet devised in America (a final crushing blow fell on the stiff-necked Bay Colony in 1684 when its charter was revoked by the authorities)
  10. Andros Promotes the First American Revolution
    1. Massachusetts suffered further humiliation in 1686 when the Dominion of New England was created by royal authority (imposed from London)
      1. It was expanded two years later to include New York, East and West Jersey; the dominion also aimed at bolstering colonial defense in the event of war with Indians (statesmen like view from England)
      2. More importantly it was designed to promote urgently needed efficiency in the administration of the English Navigation Laws, the laws reflecting the intensifying colonial rivalries of the 17th century and sought to stitch England’s overseas possessions more tightly
      3. The Navigation Laws also blocked American trade with countries not ruled by the English crown (Americans chafed at confinements and smuggling became an increasingly common occupation)
    2. At the head of the new dominion stood autocratic Sir Edmund Andros
      1. An able English military man, he established headquarters in Puritanical Boston and generated much hostility by his open affiliation with the despised Church of England
      2. The colonials were also outraged by his noisy and Sabbath-profaning soldiers, who were accused of teaching people to sin
      3. Andros was prompt to use force and ruthlessly curbed the cherished town meetings, laid heavy restrictions on the courts, the press, the schools, and revoked all land titles (he taxed people without the consent of their duly elected representatives)
      4. Andros strove to enforce the unpopular Navigation Laws and stop smuggling; liberty-loving colonials were on the verge of revolt
    3. The people of old England stole a march on the people of New England in 1688-1689 they engineered the Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution
    4. Dethroning the despotic and unpopular Catholic James II, they enthroned the Protestant rulers of the Netherlands, the Dutch-born William III and his English wife, Mary, daughter of James II
    5. When the new of the Glorious Revolution reached America, the Dominion of New England collapsed like a house of cares and a Boston mob rose against the existing regime sending Andros back to England
    6. Massachusetts though rid of the despotic Andros, did not gain as much from the upheaval as it had hoped; it was arbitrarily made a royal colony with a new charter and a new royal governor in 1691
      1. The permanent loss of the ancient charter was a staggering blow to the proud Puritans who never really fully recovered
      2. Worst of all, the privilege of voting, once only of church members, was now to be enjoyed by all qualified male property owners
    7. England’s Glorious Revolution had a impact for unrest erupted from New England to the Carolinas—the upheaval resulted in a permanent abandonment of many of the objectionable features of the Andros system as well as a temporary breakdown of the Navigation Laws
    8. Residues remained of Charles II’s effort to assert tighter administrative control over his empire; more English officials now staffed the courts and strolled the wharves of English America (corrupt hacks)
    9. Appointed by influential patrons in England, they blocked by their presence the rise of local leaders to positions of political power; aggrieved Americans viewed them with mounting contempt and resentment as the eighteenth century wore on
  11. Old Netherlanders at New Netherland
    1. Late in the sixteenth century, the oppressed people of the Netherlands rebelled against Ferdinand of Catholic Spain and they finally succeeded with the aid of Protestant England in winning independence
    2. The seventeenth century was a golden age in Dutch history
      1. The lowland nation emerged as a major commercial and naval power and then ungratefully challenged the supremacy of England
      2. Three great Anglo-Dutch naval wars were fought in the seventeenth century and the sturdy Dutch and English dealt heavy blows
      3. The Dutch Republic also became a leading colonial power, with by far its greatest activity in the East Indies where is maintained an enormous and profitable empire for over three hundred years
      4. The Dutch East India Company was virtually a state within a state
    3. Seeking greater riches, the company employed an English explorer, Henry Hudson who, disregarding orders to sail northeast, ventured into Delaware Bay and New York Bay in 1609 and then ascended the Hudson River (he merely filed a Dutch claim to the magnificent area)
    4. Much less powerful than the Dutch East India Company was the Dutch West India Company, which maintained profitable enterprises in the Caribbean (at times it was less interested in trading than in raiding)
    5. Dutch West India Company also established outposts in Africa and a flourishing sugar industry in Brazil (principal center of activity)
