A.P. U.S. History Notes
Chapter 3: “Settling the Northern Colonies”
I.
The
Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism
A.
Beginnings
1.
In
1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg
cathedral.
a.
He
ignited the Protestant Reformation.
2.
John
Calvin preached Calvinism
a.
Basic
doctrines were stated in the 1536 document entitled Institutes of the Christian
Religion.
b.
Stated
that all humans were weak and wicked.
c.
Only
the predestined could go to heaven, no matter what.
d.
Calvinists
were expected to seek “conversions,” signs that they were one of the
predestined, and afterwards, lead “sanctified lives.”
3.
In
England, King Henry VIII was breaking his ties with the Holy Roman Catholic
Church in the 1530s.
4.
Some
people, called Puritans, were influenced to totally reform the Christian faith.
B.
Puritans
1.
All
believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership.
2.
Separatists
vowed to break away from the Church of England because the “saints” would have
to sit with the “damned.”
3.
King
James I, father of the beheaded Charles I, harassed the Separatists out of
England because he thought that if people could defy him as their spiritual
leader, they might defy him as their political ruler.
II.
The
Pilgrims End Their Pilgrimage at Plymouth
A.
The
Voyage
1.
The
Separatists that left were from Holland, where they had fled to after they had
left England.
a.
They
were concerned that their children were getting to “Dutchified.”
b.
They
wanted a place where they were free to worship their own religion and could
live and die as good Puritans.
2.
After
negotiating with the Virginia Company, the Separatists left Holland and sailed
for 65 days at sea on the Mayflower until they arrived off the rocky coast of
New England in 1620, a trip in which only one person died and one person was
born.
a.
Less
than half of the pilgrims on the Mayflower were actually Separatists.
b.
Contrary
to myth, the Pilgrims undertook a few surveys before deciding to settle at
Plymouth, an area far from Virginia.
c.
The
Pilgrims became squatters, people without legal right to land and without
specific authority to establish government.
3.
Captain
Myles Standish (a.k.a. Captain Shrimp) proved to be a great Indian fighter and
negotiator.
4.
Before
disembarking from ship, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, a set of
rules by which to obey.
a.
Though
it wasn’t a constitution, it did set the standard for later constitutions.
5.
In
the winter of 1620-21, only 44 of the 102 survived.
6.
1621
brought bountiful harvests, though, and the first Thanksgiving was celebrated
that year.
7.
William
Bradford, chosen governor of Plymouth 30 times in the annual elections, was a
great leader, and helped Plymouth to survive and trade fur, fish, and lumber.
8.
In
1691, Plymouth finally merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
III.
The
Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth
A.
Settling
In
1.
In
1629, some non-Separatist Puritans got a royal charter from England to settle
in the New World. Secretly, they took
the charter with them and later used it as a type of constitution.
2.
It
was a well-equipped group of which about 11,000 people came to Massachusetts.
3.
John
Winthrop was elected governor or deputy governor for 19 years, helping
Massachusetts prosper in fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding.
IV.
Building
the Bay Colony
A.
Government
1.
Soon
after the establishment of the colony, the franchise was extended to all
“freemen:” adult males who belonged to the Puritan congregations (later called
the Congregational church), making people who could enjoy the franchise about
two fifths of the total population.
a.
Unchurched
men and women weren’t allowed in.
2.
The
provincial government was not a democracy.
a.
Governor
Winthrop feared and distrusted the common people, calling democracy the
“meanest and worst” of all forms of government.
3.
Religious
leaders wielded powerful influence over the admission to church membership.
4.
John
Cotton, a prominent clergy member, was educated at Cambridge and had immigrated
to Massachusetts to avoid persecution fro his criticism of the Church of
England.
5.
However,
congregations could hire and fire their ministers at will.
6.
Still,
there were laws to limit Earthly pleasures, such as a fine of twenty shillings
for couples caught kissing in public.
7.
The
Puritan concept of Hell was very serious and scary.
a.
Michael
Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom,” written in 1662, sold one copy for every twenty
people.
V.
Trouble
in the Bible Commonwealth
A.
Defiance
1.
Tensions
arose in Massachusetts.
a.
Quakers
were fined, flogged, and/or banished.
b.
Anne
Hutchinson was a very intelligent, strong-willed, talkative woman who 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.
(1)Brought to trial in 1638,
Anne boasted that her beliefs were directly from God.
(2)She was banished from the
colony and eventually made her way to Rhode Island.
(3)She died in New York after
an attack by Indians.
c.
Roger
Williams was a radical idealist hounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean
and complete break with the Church of England.
(1)He went on to deny that
civil government could and should govern religious behavior.
(2)He was banished in 1635, and
flew to the Rhode Island area the next year.
VI.
The
Rhode Island “Sewer”
A.
Land
of the Outcasts
1.
People
who went to Rhode Island weren’t necessarily similar; they were just unwanted
everywhere else.
