16I have acquired a lot of knowledge about the histo.docx

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I have acquired a lot of knowledge about the history of the
United States in this semester. However, there are three most
interesting facts that I’ve learned from the history of the
country. The firsts interesting knowledge is that South and
North America was occupied by Indians before Europeans
arrived. When the Europeans arrived to the United States, it was
not a wilderness. There are communities which inhabited the
land and called it their home. While the Europeans found a new
world the natives considered it an ancient homeland (Foner,
2013). I learnt this information from the course textbook as well
as from other external sources related to the coursework.
South and North America was inhabited by Indians and
contained irrigation systems, roads, cities as well as large
structures like the pyramid temples which until today inspire
wonder by their beauty. Tenochtitlan, the capital City of Aztec
Empire with a population of approximately 250,000 people was
considered to be one of the largest cities in the world in that
period. The Aztec empire is what toy is referred to as Mexico.
In the far south, was the Inca kingdom what is referred to as
Peru in the modern society. The kingdom’s dense population
was characterized by complex road and bridge systems.
In North America, Indian civilization had not developed the
centralized, scale or grandeur of the Inca and Aztec societies in
the south. However, the Indians in the North America lacked the
technology that the Europeans had such as gun power, machines
and metal tools as well as the scientific knowledge that helped
them to navigate in the sea. They were also illiterate although
some could make maps. This led to their conquest by the
Europeans. Nevertheless, the Indian societies had acquired

techniques of fishing, farming and hunting, established
structures of religious beliefs and political power and engaged
in extensive communication and trade networks.
This information is shocking because I thought that North and
South America were inhabited by white people before the
European arrived. It is also interesting how the Indian societies
had mastered various skills even without literacy. This
information is very important to my understanding of the
history of America since it helps understand were we have come
from and appreciate the efforts put in by our fore fathers to
realize the kind of life we live today. It also helps me to relate
the history of America with the culture and the lifestyle we
embrace today.
Some other interesting information I learnt in this course is that
there existed social classes in the colonial period. I learnt this
information from the course textbook as well as from other
external sources related to the coursework. As the colonial
society evolved, a group of elites emerged which dominated the
society and politics. The expansion of trade led to the
emergence of upper class merchants who were closely
associated with London firms or families. By eighteenth
century, the communication and trade between Britain and
American colonies intensified. Wealthy Americans wanted to be
like the British people and therefore adopted their behavior and
etiquette (Shi & Tindall, 2016).
On the other hand, poverty emerged representing the colonial
life of the eighteen century. While most colonists did not
consider slaves as part of their society, the number of people
living in impoverished conditions increased significantly.
Poverty became widespread among the free Americans. As the
colonists populations increased, land was becoming scarce
forcing many colonial males to seek employment in other
colonies or cities. This led to the increase of property less wage
earners in the cities. The poor were largely considered shiftless,
lazy and responsible for what they were going through.
There were also the middle ranks. Most of the free Americans

were in this class of the society which represented the people
living between the extremes of poverty and wealth (Merritt,
2017). Together with ethnic and racial diversities, this class
could be distinguished from the Europeans by the economic
autonomy and wide distribution of land. Most of them were
famers who owned various parcels of land. Women in this
period were considered the centre of family (Merritt, 2017).
They played a significant role in the household economy. The
society expected women to dedicate their lives in being good
wives to their husbands. With the colonial structure gaining
momentum, opportunities that existed before this period for
women decreased (Merritt, 2017).
This information is shocking because I would expect that the
issue of social class came with urbanization and civilization.
Being colonies of Europe, one would expect that Americans
would pull together and embrace unity to avoid being mistreated
by the Europeans. That was however not the case. This
information helps me to get a better understanding of the origin
of social class that exists in our current society. This also helps
me to understand the condition that led to the American
community of the colonial period to adopt such systems. By
gaining such historical knowledge I can be able to relate with
what is happening today in our society.
Some other interesting information I learnt in this course is the
changes that were brought by the war. The civil war brought in
significant transformation of the society and the American
government. I obtained this information from the course book as
well as other related secondary sources. This transformation in
the society was referred to as the second American
transformation. A good example was the change in status of
Blacks. During the civil, freedom contested nature than never
before. Although liberty was declared, it did not mean the same
thing for different people in the society (Gallagher, 2016).
To the people in the north, freedom meant respect on each other
and that each man enjoys the fruits of his labor. To the whites
in the South, this meant mastership and to do what they please

with the fruits of other people’s labor (Gallagher, 2016). The
war marked a new beginning for the black Americans as it
symbolized their equal status with all other Americans. The
civil war also influenced the protestant clergy to develop new
theories to justify that the war was not in vain. Religious
believes helped people cope with the consequences of the war
(Gallagher, 2016).
It is shocking that Americans had to learn the importance of
treating each other as equals and with respect through a civil
war which cost the lives of many people. This information is
very important to my understanding of the American history
since it provides insights on when people began respecting and
considering each other as equals. It also helps me to understand
why it is important to consider each other as equals in the
society. The information that I have learned in this course has
helped me to have a better understanding of where we have
come from.
References
Foner, E. (2013). Give Me Liberty! An American History:
Seagull Fourth Edition (Vol. 1). WW Norton & Company.
Shi, D. E., & Tindall, G. B. (2016). America: A narrative
history. WW Norton & Company.
Gallagher, G. W. (2016). The American Civil War: The War in
the East 1861-May 1863. Routledge.
Merritt, R. L. (2017). Nation-building in America: The colonial
years. In Nation Building in Comparative Contexts (pp. 56-72).
Routledge.

G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y !
A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n
B
W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y
N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N
E R I C F O N E R
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y !
W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its
founding in 1923, when William

Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published
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Copyright © 2014, 2012 by Eric Foner
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ISBN 978-0-393-92033-8 (pbk.)
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005), an accomplished
artist who lived
through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at
Columbia University, where
he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he
focuses on the Civil War
and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America.

Professor Foner’s publi-
cations include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology
of the Republican Party before the
Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but
Freedom: Emancipation and Its
Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution,
1863–1877; The Story of American Free-
dom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and
Reconstruction. His history of Recon-
struction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History,
the Bancroft Prize, and the
Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization
of American Historians
and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received
the Presidential Award for
Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most
recent book is The Fiery Trial:
Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Lincoln
Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and
the Pulitzer Prize.
A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
C O N T E N T S
Contents

vi i
1 . A N E W W O R L D . . . 1
THE FIRST AMERICANS . . . 3
Americas ... 3
Western Indians ... 6
Religion ... 7
European Views
of the Indians ... 10
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM .. . 11
and
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE . . . 13
Slavery in

CONTACT . . . 16
Conquest ... 17
THE SPANISH EMPIRE . . . 20
sts and Indians in
Spanish
and Profit ... 23
25
Revolt ... 27
Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of
the Indies
(1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19,
1681) ... 28
THE FRENCH AND DUTCH EMPIRES . . . 30
The
Religious

of European
Settlement ... 36
REVIEW .. . 37
2 . B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A ,
1 6 0 7 – 1 6 6 0 . . . 3 8
ENGLAND AND THE NEW WORLD . . . 40
The Social
ess Men ... 43
A b o u t t h e A u t h o r . . . v
L i s t o f M a p s , T a b l e s , a n d F i g u r e s . . . x v i i
i
P r e f a c e . . . x x
vii i
Contents
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH .. . 43

and
Transformation
of Indian Life ... 46
SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE .. . 47
Uprising o
and the
in
Maryland ... 52
THE NEW ENGLAND WAY .. . 53
Pilgrims at
Pl
State in
Puritan Massachusetts ... 58
NEW ENGLANDERS DIVIDED .. . 59
and Connecticut ... 60

Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson”
(1637),
and From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General
Court
(July 3, 1645) ... 62
A Growing
Commercial Society ... 66
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND FREEDOM ... 67
Civil War and
English
REVIEW .. . 71
3 . C R E A T I N G A N G L O - A M E R I C A , 1 6 6 0 – 1
7 5 0 . . . 7 2
GLOBAL COMPETITION AND THE EXPANSION OF
ENGLAND’S EMPIRE . . . 74

The Mercanti
Land in
Pennsylvania ... 79
ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY .. . 80
Slavery
Rise of
Labor in
Virginia ... 8
Contents
ix
COLONIES IN CRISIS . . . 86

The Salem Witch Trials ... 89
THE GROWTH OF COLONIAL AMERICA .. . 90
A Diverse Populatio
Voices of Freedom: From Memorial against Non-English
Immigration
(December 1727), and From Letter by a Swiss-German
Immigrant
to Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769) ... 92
Regional
An Atlantic World ... 98
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES . . . 99
in
the
the
-Century
... 102
REVIEW .. . 103
4 . S L A V E R Y , F R E E D O M , A N D T H E S T R U

G G L E F O R E M P I R E ,
T O 1 7 6 3 . . . 1 0 4
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE . . . 106
The Middle
Kingdom ... 110
avery in the North ...
112
SLAVE CULTURES AND SLAVE RESISTANCE .. . 113
Becoming African-
Colonial America
-
Slavery ... 115
AN EMPIRE OF FREEDOM .. . 116
Republican
THE PUBLIC SPHERE . . . 119
Rise of the
Assemblies .
Colonial Press ... 122

Zenger ... 123
THE GREAT AWAKENING .. . 125
The Preaching of Whitefield ...
Awakening’s Impact ... 126
IMPERIAL RIVALRIES . . . 127
French Empire ... 129
x
Contents
BATTLE FOR THE CONTINENT .. . 130
A World
Proclamation
Line ... 132

Voices of Freedom: From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763),
and
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,
or
Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) ... 134
137
REVIEW .. . 138
5 . T H E A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N , 1 7 6 3 –
1 7 8 3 . . . 1 3 9
THE CRISIS BEGINS . . . 140
The Regulators ... 145
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION .. . 145
The Townshend
Acts ... 148
THE COMING OF INDEPENDENCE .. . 149

Association ... 150
The Declaration
The Global
Declaration of Independence ... 155
Voices of Freedom: From Thomas Paine, Common Sense
(1776), and
From Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and
Consequences of
the American Revolution (1775) ... 156
SECURING INDEPENDENCE .. . 158
lution ...
REVIEW .. . 166
6 . T H E R E V O L U T I O N W I T H I N . . . 1 6 7

DEMOCRATIZING FREEDOM .. . 169
Nation ... 169
Constitutions ... 171
TOWARD RELIGIOUS TOLERATION .. . 172
Catholic Americans ..
173
Republicanism ... 175
Contents
xi
DEFINING ECONOMIC FREEDOM .. . 176
The Politics
THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY .. . 178

The Indians’
Revolution ... 181
SLAVERY AND THE REVOLUTION .. . 182
Abolition ... 183
Freedom ... 184
185
Voices of Freedom: From Abigail Adams to John Adams,
Braintree,
Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From Petitions of Slaves to the
Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777) ... 186
188
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY .. . 189
Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 190
REVIEW .. . 192

7 . F O U N D I N G A N A T I O N , 1 7 8 3 – 1 7 9 1 . . . 1
9 3
AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATION .. . 195
the West ...
Weaknesses ...
... 201
A NEW CONSTITUTION .. . 202
Democracy ... 203
Debate over Slavery
Document ... 207
THE RATIFICATION DEBATE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE
BILL
OF RIGHTS . . . 208
Anti-
Federalists ... 209
Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the

American
Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist
Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787) ... 210
The Bill of Rights ... 214
“WE THE PEOPLE” . . . 215
Principles of
Freedom ... 219
REVIEW .. . 220
xii
Contents
8 . S E C U R I N G T H E R E P U B L I C , 1 7 9 1 – 1 8 1
5 . . . 2 2 1
POLITICS IN AN AGE OF PASSION .. . 222
of Opposition ...

Jefferson-
Revolution
Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the
Equality of
the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-
Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) ... 228
The Rights of Women ... 230
THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY .. . 231
The
of
JEFFERSON IN POWER .. . 236
Lewis and

Barbary Wars ... 241
242
THE “SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE” . . . 243
The War’s
REVIEW .. . 248
9 . T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N , 1 8 0 0 – 1 8 4
0 . . . 2 4 9
A NEW ECONOMY .. . 251
Railroads
The Cotton
Kingdom ... 257
MARKET SOCIETY .. . 259
Commercial Farmers ..
The Factory
Immigration ...

Law ... 266
THE FREE INDIVIDUAL .. . 267
The West and
269
Voices of Freedom: From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The
American
Scholar” (1837), and From “Factory Life as It Is, by an
Operative”
(1845) ... 270
The Emergence of Mormonism ... 272
Contents
xi i i
THE LIMITS OF PROSPERITY . . . 273
Early Labor

REVIEW .. . 279
1 0 . D E M O C R A C Y I N A M E R I C A , 1 8 1 5 – 1 8 4
0 . . . 2 8 0
THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY .. . 281
Tocqueville on
The Limits of
NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS . . . 285
The Panic
NATION, SECTION, AND PARTY .. . 289
The United States and the Latin American Wars of
Independence ... 289
Voices of Freedom: From President James Monroe, Annual
Message
to Congress (1823), and From John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition
on

Government” (ca. 1845) ... 292
Power” ... 294
Election
of 1828 ... 295
THE AGE OF JACKSON .. . 296
Public and
299
Crisis ... 301
Indians ... 302
THE BANK WAR AND AFTER .. . 304
Panic
of 1840 ... 307
REVIEW .. . 310
1 1 . T H E P E C U L I A R I N S T I T U T I O N . . . 3 1 1

THE OLD SOUTH .. . 312
Slavery
and the
Plain Folk
Paternalist
in the
y ... 320
xiv
Contents
LIFE UNDER SLAVERY .. . 321
Slavery in the
325
SLAVE CULTURE .. . 326

Gender Roles
for Liberty ... 329
RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY .. . 330
Forms of Resistance ... 330
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph
Long
(1840), and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) ... 332
Rebellion ... 336
REVIEW .. . 338
1 2 . A N A G E O F R E F O R M , 1 8 2 0 – 1 8 4 0 . . . 3
3 9
THE REFORM IMPULSE .. . 340
Invention of the
THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY .. . 348

Spreading the
..
New Vision of America ... 352
BLACK AND WHITE ABOLITIONISM .. . 353
Standing ... 354
THE ORIGINS OF FEMINISM .. . 356
Spe
Women and
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The
Liberator
(August 2, 1837), and From Frederick Douglass, Speech on July
5,
1852, Rochester, New York ... 360
REVIEW .. . 365

1 3 . A H O U S E D I V I D E D , 1 8 4 0 – 1 8 6 1 . . . 3 6
6
FRUITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY .. . 368
Continental Expansi
Mexico and
of 1844 ... 370
Contents
xv
Gold-Rush
A DOSE OF ARSENIC . . . 378
Crisis and
The
Fugitive Slave
The Kansas-

Nebraska Act ... 382
THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY .. . 383
Know-
“Bleeding Kansas”
and the Election of 1856 ... 387
THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN .. . 388
Lincoln-
Ferry ... 391
Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
... 392
1860 ... 395
THE IMPENDING CRISIS . . . 397
nd
the War Came ... 399
REVIEW .. . 401

1 4 . A N E W B I R T H O F F R E E D O M : T H E C I V
I L W A R ,
1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6 5 . . . 4 0 2
THE FIRST MODERN WAR .. . 403
Military
East,
THE COMING OF EMANCIPATION .. . 410
Slavery and the War
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION .. . 417
Liberty, Union, and Natio
Religion ... 419
Voices of Freedom: From Letter of Thomas F. Drayton (April
17,
1861), and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair,

Baltimore (April 18, 1864) ... 420
’s Transformation ...
Women and
xvi
Contents
THE CONFEDERATE NATION .. . 428
Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 431
TURNING POINTS . . . 431
Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 431
REHEARSALS FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THE END

OF THE WAR .. . 434
in the West
Victory at Last ...
American History ... 438
REVIEW .. . 440
1 5 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ” : R E C O N S T R U
C T I O N ,
1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 . . . 4 4 1
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM .. . 443
Families in Freedom ... 4
Political
Masters without
Freedmen’s Bureau
White
Farmer ... 449
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of
the
Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A
Sharecropping

Contract (1866) ... 450
Aftermath of Slavery ... 453
THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION .. . 454
Andr
Reconstruction ...
... 457
Election
“Great
461
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH .. . 462
The Black Officeholder ...
464
Republicans in
THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION .. . 466

or” ...
467
and Bargain
REVIEW .. . 474
Contents
xvii
A P P E N D I X
DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776) ... A-2
The Constitution of The United States (1787) ... A-5
From George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) ... A-17
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments And Resolutions
(1848) ... A-22
From Frederick Douglass’s “What, To the Slave, Is The Fourth
Of July?”

