settling the northern colonies...settling the northern colonies 1619–1700 god hath sifted a nation...

Settling the Northern Colonies

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1619–1700God hath sifted a nation that he might send

Choice Grain into this Wilderness.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON [OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY], 1699

3

Although colonists both north and south were boundtogether by a common language and a common

allegiance to Mother England, they established differentpatterns of settlement, different economies, differentpolitical systems, and even different sets of values—defining distinctive regional characteristics that wouldpersist for generations. The promise of riches—espe-cially from golden-leaved tobacco—drew the first set-tlers to the southern colonies. But to the north, in thefertile valleys of the middle Atlantic region and espe-cially along the rocky shores of New England, it was notworldly wealth but religious devotion that principallyshaped the earliest settlements.

The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism

Little did the German friar Martin Luther suspect, whenhe nailed his protests against Catholic doctrines to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral in 1517, that he was shaping the destiny of a yet unknown nation.Denouncing the authority of priests and popes, Luther

declared that the Bible alone was the source of God’s word. He ignited a fire of religious reform (the“Protestant Reformation”) that licked its way acrossEurope for more than a century, dividing peoples, toppling sovereigns, and kindling the spiritual fervor of millions of men and women—some of whom helpedto found America.

The reforming flame burned especially brightly inthe bosom of John Calvin of Geneva. This somber andsevere religious leader elaborated Martin Luther’sideas in ways that profoundly affected the thought andcharacter of generations of Americans yet unborn.Calvinism became the dominant theological credo notonly of the New England Puritans but of other Americansettlers as well, including the Scottish Presbyterians,French Huguenots, and communicants of the DutchReformed Church.

Calvin spelled out his basic doctrine in a learnedLatin tome of 1536, entitled Institutes of the ChristianReligion. God, Calvin argued, was all-powerful and all-good. Humans, because of the corrupting effect of origi-nal sin, were weak and wicked. God was alsoall-knowing—and he knew who was going to heavenand who was going to hell. Since the first moment of

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44 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619–1700

creation, some souls—the elect—had been destined foreternal bliss and others for eternal torment. Good workscould not save those whom “predestination” hadmarked for the infernal fires.

But neither could the elect count on their predeter-mined salvation and lead lives of wild, immoral abandon. For one thing, no one could be certain of his orher status in the heavenly ledger. Gnawing doubts abouttheir eternal fate plagued Calvinists. They constantlysought, in themselves and others, signs of “conversion,”or the receipt of God’s free gift of saving grace. Conversionwas thought to be an intense, identifiable personal expe-rience in which God revealed to the elect their heavenlydestiny. Thereafter they were expected to lead “sanctified”lives, demonstrating by their holy behavior that they wereamong the “visible saints.”

These doctrines swept into England just as KingHenry VIII was breaking his ties with the RomanCatholic Church in the 1530s, making himself the headof the Church of England. Henry would have been con-tent to retain Roman rituals and creeds, but his actionpowerfully stimulated some English religious reformersto undertake a total purification of English Christianity.Many of these “Puritans,” as it happened, came from thecommercially depressed woolen districts (see pp. 27–28).Calvinism, with its message of stark but reassuring orderin the divine plan, fed on this social unrest and providedspiritual comfort to the economically disadvantaged. Astime went on, Puritans grew increasingly unhappy overthe snail-like progress of the Protestant Reformation inEngland. They burned with pious zeal to see the Churchof England wholly de-catholicized.

The most devout Puritans, including those whoeventually settled New England, believed that only “visible saints” (that is, persons who felt the stirrings ofgrace in their souls and could demonstrate its presenceto their fellow Puritans) should be admitted to churchmembership. But the Church of England enrolled all theking’s subjects, which meant that the “saints” had toshare pews and communion rails with the “damned.”Appalled by this unholy fraternizing, a tiny group ofdedicated Puritans, known as Separatists, vowed tobreak away entirely from the Church of England.

King James I, a shrewd Scotsman, was head of boththe state and the church in England from 1603 to 1625.He quickly perceived that if his subjects could defy himas their spiritual leader, they might one day defy him astheir political leader (as in fact they would later defy andbehead his son, Charles I). He therefore threatened toharass the more bothersome Separatists out of the land.

The Pilgrims End TheirPilgrimage at Plymouth

The most famous congregation of Separatists, fleeingroyal wrath, departed for Holland in 1608. During theensuing twelve years of toil and poverty, they wereincreasingly distressed by the “Dutchification” of theirchildren. They longed to find a haven where they couldlive and die as English men and women—and as puri-fied Protestants. America was the logical refuge, despitethe early ordeals of Jamestown, and despite tales of NewWorld cannibals roasting steaks from their white victimsover open fires.

A group of the Separatists in Holland, after negotiat-ing with the Virginia Company, at length secured rightsto settle under its jurisdiction. But their crowdedMayflower, sixty-five days at sea, missed its destina-tion and arrived off the stony coast of New England in1620, with a total of 102 persons. One had died enroute—an unusually short casualty list—and one hadbeen born and appropriately named Oceanus. Fewerthan half of the entire party were Separatists. Promi-nent among the nonbelongers was a peppery andstocky soldier of fortune, Captain Myles Standish,dubbed by one of his critics “Captain Shrimp.” He laterrendered indispensable service as an Indian fighterand negotiator.

The Pilgrims did not make their initial landing atPlymouth Rock, as commonly supposed, but undertooka number of preliminary surveys. They finally chose fortheir site the shore of inhospitable Plymouth Bay. Thisarea was outside the domain of the Virginia Company,and consequently the settlers became squatters. Theywere without legal right to the land and without specificauthority to establish a government.

Before disembarking, the Pilgrim leaders drew up andsigned the brief Mayflower Compact. Although setting aninvaluable precedent for later written constitutions, thisdocument was not a constitution at all. It was a simpleagreement to form a crude government and to submit tothe will of the majority under the regulations agreed upon.The compact was signed by forty-one adult males, elevenof them with the exalted rank of “mister,” though not bythe servants and two seamen. The pact was a promisingstep toward genuine self-government, for soon the adultmale settlers were assembling to make their own laws in open-discussion town meetings—a vital laboratory of liberty.

Plymouth Plantation 45

The Pilgrims’ first winter of 1620–1621 took a grislytoll. Only 44 out of the 102 survived. At one time only 7were well enough to lay the dead in their frosty graves.Yet when the Mayflower sailed back to England in thespring, not a single one of the courageous band of Sepa-ratists left. As one of them wrote, “It is not with us aswith other men, whom small things can discourage.”

God made his children prosperous, so the Pilgrimsbelieved. The next autumn, that of 1621, brought boun-tiful harvests and with them the first Thanksgiving Dayin New England. In time the frail colony found soundeconomic legs in fur, fish, and lumber. The beaver andthe Bible were the early mainstays: the one for the sustenance of the body, the other for the sustenance ofthe soul. Plymouth proved that the English could main-tain themselves in this uninviting region.

The Pilgrims were extremely fortunate in theirleaders. Prominent among them was the culturedWilliam Bradford, a self-taught scholar who readHebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Dutch. He was chosengovernor thirty times in the annual elections. Amonghis major worries was his fear that independent, non-Puritan settlers “on their particular” might corrupt hisgodly experiment in the wilderness. Bustling fishingvillages and other settlements did sprout to the northof Plymouth, on the storm-lashed shores of Massachu-setts Bay, where many people were as much interestedin cod as God.

Quiet and quaint, the little colony of Plymouth wasnever important economically or numerically. Its popu-lation numbered only seven thousand by 1691, when,still charterless, it merged with its giant neighbor, theMassachusetts Bay Colony. But the tiny settlement ofPilgrims was big both morally and spiritually.