2.
They
were against special privilege.
3.
“Little
Rhody” was later known as “the traditional home of the otherwise minded.”
4.
It
finally secured a charter in 1644.
VII.
New
England Spreads Out
A.
More
Settling
1.
In
1635, Hartford, Connecticut was founded.
2.
Reverend
Thomas Hooker led an energetic group of Puritans west.
3.
In
1639, settlers of the new Connecticut River colony drafted in open meeting a
trailblazing document called the Fundamental Orders.
a.
It
was basically a modern constitution.
4.
In
1638, New Haven was founded and eventually merged into Connecticut.
5.
In
1623, Maine was absorbed by Massachusetts and remained so for nearly a century
and a half.
6.
In
1641, the granite-ribbed New Hampshire was absorbed into Massachusetts.
a.
In
1679, the king separated the two and made New Hampshire a royal colony.
VIII.
Puritans
vs. Indians
A.
Violence
1.
Before
the Puritans had arrived in 1620, an epidemic had swept through the Indians,
killing over three quarters of them.
2.
At
first, Indians tried to befriend the Whites.
a.
Squanto,
a Wampanoag, helped keep relative peace.
3.
In
1637, though, after mounting tensions exploded, English settlers and the
powerful Pequot tribe fought in the Pequot War, in which the English set fire
to a Pequot village on Connecticut’s Mystic River, annihilating the Indians and
bringing about forty years of tentative peace.
a.
In
an attempt to save face, the Puritans did try to convert some of the Indians,
though with less zeal than that of the Spanish and French.
4.
IN
1675, Metacom (called King Philip by the English) united neighboring Indians in
a last-ditched attack that failed.
a.
The
King Philip’s War slowed colonial western march, but Metacom was beheaded and
quartered and his head was stuck on a sharp pike for all to see, his wife and
son sold to slavery.
IX.
Seeds
of Colonial Unity and Independence
A.
A
Bit of Unity Shown
1.
In
1643, four colonies banded together to form the New England Confederation.
a.
It
was almost all Puritan.
b.
It
was weak, but still a notable milestone toward American unity.
2.
The
colonies were basically allowed to be semiautonomous commonwealths.
3.
After
Charles II was restored to the British throne, he hoped to control his colonies
more firmly, but was shocked to find how much his orders were ignored by
Massachusetts.
a.
As
punishment, a sea-to-sea charter was given to rival Connecticut (1662), and a
charter was given to Rhode Island (1663).
b.
Finally,
in 1684, Massachusetts’ charter was revoked.
X.
Andros
Promotes the First American Revolution
A.
Opposition
to England Grows
1.
In
1686, the Dominion of New England was created to bolster the colonial defense
against Indians and tying the colonies closer to Britain by enforcing the hated
Navigation Acts.
a.
The
acts forbade American trade with countries other than Britain.
b.
As
a result, smuggling became common.
c.
Head
of the Dominion was Sir Edmund Andros.
(1)Establishing HQ in Boston,
he openly showed his association with the locally hated Church of England.
(2)His soldiers were
vile-mouthed.
2.
Andros
responded to opposition by curbing town meetings, restricting the courts and
the press, and revoking all land titles.
3.
He
taxed the people without their consent.
4.
At
the same time, the people of England staged the Glorious Revolution, instating
William and Mary to the crown.
a.
Result,
the Dominion of New England collapsed.
b.
Massachusetts
got a new charter in 1691, but this charter allowed all landowners to vote, as
opposed to the previous law of voting belonging only to the church members.
XI.
Old
Netherlanders at New Netherland
A.
The
Little Guys Gain Power
1.
In
the 17th Century, the Netherlands revolted against Spain, and with
help of Britain, gained their independence.
2.
The
Dutch East India Company was established, with an army of 10,000 men and a
fleet of 190 ships (including 40 men-of-war).
3.
The
Dutch West India Company often raided rather than traded.
4.
In
1609, Henry Hudson ventured into Delaware and New York Bay and claimed the area
for the Netherlands.
5.
It
was the Dutch West India Company that bought Manhattan Island for some
worthless trinkets (22,000 acres of the most valuable land in the world today).
6.
New
Amsterdam was a company town, run by and for the Dutch company and in the
interests of stockholders.
7.
The
Dutch gave patroonships (large areas of land) to promoters who agreed to settle
at least 50 people on them.
8.
New
Amsterdam attracted people of all types and races.
a.
One
French Jesuit missionary counted 18 different languages being spoken on the
street.
XII.
Friction
with English and Swedish Neighbors
A.
Trouble
for the Dutch
1.
Indian’s
attacked the Dutch for their cruelties.
2.
New
England was hostile against Dutch growth.
3.
The
Swedes trespassed Dutch reserves from 1638 to 1655 by planting the anemic
colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River.
4.