    6. New Netherland, in the Hudson River area was planted in1623-1624 on a permanent basis; established by the Dutch West India Company for its quick-profit fur trade, it was never more than a secondary interest
      1. The company’s most brilliant stroke was to buy Manhattan Island from the Indians for virtually worthless trinkets (22,000 acres)
      2. New Amsterdam—New York City—was a company town and was run by the Dutch company in the interests of the stockholders
      3. The investors had no enthusiasm for religious toleration, free speech, or democratic practices, and the governors were despotic
      4. In response to repeated protests by the colonists, the semi-representative body was at length reluctantly granted; religious dissenters who opposed the official Dutch Reformed church were looked upon with suspicion and Quakers were abused for a while
    7. The Dutch colony took on a strongly aristocratic tinge and retained it for generations; feudal estates fronting the Hudson River, patroonships, were granted to promoters who would settle fifty people on them
    8. Colorful little New Amsterdam attracted a cosmopolitan population
  12. Friction with English and Swedish Neighbors
    1. Annoyances beset the Dutch company-colony from the beginning
      1. Company shareholders demanded their dividends and payments even at the expense of the colony’s overall welfare
      2. The Indians, infuriated by Dutch cruelties, retaliated with horrible massacres and as a defense measure, the settlers on Manhattan Island erected a stout wall from which Wall Street derives its name
      3. New England was hostile to the growth of its Dutch neighbor and the people of Connecticut finally ejected intruding Hollanders from their verdant valley; in fact, three of the four member colonies of the New England Confederation were eager to wipe out New Netherland with military force but Massachusetts vetoed
    2. The Swedes in turn trespassed on Dutch preserves, from 1638 to 1655 by planting the anemic colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River
    3. This was the golden age of Sweden, during and following the Thirty Years’ War in which its brilliant King Gustavus Adolphus had carried the torch for Protestantism; the outburst of energy in Sweden caused it to enter the costly colonial game in America
    4. Resenting the Swedish intrusion on the Delaware, the Dutch dispatched a small military expedition in 1655 led by the ablest of the directors-general, Peter Stuyvesant, who was dubbed Father Wooden Leg by the Indians, and the main fort tell after a bloodless siege, whereupon Swedish rule came to an abrupt end (absorbed by colony)
    5. New Sweden was never important and it faded leaving behind in later Delaware a sprinkling of Swedish place names and Swedish log cabins, as well as an admixture of Swedish blood
  13. ​​Dutch Residues in New York
    1. The neglected stepchild of a trading company, New Netherland was destined from the beginning to be English; lacking vitality and representing only a secondary commercial interest of the Dutch, it lay under the shadow of the vigorous English colonies to the north (about one-half of New Netherland’s people were New England immigrants)
    2. The Days of the Dutch on the Hudson were numbered for the English regarded them as intruders; in 1664 after Charles II had granted the area to his brother, the Duke of York, a strong English squadron appeared on off the decrepit defenses of New Amsterdam
      1. A fuming Peter Stuyvesant, short of all munitions except courage was forced to surrender without firing a single shot
      2. New Amsterdam was thereupon renamed New York; England won a splendid harbor, strategically located in the middle of the mainland colonies and a stately Hudson River penetrating inward
      3. The English banner now waved with the removal of this foreign wedge, over a stretch of territory from Maine to the Carolinas
    3. The conquered Dutch province tenaciously retained many of the illiberal features of earlier days; an autocratic spirit survived and the aristocratic element gained strength when certain corrupt English governors granted immense acreage to their favorites (influence)
    4. These monopolistic land policies combined with the lordly atmosphere discouraged many European immigrants from coming and the physical growth of New York was correspondingly diminished severely
    5. The Dutch peppered place names over the land and likewise left their imprint on the gambrel-roofed architecture; as for social customs, no other foreign group of comparable size made such a contribution
    6. Noteworthy were Easter eggs, Santa Claus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skating, and golf (forbidden in settled areas)
  14. Penn’s Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania
    1. A remarkable group of dissenters, commonly known as Quakers, arose in England during the mid-1600s; their name derived from the report that they “quaked” when under deep religious emotion
