We went over Spanish, French, and British colonization, some of the major ideas behind it. The Headright System I believe we did already. Things like that. So I was actually going to do colonies.
Key groups that are then attacking different areas in early America:
- The Powhatan Indians kill off, fight in Virginia. That's also going to be Pocahontas. That's another "P". So Powhatan Indians. They're not really effective at killing off the new colonists. I mean, they slow them down a bit but they do have that nine year peace because of Pocahontas's marriage and then they get wiped out.
- The Pequot - the destroyers, friends of the Dutch. They're going to attack the North, upper New York, upstate New York. They're going to go and get Massachusetts. So you're going to have a lot of Northern fighting there. They're going to be pretty effective at killing off the new colonists. They slow down a lot of progress. A lot of people say by 40 years they slowed down colonial progress in the Northern region.
- King Philip's War (real name Metacom) - go after New England, again. So, kind of like Pennsylvania a little bit more. So, we're moving South just a little bit. They're back country Indians and they're going to steal a woman named Mary Rowlandson. It's much like Snow White. She gets attacked and captured and they take her back and she has to cook and clean for them. She comes and escapes later on and then writes a book about her experiences. Kind of starts a new genre of American literature. They're Wampanoag Indians.
- Pontiac's Rebellion - they one where they use the early form of bio warfare (they actually use it in earlier ones too but not intentionally). Pontiac's Rebellion and that's going to start or actually be an issue in the 1760's and it's going to start another thing that starts with a "P" and that's the British response, the Proclamation Line. So, that's going to be another "P", Pontiac's Rebellion. Actually, it's Fort Pitt, so another "P". They're going to famously throwing smallpox blankets at them. So it's going to be them moving across the Appalachian mountains, farther in. So, it's going to be places like Detroit. So they're much farther inland. And that's why we have the Proclamation Line in 1763.
- Iroquois (a little bit later) - Iroquois Confederacy, the five nations up in the North. They're the ones with the document that a lot of people say is a lot like one of the founding documents of the United States of America. The Iroquois Confederacy have a document - The Articles of Confederation - that we often credit with being the model for one of our founding documents of the United States of America, not of the colonies, not of just democracy. So a lot of people say the Iroquois Confederacy's document looks much like the Articles of Confederation. I think that's reaching a little bit because that's a lot of historians trying to make that true but in ways I guess you have disparate nations that then come together, have a single vote for some of their major decisions. They're all the different nations up in the North and the Iroquois are the strongest tribe there and then they come together to have a government of their own.
The first colony to be created in the New World by the English is Jamestown and it's going to be followed relatively quickly by another English settlement that's also a joint stock company - the Pilgrims coming across. They're going to be Pilgrims and they just start off at Plymouth, they drop down on that rock, maybe, and create their colony. They're a joint stock company which might be important to you guys and their intention is to have religious freedom. I guess the only person you need to associate with our government is a guy named William Bradford and he's actually not the first governor of them, he's the second one, but for some reason he's the guy that comes up. So, he's important in terms of organizing the colony.
Whenever they show up thought they have a couple challenges on them - they have some strangers among them. They have Polish people with them and they are not the same religion so they sign the Mayflower Compact that says the power to govern derives from the governed. (Also it is a precedent for self-government and the Constitution. Not just the Constitution, but the power to govern derives from the governed.) One of the things about it is that they don't have any - and this is a question sometimes - laws in it. There are no prescriptions for an executive. There's nothing in it except to say "we agree to rule ourselves." The reason they can make this document is that they're outside of their territory. The charter was for areas near Virginia. They're suppose to start out really far South and somehow they get knocked off course and end up really far North and then when they get there they're like "Oh, no, we have to create our own government!" Right? So, who knows what the truth is behind that one but it's pretty suspicious to me.
Also, remember that they're hippies. That's what I like about them. Remember the things they name their kids - Hope and Faith and stuff. Super fun! So, they're kind of hippies from the beginning. (The very first kid to be born in America on the way in was Virginia Dare. Isn't that an awesome name? It's something you throw in an essay for fun. It's not her hyphenated first name. This is going to be in the South. The Southerners weren't hippies. Only the Northerners might do something like that.) So, they sign the Mayflower Compact, they have Thanksgiving in 1621. William Bradford is their leader.
And then we get swallowed up in Plymouth. It gets swallowed up by Massachusetts Bay Colony. And that one is going to be founded by John Winthrop because he gives a speech on the Arabella called "A Model of Christian Charity" and it's most famous line is, "We are a city upon a hill." So, that's going to be Massachusetts Bay Colony. They're going to founded in 1630. They very, very quickly then swallow up Plymouth and they turn into Massachusetts. These guys are totally intolerant and they create new colonies out of themselves because they do not like political dissenters or religious dissenters. In order to be a member of each of these guys communities you had to be religious, in order to vote you had to be a white male owning property. So, be a white male and relatively rich in order to vote. And a church member of good standing.