The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth

The Separatist Pilgrims were dedicated extremists—thepurest Puritans. More moderate Puritans sought toreform the Church of England from within. Though

Plymouth PlantationCarefully restored, the modestvillage at Plymouth lookstoday much as it did nearlyfour hundred years ago.

William Bradford (1590–1657) wrote in OfPlymouth Plantation,

“Thus out of small beginnings greaterthings have been produced by Hishand that made all things of nothing,and gives being to all things that are;and, as one small candle may light athousand, so the light here kindledhath shone unto many, yea in somesort to our whole nation.”


resented by bishops and monarchs, they slowly gatheredsupport, especially in Parliament. But when Charles Idismissed Parliament in 1629 and sanctioned the anti-Puritan persecutions of the reactionary ArchbishopWilliam Laud, many Puritans saw catastrophe in themaking.

In 1629 an energetic group of non-Separatist Puritans,fearing for their faith and for England’s future, secured aroyal charter to form the Massachusetts Bay Company.They proposed to establish a sizable settlement in theinfertile Massachusetts area, with Boston soon becomingits hub. Stealing a march on both king and church, thenewcomers brought their charter with them. For manyyears they used it as a kind of constitution, out of easyreach of royal authority. They steadfastly denied that theywanted to separate from the Church of England, only fromits impurities. But back in England, the highly orthodoxArchbishop Laud snorted that the Bay Colony Puritanswere “swine which rooted in God’s vineyard.”

The Massachusetts Bay enterprise was singularlyblessed. The well-equipped expedition of 1630, witheleven vessels carrying nearly a thousand immigrants,started the colony off on a larger scale than any of the other English settlements. Continuing turmoil inEngland tossed up additional enriching waves of Puri-tans on the shores of Massachusetts in the followingdecade (see “Makers of America: The English,” pp. 50–51).During the “Great Migration” of the 1630s, about seventythousand refugees left England. But not all of them werePuritans, and only about twenty thousand came toMassachusetts. Many were attracted to the warm andfertile West Indies, especially the sugar-rich island ofBarbados. More Puritans came to this Caribbean isletthan to all of Massachusetts.

Many fairly prosperous, educated persons immi-grated to the Bay Colony, including John Winthrop, awell-to-do pillar of English society, who became thecolony’s first governor. A successful attorney and manorlord in England, Winthrop eagerly accepted the offer tobecome governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,believing that he had a “calling” from God to lead thenew religious experiment. He served as governor ordeputy governor for nineteen years. The resources andskills of talented settlers like Winthrop helped Massachu-setts prosper, as fur trading, fishing, and shipbuildingblossomed into important industries, especially fish andships. Massachusetts Bay Colony rapidly shot to the foreas both the biggest and the most influential of the NewEngland outposts.

Massachusetts also benefited from a shared sense ofpurpose among most of the first settlers. “We shall be as

a city upon a hill,” a beacon to humanity, declared Gov-ernor Winthrop. The Puritan bay colonists believed thatthey had a covenant with God, an agreement to build aholy society that would be a model for humankind.

Building the Bay Colony

These common convictions deeply shaped the infantcolony’s life. Soon after the colonists’ arrival, the fran-chise was extended to all “freemen”—adult males whobelonged to the Puritan congregations, which in timecame to be called collectively the CongregationalChurch. Unchurched men remained voteless in provin-cial elections, as did women. On this basis about two-fifths of adult males enjoyed the franchise in provincialaffairs, a far larger proportion than in contemporaryEngland. Town governments, which conducted muchimportant business, were even more inclusive. There allmale property holders, and in some cases other resi-dents as well, enjoyed the priceless boon of publicly dis-cussing local issues, often with much heat, and of votingon them by a majority-rule show of hands.

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

ToW

est I

ndie

s

c.48

,000

To New England

c. 20,000

The Great English Migration, c. 1630–1642Much of the early history of the United Stateswas written by New Englanders, who were notdisposed to emphasize the larger exodus ofEnglish migrants to the Caribbean islands.When the mainland colonists declared inde-pendence in 1776, they hoped that these islandoutposts would join them, but the existence ofthe British navy had a dissuading effect.

Religion in the Bay Colony 47

Yet the provincial government, liberal by the standards of the time, was not a democracy. The ableGovernor Winthrop feared and distrusted the “com-mons” as the “meaner sort” and thought that democ-racy was the “meanest and worst” of all forms ofgovernment. “If the people be governors,” asked onePuritan clergyman, “who shall be governed?” True, thefreemen annually elected the governor and his assis-tants, as well as a representative assembly called theGeneral Court. But only Puritans—the “visible saints”who alone were eligible for church membership—couldbe freemen. And according to the doctrine of thecovenant, the whole purpose of government was toenforce God’s laws—which applied to believers andnonbelievers alike. Moreover, nonbelievers as well asbelievers paid taxes for the government-supportedchurch.

Religious leaders thus wielded enormous influencein the Massachusetts “Bible Commonwealth.” Theypowerfully influenced admission to church member-ship by conducting public interrogations of personsclaiming to have experienced conversion. Prominentamong the early clergy was fiery John Cotton. Educatedat England’s Cambridge University, a Puritan citadel, heemigrated to Massachusetts to avoid persecution for hiscriticism of the Church of England. In the Bay Colony,he devoted his considerable learning to defending thegovernment’s duty to enforce religious rules. Profoundlypious, he sometimes preached and prayed up to sixhours in a single day.

But the power of the preachers was not absolute. Acongregation had the right to hire and fire its ministerand to set his salary. Clergymen were also barred fromholding formal political office. Puritans in England hadsuffered too much at the hands of a “political” Anglicanclergy to permit in the New World another unholy unionof religious and government power. In a limited way, thebay colonists thus endorsed the idea of the separationof church and state.

The Puritans were a worldly lot, despite—or evenbecause of—their spiritual intensity. Like JohnWinthrop, they believed in the doctrine of a “calling” todo God’s work on earth. They shared in what was latercalled the “Protestant ethic,” which involved seriouscommitment to work and to engagement in worldlypursuits. Legend to the contrary, they also enjoyed sim-ple pleasures: they ate plentifully, drank heartily, sangsongs occasionally, and made love monogamously. Likeother peoples of their time in both America and Europe,they passed laws aimed at making sure these pleasuresstayed simple by repressing certain human instincts. In

New Haven, for example, a young married couple wasfined twenty shillings for the crime of kissing in public,and in later years Connecticut came to be dubbed “theBlue Law State.” (It was so named for the blue paper onwhich the repressive laws—also known as “sumptuarylaws”—were printed.)

Yet, to the Puritans, life was serious business, andhellfire was real—a hell where sinners shriveled andshrieked in vain for divine mercy. An immensely popu-lar poem in New England, selling one copy for everytwenty people, was clergyman Michael Wigglesworth’s“Day of Doom” (1662). Especially horrifying were hisdescriptions of the fate of the damned:

They cry, they roar for anguish sore,and gnaw their tongues for horrour. But get away

without delay,Christ pitties not your cry:

Depart to Hell, there may you yell,and roar Eternally.

Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth

The Bay Colony enjoyed a high degree of social harmony,stemming from common beliefs, in its early years. Buteven in this tightly knit community, dissension soonappeared. Quakers, who flouted the authority of the Puritan clergy, were persecuted with fines, floggings, andbanishment. In one extreme case, four Quakers whodefied expulsion, one of them a woman, were hanged onthe Boston Common.