Speech (1852) ... A-25
The Gettysburg Address (1863) ... A-29
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865) ... A-30
The Populist Platform of 1892 ... A-31
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) ... A-34
From The Program For The March On Washington For Jobs And
Freedom
(1963) ... A-37
Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) ... A-38
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) ... A-42
TABLES AND FIGURES
Presidential Elections ... A-46
Admission of States ... A-54
Population of the United States ... A-55
Historical Statistics of The United States:
Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed As A
Percentage
of The Labor Force, 1800–2010 ... A-56
Immigration, By Origin ... A-56
Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013 ... A-57

Union Membership As A Percentage Of Nonagricultural
Employment,
1880–2012 ... A-57
Voter Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012 ... A-57
Birthrate, 1820–2011 ... A-57
S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G S ... A - 5 9
G L O S S A R Y ... A - 6 7
C R E D I T S ... A - 9 5
I N D E X ... A - 9 9
xvii i
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
M A P S
CHAPTER 1
The First Americans ... 4
Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500 ... 8
The Old World on the Eve of American
Colonization, ca. 1500 ... 15

Voyages of Discovery ... 18
Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the
New World ... 26
The New World—New France and New
Netherland, ca. 1650 ... 31
CHAPTER 2
English Settlement in the Chesapeake,
ca. 1650 ... 48
English Settlement in New England,
ca. 1640 ... 59
CHAPTER 3
Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and
Early Eighteenth Centuries ... 76
European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the
Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760 ... 94
CHAPTER 4
Atlantic Trading Routes ... 107
The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World,

1460–1770 ... 108
European Empires in North America,
ca. 1750 ... 128
Eastern North America after the Peace of
Paris, 1763 ... 133
CHAPTER 5
The Revolutionary War in the North,
1775–1781 ... 160
The Revolutionary War in the South,
1775–1781 ... 163
North America, 1783 ... 164
CHAPTER 6
Loyalism in the American Revolution ... 180
CHAPTER 7
Western Lands, 1782–1802 ... 197
Western Ordinances, 1785–1787 ... 199
Ratification of the Constitution ... 213
CHAPTER 8

The Presidential Election of 1800 ... 234
The Louisiana Purchase ... 239
The War of 1812 ... 245
CHAPTER 9
The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals,
1840 ... 253
Travel Times from New York City in 1800
and 1830 ... 256
The Market Revolution: The Spread of
Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840 ... 258
Cotton Mills, 1820s ... 263
CHAPTER 10
The Missouri Compromise, 1820 ... 289
Indian Removals, 1830–1840 ... 302
CHAPTER 11

Slave Population, 1860 ... 315
Size of Slaveholdings, 1860 ... 319
Major Crops of the South, 1860 ... 325
Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century
Atlantic World ... 331
CHAPTER 12
Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth
Century ... 342
CHAPTER 13
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s ... 369
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 ... 374
Continental Expansion through 1853 ... 375
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 ... 383
Lists of Maps, Tables, and Figures
xix
The Railroad Network, 1850s ... 384

CHAPTER 14
The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861 ...
404
The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862 ... 409
The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862 ... 411
The Emancipation Proclamation ... 414
The Civil War, 1863 ... 432
The Civil War, Late 1864–1865 ... 437
CHAPTER 15
The Barrow Plantation ... 446
Sharecropping in the South,
1880 ... 452
Reconstruction in the South,
1867–1877 ... 471

T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S
CHAPTER 1
Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500 ... 24
Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations:
The World, ca. 1500 ... 25
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants
to British North American Colonies,
1700–1775 ... 91
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of
Total Population of Original Thirteen
Colonies, 1770 ... 112
CHAPTER 7
Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population
of the United States, 1790 ... 217
CHAPTER 9

Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western
States, 1800–1850 (Excluding Indians)... 257
Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by
Five-Year Period ... 264
Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850 ... 265
CHAPTER 11
Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population ... 314
Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850 (in Round
Numbers) ... 318
CHAPTER 14
Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus
Confederacy ... 407
xx
Preface
P R E FA C E
Since it originally appeared late in 2004, Give Me Liberty! An
American History has gone through three editions and been
adopted for use in survey courses at close to one thousand two-

and four-year colleges
in the United States, as well as a good number overseas. Of
course, I am
extremely gratified by this response. The book offers students a
clear narra-
tive of American history from the earliest days of European
exploration and
conquest of the New World to the first decade of the twenty-
first century. Its
central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
The comments I have received from instructors and students
encour-
age me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in the
classroom. These
comments have also included many valuable suggestions,
ranging from
corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about
subjects
that need more extensive treatment. In preparing new editions
of the book
I have tried to take these suggestions into account, as well as
incorporating
the insights of recent historical scholarship.
Since the original edition was written, I have frequently been
asked to
produce a more succinct version of the textbook, which now
runs to some
1,200 pages. This Brief Edition is a response to these requests.
The text of the
current volume is about one-third shorter than the full version.
The result, I
believe, is a book more suited to use in one-semester survey
courses, classes

Preface
xxi
where the instructor wishes to supplement the text with
additional read-
ings, and in other situations where a briefer volume is desirable.
Since some publishers have been known to assign the task of
reduction
in cases like this to editors rather than the actual author, I wish
to empha-
size that I did all the cutting and necessary rewriting for this
Brief Edition
myself. My guiding principle was to preserve the coverage,
structure, and
emphases of the regular edition and to compress the book by
eliminating
details of secondary importance, streamlining the narrative of
events, and
avoiding unnecessary repetition. While the book is significantly
shorter,
no subject treated in the full edition has been eliminated
entirely and noth-
ing essential, I believe, has been sacrificed. The sequence of
chapters and
subjects remains the same, and the freedom theme is present and
operative
throughout.
In abridging the textbook I have retained the original
interpretive
framework as well as the new emphases added when the second

and third
editions of the book were published. The second edition
incorporated new
material about the history of Native Americans, an area of
American his-
tory that has been the subject of significant new scholarship in
the past
few years. It also devoted greater attention to the history of
immigration and
the controversies surrounding it—issues of considerable
relevance to Amer-
ican social and political life today.
The most significant change in the third edition reflected my
desire to
place American history more fully in a global context. In the
past few years,
scholars writing about the American past have sought to
delineate the influ-
ences of the United States on the rest of the world as well as the
global devel-
opments that have helped to shape the course of events here at
home. They
have also devoted greater attention to transnational processes—
the expan-
sion of empires, international labor migrations, the rise and fall
of slavery,
the globalization of economic enterprise—that cannot be
understood solely
within the confines of one country’s national boundaries.
Without seek-
ing in any way to homogenize the history of individual nations
or neglect
the domestic forces that have shaped American development,
this edition
retains this emphasis.

The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my
desire
to integrate more fully into the narrative the history of
American religion.
Today, this is a thriving subfield of American historical writing,
partly
because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates
over the
relations between government and religion and over the
definition of reli-
gious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American
experience.
The Brief Edition also employs a bright new design for the text
and its vari-
ous elements. The popular Voices of Freedom feature—a pair of
excerpts
from primary source documents in each chapter that illuminate
divergent
interpretations of freedom—is present here. So too are the
useful chapter
xxii
Preface
opening focus questions, which appear in the running heads of
the relevant
text pages as well. There are chapter opening chronologies and
end-of-
chapter review pages with questions and key terms. As a new
feature in the
Brief Edition there are marginal glosses in the text pages that

are meant to
highlight key points and indicate the chapter structure for
students. They
are also useful means for review. The Brief Edition features
more than
400 illustrations and over 100 captioned maps in easy to read
four-color
renditions. The Further Readings sections appear in the
Appendix along
with the Glossary and the collection of key documents. The
Brief Edition
is fully supported by the same array of print and electronic
supplements
that support the other editions of Give Me Liberty! These
materials have been
revised to match the content of the Brief Edition.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history.
On the one
hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing
events of even
the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing
history as a bur-
den to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other
hand, like
many other peoples, Americans have always looked to history
for a sense
of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This
is why so
many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family
trees and
why they visit historical museums and National Park Service
historical
sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will
help to con-
vince readers with all degrees of interest that history does

matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that
history
“does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the
contrary,
the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it
within us, . . .
[that] history is literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin
recognized,
the power of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a
political
democracy like the United States, whose government is
designed to rest on
the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is
essential—not
only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and
writing of history,
but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple
lessons or imme-
diate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of
immigration to
the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and
aspirations associated
with it, for example, does not tell us what current immigration
policy ought
to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of
understanding which
approaches have worked and which have not—essential
information for the
formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to
remember
about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a
group of inter-

pretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of
history is con-
stantly changing. There is nothing unusual in the fact that each
generation
rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree
among
Preface
xxii i
themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War
or the rea-
sons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each
generation asks dif-
ferent questions of the past, each generation formulates
different answers.
The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of
the scope
of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by
earlier scholars,
including women, African-Americans, working people, and
others, have
received unprecedented attention from historians. New
subfields—social
history, cultural history, and family history among them—have
taken their
place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature
to pres-
ent an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past,
paying due

attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans
while in no
way neglecting the events and processes Americans have
experienced in
common. It devotes serious attention to political, social,
cultural, and eco-
nomic history, and to their interconnections. The narrative
brings together
major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of
ordinary peo-
ple who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich
cast of char-
acters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman
suffrage, from
Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe
meaning into
emancipation during and after the Civil War.
The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives
shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that
make up
the American experience. This approach builds on that of my
earlier book,
The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me
Liberty! places events
and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the
structure of
the introductory survey course.
Freedom, and battles to define its meaning, has long been
central to
my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses
on the
nineteenth century and especially the era of Civil War and
Reconstruction
(1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore

the nation apart
and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights
the former
slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have
found that
attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of
differ-
ent groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a
way of mak-
ing sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that
pivotal era.
I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole.
No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves
as
individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in
our politi-
cal language, freedom—or liberty, with which it is almost
always used
interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the record of our
history and the
language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence
lists liberty
among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces
its purpose
xxiv
Preface
as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the
Civil War to
bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four

Freedoms,
and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of
liberty has
been represented by liberty poles, liberty caps, and statues of
liberty, and
acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running
away
from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every
man in the
street, white, black, red or yellow,” wrote the educator and
statesman Ralph
Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . .
‘the cradle of
liberty.’”
The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be
mislead-
ing. Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single
unchanging defi-
nition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a
story of debates,
disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the
American Revo-
lution, the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently
transformed the
idea of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of
Americans to
enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been
constructed not
only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on
plantations and
picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.
Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both
a real-
ity and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans,

a cruel
mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what some
scholars call a
“habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived
out but rarely
analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant
goal that has
inspired great sacrifice.
Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of
freedom that
have been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of
freedom; (2) the
social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the
boundaries of free-
dom that determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is
not. All have
changed over time.
In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom
was pri-
marily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—including the
right of a com-
munity to be governed by laws to which its representatives had
consented
and of individuals to engage in religious worship without
governmental
interference. In the nineteenth century, freedom came to be
closely identi-
fied with each person’s opportunity to develop to the fullest his
or her innate
talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public
and private
life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom.
This develop-
ment was encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer

marketplace
which offered Americans an unprecedented array of goods with
which to
satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial
chapter in the
history of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was
extended
into virtually every realm, from attire and “lifestyle” to
relations between
Preface
xxv
the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life have
been drawn into
Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom.
A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social
con-
ditions necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of
economic
institutions and relationships best encourage individual
freedom? In the
colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the
answer
centered on economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification
of the inde-
pendent small producer—the farmer, skilled craftsman, or
shopkeeper—
who did not have to depend on another person for his
livelihood. As the
industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic

freedom came to
the fore: “liberty of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial
freedom” (a say
in corporate decision making) in the Progressive era, economic
security
during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy
mass consump-
tion within a market economy.
The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme,
have
inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history.
Although
founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all
humanity, the
United States for much of its history deprived many of its own
people of free-
dom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to
freedom as white
Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of
all Ameri-
cans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by
race, gender,
class, and in other ways.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has
fre-
quently been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era
and nine-
teenth century, expanding freedom for many Americans rested
on the
lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate
position
of women—for others. By the same token, it has been through
battles at the
boundaries—the efforts of racial minorities, women, and others

to secure
greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of freedom
have been
deepened and the concept extended into new realms.
Time and again in American history, freedom has been
transformed
by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of
freedom as a
universal birthright owes much to abolitionists who sought to
extend the
blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who
insisted on full
recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal
protection of the
law without regard to race, which became a central element of
American
freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and Civil War and
was rein-
vigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which
called itself the
“freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by
labor radicals
and birth control advocates in the first part of the twentieth
century helped
to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all
Americans.
Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of
aspirations.
At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry
of the
xxvi

Preface
powerless and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps
to bind
our culture together and exposes the contradictions between
what Amer-
ica claims to be and what it sometimes has been. American
history is not
a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater
freedom. As
the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the
Civil War,
“revolutions may go backward.” While freedom can be
achieved, it may also
be taken away. This happened, for example, when the equal
rights granted
to former slaves immediately after the Civil War were
essentially nullified
during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth
century, the
price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a
central
role in our political and social life and thought. It is invoked by
individuals
and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization
to those who
seek to export American freedom overseas. As with the longer
version of
the book, I hope that this Brief Edition of Give Me Liberty! will
offer begin-
ning students a clear account of the course of American history,
and of its

central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied,
contentious, and
ever-changing as America itself.
Preface
xxvii
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative
books, in that
every writer builds on the research and writing of previous
scholars. This
is especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American
experience,
over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the
innumerable histo-
rians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The
Suggested
Reading list in the Appendix offers only a brief introduction to
the vast body
of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this
book. More
specifically, however, I wish to thank the following scholars,
who gener-
ously read portions of this work and offered valuable comments,
criticisms,
and suggestions:
Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University
Mary E. Adams, City College of San Francisco
Jeff Adler, University of Florida

David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University
John Barr, Lone Star College, Kingwood
Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College
James Broussard, Lebanon Valley College
Michael Bryan, Greenville Technical College
Stephanie Cole, The University of Texas at Arlington
Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College
Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College
Beverly Gage, Yale University
Monica Gisolfi, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Adam Goudsouzian, University of Memphis
Mike Green, Community College of Southern Nevada
Vanessa Gunther, California State University, Fullerton
David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky
Brian Harding, Mott Community College
Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
April Holm, University of Mississippi
David Hsiung, Juniata College
James Karmel, Harford Community College
Kelly Knight, Penn State University
Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College
Jeffrey K. Lucas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Tina Margolis, Westchester Community College
Kent McGaughy, HCC Northwest College
James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville
Gil Montemayor, McLennan Community College
Jonathan Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College
Robert M. O’Brien, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
xxvii i
Preface

