CHAPTER 3

Putting Down Roots

Opportunity and Oppression in Colonial Society
1619–1692

AMERICAN STORIES
A History of the United States
First Edition
Brands  Breen  Williams  Gross

Copyright 2009, Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman

 Sources of Stability:
New England Colonies of the
Seventeenth Century
• New Englanders replicated traditional
English social order
• Contrasted with experience in other English
colonies
• Explanation lies in development of Puritan
families
 Immigrant Families
and New Social Order
• Puritans believed God ordained the family
• Reproduced patriarchal English family structure
in New England
• Huge population growth caused by high life
expectancy more than high fertility
• Greater longevity in New England resulted in
“invention” of grandparents
• Multigenerational families strengthened social
stability
 Commonwealth of Families
• Most New Englanders married neighbors with
similar values
• Households produced their own needs and
surpluses
• New England towns were collections of
interrelated households
• Church membership associated with certain
families and church activities increasingly
reflected that
• Education provided by the family
 Women’s Lives
in Puritan New England
• Women’s roles
– Farm labor, although not necessarily same tasks as
men
– Often outnumbered men 2:1 in church membership
• Women could not control property
• Divorce difficult for a woman to obtain
• Both genders accommodated themselves to
roles they believed God ordained
Social Hierarchy in New England
• Absence of very rich necessitated creation of
new social order
• New England social order:
– Local gentry of prominent, pious families
– Large population of independent yeomen landowners
loyal to local community
– Small population of landless laborers, servants, poor
• Only moderate disparities of wealth
• Servitude was more an apprenticeship
 The Challenge of the Chesapeake
Environment

• Despite similarities in background and

timing with New England, Chesapeake
settlements were very different
• High death rate most important source of
distinctiveness of Chesapeake
 Family Life at Risk

• Normal family life impossible in Virginia

– Mostly young male indentured servants
– Most immigrants soon died
– In marriages, one spouse often died within seven
years
• Extended families common
• Mortality rates so high that without immigration,
population would have declined
 Women in Chesapeake Society

• Scarcity gave some women bargaining

power in marriage market
• Female indentured servants vulnerable to
sexual exploitation
• Childbearing extremely dangerous
• Chesapeake women died twenty years
earlier than women in New England
 The Structure of Planter
Society: The Gentry
• Tobacco the basis of Chesapeake wealth
• Large landowners had to have labor under
their control
• Great planters few but dominant
– Arrived with capital to invest in workers
– Amassed huge tracts of land
– Gentry intermarried and become colony’s elite
leaders
 The Structure of Planter
Society: The Freemen
• The largest class in Chesapeake society
• Most freed at the end of indenture
• Lived on the edge of poverty
 The Structure of Planter
Society: Indentured Servants
• Servitude a temporary status
• Conditions harsh
• Servants regarded their bondage as
slavery
• Planters feared rebellion
 The Structure of Planter
Society: Post-1680s Stability
• Before 1680, the rank of gentry was open
to people with capital
• Demographic shift after 1680 created
Creole elite
• Ownership of slaves consolidated planter
wealth and position
• Freemen found advancement more
difficult
 The Structure of Planter
Society: A Dispersed Population
• Large-scale tobacco cultivation required
– Great landholdings
– Ready access to water-borne commerce
• Result: population dispersed along great
tidal rivers
• Virginia a rural society devoid of towns
• Education system was seen as
unnecessary and got little attention
 Race and Freedom
in British America
• Indians decimated by disease
• European indentured servant pool waned
after 1660
• Enslaved Africans filled demand for labor
 Roots of Slavery
• First Africans came to Virginia in 1619
• Status of Africans in Virginia unclear for fifty
years
• Rising black population in Virginia after 1672
prompted stricter slave laws
– Africans defined as slaves for life
– Slave status passed on to children
– White masters possessed total control of slave life
and labor
– Mixing of races not tolerated
Origins and Destinations of African
Slaves, 1619-1760
 Constructing African American
Identities: Geography’s
Influence
• Slave experience differed from colony to
colony
• 60% of South Carolina population black
• Nearly half Virginia population black
• Blacks much less numerous in New
England and the Middle Colonies
 Constructing African American
Identities: African Initiatives
• Older black population tended to look
down on recent arrivals from Africa
• All Africans participated in creating an
African American culture
– Required an imaginative re-shaping of African
and European customs.
• By 1720, African population and culture
were self-sustaining
 Constructing African American
Identities: Slave Resistance
• Widespread resentment of debased status
• Armed resistance such as South Carolina’s
Stono Rebellion of 1739 a threat
• Black mariners linked African American
communities and brought news of outside
world to American slaves
 Rise of a Commercial Empire