A sharp challenge to Puritan orthodoxy came fromAnne Hutchinson. She was an exceptionally intelligent,strong-willed, and talkative woman, ultimately themother of fourteen children. Swift and sharp in theo-logical argument, she carried to logical extremes thePuritan doctrine of predestination. She claimed that aholy life was no sure sign of salvation and that the trulysaved need not bother to obey the law of either God or man. This assertion, known as antinomianism (fromthe Greek, “against the law”), was high heresy.

Brought to trial in 1638, the quick-witted Hutchinsonbamboozled her clerical inquisitors for days, until sheeventually boasted that she had come by her beliefsthrough a direct revelation from God. This was evenhigher heresy. The Puritan magistrates had little choicebut to banish her, lest she pollute the entire Puritanexperiment. With her family, she set out on foot forRhode Island, though pregnant. She finally moved to


New York, where she and all but one of her householdwere killed by Indians. Back in the Bay Colony, the piousJohn Winthrop saw “God’s hand” in her fate.

More threatening to the Puritan leaders was a personable and popular Salem minister, Roger Williams.Williams was a young man with radical ideas and anunrestrained tongue. An extreme Separatist, hehounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean breakwith the corrupt Church of England. He also challengedthe legality of the Bay Colony’s charter, which he condemned for expropriating the land from the Indianswithout fair compensation. As if all this were notenough, he went on to deny the authority of civil government to regulate religious behavior—a seditiousblow at the Puritan idea of government’s very purpose.

Their patience exhausted by 1635, the Bay Colonyauthorities found Williams guilty of disseminating“newe & dangerous opinions” and ordered him ban-ished. He was permitted to remain several monthslonger because of illness, but he kept up his criticisms.The outraged magistrates, fearing that he might organizea rival colony of malcontents, made plans to exile him toEngland. But Williams foiled them.

The Rhode Island “Sewer”

Aided by friendly Indians, Roger Williams fled to theRhode Island area in 1636, in the midst of a bitter winter.At Providence the courageous and far-visioned Williamsbuilt a Baptist church, probably the first in America. Heestablished complete freedom of religion, even for Jewsand Catholics. He demanded no oaths regarding reli-gious beliefs, no compulsory attendance at worship, notaxes to support a state church. He even sheltered theabused Quakers, although disagreeing sharply withtheir views. Williams’s endorsement of religious tolerancemade Rhode Island more liberal than any of the otherEnglish settlements in the New World, and moreadvanced than most Old World communities as well.

Those outcasts who clustered about Roger Williamsenjoyed additional blessings. They exercised simplemanhood suffrage from the start, though this broad-minded practice was later narrowed by a property quali-fication. Opposed to special privilege of any sort, theintrepid Rhode Islanders managed to achieve remarkablefreedom of opportunity.

Other scattered settlements soon dotted RhodeIsland. They consisted largely of malcontents and exiles,some of whom could not bear the stifling theologicalatmosphere of the Bay Colony. Many of these restlesssouls in “Rogues’ Island,” including Anne Hutchinson,had little in common with Roger Williams—except beingunwelcome anywhere else. The Puritan clergy back inBoston sneered at Rhode Island as “that sewer” in whichthe “Lord’s debris” had collected and rotted.

Planted by dissenters and exiles, Rhode Islandbecame strongly individualistic and stubbornly indepen-dent. With good reason “Little Rhody” was later known as “the traditional home of the otherwise minded.” Begunas a squatter colony in 1636 without legal standing, itfinally established rights to the soil when it secured a charter from Parliament in 1644. A huge bronze statue of the “Independent Man” appropriately stands today onthe dome of the statehouse in Providence.

Anne Hutchinson, DissenterMistress Hutchinson (1591–1643) held unorthodoxviews that challenged the authority of the clergy andthe very integrity of the Puritan experiment inMassachusetts Bay Colony. An outcast in her day, shehas been judged a heroine in the eye of history: thisstatue in her honor, erected in the nineteenth century,now graces the front of the Boston Statehouse.

The Expansion of New England 49

New England Spreads Out

The smiling valley of the Connecticut River, one of thefew highly fertile expanses of any size in all New Eng-land, had meanwhile attracted a sprinkling of Dutchand English settlers. Hartford was founded in 1635.The next year witnessed a spectacular beginning ofthe centuries-long westward movement across thecontinent. An energetic group of Boston Puritans, ledby the Reverend Thomas Hooker, swarmed as a bodyinto the Hartford area, with the ailing Mrs. Hookercarried on a horse litter.

Three years later, in 1639, the settlers of the new Con-necticut River colony drafted in open meeting a trailblaz-ing document known as the Fundamental Orders. It wasin effect a modern constitution, which established aregime democratically controlled by the “substantial” citizens. Essential features of the Fundamental Orderswere later borrowed by Connecticut for its colonial charter and ultimately for its state constitution.

Another flourishing Connecticut settlement beganto spring up at New Haven in 1638. It was a prosperouscommunity, founded by Puritans who contrived to setup an even closer church-government alliance than inMassachusetts. Although only squatters without a char-ter, the colonists dreamed of making New Haven abustling seaport. But they fell into disfavor with CharlesII as a result of having sheltered two of the judges whohad condemned his father, Charles I, to death. In 1662,to the acute distress of the New Havenites, the crowngranted a charter to Connecticut that merged NewHaven with the more democratic settlements in theConnecticut Valley.

Far to the north, enterprising fishermen and furtraders had been active on the coast of Maine for adozen or so years before the founding of Plymouth.After disheartening attempts at colonization in 1623 bySir Ferdinando Gorges, this land of lakes and forests wasabsorbed by Massachusetts Bay after a formal purchasein 1677 from the Gorges heirs. It remained a part ofMassachusetts for nearly a century and a half beforebecoming a separate state.

Granite-ribbed New Hampshire also sprang fromthe fishing and trading activities along its narrow coast.It was absorbed in 1641 by the grasping Bay Colony,under a strained interpretation of the Massachusettscharter. The king, annoyed by this display of greed, arbi-trarily separated New Hampshire from Massachusettsin 1679 and made it a royal colony.

Puritans Versus Indians

The spread of English settlements inevitably led toclashes with the Indians, who were particularly weak inNew England. Shortly before the Pilgrims had arrived at Plymouth in 1620, an epidemic, probably triggered by contact with English fishermen, had swept throughthe coastal tribes and killed more than three-quarters ofthe native people. Deserted Indian fields, ready fortillage, greeted the Plymouth settlers, and scatteredskulls and bones provided grim evidence of the impactof the disease.

In no position to resist the English incursion, thelocal Wampanoag Indians at first befriended the settlers.Cultural accommodation was facilitated by Squanto, a Wampanoag who had learned English from a ship’scaptain who had kidnapped him some years earlier. TheWampanoag chieftain Massasoit signed a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621 and helped them celebratethe first Thanksgiving after the autumn harvests thatsame year.

Con

nect

icu

tR

.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

1641

1679

1677

Portsmouth

Salem

CambridgeBoston

Plymouth(Pilgrims)

ProvidencePortsmouth

New Haven

Springfield

Hartford

MAINE1623

NEWHAMPSHIRE

CONNECTICUT1635-1636

NEWHAVEN

1638

PLYMOUTH1620

MASSACHUSETTS BAY 1630

RHODEISLAND

1636

LONG ISLAND

Seventeenth-Century New England SettlementsThe Massachusetts Bay Colony was the hub ofNew England. All earlier colonies grew into it; alllater colonies grew out of it.

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

island’s population in check. But by 1500 increasedresistance to such diseases allowed the population tosoar, and a century later the island nation was burstingat the seams. This population explosion, combined witheconomic depression and religious repression, sparkedthe first major European migration to England’s NewWorld colonies.