      1. Officially they were known as the Religious Society of Friends
      2. Quakers were especially offensive to the authorities, both religious and civil; they refused to support the established Church of England with taxes and built simple meetingshouses, without a paid clergy, and “spoke up” themselves in meetings when moved
      3. Believing that they were all children in the sight of God, they kept their broad-brimmed hats on in the presence of their betters and addressed others with a simple “thee’s” and “thou’s”
      4. They would take no oaths, because Jesus had said, “swear not at all” and this peculiarity often embroiled them with government officials for “test oaths” were still required to establish the fact that a person was not a Roman Catholic (people of deep conviction)
      5. They abhorred strife and warfare and refused military service
    2. As advocates of passive resistance, the Quakers would turn the other cheek and rebuild their meetinghouse on the site where their enemies had torn it down and their courage and devotion to principle finally triumphed (they were a simple, devoted, democratic people)
    3. William Penn was attracted to the Quaker faith in 1660 when only sixteen years old and his father disapproved, administering a flogging; after various adventures in the army, the youth firmly embraced the despised faith and suffered much persecution (“saucy and impertinent”)
      1. Several hundred of the less fortunate fellow Quakers died of cruel treatment and thousands were fined, flogged, or cast into prison
      2. Penn’s thoughts naturally turned to the New World where a sprinkling of Quakers had already fled, notably to Rhode Island, North Carolina, and New Jersey (asylum for his people)
      3. Penn hoped to experiment with liberal ideas in government and at the same time make a profit and in 1681, he managed to secure from the king an immense grant of fertile land, in consideration of a monetary debt owed to his deceased father by the crown
      4. The king called the area Pennsylvania in honor of the sire but the modest son, fearing that critics would accuse him of naming it after himself, sought unsuccessfully to change the name of the area
    4. Pennsylvania was by far the best advertised of all the colonies; its founder sent out paid agents and distributed countless pamphlets
    5. Unlike the lures of many other American real estate promoters, Penn’s inducements were generally truthful and he especially welcomed forward-looking spirits and substantial citizens including industrious carpenters, masons, shoemakers, and other manual workers
    6. His liberal land policy was instrumental in attracting many immigrants
  15. Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors
    1. Penn formally launched his colony in 1681 and his task was simplified by the presence of several thousand “squatters”—Dutch, Swedes, English, Welsh—who were already scattered along the Delaware River
    2. Philadelphia was more carefully planned than most colonial cities and consequently enjoyed wide and attractive streets
    3. Penn farsightedly bought land from the Indians, including Chief Tammany; his treatment of the native peoples was so fair that the Quakers went among them unarmed and even employed them
      1. For a brief period, Pennsylvania seemed the promised land of amicable Indian-white relations; some southern tribes migrated
      2. But ironically, Quaker tolerance proved the undoing of Quaker Indian policy; as non-Quaker European immigrants flooded into the province, they undermined the Quakers’ own benevolent policy toward the Indians (feisty Scots-Irish were particularly undermined)
    4. Penn’s new proprietary regime was unusually liberal and included a representative assembly elected by the landowners; there was no tax supported state church and freedom of worship was guaranteed to all residents, although Penn, under pressure from London, was forced to deny Catholics and Jews the privilege of voting or holding office
      1. The death penalty was imposed only for treason and murder
      2. No prevision was made by the peace-loving Quakers of Pennsylvania for a military defense
      3. No restrictions were placed on immigration, and naturalization was made easy; the Quakers also developed a strong dislike of black slavery and some progress was made toward social reform
    5. With its many liberal features, it attracted a rich mix of ethnic groups
      1. The people included numerous religious misfits who were repelled by the harsh practices of the neighboring colonies
      2. This Quaker haven boasted a surprisingly modern atmosphere in an unmodern age and to a degree afforded economic opportunity, civil liberty, and religious freedom (however, “blue laws” existed)