Colonies made out of Massachusetts:
- Rhode Island - the nice and easy one. Founded by Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. They have to run away because of religious persecution. She's an antinomianist. That means it doesn't matter how good you are on Earth, you're already pre-destined, one way or the other. But her really special thing of antinomianism was that morality cannot be determined by a government. Morality is only individually determined by yourself so you can't have a government tell you anything about what your religion should be. It wasn't true back then. It makes sense because we're modern Americans, it did not make sense to them back then. It was blasphemy, in fact. So, that's what she's famous for. She's also famous for preaching to men. That's going to be one of those important things, especially if you have to do an essay on women's rights because that is often a question that is asked. So, the other guy, Roger Williams, his deal was that he was kicked out of Massachusetts, he has to go live with the Native Americans and he moves eventually to Rhode Island. He establishes a principle in Rhode Island that we adopted for our country - separation of church and state. So, the church cannot be determined by the state at all. He and she were both Anabaptist. They're Anabaptists. So, Baptists believe that whenever you were born you get baptized and that you had to have that revelation when you were an older person and baptize again. Well, Anabaptists thought you don't need a preacher to help you with that, you can baptize yourself again. Anabaptists, like anabolic steroids. You do it by yourself. It's by yourself - "ana". You can baptize yourself, you don't need religion to do it for you at all. And so that's what religion they are, in case that comes up. Everyone was baptized at birth back then, so it was a given. They don't really quibble about that at all but it was about whether or not you needed a church to baptize you or if you would come to that by yourself. Anabaptists believed that you did it by yourself. It was a movement actually in Germany that started off and then spread through that seemed really subversive because it just bucked the entire hierarchical system of the church. In a lot of those early, early Protestant sects they were very, very traditional in the eyes of today. The idea that you would just be able to come to that yourself is crazy. So, a lot of the early, even Lutherans, you would get rid of the Catholic church as your leader but it was replaced then by the Protestant hierarchy. So, especially, Episcopalians, or something like that, or Anglicans, it's really, really traditional. The whole congregation idea was a big deal that it was part of your entire life and your community. So, if you said that you could baptize yourself, it said that the church and views wasn't a big part of it. Which makes sense for Rhode Island. Rhode Island people made their money on fishing and ship building and whales. They whale. Have you seen Perfect Storm? Whaling. Not whale watching. Whale killing and whale harvesting for ambergris. Moby Dick. Moby Dick is in Rhode Island. (Massachusetts are the rum makers.)
- Connecticut - their founding document is the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.
- New Hampshire - off of Pennsylvania, the thing that's weird about them is that they're the people running away from Massachusetts. Now, the thing that doesn't always make sense but you have to think about it map-wise is that Pennsylvania is also going to be a shoot-off of Massachusetts and they don't turn into a colony until the Quakers come and things like that. But a lot of those people were originally Massachusetts runaways and then they run away to New Hampshire. And New Hampshire is really late, too, to the game, compared to the other ones. Their founding document is the Exeter Compact. It looks much like the Mayflower Compact. Exeter Compact is the New Hampshire document. There's a city in England, which is what it's named off of. There's an English city called Exeter and then Phillips Exeter Academy.
- Maryland - not so much, a little bit but they're going to be founded later as a proprietary.
So, whenever you're talking about a government that has covenants in it means that So whenever you're talking about a community you have a pact under God to kind of like support each other. So that's often how all of these places were ruled at commonwealths, especially, in New England.
I'm trying to cover all the New England stuff.
The New England colonies were relatively rich and middle class. They're pretty solidly rich and middle class. They had Yeoman and subsistence farmers - not cash crop people. The colonies with cash crops were the South so that starts in Virginia and Maryland and then down. So, those are the cash crop places - but some of the Northerner places did have plantations. Rhode Island has slaves and New Jersey has slaves. They don't usually have plantation type, you have one or two. But New York has slaves. It comes up every once in a while, so just be aware that that happens.
The breadbasket colonies in the very beginning (we don't have Ohio yet) are the Middle Colonies and those are going to be New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, (Delaware and Maryland those weird ones that are sometimes considered in the middle, sometimes considered the South, usually you put them in the South - but they are a mixed economy because they do trade and things like that).
When we move away from the New England colonies we'll move to Southern ones, the next major ones that get populated.
After Virginia, just direction-wise, the important ones, the interesting things:
- Maryland - weird because they're Catholic and they passed the Act of Religious Toleration, an important piece for us. The Act of Religious Toleration was weird because it is only for Christians and Catholics and it's suppose to protect Catholics. So, the Catholics pass it because their colony is being overrun and invaded with Protestants because the kings switch in England so all these Protestants are coming in so they pass the Act of Religious Toleration so that when they get outnumbered they will not be persecuted. It's not listened to, they get persecuted anyway, but it's a nice idea. It's started by Lord Baltimore Cecil Calvert. He gets the land proprietary - he's given it by the king.
- Georgia - James Oglethorpe planned to bring in all the convicts, debtors. They were supposed to make their money off of silkworms - it was weird. Wine. He was going to try fancy things. It totally fails. They end up doing rice. They end up doing indigo. They end up doing some tobacco. It's kind of swampy for that. They end up being a buffer state. It's a buffer state. So that worked.
- The Carolinas (North Carolina and South Carolina) - proprietary too. John Locke is the guy who writes their constitution. He doesn't own it.
There are a couple more that happen up farther North, the restoration colonies in the Middle Colonies:
- New York - given to the Duke of York who turns into King James so it turns into a royal colony whenever he becomes the king but it was a proprietary colony. Charles gives it to his brother. And that means the other colony next to it was also proprietary...
- New Jersey - so that's given out, proprietary
- Pennsylvania - William Penn, Walking Bargain, Society of Friends. They're tolerant. They're famous for pacifists and being friendly to the Native Americans and being tolerant of black people. They're the first anti-slavery society and they also like Jewish people, they allow for temples. So, this is a pretty tolerant society in the Society of Friends. Although, they're also going to be kind of awful too. Germans move to Pennsylvania in droves - Pennsylvania Dutch.
Half-way Covenant means you get baptized when you're older and so Half-way Covenant says you don't have to do that so your kids can continue to be part of the church. It shows a decrease in piety and then we're going to have the First Great Awakening.
We're up to Salutary Neglect!
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