Some of those who voyaged to Virginia and Mary-land in the seventeenth century were independent artisans or younger members of English gentry families.But roughly three-quarters of the English migrants to

the Chesapeake during this period came as servants,signed to “indentures” ranging from four to seven years.One English observer described such indentured servants as “idle, lazie, simple people,” and anothercomplained that many of those taking ship for thecolonies “have been pursued by hue-and-cry for robberies, burglaries, or breaking prison.”

In fact, most indentured servants were young mendrawn from England’s “middling classes.” Some fled thedisastrous slump in the cloth trade in the early seventeenth century. Many others had been forced offthe land as the dawning national economy promptedlandowners in southwestern England to convert fromcrop fields to pasture and to “enclose” the land for sheepgrazing. Making their way from town to town in searchof work, they eventually drifted into port cities such asBristol and London. There they boarded ship for Amer-ica, where they provided the labor necessary to cultivatethe Chesapeake’s staple crop, tobacco.

Some 40 percent of these immigrants of the mid-seventeenth century died before they finished theirterms of indenture. (Because of the high death rate andthe shortage of women, Chesapeake society was unableto reproduce itself naturally until the last quarter of theseventeenth century.) The survivors entered Chesa-peake society with only their “freedom dues”—usuallyclothing, an ax and hoe, and a few barrels of corn.

Nevertheless, many of those who arrived early in the century eventually acquired land and moved intothe mainstream of Chesapeake society. After 1660, however, opportunities for the “freemen” declined. InEngland the population spurt ended, and the great London fire of 1666 sparked a building boom thatsoaked up job seekers. As the supply of English inden-tured servants dried up in the late seventeenth century,southern planters looking for laborers turned increas-ingly to black slaves.

50

The English

Town Meetinghouse, Hingham, MassachusettsErected in 1681, it is still in use today as a UnitarianUniversalist Church, making it the oldest meeting-house in continuous ecclesiastical use in theUnited States.

Whereas English immigration to the Chesapeakewas spread over nearly a century, most English voyagersto New England arrived within a single decade. In thetwelve years between 1629 and 1642, some twenty thou-sand Puritans swarmed to the Massachusetts BayColony. Fleeing a sustained economic depression andthe cruel religious repression of Charles I, the Puritanscame to plant a godly commonwealth in New England’srocky soil.

In contrast to the single indentured servants of theChesapeake, the New England Puritans migrated infamily groups, and in many cases whole communitieswere transplanted from England to America. Althoughthey remained united by the common language andcommon Puritan faith they carried to New England,their English baggage was by no means uniform. As inEngland, most New England settlements were farmingcommunities. But some New England towns re-createdthe specialized economies of particular localities inEngland. Marblehead, Massachusetts, for example,became a fishing village because most of its settlers hadbeen fishermen in old England. The townsfolk of Row-ley, Massachusetts, brought from Yorkshire in northernEngland not only their town name but also their distinc-tive way of life, revolving around textile manufacturing.

Political practices, too, reflected the towns’ varie-gated English roots. In Ipswich, Massachusetts, settledby East Anglian Puritans, the ruling selectmen servedlong terms and ruled with an iron hand. By contrast,local politics in the town of Newbury were bitter andcontentious, and officeholders were hard-pressed towin reelection; the town’s founders came from westernEngland, a region with little tradition of local gov-ernment. Although the Puritans’ imperial masters inLondon eventually circumscribed such precious localautonomy, this diverse heritage of fiercely independentNew England towns endured, reasserting itself duringthe American Revolution.

51

Mistress Anne PollardBorn in England, Mistress Pollard arrived inMassachusetts as a child with John Winthrop’s fleet in 1630. A tavern operator and the mother of 13 children, she was 100 years old when this portraitwas painted in 1721. On her death 4 years later, sheleft 130 descendants, a dramatic example of thefecundity of the early New England colonists.

Rowley

RyeField

Morland Field

PollipodField

TownBrook

NIpswich

FieldBradfordStreetField

ProspectHill

Northeast

Land Use in Rowley, Massachusetts, c. 1650The settlers of Rowley brought from their nativeYorkshire the practice of granting families very smallfarming plots and reserving large common fields foruse by the entire community. On the map, the yellowareas show private land; the green areas show landheld in common.


As more English settlers arrived and pushed inlandinto the Connecticut River valley, confrontationsbetween Indians and whites ruptured these peacefulrelations. Hostilities exploded in 1637 between the Eng-lish settlers and the powerful Pequot tribe. Besieging a Pequot village on Connecticut’s Mystic River, Englishmilitiamen and their Narragansett Indian allies set fire tothe Indian wigwams and shot the fleeing survivors. Theslaughter wrote a brutal finish to the Pequot War, virtu-ally annihilated the Pequot tribe, and inaugurated fourdecades of uneasy peace between Puritans and Indians.

Lashed by critics in England, the Puritans madesome feeble efforts at converting the remaining Indiansto Christianity, although Puritan missionary zeal neverequaled that of the Catholic Spanish and French. A merehandful of Indians were gathered into Puritan “prayingtowns” to make the acquaintance of the English Godand to learn the ways of English culture.

The Indians’ only hope for resisting Englishencroachment lay in intertribal unity—a pan-Indianalliance against the swiftly spreading English settle-ments. In 1675 Massasoit’s son, Metacom, called KingPhilip by the English, forged such an alliance andmounted a series of coordinated assaults on English vil-lages throughout New England. Frontier settlementswere especially hard hit, and refugees fell back towardthe relative safety of Boston. When the war ended in1676, fifty-two Puritan towns had been attacked, and

twelve destroyed entirely. Hundreds of colonists andmany more Indians lay dead. Metacom’s wife and sonwere sold into slavery; he himself was captured,beheaded, and drawn and quartered. His head was carried on a pike back to Plymouth, where it wasmounted on grisly display for years.

King Philip’s War slowed the westward march ofEnglish settlement in New England for several decades.But the war inflicted a lasting defeat on New England’sIndians. Drastically reduced in numbers, dispirited, anddisbanded, they thereafter posed only sporadic threatsto the New England colonists.

Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence

A path-breaking experiment in union was launched in1643, when four colonies banded together to form theNew England Confederation. Old England was thendeeply involved in civil wars, and hence the colonistswere thrown upon their own resources. The primarypurpose of the confederation was defense against foesor potential foes, notably the Indians, the French, andthe Dutch. Purely intercolonial problems, such as run-away servants and criminals who had fled from onecolony to another, also came within the jurisdiction of

Attack on a Pequot Fort during thePequot War of 1637, engraving byJ.W. Barber, 1830 This was the first war between natives andEuropeans in British North America.It culminated in the Puritan militia’svicious burning out and slaughteringof nearly three hundred Pequot men,women, and children. The defeat of the Pequots eliminated armedresistance to the new settlements of New Haven and Guildford. TheConnecticut Valley would not seesignificant “Indian troubles” againfor forty years, when the Indians ofNew England united in their finalstand against the encroachments ofEnglish settlers, King Philip’s War.

Confederation and Dominion in New England 53

the confederation. Each member colony, regardless of size, wielded two votes—an arrangement highly displeasing to the most populous colony, Massachu-setts Bay.

The confederation was essentially an exclusivePuritan club. It consisted of the two Massachusettscolonies (the Bay Colony and bantam-sized Plymouth)and the two Connecticut colonies (New Haven and thescattered valley settlements). The Puritan leadersblackballed Rhode Island as well as the Maine outposts.These places, it was charged, harbored too manyheretical or otherwise undesirable characters. Shock-ingly, one of the Maine towns had made a tailor itsmayor and had even sheltered an excommunicatedminister of the gospel.

Weak though it was, the confederation was the firstnotable milestone on the long and rocky road towardcolonial unity. The delegates took tottering but long-overdue steps toward acting together on matters ofintercolonial importance. Rank-and-file colonists, fortheir part, received valuable experience in delegatingtheir votes to properly chosen representatives.