Joseph Palermo, California State University, Sacramento
Ann Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara
Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University
Indianapolis
Esther Robinson, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernadino
Diane Sager, Maple Woods Community College
John Shaw, Portland Community College
Mark Spencer, Brock University
David Stebenne, Ohio State University
Judith Stein, City College, City University of New York
George Stevens, Duchess Community College
Robert Tinkler, California State University, Chico
Elaine Thompson, Louisiana Tech University
David Weiman, Barnard College
William Young, Maple Woods Community College
I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia
University
Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin
American his-
tory; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many
suggestions for
improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and
the history of
the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice
on treating the
history of the environment.
I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia
Univer-
sity’s Department of History who helped with this project.
Theresa Ventura
offered invaluable assistance in gathering material for the new
sections plac-
ing American history in a global context. April Holm provided

similar assis-
tance for new coverage in this edition of the history of
American religion and
debates over religious freedom. James Delbourgo conducted
research for
the chapters on the colonial era. Beverly Gage did the same for
the twenti-
eth century. Daniel Freund provided all-round research
assistance. Victoria
Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank
my colleagues
Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brinkley for offering advice and
encourage-
ment throughout the writing of this book.
Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social
History
Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable
online resources
for the study of American history. Nancy Robertson at IUIPUI
did a superb
job revising and enhancing the in-book pedagogy. Monica
Gisolfi (Univer-
sity of North Carolina, Wilmington) and Robert Tinkler
(California State
University, Chico) did excellent work on the Instructor’s
Manual and Test
Bank. Kathleen Thomas (University of Wisconsin, Stout) helped
greatly in
the revisions of the companion media packages.
Preface

xxix
At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal
editor—
patient, encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I
would also
like to thank Steve’s assistants, Justin Cahill and Penelope Lin,
for their
indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the
project; Ellen
Lohman and Debbie Nichols for their careful copyediting and
proof read-
ing work. Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri for their
resourceful atten-
tion to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-
Yee Lai for
their refinements of the book design; Mike Fodera and Debra
Morton-Hoyt
for splendid work on the covers for the Fourth Edition; Kim Yi
for keep-
ing the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them
together;
Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production;
Steve Hoge for
orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the
textbook; Jessica
Brannon-Wranosky, Texas A&M University–Commerce, our
digital media
author for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Volker
Janssen, Cali-
fornia State University, Fullerton, for the helpful new online
reading exer-
cises; Nicole Netherton, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their
alert reads
of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping
establish Give Me

Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and
Julia Reidhead
for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned
publisher ded-
icated to excellence in its work.
Many students may have heard stories of how publishing
companies
alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to
maximize sales
and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can
honestly say that
W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and,
apart from the
usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at
all. For this
I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the
interpretations pre-
sented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book
of this length
can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me
corrections at
[email protected]
My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn
Garafola,
for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a
project that con-
sumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my
daughter,
Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as
it was writ-
ten and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the
book’s clarity,
logic, and grammar.
Eric Foner

New York City
July 2013
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y !
C H A P T E R 1
A
N E W W O R L D
7000 BC Agriculture developed in
Mexico and Andes
900– Hopi and Zuni tribes build
1200 AD planned towns
1200 Cahokia city-empire along

the Mississippi
1400s Iroquois League
established
1434 Portuguese explore sub-
Saharan African Coast
1487 Bartolomeu Dias reaches
the Cape of Good Hope
1492 Reconquista of Spain
Columbus’s first voyage to
the Americas
1498 Vasco da Gama sails to the
Indian Ocean
1500 Pedro Cabral claims Brazil
for Portugal
1502 First African slaves trans-
ported to the Caribbean
islands
1517 Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five
Theses
1519 Hernán Cortés arrives in
Mexico
1528 Las Casas’s History of the
Indies
1530s Pizarro’s conquest of Peru

1542 Spain promulgates the New
Laws
1608 Champlain establishes
Quebec
1609 Hudson claims New
Netherland
1610 Santa Fe established
1680 Pueblo Revolt
A
N E W W O R L D
C H A P T E R 1
France Bringing the Faith to the Indians
of New France. European nations
justified colonization with the argument
that they were bringing Christianity—
without which freedom was impossible—
to Native Americans. In this painting
from the 1670s, an Indian kneels before
a female representation of France. Both

hold a painting of the Trinity.
A New World2
What were the major pat-
terns of Native American
life in North America
before Europeans arrived?
How did Indian and Euro-
pean ideas of freedom dif-
fer on the eve of contact?
What impelled European
explorers to look west
across the Atlantic?
What happened when the
peoples of the Americas
came in contact with
Europeans?
What were the chief

features of the Spanish
empire in America?
What were the chief fea-
tures of the French and
Dutch empires in North
America?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
T he discovery of America,” the British writer Adam Smith
announced in his celebrated work The Wealth of Nations
(1776), was one of “the two greatest and most important events
recorded
in the history of mankind.” Historians no longer use the word
“discovery”
to describe the European exploration, conquest, and
colonization of
a hemisphere already home to millions of people. But there can
be no
doubt that when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the
West Indian
islands in 1492, he set in motion some of the most pivotal
developments
in human history. Immense changes soon followed in both the
Old and
New Worlds; the consequences of these changes are still with us
today.
The peoples of the American continents and Europe, previously
unaware of each other’s existence, were thrown into continuous

interaction.
Crops new to each hemisphere crossed the Atlantic, reshaping
diets and
transforming the natural environment. Because of their long
isolation, the
inhabitants of North and South America had developed no
immunity to
the germs that also accompanied the colonizers. As a result,
they suffered
a series of devastating epidemics, the greatest population
catastrophe
in human history. Within a decade of Columbus’s voyage, a
fourth
continent—Africa—found itself drawn into the new Atlantic
system of
trade and population movement. In Africa, Europeans found a
supply of
unfree labor that enabled them to exploit the fertile lands of the
Western
Hemisphere. Indeed, of approximately 10 million men, women,
and
children who crossed from the Old World to the New between
1492 and
1820, the vast majority, about 7.7 million, were African slaves.
From the vantage point of 1776, the year the United States
declared
itself an independent nation, it seemed to Adam Smith that the
“discovery”
of America had produced both great “benefits” and great
“misfortunes.”
To the nations of western Europe, the development of American
colonies
brought an era of “splendor and glory.” Smith also noted,
however, that
to the “natives” of the Americas the years since 1492 had been

ones of
“dreadful misfortunes” and “every sort of injustice.” And for
millions
of Africans, the settlement of America meant a descent into the
abyss
of slavery.
Long before Columbus sailed, Europeans had dreamed of a land
of abundance, riches, and ease beyond the western horizon.
Europeans
envisioned America as a religious refuge, a society of equals, a
source
of power and glory. They searched the New World for golden
cities and
fountains of eternal youth. Some of these dreams would indeed
be fulfilled.
To many European settlers, America offered a far greater
chance to own
land and worship as they pleased than existed in Europe, with
its rigid,
unequal social order and official churches. Yet the New World
also became
3T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North
America before Europeans arrived?
the site of many forms of unfree labor, including indentured
servitude,
forced labor, and one of the most brutal and unjust systems,
plantation
slavery. The conquest and settlement of the Western
Hemisphere opened

new chapters in the long histories of both freedom and slavery.
T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
The Settling of the Americas
The residents of the Americas were no more a single group than
Europeans
or Africans. They spoke hundreds of different languages and
lived in
numerous kinds of societies. Most, however, were descended
from bands
of hunters and fishers who had crossed the Bering Strait via a
land bridge
at various times between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago—the
exact dates
are hotly debated by archaeologists.
The New World was new to Europeans but an ancient homeland
to those who already lived there. The hemisphere had witnessed
many
changes during its human history. First, the early inhabitants
and their
descendants spread across the two continents, reaching the tip
of South
America perhaps 11,000 years ago. As the climate warmed, they
faced a
food crisis as the immense animals they hunted, including
woolly mam-
moths and giant bison, became extinct. Around 9,000 years ago,
at the
same time that agriculture was being developed in the Near
East, it also
emerged in modern-day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread
to other
parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible.

Indian Societies of the Americas
North and South America were hardly an empty wilderness
when
Europeans arrived. The hemisphere contained cities, roads,
irrigation
systems, extensive trade networks, and large structures such as
the
pyramid-temples whose beauty still inspires wonder. With a
population
close to 250,000, Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire
in what
is now Mexico, was one of the world’s largest cities. Farther
south lay the
Inca kingdom, centered in modern-day Peru. Its population of
perhaps
12 million was linked by a complex system of roads and bridges
that
extended 2,000 miles along the Andes mountain chain.
Indian civilizations in North America had not developed the
scale, gran-
deur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and Inca societies
to their south.
Emergence of agriculture
Roads, trade networks, and
irrigation systems
Tenochtitlán

Monte Alban
Poverty Point
Chichen Itzá
Chaco
Canyon
Cahokia
Palenque
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
CENTRAL AMERICA
Chukc h i
Pe n insu la
Yucatán
Pen ins u la
Aleut ian I s lands
INCAS
MAY
ANS
MOHAWK
ONEIDA
CAYUGA

SENECA
ONONDAGA
CHEROKEE
HOPI
ZUNI
PUEBLO CHICKASAW
CHOCTAW
AZTECS
Be
rin
g St
rait
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Atlantic Ocean
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
500
500

1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
Possible migration routes
Oh
io Ri
ve
r
M
ississippi R.
T H E F I R S T A M E R I C A N S
A map illustrating the probable routes by which the first
Americans settled the Western Hemisphere at various times
between 15,000
and 60,000 years ago.
North American Indians lacked the technologies Europeans had
mastered,
such as metal tools and machines, gunpowder, and the scientific
knowledge
necessary for long-distance navigation. No society north of

Mexico had
achieved literacy (although some made maps on bark and animal
hides).
Their “backwardness” became a central justification for
European conquest.
But, over time, Indian societies had perfected techniques of
farming, hunt-
ing, and fishing, developed structures of political power and
religious belief,
and engaged in far-reaching networks of trade and
communication.
Mound Builders of the Mississippi
River Valley
Remarkable physical remains still exist from some of the early
civilizations
in North America. Around 3,500 years ago, before Egyptians
built the
pyramids, Native Americans constructed a large community
centered on a
series of giant semicircular mounds on a bluff overlooking the
Mississippi
River in present-day Louisiana. Known today as Poverty Point,
it was a
commercial and governmental center whose residents
established trade
routes throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of
the
Ohio River valley, called “mound builders” by eighteenth-
century set-
tlers who encountered the large earthen burial mounds they
created, had
traded across half the continent. After their decline, another

culture flour-
ished in the Mississippi River valley, centered on the city of
Cahokia near
present-day St. Louis, a fortified community with between
10,000 and
Map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán
and the Gulf of Mexico, probably
produced by a Spanish conquistador
and published in 1524 in an edition of
the letters of Hernán Cortés. The map
shows the city’s complex system of
canals, bridges, and dams, with the
Great Temple at the center. Gardens
and a zoo are also visible.
“Mound builders”
Justification for conquest
30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200. It stood as the largest
settled com-
munity in what is now the United States until surpassed in
population by

New York and Philadelphia around 1800.
Western Indians
In the arid northeastern area of present-day Arizona, the Hopi
and Zuni
and their ancestors engaged in settled village life for over 3,000
years.
During the peak of the region’s culture, between the years 900
and 1200,
these peoples built great planned towns with large multiple-
family dwell-
ings in local canyons, constructed dams and canals to gather and
distribute
water, and conducted trade with groups as far away as central
Mexico and
the Mississippi River valley. The largest of their structures,
Pueblo Bonita,
in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, stood five stories high and had
over 600
rooms. Not until the 1880s was a dwelling of comparable size
constructed
in the United States.
After the decline of these communities, probably because of
drought,
survivors moved to the south and east, where they established
villages and
perfected the techniques of desert farming. These were the
people Spanish
explorers called the Pueblo Indians (because they lived in small
villages,
or pueblos, when the Spanish first encountered them in the
sixteenth cen-
tury). On the Pacific coast, another densely populated region,
hundreds

of distinct groups resided in independent villages and lived
primarily by
fishing, hunting sea mammals, and gathering wild plants and
nuts.
Indians of Eastern North
America
In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes
inhabited towns and villages scattered from
the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada.
They lived on corn, squash, and beans, sup-
plemented by fishing and hunting deer, tur-
keys, and other animals. Indian trade routes
crisscrossed the eastern part of the continent.
Tribes frequently warred with one another to
obtain goods, seize captives, or take revenge
for the killing of relatives. They conducted
diplomacy and made peace. Little in the
way of centralized authority existed until,
in the fifteenth century, various leagues or
Village life and trade
A modern aerial photograph of the
ruins of Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco
Canyon in present-day New Mexico.
The rectangular structures are the
foundations of dwellings, and the
circular ones are kivas, or places

of religious worship.
confederations emerged in an effort to bring order to local
regions. In the
Southeast, the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw each united
dozens of
towns in loose alliances. In present-day New York and
Pennsylvania, five
Iroquois peoples—the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and
Onondaga—
formed a Great League of Peace, bringing a period of stability
to the area.
The most striking feature of Native American society at the
time
Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each group had its
own political
system and set of religious beliefs, and North America was
home to liter-
ally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Indians did
not think
of themselves as a single unified people, an idea invented by
Europeans
and only many years later adopted by Indians themselves.
Indian identity
centered on the immediate social group—a tribe, village,
chiefdom, or con-
federacy. When Europeans first arrived, many Indians saw them
as simply

one group among many. The sharp dichotomy between Indians
and “white”
persons did not emerge until later in the colonial era.
Native American Religion
Nonetheless, the diverse Indian societies of North America did
share cer-
tain common characteristics. Their lives were steeped in
religious ceremo-
nies often directly related to farming and hunting. Spiritual
power, they
Diversity of Native American
society
The Village of Secoton, by John
White, an English artist who spent
a year on the Outer Banks of North
Carolina in 1585–1586 as part of an
expedition sponsored by Sir Walter
Raleigh. A central street links houses
surrounded by fields of corn. In the
lower part, dancing Indians take part
in a religious ceremony.

INUIT
INUIT
ALGONQUIAN
MICMAC
PENOBSCOT
ABENAKI
HURON
NEUTRAL
ERIE
IROQUOIS
SUSQUEHANNOCK
NARRAGANSETT
WAMPANOAG
PEQUOT
MOHEGAN
CREE
CHIPPEWA
CHIPPEWA
OTTOWAMENOMINEE

WINNEBAGO
POTAWATOMI
ASSINIBOINE
CHEYENNE SIOUX
TLINGIT
TSHIMSHIAN
KWAKIUTLS
NOOTKIN SHUSWAP
KOOTENAY
BLACKFEET
SHOSHONE
FLATHEAD
HIDATSA
MANDAN
KIOWA
SIOUX
ARAPAHO
PAWNEE IOWA
CHUMASH

LUISENO
DIEGUENO
COSTANO
POMO
TILLAMOOK
CHINOOK
SKAGIT
WALLA
WALLA
CAYUSE
NEZ
PERCE
KLAMATH
MODOC
MAIDU
SOUTHERN
PAIUTE
HOPI
UTE
CHEMEHUEVI
SERRANO

CAHUILLA
ZUNI TEWA
JUMANO
YACHI
CONCHO
LAGUERNO
COAHUILTEC
KABANKAWA
NATCHEZ APALACHEE
CALUSA
ARAWAK
CHOCTAW
YAMASEE
TIMUCUA
CREEK
CHEROKEE
CHICKASAW
PAMLICO
TUSCARORA

MOSOPELEA
SHAWNEESAUK
KICKAPOO
ILLINOIS
KASKASKIA
MESCALERO
COMANCHE
WICHITA
CADDO
t h i n l y
p o p u l a t e d
th
i n
l y p o p u l a t e d
L. Sup
erior
L.
M
ic
hi
ga
n

L. Huron
L. E
rie
L. O
ntar
io
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson
Bay
Paci f ic
Oc ean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Arctic hunter-gatherers
Subarctic hunter-fisher-gatherers
Northwest coast marine economy
Plains hunter-gatherers
Plains horticulturalists