• English leaders ignored colonies until

1650s
• Restored monarchy of Charles II
recognized value of colonial trade
• Navigation Acts passed to regulate,
protect, glean revenue from commerce
 Response to Economic
Competition
• “Mercantilism”
– One country’s gain is another country’s loss
– Countries gain by control of world’s scarce resources
• English trade regulations more ad hoc responses
to particular problems than coherent mercantilist
policy
• Varieties of motivation
– Crown wanted money
– English merchants wanted to exclude Dutch
– Parliament wanted stronger navy—encouraged
domestic shipbuilding industry
– Most people preferred more exports, less imports
 Regulating Colonial Trade:
The Navigation Act of 1660
• Ships engaged in English colonial trade
– Must be made in England (or America)
– Must carry a crew at least 75% English
• Enumerated goods only to English ports
– 1660 list included tobacco, sugar, cotton, indigo, dyes, ginger
– 1704-1705 molasses, rice, naval stores also
• Effects
– Encouraged ship building in England
– Made it harder for rivals to get certain goods
– Generated revenue for the crown
 Regulating Colonial Trade:
The Navigation Act of 1663
• The Staple Act
• Goods shipped to English colonies must
pass through England
• Increased price paid by colonial
consumers
 Regulating Colonial Trade:
Implementing the Acts
• Navigation Acts aimed at removing Dutch role in
English commerce
• Planters hurt by Navigation Acts
• New England merchants skirted laws
• English revisions tightened loopholes
• 1696—Admiralty Courts and Board of Trade
created
• Navigation Acts eventually benefited colonial
merchants
Colonial Factions Spark Political
Revolt, 1676-1691
• English colonies experienced unrest at the
end of the seventeenth century
• Unrest not social revolution but a contest
between gentry “ins” and “outs”
• Winners gained legitimacy for their rule
 Civil War in Virginia:
Bacon’s Rebellion—Beginnings
• Discontent with Governor Berkeley’s rule
– Green Spring faction controlled lucrative economic
activity
– Frontier population felt that Berkeley did not
protect them from Native Americans
• Nathaniel Bacon united this discontent into
rebellion in 1676
• Rebellion allowed small farmers, blacks and
women to join, demand reforms
 Civil War in Virginia:
Bacon’s Rebellion—Outcome
• Rebels burned capital, caused great disorder
• Governor William Berkeley regained control, but
was recalled to England
• Rebellion collapsed after Bacon’s death
• Gentry recovered positions and united over next
decades to oppose royal governors
The Glorious Revolution in the
Bay Colony: King Philip’s War
• Population divided by increased trade
– Brought non-Puritan settlers
– Navigation Acts inflicted direct royal presence
• 1675—Metacomet led Wampanoag-
Narragansett alliance against colonists
• Colonists struggled to unite, to defeat Indians
• Deaths totaled 1000+ Indians and colonists
The Glorious Revolution in the Bay
Colony: The Dominion of New
England
• 1684—King James II established
“Dominion of New England”
– Colonial charters annulled
– Colonies from Maine to New Jersey united
– Edmund Andros appointed governor, ruled
tyrannically
• 1689—news of James II’s overthrow
sparked rebellion in Massachusetts
 The Glorious Revolution in the
Bay Colony: Outcomes
• Andros deposed when word of revolution
in England reached New England
• Dominion of New England split up in 1691
• William III and Mary II gave
Massachusetts a new charter
– incorporated Plymouth
– Voting rights based on property and wealth,
not church membership
 Contagion of Witchcraft
• Charges of witchcraft common
– Accused witches thought to have made a compact with
the devil
• Salem panic of 1691 much larger in scope than
previous accusations
– Twenty victims dead before trials halted in late summer
of 1692
• Ministers outside Salem condemned practice of
using “Spectral Evidence” in trials
• Causes included church factionalism, economic
jealousy, misogyny, and fear of Native American
attack
 The Glorious Revolution in
New York
• Underlying tension between older Dutch elite
and newly wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchants
• 1689—news of James II’s overthrow prompted
crisis of authority in New York
• Jacob Leisler seized control
• Maintained position through 1690
• March 1691—Governor Henry Sloughter arrested
and executed Leisler
 The Glorious Revolution in
Maryland
• 1689—news prompted John Coode to lead revolt
against Catholic governor
• Coode’s rebellion approved by King William
• Maryland as Royal colony
– Maryland taken from Calvert control
– Anglican official church; Catholics barred from office
• 1715—proprietorship restored to the Protestant
fourth Lord Baltimore
 Local Aspirations within
an Atlantic Empire

• By 1700, England’s attitude toward the

colonies had changed dramatically
• Sectional differences within the colonies
were profound
• They were all part of Great Britain but had
little to do with each other