Back in England the king had paid little attentionto the American colonies during the early years of their planting. They were allowed, in effect, to becomesemiautonomous commonwealths. This era of benignneglect was prolonged when the crown, struggling toretain its power, became enmeshed during the 1640sin civil wars with the parliamentarians.

But when Charles II was restored to the Englishthrone in 1660, the royalists and their Church of Englandallies were once more firmly in the saddle. Puritan hopesof eventually purifying the old English church withered.Worse, Charles II was determined to take an active,aggressive hand in the management of the colonies. His

plans ran headlong against the habits that decades ofrelative independence had bred in the colonists.

Deepening colonial defiance was nowhere moreglaringly revealed than in Massachusetts. One of theking’s agents in Boston was mortified to find that royalorders had no more effect than old issues of the LondonGazette. Punishment was soon forthcoming. As a slap atMassachusetts, Charles II gave rival Connecticut in 1662a sea-to-sea charter grant, which legalized the squattersettlements. The very next year, the outcasts in RhodeIsland received a new charter, which gave kingly sanc-tion to the most religiously tolerant government yetdevised in America. A final and crushing blow fell on the stiff-necked Bay Colony in 1684, when its preciouscharter was revoked by the London authorities.

Andros Promotes the First American Revolution

Massachusetts suffered further humiliation in 1686,when the Dominion of New England was created byroyal authority. Unlike the homegrown New EnglandConfederation, it was imposed from London. Embrac-ing at first all New England, it was expanded two yearslater to include New York and East and West Jersey. Thedominion also aimed at bolstering colonial defense inthe event of war with the Indians and hence, from theimperial viewpoint of Parliament, was a statesmanlikemove.

More importantly, the Dominion of New England wasdesigned to promote urgently needed efficiency in theadministration of the English Navigation Laws. Thoselaws reflected the intensifying colonial rivalries of the

The Stuart Dynasty in England*

Name, Reign Relation to America

James I, 1603–1625 Va., Plymouth founded; Separatists persecutedCharles I, 1625–1649 Civil wars, 1642–1649; Mass., Md. founded(Interregnum, 1649–1660) Commonwealth; Protectorate (Oliver Cromwell)Charles II, 1660–1685 The Restoration; Carolinas, Pa., N.Y. founded; Conn. charteredJames 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.


seventeenth century. They sought to stitch England’s over-seas possessions more tightly to the motherland by throt-tling American trade with countries not ruled by the Englishcrown. Like colonial peoples everywhere, the Americanschafed at such confinements, and smuggling became anincreasingly common and honorable occupation.

At the head of the new dominion stood autocraticSir Edmund Andros, an able English military man, conscientious but tactless. Establishing headquarters inPuritanical Boston, he generated much hostility by hisopen affiliation with the despised Church of England.The colonists were also outraged by his noisy and Sabbath-profaning soldiers, who were accused of teach-ing the people “to drink, blaspheme, curse, and damn.”

Andros was prompt to use the mailed fist. He ruthlessly curbed the cherished town meetings; laidheavy restrictions on the courts, the press, and the

schools; and revoked all land titles. Dispensing with thepopular assemblies, he taxed the people without theconsent of their duly elected representatives. He alsostrove to enforce the unpopular Navigation Laws andsuppress smuggling. Liberty-loving colonists, accus-tomed to unusual privileges during long decades of neglect, were goaded to the verge of revolt.

The people of old England soon taught the people of New England a few lessons in resisting oppression. In 1688–1689 they engineered the memorable Glorious(or Bloodless) Revolution. Dethroning the despotic andunpopular Catholic James II, they enthroned the Protes-tant rulers of the Netherlands, the Dutch-born WilliamIII and his English wife, Mary, daughter of James II.

When the news of the Glorious Revolution reachedAmerica, the ramshackle Dominion of New England collapsed like a house of cards. A Boston mob, catching

Sir Edmund Andros (1637–1714); a Boston Broadside Urging Him to Surrender, 1689;and a Map Showing Andros’s Dominion of New England After being expelledfrom New England, Andros eventually returned to the New World as governor ofVirginia (1692–1697).

ATLANTICOCEAN

PA.

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MAINE

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PLYMOUTHR.I.N.Y.

EAST JERSEY

WEST JERSEYMD.

England’s Glorious Revolution 55

the fever, rose against the existing regime. Sir EdmundAndros attempted to flee in woman’s clothing but wasbetrayed by boots protruding beneath his dress. He was hastily shipped off to England.

Massachusetts, though rid of the despotic Andros,did not gain as much from the upheaval as it had hoped.In 1691 it was arbitrarily made a royal colony, with anew charter and a new royal governor. The permanentloss of the ancient charter was a staggering blow to theproud Puritans, who never fully recovered. Worst of all,the privilege of voting, once a monopoly of churchmembers, was now to be enjoyed by all qualified maleproperty holders.

England’s Glorious Revolution reverberatedthroughout the colonies from New England to theChesapeake. Inspired by the challenge to the crown inold England, many colonists seized the occasion tostrike against royal authority in America. Unrest rockedboth New York and Maryland from 1689 to 1691, untilnewly appointed royal governors restored a semblanceof order. Most importantly, the new monarchs relaxedthe royal grip on colonial trade, inaugurating a period of“salutary neglect” when the much-resented NavigationLaws were only weakly enforced.

Yet residues remained of Charles II’s effort to asserttighter administrative control over his empire. MoreEnglish officials—judges, clerks, customs officials—now

staffed the courts and strolled the wharves of EnglishAmerica. Many were incompetent, corrupt hacks whoknew little and cared less about American affairs.Appointed by influential patrons in far-off England,they blocked, by their very presence, the rise of localleaders to positions of political power. AggrievedAmericans viewed them with mounting contempt andresentment as the eighteenth century wore on.

Old Netherlanders at New Netherland

Late in the sixteenth century, the oppressed people of theNetherlands unfurled the standard of rebellion againstCatholic Spain. After bloody and protracted fighting, theyfinally succeeded, with the aid of Protestant England, inwinning their independence.

The seventeenth century—the era of Rembrandtand other famous artists—was a golden age in Dutchhistory. This vigorous little lowland nation finallyemerged as a major commercial and naval power, andthen it ungratefully challenged the supremacy of its former benefactor, England. Three great Anglo-Dutchnaval wars were fought in the seventeenth century, withas many as a hundred ships on each side. The sturdyDutch dealt blows about as heavy as they received.

New York (then New Amsterdam), 1664This drawing clearly shows the tip ofManhattan Island protected by the wallafter which Wall Street was named.


The Dutch Republic also became a leading colonialpower, with by far its greatest activity in the East Indies.There it maintained an enormous and profitable empirefor over three hundred years. The Dutch East India Company was virtually a state within a state and at onetime supported an army of 10,000 men and a fleet of 190ships, 40 of them men-of-war.

Seeking greater riches, this enterprising companyemployed an English explorer, Henry Hudson. Disregard-ing orders to sail northeast, he ventured into DelawareBay and New York Bay in 1609 and then ascended theHudson River, hoping that at last he had chanced uponthe coveted shortcut through the continent. But, as the event proved, he merely filed a Dutch claim to a magnificently wooded and watered area.

Much less powerful than the mighty Dutch EastIndia Company was the Dutch West India Company,which maintained profitable enterprises in theCaribbean. At times it was less interested in trading thanin raiding and at one fell swoop in 1628 captured a fleet of Spanish treasure ships laden with loot worth $15 million. The company also established outposts inAfrica and a thriving sugar industry in Brazil, which forseveral decades was its principal center of activity in theNew World.