Non-horticultural rancherian peoples
Rancherian peoples with low-intensity horticulture
Rancherian peoples with intensive horticulture
Pueblos with intensive horticulture
Seacoast foragers
Ways of Life in North America, AD 1515
Marginal horticultural hunters
River-based horticultural chiefdoms
Orchard-growing alligator hunters
Tidewater horticulturalists
Fishers and wild-rice gatherers
N A T I V E W A Y S O F L I F E , c a . 1 5 0 0
The native population of North America at the time of first
contact with Europeans consisted of numerous tribes with their
own
languages, religious beliefs, and economic and social structures.
This map suggests the numerous ways of life existing at the
time.
believed, suffused the world, and sacred spirits could be found
in all kinds
of living and inanimate things—animals, plants, trees, water,
and wind.
Through religious ceremonies, they aimed to harness the aid of

powerful
supernatural forces to serve human interests. Indian villages
also held elab-
orate religious rites, participation in which helped to define the
boundaries
of community membership. In all Indian societies, those who
seemed to pos-
sess special abilities to invoke supernatural powers—shamans,
medicine
men, and other religious leaders—held positions of respect and
authority.
In some respects, Indian religion was not that different from
popular
spiritual beliefs in Europe. Most Indians held that a single
Creator stood
atop the spiritual hierarchy. Nonetheless, nearly all Europeans
arriving in
the New World quickly concluded that Indians were in dire need
of being
converted to a true, Christian faith.
Land and Property
Equally alien in European eyes were Indian attitudes toward
property.
Generally, village leaders assigned plots of land to individual
families to
use for a season or more, and tribes claimed specific areas for
hunting.
Unclaimed land remained free for anyone to use. Families
“owned” the
right to use land, but they did not own the land itself. Indians
saw land as
a common resource, not an economic commodity. There was no
market in

real estate before the coming of Europeans.
Land as a common resource
Indian religious rituals
A Catawba map illustrates the
differences between Indian and
European conceptions of landed
property. The map depicts not
possession of a specific territory, but
trade and diplomatic connections
between various native groups
and with the colony of Virginia,
represented by the rectangle on the
lower right. The map, inscribed on
deerskin, was originally presented
by Indian chiefs to Governor Francis
Nicholson of South Carolina in 1721.
This copy, the only version that
survives, was made by the governor

for the authorities in London. It added
English labels that conveyed what the
Indians had related orally with the gift.
Nor were Indians devoted to the accumulation of wealth and
mate-
rial goods. Especially east of the Mississippi River, where
villages moved
every few years when soil or game became depleted, acquiring
numer-
ous possessions made little sense. However, status certainly
mattered in
Indian societies. Tribal leaders tended to come from a small
number of
families, and chiefs lived more splendidly than average
members of soci-
ety. But their reputation often rested on their willingness to
share goods
with others rather than hoarding them for themselves.
Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift
giv-
ing was essential to Indian society. Trade, for example, meant
more than
a commercial transaction—it was accompanied by elaborate
ceremonies
of gift exchange that bound different groups in webs of mutual
obligation.
“There are no beggars among them,” reported the English
colonial leader

Roger Williams of New England’s Indians.
Gender Relations
The system of gender relations in most Indian societies also
differed mark-
edly from that of Europe. Membership in a family defined
women’s lives,
but they openly engaged in premarital sexual relations and
could even
choose to divorce their husbands. Most, although not all, Indian
societies
were matrilineal—that is, centered on clans or kinship groups in
which
children became members of the mother’s family, not the
father’s. Under
English law, a married man controlled the family’s property and
a wife had
no independent legal identity. In contrast, Indian women owned
dwellings
and tools, and a husband generally moved to live with the
family of his wife.
Because men were frequently away on the hunt, women took
responsibility
not only for household duties but for most agricultural work as
well.
European Views of the Indians
Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms.
They were regarded either as “noble savages,” gentle,
friendly, and superior in some ways to Europeans, or
as uncivilized and brutal savages. Over time, however,
n egative images of Indians came to overshadow positive
ones. Early European descriptions of North American
Indians as barbaric centered on three areas—religion,

land use, and gender relations. Whatever their country
of origin, European newcomers concluded that Indians
Gift giving
Matrilineal societies
Indian women planting crops while
men break the sod. An engraving by
Theodor de Bry, based on a painting
by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues.
Morgues was part of an expedition
of French Huguenots to Florida in
1564; he escaped when the Spanish
destroyed the outpost in the following
year.
11I N D I A N F R E E D O M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D
O M
lacked genuine religion, or in fact worshiped the devil. Whereas
the
Indians saw nature as a world of spirits and souls, the

Europeans viewed it
as a collection of potential commodities, a source of economic
opportunity.
Europeans invoked the Indians’ distinctive pattern of land use
and
ideas about property to answer the awkward question raised by a
British
minister at an early stage of England’s colonization: “By what
right or
warrant can we enter into the land of these Savages, take away
their right-
ful inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places?”
While
the Spanish claimed title to land in America by right of
conquest and
papal authority, the English, French, and Dutch came to rely on
the idea
that Indians had not actually “used” the land and thus had no
claim to it.
Despite the Indians’ highly developed agriculture and well-
established
towns, Europeans frequently described them as nomads without
settled
communities.
In the Indians’ gender division of labor and matrilineal family
struc-
tures, Europeans saw weak men and mistreated women. Hunting
and
fishing, the primary occupations of Indian men, were
considered leisure
activities in much of Europe, not “real” work. Because Indian
women worked
in the fields, Europeans often described them as lacking
freedom. Europeans

insisted that by subduing the Indians, they were actually
bringing them
freedom—the freedom of true religion, private property, and the
liberation of
both men and women from uncivilized and unchristian gender
roles.
I N D I A N F R E E D O M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D O
M
Indian Freedom
Although many Europeans initially saw Indians as embodying
freedom,
most colonizers quickly concluded that the notion of “freedom”
was alien
to Indian societies. European settlers reached this conclusion in
part
because Indians did not appear to live under established
governments or
fixed laws, followed their own—not European—definitions of
authority,
and lacked the kind of order and discipline common in European
society.
Indians also did not define freedom as individual autonomy or
tie it to the
ownership of property—two attributes important to Europeans.
What were the Indians’ ideas of freedom? The modern notion of
free-
dom as personal independence had little meaning in most Indian
societies,
but individuals were expected to think for themselves and did
not always
have to go along with collective decision making. Far more
important

A seventeenth-century engraving by
a French Jesuit priest illustrates many
Europeans’ view of Indian religion.
A demon hovers over an Iroquois
longhouse, suggesting that Indians
worship the devil.
Freedom in the group
than individual autonomy were kinship ties, the ability to follow
one’s
spiritual values, and the well-being and security of one’s
community. In
Indian culture, group autonomy and self-determination, and the
mutual
obligations that came with a sense of belonging and
connectedness, took
precedence over individual freedom. Ironically, the coming of
Europeans,
armed with their own language of liberty, would make freedom
a preoc-
cupation of American Indians, as part and parcel of the very
process by
which they were reduced to dependence on the colonizers.
Christian Liberty

On the eve of colonization, Europeans held numerous ideas of
freedom.
Some were as old as the city-states of ancient Greece, others
arose during
the political struggles of the early modern era. Some laid the
foundations
for modern conceptions of freedom, others are quite unfamiliar
today.
Freedom was not a single idea but a collection of distinct rights
and privi-
leges, many enjoyed by only a small portion of the population.
One conception common throughout Europe understood freedom
less as a political or social status than as a moral or spiritual
condition.
Freedom meant abandoning the life of sin to embrace the
teachings of Christ.
“Christian Liberty,” however, had no connection to later ideas
of religious
toleration, a notion that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of
colonization.
Every nation in Europe had an established church that decreed
what forms
of religious worship and belief were acceptable. Dissenters
faced persecu-
tion by the state as well as condemnation by church authorities.
Religious
uniformity was thought to be essential to public order; the
modern idea that
a person’s religious beliefs and practices are a matter of private
choice, not
legal obligation, was almost unknown.
Freedom and Authority

In its secular form, the equating of liberty with obedience to a
higher
authority suggested that freedom meant not anarchy but
obedience to law.
The identification of freedom with the rule of law did not,
though, mean
that all subjects of the crown enjoyed the same degree of
freedom. Early
modern European societies were extremely hierarchical, with
marked gra-
dations of social status ranging from the king and hereditary
aristocracy
down to the urban and rural poor. Inequality was built into
virtually every
social relationship.
Within families, men exercised authority over their wives and
chil-
dren. According to the widespread legal doctrine known as
“coverture,”
when a woman married she surrendered her legal identity, which
became
Freedom as a spiritual
condition
Hierarchy in the family
13T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve
of contact?
“covered” by that of her husband. She could not own property

or sign
contracts in her own name, control her wages if she worked,
write a
separate will, or, except in the rarest of circumstances, go to
court seeking
a divorce. The husband had the exclusive right to his wife’s
“company,”
including domestic labor and sexual relations.
Everywhere in Europe, family life depended on male dominance
and female submission. Indeed, political writers of the sixteenth
century
explicitly compared the king’s authority over his subjects with
the hus-
band’s over his family. Both were ordained by God.
Liberty and Liberties
In this hierarchical society, liberty came from knowing one’s
social place
and fulfilling the duties appropriate to one’s rank. Most men
lacked the
freedom that came with economic independence. Property
qualifications
and other restrictions limited the electorate to a minuscule part
of the adult
male population. The law required strict obedience of
employees, and
breaches of labor contracts carried criminal penalties.
European ideas of freedom still bore the imprint of the Middle
Ages,
when “liberties” meant formal, specific privileges such as self-
government,
exemption from taxation, or the right to practice a particular
trade, granted

to individuals or groups by contract, royal decree, or purchase.
Only those
who enjoyed the “freedom of the city,” for example, could
engage in cer-
tain economic activities. Numerous modern civil liberties did
not exist.
The law decreed acceptable forms of religious worship. The
government
regularly suppressed publications it did not like, and criticism
of author-
ity could lead to imprisonment. Nonetheless, every European
country that
colonized the New World claimed to be spreading freedom—for
its own
population and for Native Americans.
T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E
It is fitting that the second epochal event that Adam Smith
linked to
Columbus’s voyage of 1492 was the discovery by Portuguese
navigators
of a sea route from Europe to Asia around the southern tip of
Africa. The
European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest
for a sea
route to India, China, and the islands of the East Indies, the
source of the
silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury goods on which
international
trade in the early modern era centered. For centuries, this
commerce had
been conducted across land, from China and South Asia to the
Middle East
Hierarchy in society

Sea route to the East
and the Mediterranean region. Profit and piety—the desire to
eliminate
Islamic middlemen and win control of the lucrative trade for
Christian
western Europe—combined to inspire the quest for a direct
route to Asia.
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, one might have
predicted that
China would establish the world’s first global empire. Between
1405 and
1433, Admiral Zheng He led seven large naval expeditions in
the Indian
Ocean. The first convoy consisted of 62 ships that were larger
than those of
any European nation, along with 225 support vessels and more
than 25,000
men. On his sixth voyage, Zheng explored the coast of East
Africa. Had his
ships continued westward, they could easily have reached North
and South
America. But as a wealthy land-based empire, China did not feel
the need for
overseas expansion, and after 1433 the government ended
support for long-
distance maritime expeditions.

It fell to Portugal, far removed from the overland route to Asia,
to begin
exploring the Atlantic. Taking advantage of new long-distance
ships known
as caravels and new navigational devices such as the compass
and quadrant,
the Portuguese showed that it was possible to sail down the
coast of Africa
and return to Portugal. No European sailor had seen the coast of
Africa below
the Sahara. But in that year, a Portuguese ship brought a sprig
of rosemary
from West Africa, proof that one could sail beyond the desert
and return.
Little by little, Portuguese ships moved farther down the coast.
In
1485, they reached Benin, an imposing city whose craftsmen
produced
bronze sculptures that still inspire admiration for their artistic
beauty and
superb casting techniques. The Portuguese established fortified
trading
posts on the western coast of Africa. The profits reaped by these
Portuguese
“factories”—so named because merchants were known as
“factors”—
inspired other European powers to follow in their footsteps.
Portugal also began to colonize Madeira, the Azores, and the
Canary
and Cape Verde Islands, which lie in the Atlantic off the
African coast. The
Portuguese established plantations on the Atlantic islands,
eventually
replacing the native populations with thousands of slaves

shipped from
Africa—an ominous precedent for the New World.
Freedom and Slavery in Africa
Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans.
Traditionally,
African slaves tended to be criminals, debtors, and captives in
war. They
worked within the households of their owners and had well-
defined rights,
such as possessing property and marrying free persons. It was
not uncom-
Zheng He’s voyages
New techniques of sailing and
navigation
Portuguese explorations
15T H E E X P A N S I O N O F E U R O P E
What impelled European explorers to look west across the
Atlantic?
mon for African slaves to acquire their freedom. Slavery was
one of several
forms of labor, not the basis of the economy as it would become
in large
parts of the New World. The coming of the Portuguese, soon
followed by
traders from other European nations, accelerated the buying and
selling of

slaves within Africa. At least 100,000 African slaves were
transported to
Spain and Portugal between 1450 and 1500.
Having reached West Africa, Portuguese mariners pushed their
explo-
rations ever southward along the coast. Bartholomeu Dias
reached the Cape
of Good Hope at the continent’s southern tip in 1487. In 1498,
Vasco da
Gama sailed around it to India, demonstrating the feasibility of
a sea route
to the East. With a population of under 1 million, Portugal
established a
vast trading empire, with bases in India, southern China, and
Indonesia.
But six years before da Gama’s voyage, Christopher Columbus
had, he
believed, discovered a new route to China and India by sailing
west.
T H E O L D W O R L D O N T H E E V E O F A M E R I
C A N
C O L O N I Z A T I O N , c a . 1 5 0 0
In the fifteenth century, the world
known to Europeans was limited to
Europe, parts of Africa, and Asia.
Explorers from Portugal sought to
find a sea route to the East in order to
circumvent the Italian city-states and

Middle Eastern rulers who controlled
the overland trade.
Lisbon
Genoa
Venice
da Gama
da G
ama
Dias
Zh
en
g
He
Zhe
ng
He
PORTUGAL SPAIN
FRANCE
ENGLAND
SCOTLAND

IRELAND
NETHERLANDS
PERSIA
INDIA
CHINA
EAST INDIES
MALI
BENIN
CHAMPA
MALACCA
H o rmuz
HOLY ROMAN
EMPIRE
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Made i ra I s .
Canary I s .
Cape o f
Good Hope

Cape
Verde
I s .
Azores
Cyprus
Crete
S A H A R A D E S E R T
J ava
Sumatra
Cey lo n
Mediterranean Sea
Atlantic
Ocean
Indian
Oce an
Paci f ic
Oce an
0
0
1,000

1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
The Voyages of Columbus
A seasoned mariner and fearless explorer from Genoa, a major
port in
northern Italy, Columbus had for years sailed the Mediterranean
and
North Atlantic, studying ocean currents and wind patterns. Like
nearly all
navigators of the time, Columbus knew the earth was round. But
he drasti-
cally underestimated its size. He believed that by sailing
westward he could
relatively quickly cross the Atlantic and reach Asia. No one in
Europe knew
that two giant continents lay 3,000 miles to the west. The
Vikings, to be
sure, had sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland around the
year 1000
and established a settlement, Vinland. But this outpost was
abandoned
after a few years and had been forgotten, except in Norse
legends.
For Columbus, as for other figures of the time, religious and
com-
mercial motives reinforced one another. A devout Catholic, he

drew on the
Bible for his estimate of the size of the globe. Along with
developing trade
with the East, he hoped to convert Asians to Christianity and
enlist them
in a crusade to redeem Jerusalem from Muslim control.
Columbus sought financial support throughout Europe for the
planned
voyage. Eventually, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of
Spain agreed
to become sponsors. Their marriage in 1469 had united the
warring king-
doms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the
reconquista—the
“reconquest” of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who
had occupied
part of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. With Spain’s
territory united,
Ferdinand and Isabella—like the rulers of the Italian city-
states—were anx-
ious to circumvent the Muslim stranglehold on eastern
trade. It is not surprising, then, that Columbus set sail
with royal letters of introduction to Asian rulers, autho-
rizing him to negotiate trade agreements.
C O N T A C T
Columbus in the New World
On October 12, 1492, after only thirty-three days of sail-
ing from the Canary Islands, where he had stopped to
resupply his three ships, Columbus and his expedition
arrived at the Bahamas. Soon afterward, he encountered
the far larger islands of Hispaniola (today the site of Haiti

and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. When one of his
ships ran aground, he abandoned it and left thirty-eight
Columbus’s Landfall, an engraving
from La lettera dell’isole (Letter from
the Islands). This 1493 pamphlet
reproduced, in the form of a poem,
Columbus’s first letter describing his
voyage of the previous year. Under
the watchful eye of King Ferdinand
of Spain, Columbus and his men land
on a Caribbean island, while local
Indians flee.
Norse settlement
17C O N T A C T
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in
contact with Europeans?
men behind on Hispaniola. But he found room to bring ten
inhabitants of
the island back to Spain for conversion to Christianity.