    6. The Quakers were shrewd businesspeople and in a short time the settlers were exporting grain and other foodstuffs; within two years Philadelphia had twenty-five hundred people; within nineteen years (which was by 1700) the colony was surpassed in population and wealth only b the long-established Virginia and Massachusetts
    7. William Penn, who altogether spent about four years in Pennsylvania, was never fully appreciated by his colonists
      1. His governors, some of them incompetent and tactless, quarreled bitterly with the people, who were constantly demanding greater political control (Penn became too friendly with James II, the disposed Catholic king and he died full of sorrows)
      2. His enduring monument was not only a noble experiment in government but also a new commonwealth; based no civil and religious liberty and dedicated to freedom of conscience and worship, it held aloft a hopeful torch in a world of darkness
    8. Small Quaker settlements flourished next door to Pennsylvania
      1. New Jersey was started in 1664, when two noble proprietors received the area from the Duke of York
      2. ​​A substantial number of New Englanders, including many whose weary soil had dried up flocked to the new colony and one of the proprietors sold West New Jersey in 1674 to a group of Quakers who here setup a sanctuary even before Pennsylvania was launched
      3. East New Jersey was also acquired in later years by the Quakers, whose wings were clipped in 1702 when the crown combined the two Jerseys in a royal colony
      4. Swedish-tinged Delaware consisted of only three counties and was named after Lord De La Warr, the harsh military governor who had arrived in Virginia in 1610 (Delaware was granted its own assembly in 1703—it still remained under the governor of Penn)
  16. ​​The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies
    1. The middle colonies—New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania—enjoyed certain features in common among the states
      1. In general, the soil was fertile and the expanse of land was broad, unlike New England; Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey came to be known as the “bread colonies” (heavy exports of grain)
      2. Rivers played a vital role; broad streams (Susquehanna, Delaware, and Hudson) tapped the fur trade of the interior and beckoned adventuresome spirits into the backcountry
      3. The rivers had few cascading waterfalls, unlike New England’s, and hence presented little inducement to manufacturing water power
      4. A surprising amount of industry flourished in the middle colonies; virginal forests abounded for lumbering/shipbuilding; the presence of deep river estuaries and landlocked harbors stimulated both commerce and the growth of seaports (New York and Philadelphia)
    2. The middle colonies were in many respects midway between New England and the southern plantation group; the landholdings were generally intermediate in size, except in aristocratic New York
    3. Local government lay somewhere between the personalized town meeting of New England and the diffused county government of the South; it was the same case with the intermediate industries
    4. Yet the middle colonies, which in some ways were the most American
      1. Generally speaking, the population was more ethnically mixed than that of other settlements; the people were blessed with an unusual degree of religious toleration and democratic control
      2. Quakers, in particular, made a contribution to human freedom out of all proportion to their numbers; desirable land was more easily acquired in the middle colonies than in New England or the South
      3. One result that was a considerable amount of economic and social democracy prevailed, though less so in aristocratic New York
    5. Modern-minded Benjamin Franklin entered Philadelphia at seventeen; although it is true that Franklin was born a Yankee in Puritanical Boston, one boasted, “He came to life at seventeen, in Philadelphia”
    6. By the mid-eighteenth century, the thirteen colonies as a group revealed striking similarities; even though they had developed wide differences
      1. They were all basically English
      2. They all exercised certain priceless Anglo-Saxon freedoms
      3. They all possessed some degree of self-government (not complete)
      4. They all enjoyed some degree of religious toleration and educational opportunity in the Americas
      5. They all had advantages for economic and social self-development
      6. They were all separated from home authority by a vast ocean moat three thousand miles away (4,800 kilometers)

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How to cite this note (MLA)

Aboukhadijeh, Feross. "Chapter 3: Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619-1700" StudyNotes.org. Study Notes, LLC., 17 Nov. 2012. Web. 18 Mar. 2024. <https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/outlines/chapter-3-settling-the-northern-colonies-1619-1700/>.
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