New Netherland, in the beautiful Hudson Riverarea, was planted in 1623–1624 on a permanent basis.Established by the Dutch West India Company for its

quick-profit fur trade, it was never more than a sec-ondary interest of the founders. The company’s mostbrilliant stroke was to buy Manhattan Island from theIndians (who did not actually “own” it) for virtuallyworthless trinkets—twenty-two thousand acres ofwhat is now perhaps the most valuable real estate inthe world for pennies per acre.

New Amsterdam—later New York City—was a com-pany town. It was run by and for the Dutch company, in the interests of the stockholders. The investors had no enthusiasm for religious toleration, free speech, ordemocratic practices; and the governors appointed bythe company as directors-general were usually harshand despotic. Religious dissenters who opposed the official Dutch Reformed Church were regarded with suspicion, and for a while Quakers were savagelyabused. In response to repeated protests by the aggra-vated colonists, a local body with limited lawmakingpower was finally established.

This picturesque Dutch colony took on a stronglyaristocratic tint and retained it for generations. Vast feudal estates fronting the Hudson River, known aspatroonships, were granted to promoters who agreed tosettle fifty people on them. One patroonship in theAlbany area was slightly larger than the later state ofRhode Island.

Colorful little New Amsterdam attracted a cosmo-politan population, as is common in seaport towns. A

New York AristocratsThis prosperous family exemplifiedthe comfortable lives and aristocraticpretensions of the “Hudson Riverlords” in colonial New York.

The Dutch Plant New York 57

French Jesuit missionary, visiting in the 1640s, notedthat eighteen different languages were being spoken inthe streets. New York’s later babel of immigrant tongueswas thus foreshadowed.

Friction with Englishand Swedish Neighbors

Vexations beset the Dutch company-colony from thebeginning. The directors-general were largely incompe-tent. Company shareholders demanded their dividends,even at the expense of the colony’s welfare. The Indians,

infuriated by Dutch cruelties, retaliated with horriblemassacres. As a defense measure, the hard-pressed settlers on Manhattan Island erected a stout wall, fromwhich Wall Street derives its name.

New England was hostile to the growth of its Dutchneighbor, and the people of Connecticut finally ejectedintruding Hollanders from their verdant valley. Three of the four member colonies of the New England Confederation were eager to wipe out New Netherlandwith military force. But Massachusetts, which wouldhave had to provide most of the troops, vetoed the proposed foray.

The Swedes in turn trespassed on Dutch preserves,from 1638 to 1655, by planting the anemic colony ofNew Sweden on the Delaware River. This was the goldenage of Sweden, during and following the Thirty Years’War of 1618–1648, in which its brilliant King GustavusAdolphus had carried the torch for Protestantism. Thisoutburst of energy in Sweden caused it to enter thecostly colonial game in America, though on somethingof a shoestring.

Resenting the Swedish intrusion on the Delaware,the Dutch dispatched a small military expedition in1655. It was led by the ablest of the directors-general,Peter Stuyvesant, who had lost a leg while soldiering inthe West Indies and was dubbed “Father Wooden Leg”by the Indians. The main fort fell after a bloodless siege,whereupon Swedish rule came to an abrupt end. Thecolonists were absorbed by New Netherland.

New Sweden, never important, soon faded away,leaving behind in later Delaware a sprinkling of Swedishplace names and Swedish log cabins (the first in America), as well as an admixture of Swedish blood.

Dutch Residues in New York

Lacking vitality, and representing only a secondarycommercial interest of the Dutch, New Netherland layunder the menacing shadow of the vigorous Englishcolonies to the north. In addition, it was honeycombedwith New England immigrants. Numbering about one-half of New Netherland’s ten thousand souls in1664, they might in time have seized control fromwithin.

The days of the Dutch on the Hudson were num-bered, for the English regarded them as intruders. In1664, after the imperially ambitious Charles II hadgranted the area to his brother, the Duke of York, a

Peter Stuyvesant (1602–1682) Despotic in govern-ment and intolerant in religion, he lived in a con-stant state of friction with the prominent residentsof New Netherland. When protests arose, hereplied that he derived his power from God andthe company, not the people. He opposed popularsuffrage on the grounds that “the thief” wouldvote “for the thief” and “the rogue for the rogue.”


strong English squadron appeared off the decrepitdefenses of New Amsterdam. A fuming Peter Stuyvesant,short of all munitions except courage, was forced to surrender without firing a shot. New Amsterdam wasthereupon renamed New York, in honor of the Duke ofYork. England won a splendid harbor, strategicallylocated in the middle of the mainland colonies, and thestately Hudson River penetrating the interior. With theremoval of this foreign wedge, the English banner nowwaved triumphantly over a solid stretch of territory fromMaine to the Carolinas.

The conquered Dutch province tenaciously retainedmany of the illiberal features of earlier days. An auto-cratic spirit survived, and the aristocratic elementgained strength when certain corrupt English governorsgranted immense acreage to their favorites. Influentiallandowning families—such as the Livingstons and the De Lanceys—wielded disproportionate power in theaffairs of colonial New York. These monopolistic landpolicies, combined with the lordly atmosphere, discour-aged many European immigrants from coming. Thephysical growth of New York was correspondinglyretarded.

The Dutch peppered place names over the land,including Harlem (Haarlem), Brooklyn (Breuckelen),and Hell Gate (Hellegat). They likewise left their imprinton the gambrel-roofed architecture. As for social customsand folkways, no other foreign group of comparable size

has made so colorful a contribution. Noteworthy areEaster eggs, Santa Claus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling,sleighing, skating, and kolf (golf)—a dangerous gameplayed with heavy clubs and forbidden in settled areas.

Penn’s Holy Experiment inPennsylvania

A remarkable group of dissenters, commonly known asQuakers, arose in England during the mid-1600s. Theirname derived from the report that they “quaked” whenunder deep religious emotion. Officially they wereknown as the Religious Society of Friends.

Quakers were especially offensive to the authorities,both religious and civil. They refused to support theestablished Church of England with taxes. They builtsimple meetinghouses, congregated without a paidclergy, and “spoke up” themselves in meetings whenmoved. Believing that they were all children in the

Quakers in the Colonial Era Quakers, or Friends,were renowned for their simplicity of architecture,dress, manner, and speech. They also distinguishedthemselves from most other Protestant denominationsby allowing women to speak in Quaker meetings andto share in making decisions for the church and thefamily.

The Quakers in Pennsylvania 59

sight of God, they kept their broad-brimmed hats on inthe presence of their “betters” and addressed otherswith simple “thee”s and “thou”s, rather than with conventional titles. They would take no oaths becauseJesus had commanded, “Swear not at all.” This peculiarityoften embroiled them with government officials, for“test oaths” were still required to establish the fact that aperson was not a Roman Catholic.

The Quakers, beyond a doubt, were a people ofdeep conviction. They abhorred strife and warfare andrefused military service. As advocates of passive resis-tance, they would turn the other cheek and rebuild theirmeetinghouse on the site where their enemies had tornit down. Their courage and devotion to principle finallytriumphed. Although at times they seemed stubbornand unreasonable, they were a simple, devoted, demo-cratic people, contending in their own high-mindedway for religious and civic freedom.

William Penn, a wellborn and athletic young Englishman, was attracted to the Quaker faith in 1660,when only sixteen years old. His father, disapproving,administered a sound flogging. After various adventuresin the army (the best portrait of the peaceful Quaker hashim in armor), the youth firmly embraced the despisedfaith and suffered much persecution. The courtsbranded him a “saucy” and “impertinent” fellow. Sev-eral hundred of his less fortunate fellow Quakers died of

cruel treatment, and thousands more were fined,flogged, or cast into dank prisons.