In the following year, 1493, Columbus returned with seventeen
ships
and more than 1,000 men to explore the area and establish a
Spanish
outpost. Columbus’s settlement on the island of Hispaniola,
which he
named La Isabella, failed, but in 1502 another Spanish explorer,
Nicolás
de Ovando, arrived with 2,500 men and established a permanent
base,
the first center of the Spanish empire in America. Columbus
went to his
grave believing that he had discovered a westward route to
Asia. The
explorations of another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, along the
coast of South
America between 1499 and 1502 made plain that a continent
entirely
unknown to Europeans had been encountered. The New World
would
come to bear not Columbus’s name but one based on
Vespucci’s—America.
Vespucci also realized that the native inhabitants were distinct
peoples,
not residents of the East Indies as Columbus had believed,
although the
name “Indians,” applied to them by Columbus, has endured to
this day.
Exploration and Conquest
Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press
in the
1430s, news of Columbus’s achievement traveled quickly, at
least among
the educated minority in Europe. Other explorers were inspired

to follow
in his wake. John Cabot, a Genoese merchant who had settled in
England,
reached Newfoundland in 1497. Soon, scores of fishing boats
from France,
Spain, and England were active in the region. Pedro Cabral
claimed Brazil
for Portugal in 1500.
But the Spanish took the lead in exploration and conquest.
Inspired by
a search for wealth, national glory, and the desire to spread
Catholicism,
Spanish conquistadores, often accompanied by religious
missionaries and
carrying flags emblazoned with the sign of the cross, radiated
outward
from Hispaniola. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked
across the isth-
mus of Panama and became the first European to gaze upon the
Pacific
Ocean. Between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan led the
first expedition
to sail around the world, encountering Pacific islands and
peoples previ-
ously unknown to Europe.
The first explorer to encounter a major American civilization
was
Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 arrived at Tenochtitlán, the nerve
center of
the Aztec empire, whose wealth and power rested on domination
of
numerous subordinate peoples nearby. The Aztecs were violent
warriors
who engaged in the ritual sacrifice of captives and others,

sometimes thou-
sands at a time. This practice thoroughly alienated their
neighbors.
Spain takes the lead
Cortés
Vespucci
Hispaniola settlement
Vinland
Magellan (1519-1522)
Cabot (1497)
Columbus (1492)
Ba
lbo
a (
151
3)
M
ag

ell
an
(1
51
9-
15
22
)
Ve
sp
uc
ci
(1
50
1-
15
02
)
Ca
br
al
(1
50
0)

Cor
tés (1519) Colum
bus (1
493)
Colu
mbus
(150
2)
Columbus (1498)
NEWFOUNDLAND
NORTH
AMERICA
SOUTH
AMERICA
AFRICA
EUROPE
At lant ic
Oce an
Paci f ic
Ocean
0
0

1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
V O Y A G E S O F D I S C O V E R Y
Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic crossing, in 1492, was
soon followed by voyages of discovery by English, Portuguese,
Spanish,
and Italian explorers.
19C O N T A C T
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in
contact with Europeans?
With only a few hundred European men, Cortés
conquered the Aztec city, relying on superior military
technology such as iron weapons and gunpowder, as
well as shrewdness in enlisting the aid of some of the
Aztecs’ subject peoples, who supplied him with thou-
sands of warriors. His most powerful ally, however,
was disease—a smallpox epidemic that devastated Aztec
society. A few years later, Francisco Pizarro conquered
the great Inca kingdom centered in modern-day Peru.
Pizarro’s tactics were typical of the conquistadores. He
captured the Incan king, demanded and received a ran-
som, and then killed the king anyway. Soon, treasure

fleets carrying cargoes of gold and silver from the mines
of Mexico and Peru were traversing the Atlantic to
enrich the Spanish crown.
The Demographic Disaster
The transatlantic flow of goods and people is sometimes called
the
Columbian Exchange. Plants, animals, and cultures that had
evolved inde-
pendently on separate continents were now thrown together.
Products
introduced to Europe from the Americas included corn,
tomatoes, pota-
toes, peanuts, and tobacco, while people from the Old World
brought
wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep to the
New. But
Europeans also carried germs previously unknown in the
Americas.
No one knows exactly how many people lived in the Americas
at the
time of Columbus’s voyages—current estimates range between
50 and
90 million, most of whom lived in Central and South America.
In 1492, the
Indian population within what are now the borders of the United
States
was between 2 and 5 million. The Indian populations of the
Americas suf-
fered a catastrophic decline because of contact with Europeans
and their
wars, enslavement, and especially diseases like smallpox,
influenza, and
measles. Never having encountered these diseases, Indians had

not devel-
oped antibodies to fight them. The result was devastating. The
population
of Mexico would fall by more than 90 percent in the sixteenth
century,
from perhaps 20 million to under 2 million. As for the area that
now forms
the United States, its Native American population fell
continuously. It
reached its lowest point around 1900, at only 250,000.
Overall, the death of perhaps 80 million people—close to one-
fifth of
humankind—in the first century and a half after contact with
Europeans
Engravings, from the Florentine
Codex, of the forces of Cortés
marching on Tenochtitlán and
assaulting the city with cannon fire.
The difference in military technology
between the Spanish and Aztecs
is evident. Indians who allied with
Cortés had helped him build vessels
and carry them in pieces over
mountains to the city. The codex

(a volume formed by stitching
together manuscript pages) was
prepared under the supervision of
a Spanish missionary in sixteenth-
century Mexico.
Decline of Indian populations
represents the greatest loss of life in human history. It was
disease as
much as military prowess and more advanced technology that
enabled
Europeans to conquer the Americas.
T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain had established an
immense
empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia. The
Atlantic
and Pacific oceans, once barriers separating different parts of
the world,
now became highways for the exchange of goods and the
movement of
people. Spanish galleons carried gold and silver from Mexico
and Peru east-
ward to Spain and westward to Manila in the Philippines and on
to China.

Stretching from the Andes Mountains of South America through
present-day Mexico and the Caribbean and eventually into
Florida and the
southwestern United States, Spain’s empire exceeded in size the
Roman
empire of the ancient world. Its center was Mexico City, a
magnificent capi-
tal built on the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán that
boasted churches,
hospitals, monasteries, government buildings, and the New
World’s first
university. Unlike the English and French New World empires,
Spanish
A late-seventeenth-century painting
of the Plaza Mayor (main square)
of Mexico City. The image includes
a parade of over 1,000 persons, of
different ethnic groups and
occupations, dressed in their
characteristic attire.
Extent of the empire
21T H E S P A N I S H E M P I R E
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in

America?
America was essentially an urban civilization. For centuries, its
great cit-
ies, notably Mexico City, Quito, and Lima, far outshone any
urban centers
in North America and most of those in Europe.
Governing Spanish America
At least in theory, the government of Spanish America reflected
the absolut-
ism of the newly unified nation at home. Authority originated
with the king
and flowed downward through the Council of the Indies—the
main body
in Spain for colonial administration—and then to viceroys in
Mexico and
Peru and other local officials in America. The Catholic Church
also played a
significant role in the administration of Spanish colonies,
frequently exert-
ing its authority on matters of faith, morals, and treatment of
the Indians.
Successive kings kept elected assemblies out of Spain’s New
World
empire. Royal officials were generally appointees from Spain,
rather than
criollos, as persons born in the colonies of European ancestry
were called.
But as Spain’s power declined in Europe beginning in the
seventeenth
century, the local elite came to enjoy more and more effective
authority
over colonial affairs.

Colonists and Indians in Spanish America
Despite the decline in the native population, Spanish America
remained
populous enough that, with the exception of the West Indies and
a few cit-
ies, large-scale importations of African slaves were
unnecessary. Instead,
the Spanish forced tens of thousands of Indians to work in gold
and silver
mines, which supplied the empire’s wealth, and on large-scale
farms, or
haciendas, controlled by Spanish landlords. In Spanish America,
unlike
other New World empires, Indians performed most of the labor.
The opportunity for social advancement drew numerous
colonists
from Spain—225,000 in the sixteenth century and a total of
750,000 in
the three centuries of Spain’s colonial rule. Eventually, a
significant num-
ber came in families, but at first the large majority were young,
single men,
many of them laborers, craftsmen, and soldiers. Many also came
as gov-
ernment officials, priests, professionals, and minor aristocrats,
all ready
to direct the manual work of Indians, since living without
having to labor
was a sign of noble status. The most successful of these
colonists enjoyed
lives of luxury similar to those of the upper classes at home.
Unlike in the later British empire, Indian inhabitants always

out-
numbered European colonists and their descendants in Spanish
America,
and large areas remained effectively under Indian control for
many years.
Labor in Spanish America
Authority in Spanish America
Spanish authorities granted Indians certain rights within
colonial society
and looked forward to their eventual assimilation. Indeed, the
success
of the Spanish empire depended on the nature of the native
societies on
which it could build. In Florida, the Amazon, and Caribbean
islands like
Jamaica, which lacked major Indian cities and large native
populations,
Spanish rule remained tenuous.
The Spanish crown ordered wives of colonists to join them in
America
and demanded that single men marry. But with the population of
Spanish
women remaining low, the intermixing of the colonial and
Indian peoples
soon began. As early as 1514, the Spanish government formally
approved
of such marriages, partly as a way of bringing Christianity to
the native

population. By 1600, mestizos (persons of mixed origin) made
up a large
part of the urban population of Spanish America. Over time,
Spanish
America evolved into a hybrid culture, part Spanish, part
Indian, and
in some areas part African, but with a single official faith,
language, and
governmental system.
Justifications for Conquest
The Europeans who crossed the Atlantic in the wake of
Columbus’s voy-
age had immense confidence in the superiority of their own
cultures to
those they encountered in America. They expected these
societies to aban-
don their own beliefs and traditions and embrace those of the
newcomers.
Failure to do so reinforced the conviction that these people were
uncivi-
lized “heathens” (non-Christians). In addition, Europeans
brought with
them a long history of using violence to subdue their foes and a
missionary
zeal to spread the benefits of their own civilization to others,
while reaping
the benefits of empire. Spain was no exception.
To further legitimize Spain’s claim to rule the New World, a
year after
Columbus’s first voyage Pope Alexander VI divided the non-
Christian
world between Spain and Portugal. The line was subsequently
adjusted

to give Portugal control of Brazil, with the remainder of the
Western
Hemisphere falling under Spanish authority. Its missionary
purpose in
colonization was already familiar because of the long holy war
against Islam
within Spain itself and Spain’s 1492 order that all Muslims and
Jews had to
convert to Catholicism or leave the country. But missionary zeal
was power-
fully reinforced in the sixteenth century, when the Protestant
Reformation
divided the Catholic Church. In 1517, Martin Luther, a German
priest, posted
his Ninety-Five Theses, which accused the Church of
worldliness and cor-
ruption. Luther wanted to cleanse the Church of abuses such as
the sale
of indulgences (official dispensations forgiving sins). He
insisted that all
The Virgin of Guadalupe, a symbol
of Mexican culture, in an image
from 1770. She is portrayed as the
protector of the Indians.
A hybrid culture

America?
believers should read the Bible for themselves, rather than
relying on priests
to interpret it for them. His call for reform led to the rise of new
Protestant
churches independent of Rome and plunged Europe into more
than a cen-
tury of religious and political strife.
Spain, the most powerful bastion of orthodox Catholicism,
redoubled
its efforts to convert the Indians to the “true faith.” Spain
insisted that the
primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from
heathenism and
prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism.
Piety and Profit
To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the
Americas
were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be
organized to
extract gold and silver for the mother country. The tension
between these
two outlooks would mark Spanish rule in America for three
centuries.
On the one hand, religious orders established missions
throughout the
empire, and over time millions of Indians were converted to
Catholicism.
On the other hand, Spanish rule, especially in its initial period,
decimated
the Indian population and subjected Indians to brutal labor
conditions.

The conquistadores and subsequent governors, who required
conquered
peoples to acknowledge the Catholic Church and provide gold
and silver,
Spanish conquistadores murdering
Indians at Cuzco, in Peru. The
Dutch-born engraver Theodor de Bry
and his sons illustrated ten volumes
about New World exploration
published between 1590 and 1618.
A Protestant, de Bry created vivid
images that helped to spread the
Black Legend of Spain as a uniquely
cruel colonizer.
Converting Indians
Tensions in the empire
saw no contradiction between serving God and enriching
themselves.
Others, however, did.

As early as 1537, Pope Paul III, who hoped to see Indians
become
devout subjects of Catholic monarchs, outlawed Indians’
enslavement
(an edict never extended to apply to Africans). Fifteen years
later, the
Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas published an account
of the
decimation of the Indian population with the compelling title A
Very Brief
Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
Las Casas’s writings denounced Spain for causing the death of
millions of innocent people and for denying Indians their
freedom. He
narrated in shocking detail the “strange cruelties” carried out by
“the
Christians,” including the burning alive of men, women, and
children and
the imposition of forced labor. “The entire human race is one,”
he pro-
claimed, and while he continued to believe that Spain had a
right to rule
in America, largely on religious grounds, he called for Indians
to enjoy “all
guarantees of liberty and justice” from the moment they became
subjects
of Spain. Las Casas also suggested, however, that importing
slaves from
Africa would help to protect the Indians from exploitation.
Reforming the Empire
Largely because of Las Casas’s efforts, Spain in 1542
promulgated the New

Laws, commanding that Indians no longer be enslaved. In 1550,
Spain
abolished the encomienda system, under which the first settlers
had been
granted authority over conquered Indian lands with
the right to extract forced labor from the native inhab-
itants. In its place, the government established the
repartimiento system, whereby residents of Indian
villages remained legally free and entitled to wages,
but were still required to perform a fixed amount of
labor each year. The Indians were not slaves—they
had access to land, were paid wages, and could not be
bought and sold. But since the requirement that they
work for the Spanish remained the essence of the
system, it still allowed for many abuses by Spanish
landlords and by priests who required Indians to toil
on mission lands as part of the conversion process.
Over time, Spain’s brutal treatment of Indi-
ans improved somewhat. But Las Casas’s writings,
translated almost immediately into several European
languages, contributed to the spread of the Black
TABLE 1.1 Estimated
Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500
North America 3,800,000
Mexico 17,200,000
Central America 5,625,000
Hispaniola 1,000,000

The Caribbean 3,000,000
The Andes 15,700,000
South America 8,620,000
54,945,000
Las Casas
America?
Legend—the image of Spain as a uniquely
brutal and exploitative colonizer. This
image would provide a potent justification
for other European powers to challenge
Spain’s predominance in the New World.
Exploring North America
While the Spanish empire centered on
Mexico, Peru, and the West Indies, the
hope of finding a new kingdom of gold soon
led Spanish explorers into territory that
now forms part of the United States. Juan
Ponce de León, who had conquered Puerto
Rico, entered Florida in 1513 in search of
slaves, wealth, and a fabled fountain of
youth, only to be repelled by local Indians.
In the late 1530s and 1540s, Juan Rodriguez

Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast as far north as present-day
Oregon,
and expeditions led by Hernando de Soto, Cabeza de Vaca,
Francisco
Vásquez de Coronado, and others marched through the Gulf
region and
the Southwest, fruitlessly searching for another Mexico or Peru.
These
expeditions, really mobile communities with hundreds of
adventurers,
priests, potential settlers, slaves, and livestock, spread disease
and dev-
astation among Indian communities. De Soto’s was particularly
brutal.
His men tortured, raped, and enslaved countless Indians and
transmitted
deadly diseases. When Europeans in the seventeenth century
returned to
colonize the area traversed by de Soto’s party, little remained of
the societ-
ies he had encountered.
Spain in Florida and the Southwest
Nonetheless, these explorations established Spain’s claim to a
large part of
what is now the American South and Southwest. The first region
to be col-
onized within the present-day United States was Florida. Spain
hoped to
establish a military base there to combat pirates who threatened
the trea-
sure fleet that each year sailed from Havana for Europe loaded
with gold
and silver from Mexico and Peru. Spain also wanted to forestall
French

incursions in the area. In 1565, Philip II of Spain authorized the
noble-
man Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to lead a colonizing expedition
to Florida.
Menéndez destroyed a small outpost at Fort Caroline, which a
group of
Huguenots (French Protestants) had established in 1562 near
present-day
TABLE 1.2 Estimated Regional
Populations: The World, ca. 1500
India 110,000,000
China 103,000,000
Other Asia 55,400,000
Western Europe 57,200,000
The Americas 55,000,000
Russia and Eastern Europe 34,000,000
Sub-Saharan Africa 38,300,000
Japan 15,400,000
467,300,000
De Soto
Florida as military base