Things
got so bad that the Dutch erected a wall in New Amsterdam, for which Wall
Street is named today.
5.
In
1655, the Dutch sent one legged Peter Stuyvesant to besiege the main Swedish
fort, and he won, ending Swedish colonial rule and leaving only Swedish log
cabins and place names as evidence that the Swedes were every in Delaware.
XIII.
Dutch
Residues in New York
A.
The
Dutch Get Voted Off the Island
1.
In
1664, Charles II granted the area of modern-day New York to his brother, the
Duke of York, and that year, British troops landed and defeated the Dutch,
kicking them out, without much violence.
2.
New
Amsterdam was renamed New York.
B.
The
Dutch Legacy
1.
The
people of New York retained their autocratic spirit.
2.
Dutch
names of cities remained, like Harlem, Brooklyn, and Hell Gate.
3.
Even
their architecture left its mark on buildings.
4.
The
Dutch also gave us Easter eggs, Santa Claus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling,
sleighing, skating, and golf.
XIV.
Penn’s
Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania
A.
William
Penn and the Quakers
1.
The
Quakers (characteristics)
a.
They
“quaked” under deep religious emotion.
b.
They
were offensive to religious and civil rule.
c.
They
addressed everyone with simple “thee”s and “thou”s and didn’t swear oaths
because Jesus had said “Swear not at all,” this last part creating a problem,
since you had to swear a test oath to prove that you weren’t Roman Catholic.
d.
Though
stubborn and unreasonable, they were simple, devoted, democratic people against
war and violence.
2.
William
Penn, a well-born Englishman, embraced the Quaker faith.
3.
In
1681, he managed to secure an immense grant of fertile land from the land.
a.
It
was called Pennsylvania, in honor of Penn, who, being the modest person that he
was, had insisted that it be called Sylvania.
b.
It
was the best advertised of all the colonies.
XV.
Quaker
Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors
A.
Penn
Settles
1.
Thousands
of squatters already lived in Pennsylvania.
2.
Philadelphia
was more carefully planned than most cities, with beautiful, wide streets.
3.
Penn
bought land from the Indians, like Chief Tammany, later patron saint of New
York’s political Tammany Hall.
4.
His
treatment of the Indians was so gentle that Quakers could walk through Indian
territory unarmed without fear of being hurt.
5.
However,
as more and more non-Quakers came to Pennsylvania, they mistreated the Indians
more and more.
6.
Freedom
of worship was available to everyone except for Jews and Catholics (only because
of pressure from London), and the death penalty was only for murder and
treason.
7.
No
restrictions were placed on immigration, and naturalization was made easy.
8.
The
Quakers also developed a dislike toward slavery.
9.
Pennsylvania
attracted a great variety of people from all races, class, and religion.
10.
By
1700, only Virginia was more populous and richer.
11.
Penn,
unfortunately, was not well-liked because of his friendliness towards James II,
the deposed Catholic king, and he was jailed at times, and also suffered a
paralytic stroke, dying full of sorrows.
12.
New
Jersey and Delaware prospered as well.
XVI.
The
Middle Way in the Middle Colonies
A.
New
York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania
1.
All
had fertile soil and broad expanse of land.
2.
All
except for Delaware exported lots of grain.
3.
The
Susquehanna River tapped the fur trade of the interior, and the rivers were
gentle, with little cascading waterfalls.
4.
The
middle colonies were the middle way between New England and the southern
plantation states.
5.
Landholdings
were generally intermediate in size.
6.
The
middle colonies were more ethnically mixed than other colonies.
7.
A
considerable amount of economic and social democracy prevailed.
8.
Benjamin
Franklin, born in Boston, entered Philadelphia as a seventeen-year-old in 1720
with a loaf of bread under each arm and immediately found a congenial home in
the urbane, open atmosphere of the city.
9.
Americans
began to realize that not only were they surviving, but that they were also
thriving.
XVII.
Makers
of America: The English
In the 1600s, England was undergoing a massive
population boom.
About 75% of English immigrants were indentured
servants.
Most of them were young men from the “middling
classes.”
Some had fled during the cloth trade slump in the
early 1600s while others had been forced off their land due to enclosure.
Some 40% of indentured servants died before their
seven years were over.
Late in the 17th Century, as the supply
of indentured servants slowly ran out, the southerners resolved to Black
Slaves.
From 1629 to 1642, 11,000 Puritans swarmed to the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In contrast to the indentured servants, Puritans
migrated in family groups, not alone.
Puritans brought the way of life from England with
them to America.
i.e. Marblehead, Mass. had mostly fishermen because
most of the immigrants had been fisherman in England.
i.e. Rowley, Mass. brought from Yorkshire, England
their distinctive way of life.
In Ipswich, Massachusetts, settled by East Anglian
Puritans, the rulers had long terms and ruled with an iron hand.
However, in Newbury, people rarely won reelection.