Penn’s thoughts naturally turned to the New World,where a sprinkling of Quakers had already fled, notablyto Rhode Island, North Carolina, and New Jersey. Eagerto establish an asylum for his people, he also hoped toexperiment with liberal ideas in government and at thesame time make a profit. Finally, in 1681, he managed tosecure from the king an immense grant of fertile land, inconsideration of a monetary debt owed to his deceasedfather by the crown. The king called the area Pennsyl-vania (“Penn’s Woodland”) in honor of the sire. The modest son, fearing that critics would accuse him ofnaming it after himself, sought unsuccessfully tochange the name.

Pennsylvania was by far the best advertised of all the colonies. Its founder—the “first American advertising man”—sent out paid agents and distributedcountless pamphlets printed in English, Dutch, French,and German. Unlike the lures of many other Americanreal estate promoters, then and later, Penn’s induce-ments were generally truthful. He especially welcomedforward-looking spirits and substantial citizens, includ-ing industrious carpenters, masons, shoemakers, andother manual workers. His liberal land policy, whichencouraged substantial holdings, was instrumental inattracting a heavy inflow of immigrants.

Penn’s Treaty, by Edward HicksThe peace-loving Quaker founderof Pennsylvania made a seriouseffort to live in harmony with theIndians, as this treaty-signingscene illustrates. But the westwardthrust of white settlement eventuallycaused friction between the twogroups, as in other colonies.


Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors

Penn formally launched his colony in 1681. His task was simplified by the presence of several thousand“squatters”—Dutch, Swedish, English, Welsh—who werealready scattered along the banks of the Delaware River.Philadelphia, meaning “brotherly love” in Greek, wasmore carefully planned than most colonial cities andconsequently enjoyed wide and attractive streets.

Penn farsightedly bought land from the Indians,including Chief Tammany, later patron saint of NewYork’s political Tammany Hall. His treatment of thenative peoples was so fair that the Quaker “broad brims”went among them unarmed and even employed themas baby-sitters. For a brief period, Pennsylvania seemedthe promised land of amicable Indian-white relations.Some southern tribes even migrated to Pennsylvania,seeking the Quaker haven. But ironically, Quaker toler-ance proved the undoing of Quaker Indian policy. As non-Quaker European immigrants flooded into theprovince, they undermined the Quakers’ own benevo-lent policy toward the Indians. The feisty Scots-Irishwere particularly unpersuaded by Quaker idealism.

Penn’s new proprietary regime was unusually liberaland included a representative assembly elected by the landowners. No tax-supported state church drainedcoffers or demanded allegiance. Freedom of worshipwas guaranteed to all residents, although Penn, underpressure from London, was forced to deny Catholics andJews the privilege of voting or holding office. The deathpenalty was imposed only for treason and murder, ascompared with some two hundred capital crimes inEngland.

Among other noteworthy features, no provision wasmade by the peace-loving Quakers of Pennsylvania for amilitary defense. No restrictions were placed on immi-gration, and naturalization was made easy. The humaneQuakers early developed a strong dislike of black slavery,and in the genial glow of Pennsylvania some progresswas made toward social reform.

With its many liberal features, Pennsylvaniaattracted a rich mix of ethnic groups. They includednumerous religious misfits who were repelled by theharsh practices of neighboring colonies. This Quakerrefuge boasted a surprisingly modern atmosphere in an unmodern age and to an unusual degree affordedeconomic opportunity, civil liberty, and religious free-dom. Even so, “blue laws” prohibited “ungodly revelers,”stage plays, playing cards, dice, games, and excessivehilarity.

Under such generally happy auspices, Penn’s brain-child grew lustily. The Quakers were shrewd business-people, and in a short time the settlers were exportinggrain and other foodstuffs. Within two years Philadelphiaclaimed three hundred houses and twenty-five hundredpeople. Within nineteen years—by 1700—the colonywas surpassed in population and wealth only by long-established Virginia and Massachusetts.

William Penn, who altogether spent about fouryears in Pennsylvania, was never fully appreciated by hiscolonists. His governors, some of them incompetentand tactless, quarreled bitterly with the people, whowere constantly demanding greater political control.Penn himself became too friendly with James II, thedeposed Catholic king. Thrice arrested for treason,thrust for a time into a debtors’ prison, and afflicted by aparalytic stroke, he died full of sorrows. His enduringmonument was not only a noble experiment in govern-ment but also a new commonwealth. Based on civil and religious liberty, and dedicated to freedom of conscience and worship, it held aloft a hopeful torch in a world of semidarkness.

Small Quaker settlements flourished next door toPennsylvania. New Jersey was started in 1664 when twonoble proprietors received the area from the Duke ofYork. A substantial number of New Englanders, includ-ing many whose weary soil had petered out, flocked tothe new colony. One of the proprietors sold West NewJersey in 1674 to a group of Quakers, who here set up a sanctuary even before Pennsylvania was launched.East New Jersey was also acquired in later years by the

In a Boston lecture in 1869, Ralph WaldoEmerson (1803–1882) declared,

“The sect of the Quakers in their bestrepresentatives appear to me to havecome nearer to the sublime history andgenius of Christ than any other of thesects.”

Examining the Evidence 61

A Seventeenth-Century Valuables Cabinet In1999 a boatyard worker on Cape Cod and his sister, aNew Hampshire teacher, inherited a small (20-pound,161⁄2-inch-high) chest that had always stood on theirgrandmother’s hall table, known in the family as the“Franklin chest.” Eager to learn more about it, they setout to discover the original owner, tracing their familygenealogy and consulting with furniture experts. InJanuary 2000 this rare seventeenth-century cabinet, itsfull provenance now known, appeared on the auctionblock and sold for a record $2.4 million to the PeabodyEssex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. No lessextraordinary than the price was the history of its creator and its owners embodied in the piece. Salemcabinetmaker James Symonds (1636–1726) had madethe chest for his relatives Joseph Pope (1650–1712)and Bathsheba Folger (1652–1726) to commemoratetheir 1679 marriage. Symonds carved the Popes’

initials and the date on the door of the cabinet. Healso put elaborate S curves on the sides remarkablysimilar to the Mannerist carved oak paneling produced in Norfolk, England, from where his owncabinetmaker father had emigrated. Behind thechest’s door are ten drawers where the Popes wouldhave kept jewelry, money, deeds, and writing materials.Surely they prized the chest as a sign of refinement tobe shown off in their best room, a sentiment passeddown through the next thirteen generations even asthe Popes’ identities were lost. The chest may havebecome known as the “Franklin chest” becauseBathsheba was Benjamin Franklin’s aunt, but alsobecause that identification appealed more todescendants ashamed that the Quaker Popes, whoseown parents had been persecuted for their faith, were virulent accusers during the Salem witch trialsof 1692.


Quakers, whose wings were clipped in 1702 when the crown combined the two Jerseys in a royal colony.

Swedish-tinged Delaware consisted of only threecounties—two at high tide, the witticism goes—and was named after Lord De La Warr, the harsh militarygovernor who had arrived in Virginia in 1610. Harboringsome Quakers, and closely associated with Penn’s pros-perous colony, Delaware was granted its own assemblyin 1703. But until the American Revolution, it remainedunder the governor of Pennsylvania.

The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies

The middle colonies—New York, New Jersey, Delaware,and Pennsylvania—enjoyed certain features in common.

In general, the soil was fertile and the expanse ofland was broad, unlike rock-bestrewn New England.Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey came to beknown as the “bread colonies,” by virtue of their heavyexports of grain.