A New World26
Mexico City
St. Augustine
Santa
Fe
Roanoke
Acoma
Pi
za
rro
Cort
és
Ponce de León
Cabeza de Vaca
de Soto Coronado
Oñate
Ca
br
illo

Fort Caroline
Pueblo
Revolt,
1680
PERU
Hispan io la
Gulf of
Mexico
Caribbean Sea
A tl an ti c
O cean
Paci f ic
Ocean
0
0
500
500
1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
Cabrillo
Oñate
Coronado
de Soto
Cabeza de Vaca
Ponce de León

Cortés
Pizarro
Extent of Incan peoples
Extent of Aztec peoples
By around 1600, New Spain had become a vast empire
stretching from the modern-day American
Southwest through Mexico, Central America, and into the
former Inca kingdom in South America.
This map shows early Spanish exploration, especially in the
present-day United States, Mexico,
and Peru.
E A R L Y S P A N I S H C O N Q U E S T S A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N S I N T H E N E W W O R L D
America?
Jacksonville. Menéndez and his men went on to establish
Spanish forts
on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and at St. Augustine, Florida.
The latter
remains the oldest site in the United States continuously
inhabited by
European settlers and their descendants. In general, though,
Florida failed
to attract settlers, remaining an isolated military settlement, in
effect a

fortified outpost of Cuba. As late as 1763, Spanish Florida had
only 4,000
inhabitants of European descent.
Spain took even longer to begin the colonization of the
American
Southwest. It was not until 1598 that Juan de Oñate led a group
of 400
soldiers, colonists, and missionaries north from Mexico to
establish a per-
manent settlement. While searching for fabled deposits of
precious met-
als, Oñate’s nephew and fourteen soldiers were killed by
inhabitants of
Acoma, the “sky city” located on a high bluff in present-day
New Mexico.
Oñate decided to teach the local Indians a lesson. After a two-
day
siege, his forces scaled the seemingly impregnable heights and
destroyed
Acoma, killing more than 800 of its 1,500 or so inhabitants,
including
300 women. Of the 600 Indians captured, the women and
children
were consigned to servitude in Spanish families, while adult
men were
punished by the cutting off of one foot. Oñate’s message was
plain—any
Indians who resisted Spanish authority would be crushed. In
1606, how-
ever, Oñate was ordered home and punished for his treatment of
New
Mexico’s Indians. In 1610, Spain established the capital of New
Mexico at
Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the

Southwest.
The Pueblo Revolt
In 1680, New Mexico’s small and vulnerable colonist
population numbered
less than 3,000. Relations between the Pueblo Indians and
colonial author-
ities had deteriorated throughout the seventeenth century, as
governors,
settlers, and missionaries sought to exploit the labor of an
Indian population
that declined from about 60,000 in 1600 to some 17,000 eighty
years later.
Franciscan friars worked relentlessly to convert Indians to
Catholicism,
often using intimidation and violence. As the Inquisition—the
persecution
of non-Catholics—became more and more intense in Spain, so
did the friars’
efforts to stamp out traditional religious ceremonies in New
Mexico. At the
same time, the Spanish assumed that the Indians could never
unite against
the colonizers. In August 1680, they were proven wrong.
Little is known about the life of Popé, who became the main
orga-
nizer of an uprising that aimed to drive the Spanish from the
colony and
restore the Indians’ traditional autonomy. Under Popé’s
leadership, New
Mexico’s Indians joined in a coordinated uprising. Ironically,
because
Juan de Oñate in New Mexico

Popé
Religious tensions
V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M
Las Casas was the Dominican priest who condemned the
treatment of Indians in the
Spanish empire. His widely disseminated History of the Indies
helped to establish
the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty.
The Indians [of Hispaniola] were totally deprived of their
freedom and were put in the
harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which
no one who has not seen it can
understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are
allowed to graze in the fields.
But our Spaniards gave no such opportunity to Indians and truly
considered them perpetual
slaves, since the Indians had not the free will to dispose of their
persons but instead were
disposed of according to Spanish greed and cruelty, not as men
in captivity but as beasts tied
to a rope to prevent free movement. When they were allowed to
go home, they often found it
deserted and had no other recourse than to go out into the
woods to find food and to die. When
they fell ill, which was very frequently because they are a
delicate people unaccustomed to
such work, the Spaniards did not believe them and pitilessly

called them lazy dogs and
kicked and beat them; and when illness was apparent they sent
them home as useless. . . .
They would go then, falling into the first stream and dying there
in desperation; others
would hold on longer but very few ever made it home. I
sometimes came upon dead bodies
on my way, and upon others who were gasping and moaning in
their death agony, repeating
“Hungry, hungry.” And this was the freedom, the good
treatment and the Christianity the
Indians received.
About eight years passed under [Spanish rule] and this disorder
had time to grow; no
one gave it a thought and the multitude of people who originally
lived on the island . . . was
consumed at such a rate that in these eight years 90 per cent had
perished. From here this
sweeping plague went to San Juan, Jamaica, Cuba and the
continent, spreading destruction
over the whole hemisphere.
From Bartolomé de Las Casas,
History of the Indies (1528)
Josephe was a Spanish-speaking Indian questioned by a royal
attorney in Mexico
City investigating the Pueblo Revolt. The revolt of the Indian
population, in 1680,

temporarily drove Spanish settlers from present-day New
Mexico.
Asked what causes or motives the said Indian rebels had for
renouncing the law of God and
obedience to his Majesty, and for committing so many of
crimes, [he answered] the causes they
have were alleged ill treatment and injuries received from
[Spanish authorities], because they
beat them, took away what they had, and made them work
without pay. Thus he replies.
Asked if he has learned if it has come to his notice during the
time that he has been here
the reason why the apostates burned the images, churches, and
things pertaining to divine
worship, making a mockery and a trophy of them, killing the
priests and doing the other
things they did, he said that he knows and had heard it generally
stated that while they were
besieging the villa the rebellious traitors burned the church and
shouted in loud voices,
“Now the God of the Spaniards, who was their father, is dead,
and Santa Maria, who was
their mother, and the saints, who were pieces of rotten wood,”
saying that only their own god
lived. Thus they ordered all the temples and images, crosses and
rosaries burned, and their
function being over, they all went to bathe in the rivers, saying
that they thereby washed
away the water of baptism. For their churches, they placed on
the four sides and in the center
of the plaza some small circular enclosures
of stone where they went to offer flour,
feathers, and the seed of maguey [a local

plant], maize, and tobacco, and performed
other superstitious rites, giving the children
to understand that they must all do this
in the future. The captains and the chiefs
ordered that the names of Jesus and Mary
should nowhere be uttered. . . . He has seen
many houses of idolatry which they have
built, dancing the dance of the cachina [part
of a traditional Indian religious ceremony],
which this declarant has also danced. Thus
he replies to the question.
From “Declaration of Josephe”
(December 19, 1681)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why does Las Casas, after describ-
ing the ill treatment of Indians, write,
“And this was the freedom, the good
treatment and the Christianity the
Indians received”?
2. What role did religion play in the
Pueblo Revolt?
3. What ideas of freedom are apparent in
the two documents?

VOICES OF FREEDOM 2929
the Pueblos spoke six different languages, Spanish
became the revolt’s “lingua franca” (a common means
of communication among persons of different linguistic
backgrounds). Some 2,000 warriors destroyed isolated
farms and missions, killing 400 colonists, including 21
Franciscan missionaries. Most of the Spanish survivors,
accompanied by several hundred Christian Indians,
made their way south out of New Mexico. Within a few
weeks, a century of colonization in the area had been
destroyed.
The Pueblo Revolt was the most complete victory
for Native Americans over Europeans and the only
wholesale expulsion of settlers in the history of North
America. Cooperation among the Pueblo peoples, how-
ever, soon evaporated. By the end of the 1680s, warfare
had broken out among several villages, even as Apache
and Navajo raids continued. Popé died around 1690.
In 1692, the Spanish launched an invasion that recon-
quered New Mexico. Some communities welcomed
them back as a source of military protection. But Spain
had learned a lesson. In the eighteenth century, colonial
authorities adopted a more tolerant attitude toward
traditional religious practices and made fewer demands
on Indian labor.
T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S
If the Black Legend inspired a sense of superiority among
Spain’s

European rivals, the precious metals that poured from the New
World
into the Spanish treasury aroused the desire to match Spain’s
success.
The establishment of Spain’s American empire transformed the
balance
of power in the world economy. The Atlantic replaced the
overland route
to Asia as the major axis of global trade. During the seventeenth
century,
the French, Dutch, and English established colonies in North
America.
England’s mainland colonies, to be discussed in the next
chapter, consisted
of agricultural settlements with growing populations whose
hunger for
land produced incessant conflict with native peoples. New
France and
St. Anthony and the Infant Jesus,
painted on a tanned buffalo hide by a
Franciscan priest in New Mexico in the
early eighteenth century. This was not
long after the Spanish reconquered
the area, from which they had been
driven by the Pueblo Revolt.
31T H E F R E N C H A N D D U T C H E M P I R E S

What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires
in North America?
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400 kilometers
New France
New Netherland
T H E N E W W O R L D — N E W F R A N C E A N D
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New Netherland were primarily commercial ventures that never
attracted
large numbers of colonists. More dependent on Indians as
trading partners
and military allies, these French and Dutch settlements allowed
Native

Americans greater freedom than the English.
French Colonization
The first of Spain’s major European rivals to embark on New
World
explorations was France. The explorer Samuel de Champlain,
sponsored
by a French fur-trading company, founded Quebec in 1608. In
1673, the
Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and the fur trader Louis Joliet
located the
Mississippi River, and by 1681 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de
La Salle,
had descended to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire
Mississippi River
valley for France. New France eventually formed a giant arc
along the
St. Lawrence, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers.
By 1700, the number of white inhabitants of New France had
risen
to only 19,000. With a far larger population than England,
France sent
many fewer emigrants to the Western Hemisphere. The
government at
home feared that significant emigration would undermine
France’s role as
a European great power and might compromise its effort to
establish trade
and good relations with the Indians. Unfavorable reports about
America cir-
culated widely in France. Canada was widely depicted as an
icebox, a land
of savage Indians, a dumping ground for criminals. Most French
who left

their homes during these years preferred to settle in the
Netherlands, Spain,
or the West Indies. The revocation in 1685 of the Edict of
Nantes, which had
extended religious toleration to French Protestants, led well
over 100,000
Huguenots to flee their country. But they were not welcome in
New France,
which the crown desired to remain an outpost of Catholicism.
New France and the Indians
With its small white population and emphasis on the fur trade
rather than
agricultural settlement, the viability of New France depended on
friendly
relations with local Indians. The French prided themselves on
adopting a
more humane policy than their imperial rivals. “Only our
nation,” declared
one French writer, “knows the secret of winning the Indians’
affection.”
The French worked out a complex series of military,
commercial, and
diplomatic connections, the most enduring alliances between
Indians and
settlers in colonial North America. They neither appropriated
substantial
amounts of Indian land, like the English, nor conquered native
inhabit-
ants militarily and set them to forced labor, like the Spanish.
Samuel de
Champlain, the intrepid explorer who dominated the early
history of New
Settlement in New France

Alliances with Indians
in North America?
France, denied that Native Americans were intellectually or
culturally
inferior to Europeans. Although he occasionally engaged in
wars with local
Indians, he dreamed of creating a colony based on mutual
respect between
diverse peoples. The Jesuits, a missionary religious order, did
seek, with
some success, to convert Indians to Catholicism. But unlike
Spanish mis-
sionaries in early New Mexico, they allowed Christian Indians
to retain a
high degree of independence and much of their traditional social
structure,
and they did not seek to suppress all traditional religious
practices.
Like other colonists throughout North America, however, the
French
brought striking changes in Indian life. Contact with Europeans
was inevitably
followed by the spread of disease. Participation in the fur trade
drew natives
into the burgeoning Atlantic economy, introducing new goods
and transform-
ing hunting from a search for food into a quest for marketable

commodities.
Indians were soon swept into the rivalries among European
empires.
As in the Spanish empire, New France witnessed considerable
cultural
exchange and intermixing between colonial and native
populations. On
the “middle ground” of the upper Great Lakes region in French
America,
Indians and whites encountered each other for many years on a
basis
of relative equality. And métis, or children of marriages
between Indian
women and French traders and officials, became guides, traders,
and inter-
preters. Like the Spanish, the French seemed willing to accept
Indians as
part of colonial society. Indians who converted to Catholicism
were prom-
ised full citizenship. In fact, however, it was far rarer for
natives to adopt
French ways than for French settlers to become attracted to the
“free” life
of the Indians. “It happens more commonly,” one official
complained, “that
a Frenchman becomes savage than a savage becomes a
Frenchman.”
This engraving, which appears in
Samuel de Champlain’s 1613 account
of his voyages, is the only likeness
of the explorer from his own time.

Champlain, wearing European armor
and brandishing an arquebus (an
advanced weapon of the period),
stands at the center of this pitched
battle between his Indian allies and
the hostile Iroquois.
The middle ground
Movement between societies
Jesuits
The Dutch Empire
In 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch
East India
Company, sailed into New York Harbor searching for a
northwest passage
to Asia. Hudson and his crew became the first Europeans to sail
up the
river that now bears his name. Hudson did not find a route to
Asia, but
he did encounter abundant fur-bearing animals and Native
Americans
more than willing to trade furs for European goods. He claimed

the area for
the Netherlands, and his voyage planted the seeds of what
would eventu-
ally become a great metropolis, New York City. In 1624, the
Dutch West
India Company, which had been awarded a monopoly of Dutch
trade with
America, settled colonists on Manhattan Island.
These ventures formed one small part in the rise of the Dutch
over-
seas empire. In the early seventeenth century, the Netherlands
dominated
international commerce, and Amsterdam was Europe’s foremost
shipping
and banking center. The small nation had entered a golden age
of rapidly
accumulating wealth and stunning achievements in painting,
philosophy,
and the sciences. With a population of only 2 million, the
Netherlands
established a far-flung empire that reached from Indonesia to
South Africa
and the Caribbean and temporarily wrested control of Brazil
from Portugal.
Dutch Freedom
The Dutch prided themselves on their devotion to liberty.
Indeed, in the
early seventeenth century they enjoyed two freedoms not
recognized
elsewhere in Europe—freedom of the press and of private
religious prac-
tice. Amsterdam became a haven for persecuted Protestants
from all over

Europe and for Jews as well.
Despite the Dutch reputation for cherishing freedom, New
Netherland
was hardly governed democratically. New Amsterdam, the main
population
center, was essentially a fortified military outpost controlled by
appointees
of the West India Company. Although the governor called on
prominent
citizens for advice from time to time, neither an elected
assembly nor a town
council, the basic unit of government at home, was established.
In other ways, however, the colonists enjoyed more liberty than
their
counterparts elsewhere in North America. Even their slaves
possessed
rights. Some enjoyed “half-freedom”—they were required to
pay an annual
fee to the company and work for it when called upon, but they
were given
land to support their families. Settlers employed slaves on
family farms or
for household or craft labor, not on large plantations as in the
West Indies.
Women in the Dutch settlement enjoyed far more independence
than
in other colonies. According to Dutch law, married women
retained their
Dutch trade
New Netherland

Henry Hudson
in North America?
separate legal identity. They could go to court, borrow money,
and own
property. Men were used to sharing property with their wives.
New Netherland attracted a remarkably diverse population. As
early
as the 1630s, at least eighteen languages were said to be spoken
in New
Amsterdam, whose residents included not only Dutch settlers
but also
Africans, Belgians, English, French, Germans, Irish, and
Scandinavians.
The Dutch and Religious Toleration
The Dutch long prided themselves on being uniquely tolerant in
religious
matters compared to other European nations and their empires.
It would
be wrong, however, to attribute modern ideas of religious
freedom to
either the Dutch government and company at home or the rulers
of New
Netherland. Both Holland and New Netherland had an official
religion,
the Dutch Reformed Church, one of the Protestant national
churches

to emerge from the Reformation. The Dutch commitment to
freedom of
conscience extended to religious devotion exercised in private,
not public
worship in nonestablished churches.
When Jews, Quakers, Lutherans, and others demanded the right
to
practice their religion openly, Governor Petrus Stuyvesant
adamantly
refused, seeing such diversity as a threat to a godly, prosperous
order.
Twenty-three Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from
Brazil and the
Caribbean. Referring to them as “members of a deceitful race,”
Stuyvesant
ordered the newcomers to leave. But the company overruled
him, noting
that Jews at home had invested “a large amount of capital” in its
shares.
Nonetheless, it is true that the Dutch dealt with religious
pluralism
in ways quite different from the practices common in other New
World
empires. Religious dissent was tolerated as long as it did not
involve open
and public worship. No one in New Netherland was forced to
attend the
official church, nor was anyone executed for holding the wrong
religious
beliefs (as would happen in Puritan New England).
A view of New Amsterdam from 1651
illustrates the tiny size of the outpost.

Religious pluralism
Denial of religious freedom
Settling New Netherland
During the seventeenth century, the Netherlands sent 1 million
people
overseas (many of them recent immigrants who were not in fact
Dutch)
to populate and govern their far-flung colonies. Very few,
however,
made North America their destination. By the mid-1660s, the
European
population of New Netherland numbered only 9,000. New
Netherland
remained a tiny backwater in the Dutch empire. So did an even
smaller
outpost near present-day Wilmington, Delaware, established in
1638 by a
group of Dutch merchants. To circumvent the West India
Company’s trade
monopoly, they claimed to be operating under the Swedish flag
and called
their settlement New Sweden. Only 300 settlers were living
there when
New Netherland seized the colony in 1655.
Features of European Settlement
The Dutch came to North America to trade, not to conquer.

Mindful of the
Black Legend of Spanish cruelty, the Dutch determined to treat
the native
inhabitants more humanely than the Spanish. Having won their
own
independence from Spain after the longest and bloodiest war of
sixteenth-
century Europe, many Dutch identified with American Indians
as fellow
victims of Spanish oppression.
From the beginning, Dutch authorities recognized Indian
sovereignty
over the land and forbade settlement in any area until it had
been pur-
chased. But they also required tribes to make payments to
colonial authori-
ties. Near the coast, where most newcomers settled, New
Netherland
was hardly free of conflict with the Indians. With the powerful
Iroquois
Confederacy of the upper Hudson Valley, however, the Dutch
established
friendly commercial and diplomatic relations.
Thus, before the planting of English colonies in North America,
other
European nations had established various kinds of settlements
in the New
World. Despite their differences, the Spanish, French, and
Dutch empires
shared certain features. All brought Christianity, new forms of
technol-
ogy and learning, new legal systems and family relations, and

new
forms of economic enterprise and wealth creation. They also
brought
savage warfare and widespread disease. These empires were
aware
of one another’s existence. They studied and borrowed from one
another, each lauding itself as superior to the others.
From the outset, dreams of freedom—for Indians, for settlers,
for
the entire world through the spread of Christianity—inspired
and justi-
fied colonization. It would be no different when, at the
beginning of the sev-
enteenth century, England entered the struggle for empire in
North America.
The seal of New Netherland, adopted
by the Dutch West India Company in
1630, suggests the centrality of the
fur trade to the colony’s prospects.
Surrounding the beaver is wampum,
a string of beads used by Indians in
religious rituals and as currency.
Sparse European settlement in
New Netherland

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Describe why the “discovery” of America was one of
the “most important events recorded in the history of
mankind,” according to Adam Smith.
2. Describe the different global economies that Europeans
participated in or created during the European age of
expansion.
3. One of the most striking features of Indian societies at the
time of the encounter with Europeans was their diversity.
Support this statement with several examples.
4. Compare and contrast European values and ways of life
with those of the Indians. Consider addressing religion,
views about ownership of land, gender relations, and
notions of freedom.
5. What were the main factors fueling the European age of
expansion?
6. Compare the different economic and political systems of
Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France in the age
of expansion.
7. Compare the political, economic, and religious motiva-
tions behind the French and Dutch empires with those of
New Spain.
8. How would European settlers explain their superiority to
Native Americans and justify both the conquest of Native
lands and terminating their freedom?
K E Y T E R M S

Tenochtitlán (p. 3)
Cahokia (p. 5)
Iroquois (p. 7)
“Christian Liberty” (p. 12)
caravels (p. 14)
reconquista (p. 16)
Columbian Exchange (p. 19)
mestizos (p. 22)
repartimiento system (p. 24)
Black Legend (p. 24)
Pueblo Revolt (p. 30)
métis (p. 33)
C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R
C E S
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1215 Magna Carta
1584 Hakluyt’s A Discourse Con-
cerning Western Planting
1585 Roanoke Island settlement
1607 Jamestown established
1619 First Africans arrive in
Virginia
1619 House of Burgesses
convenes
1620 Pilgrims found Plymouth
1622 Uprising led by Opechan-
canough against Virginia

1624 Virginia becomes first royal
colony
1630s Great Migration to New
England
1630 Massachusetts Bay Colony
founded
1632 Maryland founded
1636 Roger Williams banished
from Massachusetts to
Rhode Island
1637 Anne Hutchinson placed on
trial in Massachusetts
1637– Pequot War
1638
1639 Fundamental Orders of
Connecticut
1641 Body of Liberties
1642– English Civil War
1651
1649 Maryland adopts an Act
Concerning Religion
1662 Puritans’ Half-Way
Covenant
1691 Virginia outlaws English-

Indian marriages
The Armada Portrait of Queen
Elizabeth I, by the artist George Gower,
commemorates the defeat of the
Spanish Armada in 1588 and appears
to link it with English colonization of the
New World. England’s victorious navy
is visible through the window, while the
queen’s hand rests on a globe, with her
fingers pointing to the coast of North
America.
B E G I N N I N G S O F
E N G L I S H A M E R I C A
C H A P T E R 2
1 6 0 7 – 1 6 6 0
39B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A

O n April 26, 1607, three small ships carrying colonists from
England sailed into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. After
exploring the area for a little over two weeks, they chose a site
sixty miles inland on the James River for their settlement,
hoping to protect
themselves from marauding Spanish warships. Here they
established
Jamestown (named for the king of England) as the capital of the
colony of
Virginia (named for his predecessor, Elizabeth I, the “virgin
queen”). But
despite these bows to royal authority, the voyage was sponsored
not by the
English government, which in 1607 was hard-pressed for funds,
but by the
Virginia Company, a private business organization whose
shareholders
included merchants, aristocrats, and members of Parliament, and
to which
the queen had given her blessing before her death in 1603.
When the three ships returned home, 104 settlers remained in
Virginia. All were men, for the Virginia Company had more
interest
in searching for gold and in other ways exploiting the area’s
natural
resources than in establishing a functioning society.
Nevertheless,
Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the
area that
is now the United States. The settlers were the first of tens of
thousands
of Europeans who crossed the Atlantic during the seventeenth
century to
live and work in North America. They led the way for new
empires that

mobilized labor and economic resources, reshaped societies
throughout
the Atlantic world, and shifted the balance of power at home
from Spain
and Portugal to the nations of northwestern Europe.
English North America in the seventeenth century was a place
where
entrepreneurs sought to make fortunes, religious minorities
hoped to
worship without governmental interference and to create
societies based
on biblical teachings, and aristocrats dreamed of re-creating a
vanished
world of feudalism. For ordinary men and women, emigration
offered an
escape from lives of deprivation and inequality. “No man,”
wrote John
Smith, an early leader of Jamestown, “will go from [England] to
have
less freedom” in America. The settlers of English America came
to enjoy
greater rights than colonists of other empires, including the
power to
choose members of elected assemblies, protections of the
common law
such as the right to trial by jury, and access to land, the key to
economic
independence. In some colonies, though by no means all,
colonists enjoyed
considerably more religious freedom than existed in Europe.
Many degrees of freedom coexisted in seventeenth-century
North
America, from the slave, stripped completely of liberty, to the
independent

landowner, who enjoyed a full range of rights. The settlers’
success,
however, rested on depriving Native Americans of their land
and, in some
colonies, on importing large numbers of African slaves as
laborers. Freedom
and lack of freedom expanded together in seventeenth-century
America.
What were the main
contours of English
colonization in the
seventeenth century?
What challenges did the
early English settlers
face?
How did Virginia and
Maryland develop in their
early years?
What made the English
settlement of New England
distinctive?
What were the main

sources of discord in early
New England?
How did the English Civil
War affect the colonies in
America?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D
Unifying the English Nation
As the case of Spain suggests, early empire building was, in
large part,
an extension of the consolidation of national power in Europe.
But during
the sixteenth century, England was a second-rate power racked
by inter-
nal disunity. Henry VIII, crowned in 1509, launched the
Reformation in
England. When the Pope refused to annul his marriage to
Catherine of
Aragon, Henry severed the nation from the Catholic Church. In
its place
he established the Church of England, or Anglican Church, with
himself

at the head. Decades of religious strife followed, as did
considerable perse-
cution of Catholics under Henry’s successor, Edward VI. In
1553, Edward’s
half sister Mary became queen. She temporarily restored
Catholicism as
the state religion and executed a number of Protestants. Mary’s
successor,
Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603), restored the Anglican
ascendancy and
executed more than 100 Catholic priests.
England and Ireland
England’s long struggle to conquer and pacify Ireland, which
lasted well
into the seventeenth century, absorbed money and energy that
might
have been directed toward the New World. In subduing Ireland,
whose
Catholic population was deemed a threat to the stability of
Protestant
rule in England, the government employed a variety of
approaches,
including military conquest, the slaughter of civilians, the
seizure of
land and introduction of English economic practices, and the
dispatch
of large numbers of settlers. Rather than seeking to absorb the
Irish into
English society, the English excluded the native population
from a ter-
ritory of settlement known as the Pale, where the colonists
created their
own social order.

The methods used in Ireland anticipated policies England would
undertake in America. Some sixteenth- century English writers
directly
compared the allegedly barbaric “wild Irish” with American
Indians.
England and North America
Not until the reign of Elizabeth I did the English turn their
attention
to North America, although sailors and adventurers still showed
more
interest in raiding Spanish cities and treasure fleets in the
Caribbean than
establishing settlements. The government granted charters
(grants of
Religious strife in England
Subduing Ireland
41
What were the main contours of English colonization in the
E N G L A N D A N D T H E N E W W O R L D
exclusive rights and privileges) to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir
Walter
Raleigh, authorizing them to establish colonies in North
America at their
own expense.

With little or no support from the crown, both ventures failed.
Gilbert,
who had earned a reputation for brutality in the Irish wars by
murdering
civilians and burning their crops, established a short-lived
settlement on
Newfoundland in 1582. Three years later, Raleigh dispatched a
fleet of
five ships with some 100 colonists to set up a base on Roanoke
Island, off
the North Carolina coast. But the colonists, mostly young men
under mili-
tary leadership, abandoned the venture in 1586 and returned to
England.
A second group of 100 settlers, composed of families who
hoped to estab-
lish a permanent colony, was dispatched that year. Their fate
remains a
mystery. When a ship bearing supplies arrived in 1590, the
sailors found
the colony abandoned. Raleigh, by now nearly bankrupt, lost his
enthu-
siasm for colonization. To establish a successful colony, it
seemed clear,
would require more planning and economic resources than any
individual
could provide.
Motives for Colonization
As in the case of Spain, national glory, profit, and religious
mission
merged in early English thinking about the New World. The
Reformation
heightened the English government’s sense of Catholic Spain as
its mortal

enemy (a belief reinforced in 1588 when a Spanish naval
armada unsuc-
cessfully attempted to invade the British Isles). By the late
sixteenth cen-
tury, anti-Catholicism had become deeply ingrained in English
popular
culture. Reports of the atrocities of Spanish rule were widely
circulated.
English translations of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s writings
appeared during
Elizabeth’s reign.
Although atrocities were hardly confined to any one nation—as
England’s own conduct in Ireland demonstrated—the idea that
the empire
of Catholic Spain was uniquely murderous and tyrannical
enabled the
English to describe their own imperial ambitions in the
language of
freedom. In A Discourse Concerning Western Planting, written
in 1584, the
Protestant minister and scholar Richard Hakluyt listed twenty-
three rea-
sons that Queen Elizabeth I should support the establishment of
colonies.
Among them was the idea that English settlements would strike
a blow
against Spain’s empire and therefore form part of a divine
mission to res-
cue the New World and its inhabitants from the influence of
Catholicism
and tyranny.
The failed Roanoke settlement
Religion and imperial purpose

Richard Hakluyt
But bringing freedom to Indians was hardly the
only motivation Hakluyt and other writers advanced.
National power and glory, they argued, could be
achieved through colonization. England, a relatively
minor power at the end of the sixteenth century, could
come to rival great nations like Spain and France.
Yet another motivation was that colonists could
enrich the mother country and themselves by provid-
ing English consumers with goods now supplied by
foreigners and opening a new market for English prod-
ucts. Unlike early adventurers such as Raleigh, who
thought of wealth in terms of deposits of gold, Hakluyt
insisted that trade would be the basis of England’s
empire.
The Social Crisis
Equally important, America could be a refuge for England’s
“surplus”
population, benefiting mother country and emigrants alike. The
late
sixteenth century was a time of social crisis in England, with
economic
growth unable to keep pace with the needs of a population that
grew from
3 million in 1550 to about 4 million in 1600. In the sixteenth
and seven-
teenth centuries, landlords sought profits by raising sheep for

the expand-
ing trade in wool and introducing more modern farming
practices such
as crop rotation. They evicted small farmers and fenced in
“commons”
previously open to all.
While many landlords, farmers, and town merchants benefited
from
the enclosure movement, as this process was called, thousands
of persons
were uprooted from the land. Many flooded into England’s
cities. Others,
denounced by authorities as rogues, vagabonds, and vagrants,
wandered
the roads in search of work. “All our towns,” wrote the Puritan
leader John
Winthrop in 1629, shortly before leaving England for
Massachusetts, “com-
plain of the burden of poor people and strive by all means to rid
any such as
they have.” England, he added somberly, “grows weary of her
inhabitants.”
For years, the government struggled to deal with this social
crisis,
sometimes resorting to extreme measures, such as whipping or
hanging
the unemployed or forcing them to accept any job offered to
them. Another
solution was to encourage the unruly poor to leave for the New
World.
As colonists, they could become productive citizens,
contributing to the
nation’s wealth.

An engraving by Theodor de Bry
depicts colonists hunting and fishing
in Virginia. Promotional images such
as this emphasized the abundance of
the New World and suggested that
colonists could live familiar lives there.
From poverty to emigration
43T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
What were the main contours of English colonization in the
Masterless Men
Although authorities saw wandering or unemployed “masterless
men” as
a danger to society, working for wages was itself widely
associated with
servility and loss of liberty. Only those who controlled their
own labor
could be regarded as truly free. Indeed, popular tales and
ballads roman-
ticized the very vagabonds, highwaymen, and even beggars
denounced
by the propertied and powerful, since despite their poverty they
at least
enjoyed freedom from wage work.