Rivers also played a vital role. Broad, languidstreams—notably the Susquehanna, the Delaware, andthe Hudson—tapped the fur trade of the interior andbeckoned adventuresome spirits into the backcountry.The rivers had few cascading waterfalls, unlike NewEngland’s, and hence presented little inducement tomilling or manufacturing with water-wheel power.

A surprising amount of industry nonethelesshummed in the middle colonies. Virginal forestsabounded for lumbering and shipbuilding. The pres-ence of deep river estuaries and landlocked harborsstimulated both commerce and the growth of seaports,such as New York and Philadelphia. Even Albany, morethan a hundred miles up the Hudson, was a port ofsome consequence in colonial days.

The middle colonies were in many respects midwaybetween New England and the southern plantationgroup. Except in aristocratic New York, the landholdingswere generally intermediate in size—smaller than in thebig-acreage South but larger than in small-farm NewEngland. Local government lay somewhere between thepersonalized town meeting of New England and the dif-fused county government of the South. There werefewer industries in the middle colonies than in NewEngland, more than in the South.

Yet the middle colonies, which in some ways werethe most American part of America, could claim certaindistinctions in their own right. Generally speaking, thepopulation was more ethnically mixed than that ofother settlements. The people were blessed with anunusual degree of religious toleration and democraticcontrol. Earnest and devout Quakers, in particular,made a compassionate contribution to human freedomout of all proportion to their numbers. Desirable landwas more easily acquired in the middle colonies than inNew England or in the tidewater South. One result wasthat a considerable amount of economic and socialdemocracy prevailed, though less so in aristocratic NewYork.

Modern-minded Benjamin Franklin, often regardedas the most representative American personality of hisera, was a child of the middle colonies. Although it is truethat Franklin was born a Yankee in puritanical Boston, he

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Early Settlements in the Middle Colonies, withFounding Dates

Chronology 63

entered Philadelphia as a seventeen-year-old in 1720 witha loaf of bread under each arm and immediately found acongenial home in the urbane, open atmosphere of whatwas then North America’s biggest city. One Pennsylvanianlater boasted that Franklin “came to life at seventeen, inPhiladelphia.”

By the time Franklin arrived in the City of BrotherlyLove, the American colonies were themselves “comingto life.” Population was growing robustly. Transportation

and communication were gradually improving. TheBritish, for the most part, continued their hands-offpolicies, leaving the colonists to fashion their own localgovernments, run their own churches, and develop net-works of intercolonial trade. As people and productscrisscrossed the colonies with increasing frequency andin increasing volume, Americans began to realize that—far removed from Mother England—they were notmerely surviving, but truly thriving.

Chronology

1517 Martin Luther begins Protestant Reformation

1536 John Calvin of Geneva publishes Institutes of the Christian Religion

1620 Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower to Plymouth Bay

1624 Dutch found New Netherland

1629 Charles I dismisses Parliament and persecutes Puritans

1630 Puritans found Massachusetts Bay Colony

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

1635- Connecticut and New Haven colonies 1638 founded

1637 Pequot War

1638 Anne Hutchinson banished from Massachusetts colony

1639 Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders drafted

1642-1648 English Civil War

1643 New England Confederation formed

1650 William Bradford completes Of Plymouth Plantation

1655 New Netherland conquers New Sweden

1664 England seizes New Netherland from DutchEast and West Jersey colonies founded

1675-1676 King Philip’s War

1681 William Penn founds Pennsylvania colony

1686 Royal authority creates Dominion of New England

1688- Glorious Revolution overthrows Stuarts and 1689 Dominion of New England

The history of discovery and colonization raisesperhaps the most fundamental question about all

American history. Should it be understood as theextension of European civilization into the New Worldor as the gradual development of a uniquely“American” culture? An older school of thought tend-ed to emphasize the Europeanization of America.Historians of that persuasion paid close attention tothe situation in Europe, particularly England andSpain, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Theyalso focused on the exportation of the values andinstitutions of the mother countries to the new landsin the western sea. Although some historians alsoexamined the transforming effect of America onEurope, this approach, too, remained essentiallyEurocentric.

More recently, historians have concentrated onthe distinctiveness of America. The concern withEuropean origins has evolved into a comparativetreatment of European settlements in the New World.England, Spain, Holland, and France now attractmore attention for the divergent kinds of societiesthey fostered in America than for the way they com-monly pursued Old World ambitions in the New. Thenewest trend to emerge is a transatlantic history thatviews European empires and their American coloniesas part of a process of cultural cross-fertilizationaffecting not only the colonies but Europe and Africaas well.

This less Eurocentric approach has also changedthe way historians explain the colonial developmentof America. Rather than telling the story of coloniza-tion as the imposition of European ways of lifethrough “discovery” and “conquest,” historiansincreasingly view the colonial period as one of “con-tact” and “adaptation” between European, African,and Native American ways of life. Scholars, includingRichard White, Alfred Crosby, William Cronon, KarenKupperman, and Timothy Silver, have enhancedunderstanding of the cultural as well as the physical

transformations that resulted from contact. An environment of forests and meadows, for example,gave way to a landscape of fields and fences asEuropeans sought to replicate the agricultural villagesthey had known in Europe. Aggressive deforestationeven produced climatic changes, as treeless tractsmade for colder winters, hotter summers, and earth-gouging floods. Ramon Gutierrez’s When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away (1991) hasexpanded the colonial stage to include interactionsbetween Spanish settlers and Native Americans in theSouthwest.

The variety of American societies that emergedout of the interaction of Europeans and NativeAmericans has also become better appreciated. Earlyhistories by esteemed historians like Perry Millerexaggerated the extent to which the New EnglandPuritan experience defined the essence of America.Not only did these historians overlook non-Englishexperiences, they failed to recognize the diversity inmotives, methods, and consequences that existedeven within English colonization. The numbers alonetell an interesting story. By 1700 about 220,000English colonists had immigrated to the Caribbean,about 120,000 to the southern mainland colonies,and only about 40,000 to the middle Atlantic and NewEngland colonies (although by the mid-eighteenthcentury, those headed for the latter destination wouldaccount for more than half the total).

Studies such as Richard S. Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves(1972) emphasize the importance of the Caribbean inearly English colonization efforts and make clear thatthe desire for economic gain, more than the quest forreligious freedom, fueled the migration to theCaribbean islands. Similarly, Edmund S. Morgan’sAmerican Slavery, American Freedom (1975) stressesthe role of economic ambition in explaining theEnglish peopling of the Chesapeake and the eventualimportation of African slaves to that region. Studies byBernard Bailyn and David Hackett Fisher demonstrate

Europeanizing America or Americanizing Europe?

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Varying Viewpoints 65

that there was scarcely a “typical” English migrant tothe New World. English colonists migrated both singlyand in families, and for economic, social, political, andreligious reasons.

Recent studies have also paid more attention to theconflicts that emerged out of this diversity in settlerpopulations and colonial societies. This perspectiveemphasizes the contests for economic and politicalsupremacy within the colonies, such as the efforts ofthe Massachusetts Bay elite to ward off the challengesof religious “heretics” and the pressures that an increas-ingly restless lower class put on wealthy merchants andlarge landowners. Nowhere was internal conflict so

prevalent as in the ethnically diverse middle colonies,where factional antagonisms became the defining feature of public life.

The picture of colonial America that is emergingfrom all this new scholarship is of a society unique—and diverse—from inception. No longer simplyEurope transplanted, American colonial society by1700 is now viewed as an outgrowth of many inter-twining roots—of different European and Africanheritages, of varied encounters with native peoplesand a wilderness environment, and of complicatedmixtures of settler populations, each with its own distinctive set of ambitions.

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

settling the northern colonies...settling the northern colonies 1619–1700 god hath sifted a nation...

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