The image of the New World as a unique place of opportunity,
where
the English laboring classes could regain economic
independence by
acquiring land and where even criminals would enjoy a second
chance,
was deeply rooted from the earliest days of settlement. John
Smith had
scarcely landed in Virginia in 1607 when he wrote that in
America “every
man may be the master and owner of his own labor and land.”
The main
lure for emigrants from England to the New World was not so
much riches
in gold and silver as the promise of independence that followed
from own-
ing land. Economic freedom and the possibility of passing it on
to one’s
children attracted the largest number of English colonists.
T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
English Emigrants
Seventeenth-century North America was an unstable and
dangerous
environment. Diseases decimated Indian and settler populations
alike.
Without sustained immigration, most settlements would have
collapsed.
With a population of between 4 million and 5 million, about
half that of
Spain and a quarter of that of France, England produced a far
larger num-
ber of men, women, and children willing to brave the dangers of

emigra-
tion to the New World. In large part, this was because economic
conditions
in England were so bad.
Between 1607 and 1700, more than half a million people left
England.
North America was not the destination of the majority of these
emigrants.
Approximately 180,000 settled in Ireland, and about the same
number
migrated to the West Indies, where the introduction of sugar
cultivation
promised riches for those who could obtain land. Nonetheless,
the popula-
tion of England’s mainland colonies quickly outstripped that of
their rivals.
The Chesapeake area, where the tobacco-producing colonies of
Virginia
A pamphlet published in 1609
promoting emigration to Virginia.
The New World as a land of
opportunity
and Maryland developed a constant demand for cheap labor,
received
about 120,000 settlers. New England attracted 21,000
emigrants, nearly
all of them arriving before 1640. In the second part of the

seventeenth
century, the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania)
attracted about 23,000 settlers. Although the arrivals to New
England and
the Middle Colonies included many families, the majority of
newcomers
were young, single men from the bottom rungs of English
society, who had
little to lose by emigrating.
Indentured Servants
Settlers who could pay for their own passage—government
officials, cler-
gymen, merchants, artisans, landowning farmers, and members
of the
lesser nobility—arrived in America as free persons. Most
quickly acquired
land. In the seventeenth century, however, nearly two-thirds of
English
settlers came as indentured servants, who voluntarily
surrendered their
freedom for a specified time (usually five to seven years) in
exchange for
passage to America.
Like slaves, servants could be bought and sold, could not marry
with-
out the permission of their owner, were subject to physical
punishment,
and saw their obligation to labor enforced by the courts. But,
unlike slaves,
servants could look forward to a release from bondage.
Assuming they
survived their period of labor, servants would receive a payment

known
as “freedom dues” and become free members of society.
Given the high death rate, many servants did not live to the end
of
their terms. Freedom dues were sometimes so meager that they
did not
enable recipients to acquire land. Many servants found the
reality of life
in the New World less appealing than they had anticipated.
Employers
constantly complained of servants running away, not working
diligently,
or being unruly, all manifestations of what one commentator
called their
“fondness for freedom.”
Land and Liberty
Access to land played many roles in seventeenth-century
America. Land,
English settlers believed, was the basis of liberty. Owning land
gave men
control over their own labor and, in most colonies, the right to
vote. The
promise of immediate access to land lured free settlers, and
freedom dues
that included land persuaded potential immigrants to sign
contracts as
indentured servants. Land in America also became a way for the
king to
Landownership as the basis of
liberty
Slavery and indentured

servitude
Demographics of colonists
45T H E C O M I N G O F T H E E N G L I S H
What challenges did the early English settlers face?
reward relatives and allies. Each colony was launched with a
huge grant of
land from the crown, either to a company or to a private
individual known
as a proprietor. Some grants, if taken literally, stretched from
the Atlantic
Ocean to the Pacific.
Without labor, however, land would have little value. Since
emigrants
did not come to America intending to work the land of others
(except tem-
porarily in the case of indentured servants), the very abundance
of “free”
land eventually led many property owners to turn to slaves as a
workforce.
Englishmen and Indians
Land in North America, of course, was already occupied. And
the arrival of
English settlers presented the native inhabitants of eastern
North America
with the greatest crisis in their history. Unlike the Spanish,
English colo-
nists were chiefly interested in displacing the Indians and

settling on their
land, not intermarrying with them, organizing their labor, or
making them
subjects of the crown. The English exchanged goods with the
native popu-
lation, and Indians often traveled through colonial settlements.
Fur trad-
ers on the frontiers of settlement sometimes married Indian
women, partly
as a way of gaining access to native societies and the kin
networks essen-
tial to economic relationships. Most English settlers, however,
remained
obstinately separate from their Indian neighbors. Moreover, the
aim of
converting Indians to Christianity foundered on Indian
indifference to
the religious disputes that racked Europe and the unavoidable
reality that
churches transplanted to English America had their hands full
providing
religious services for European colonists.
Despite their insistence that Indians had no real claim to the
land
since they did not cultivate or improve it, most colonial
authorities
acquired land by purchase, often in treaties forced upon Indians
after they
had suffered military defeat. To keep the peace, some colonial
govern-
ments tried to prevent the private seizure or purchase of Indian
lands, or
they declared certain areas off-limits to settlers. But these
measures were
rarely enforced and ultimately proved ineffective. New settlers

and freed
servants sought land for themselves, and those who established
families in
America needed land for their children.
The seventeenth century was marked by recurrent warfare
between
colonists and Indians. These conflicts generated a strong feeling
of supe-
riority among the colonists and left them intent on maintaining
the real
and imagined boundaries separating the two peoples. Over time
the
English displaced the original inhabitants more thoroughly than
any other
European empire.
The English and Indian land
Failure of converting Indians
Recurrent warfare between
colonists and Indians
The Transformation of Indian Life
Many eastern Indians initially welcomed the newcomers, or at
least their
goods, which they appreciated for their practical advantages.
Items like
woven cloth, metal kettles, iron axes, fishhooks, hoes, and guns
were

quickly integrated into Indian life. Indians also displayed a
great desire
for goods like colorful glass beads and copper ornaments that
could be
incorporated into their religious ceremonies.
As Indians became integrated into the Atlantic economy, subtle
changes took place in Indian life. European metal goods
changed their
farming, hunting, and cooking practices. Men devoted more
time to hunt-
ing beaver for fur trading. Later observers would describe this
trade as
one in which Indians exchanged valuable commodities like furs
and ani-
mal skins for worthless European trinkets. In fact, both
Europeans and
Indians gave up goods they had in abundance in exchange for
items in
short supply in their own society. But as the colonists achieved
military
superiority over the Indians, the profits of trade mostly flowed
to colo-
nial and European merchants. Growing connections with
Europeans
stimulated warfare among Indian tribes, and the overhunting of
beaver
and deer forced some groups to encroach on territory claimed by
others.
And newcomers from Europe brought epidemics that decimated
Indian
populations.
A drawing by the artist John White
shows ten male and seven female

Native Americans dancing around
a circle of posts in a religious ritual.
White was a careful observer of their
clothing, body markings, and objects
used in the ceremony.
Changes in Indian farming,
hunting, and cooking practices
47S E T T L I N G T H E C H E S A P E A K E
What challenges did the early English settlers face?
As settlers fenced in more and more land and
introduced new crops and livestock, the natural
environment changed in ways that undermined
traditional Indian agriculture and hunting. Pigs
and cattle roamed freely, trampling Indian corn-
fields and gardens. The need for wood to build
and heat homes and export to England depleted
forests on which Indians relied for hunting. The
rapid expansion of the fur trade diminished the
population of beaver and other animals. In short,
Indians’ lives were powerfully altered by the
changes set in motion in 1607 when English colo-
nists landed at Jamestown.
S E T T L I N G T H E

C H E S A P E A K E
The Jamestown Colony
The early history of Jamestown was, to say the least, not
promising.
The colony’s leadership changed repeatedly, its inhabitants
suffered an
extraordinarily high death rate, and, with the Virginia Company
seeking
a quick profit, supplies from England proved inadequate. The
first settlers
were “a quarrelsome band of gentlemen and servants.” They
included few
farmers and laborers and numerous sons of English gentry who
preferred
to prospect for gold rather than farm.
Disease and lack of food took a heavy toll. By the end of the
first year,
the original population of 104 had fallen by half. New arrivals
(includ-
ing the first two women, who landed in 1608) brought the
numbers up to
400 in 1609, but by 1610, after a winter long remembered as the
“starv-
ing time,” only 65 settlers remained alive. At one point, the
survivors
abandoned Jamestown and sailed for England, only to be
intercepted and
persuaded to return to Virginia by ships carrying a new
governor, 250
colonists, and supplies.
Only rigorous military discipline held the colony together. John
Smith

imposed a regime of forced labor on company lands. “He that
will not
work, shall not eat,” Smith declared. Smith’s autocratic mode of
govern-
ing alienated many of the colonists. After being injured in an
accidental
The only known contemporary portrait
of a New England Indian, this 1681
painting by an unnamed artist was
long thought to represent Ninigret II, a
leader of the Narragansetts of Rhode
Island. It has been more recently
identified as David, an Indian who
saved the life of John Winthrop II,
a governor of colonial Connecticut.
Apart from the wampum beads
around his neck, everything the Indian
wears is of English manufacture.
John Smith’s iron rule

gunpowder explosion in 1609, he was forced to return to
England. But his
immediate successors continued his iron rule.
The Virginia Company slowly realized that for the colony to
survive
it would have to abandon the search for gold, grow its own
food, and find
a marketable commodity. It would also have to attract more
settlers. With
this end in view, it announced new policies in 1618. Instead of
retaining all
the land for itself, the company introduced the headright
system, award-
ing fifty acres of land to any colonist who paid for his own or
another’s
passage. Thus, anyone who brought in a sizable number of
servants would
immediately acquire a large estate. In place of the governor’s
militaristic
regime, a “charter of grants and liberties”
was issued, including the establishment of
a House of Burgesses. When it convened
in 1619, this became the first elected assem-
bly in colonial America. Also in 1619, the
first twenty blacks arrived in Virginia on
a Dutch vessel. These events laid the foun-
dation for a society that would one day be
dominated economically and politically by
slaveowning planters.
Powhatan and Pocahontas
When the English arrived at Jamestown,

they landed in an area inhabited by
some 15,000 to 25,000 Indians living in
numerous small agricultural villages. Most
acknowledged the rule of Wahunsonacock,
a shrewd and forceful leader who had
recently consolidated his authority over
the region and collected tribute from some
thirty subordinate tribes. Called Powhatan
by the settlers after the Indian word for both
his tribe and his title of paramount chief,
he quickly realized the advantages of trade
with the newcomers.
In the first two years of Jamestown’s
existence, relations with Indians were
mostly peaceful and based on a fairly equal
give-and-take. At one point, Smith was
Jamestown
(1632)
(1632)
(1607)
VIRGINIA
MARYLAND
MARYLAND
Roanoke
I s land
ACCOMAC

ACCOHANNOCK
NANTAUGHTACUND ONAWMANIENT
CHCHHCHICHICHIHHICHIHCHHHHCHH
CACACACACACCACAACCACCACCACACCCACACACACA
CCACACACACACCCACACACACCCACACCACACCACCAC
CACACCACCACACCCACACAAACCCACCCAAAA
OOAOAOAAOAAANNOAOAAAAAAAAAOOOCHICACOAN
RAPPAHANNOCK
WICOCOMOCO
CUTTATOWOMEN
MATTAPONI
CHICKAHOMINY
PAMUNKEY
CHISKIAK
APPOMATTOC
WEYANOCK
NANSEMOND
York R.
James R.
Roanoke R.
Chesapeake B
ay

0
0
25
25
50 miles
50 kilometers
Date of settlement
English settlement, ca. 1650
(1607)
E N G L I S H S E T T L E M E N T I N T H E
C H E S A P E A K E , c a . 1 6 5 0
By 1650, English settlement in the
Chesapeake had spread well beyond
the initial colony at Jamestown, as
tobacco planters sought fertile land
near navigable waterways.
How did Virginia and Maryland develop in their early years?
captured by the Indians and threatened with execution by
Powhatan,
only to be rescued by Pocahontas, reputedly the favorite among

his many
children by dozens of wives. The incident has come down in
legend as an
example of a rebellious, love-struck teenager defying her father.
In fact,
it was probably part of an elaborate ceremony designed by
Powhatan to
demonstrate his power over the colonists and incorporate them
into his
realm. Pocahontas subsequently became an intermediary
between the
two peoples, bringing food and messages to Jamestown. In
1614, she mar-
ried the English colonist John Rolfe. Two years later, she
accompanied her
husband to England, where she caused a sensation in the court
of James I
as a symbol of Anglo-Indian harmony and missionary success.
But she
succumbed to disease in 1617. Her father died the following
year.
The Uprising of 1622
Once it became clear that the English were interested in
establishing a per-
manent and constantly expanding colony, not a trading post,
conflict with
local Indians was inevitable. In 1622, Powhatan’s brother and
successor,
Opechancanough, led a brilliantly planned surprise attack that
in a single day
wiped out one-quarter of Virginia’s settler population of 1,200.
The surviving
900 colonists organized themselves into military bands, which
then massa-

cred scores of Indians and devastated their villages. By going to
war, declared
Governor Francis Wyatt, the Indians had forfeited any claim to
the land.
Virginia’s policy, he continued, must now be nothing less than
the “expulsion
of the savages to gain the free range of the country.”
The unsuccessful uprising of 1622 fundamentally shifted the
balance
of power in the colony. The settlers’ supremacy was reinforced
in 1644
when a last desperate rebellion led by Opechancanough, now
said to be
100 years old, was crushed after causing the deaths of some 500
colonists.
Virginia forced a treaty on the surviving coastal Indians, who
now num-
bered less than 2,000, that acknowledged their subordination to
the gov-
ernment at Jamestown and required them to move to tribal
reservations to
the west and not enter areas of European settlement without
permission.
Settlers spreading inland into the Virginia countryside
continued to seize
Indian lands.
The destruction caused by the Uprising of 1622 was the last in a
series
of blows suffered by the Virginia Company. Two years later, it
surrendered
its charter and Virginia became the first royal colony, its
governor now
appointed by the crown. Investors had not turned a profit, and
although

the company had sent 6,000 settlers to Virginia, its white
population
Powhatan, the most prominent Indian
leader in the original area of English
settlement in Virginia. This image,
showing Powhatan and his court, was
engraved on John Smith’s map of
Virginia and included in Smith’s General
History of Virginia, published in 1624.
The only portrait of Pocahontas made
during her lifetime was engraved by
Simon van de Passe in England in
1616. After converting to Christianity,
Pocahontas took the name Rebecca.
numbered only 1,200 when the king assumed control. The
government
in London for years paid little attention to Virginia. Henceforth,
the local
elite, not a faraway company, controlled the colony’s

development. And
that elite was growing rapidly in wealth and power thanks to the
cultiva-
tion of a crop introduced from the West Indies by John Rolfe—
tobacco.
A Tobacco Colony
King James I considered tobacco “harmful to the brain and
dangerous to
the lungs” and issued a spirited warning against its use. But
increasing
numbers of Europeans enjoyed smoking and believed the
tobacco plant
had medicinal benefits. Tobacco became Virginia’s substitute
for gold. It
enriched an emerging class of tobacco planters, as well as
members of the
colonial government who assigned good land to themselves. The
crown
profited from customs duties (taxes on tobacco that entered or
left the
kingdom). The spread of tobacco farming produced a dispersed
society
with few towns and inspired a frenzied scramble for land. By
the middle of
the seventeenth century, a new influx of immigrants with ample
financial
resources—sons of merchants and English gentlemen—had
taken advan-
tage of the headright system and governmental connections to
acquire
large estates along navigable rivers. They established
themselves as the
colony’s social and political elite.

The expansion of tobacco cultivation also led to an increased
demand
for field labor, met for most of the seventeenth century by
young, male
indentured servants. Despite harsh conditions of work in the
tobacco
fields, a persistently high death rate, and laws mandating
punishments
from whipping to an extension of service for those who ran
away or
were unruly, the abundance of land continued to attract
migrants. Of the
120,000 English immigrants who entered the Chesapeake region
dur-
ing the seventeenth century, three-quarters came as servants.
Virginia’s
white society increasingly came to resemble that of England,
with a
wealthy landed gentry at the top; a group of small farmers,
mostly former
indentured servants who had managed to acquire land, in the
middle;
and an army of poor laborers—servants and landless former
indentured
servants—at the bottom.
Women and the Family
Virginia, however, lacked one essential element of English
society—
stable family life. Given the demand for male servants to work
in the
tobacco fields, men in the Chesapeake outnumbered women for
most
Tobacco and social change in

Virginia
An advertisement for tobacco
includes images of slaves handling
barrels and tobacco plants.
How did Virginia and Maryland develop in their early years?
of the seventeenth century by four or five to one. The vast
majority of
women who emigrated to the region came as indentured
servants. Since
they usually had to complete their terms of service before
marrying, they
did not begin to form families until their mid-twenties. The high
death
rate, unequal ratio between the sexes, and late age of marriage
retarded
population growth and resulted in large numbers of single men,
widows,
and orphans.
In the colonies as in England, a married woman possessed
certain
rights before the law, including a claim to “dower rights” of
one-third of
her husband’s property in the event that he died before she did.
When the
widow died, however, the property passed to the husband’s male
heirs.

(English law was far less generous than in Spain, where a
woman could
hold independently any property inherited from her parents, and
a man
and wife owned jointly all the wealth accumulated during a
marriage.)
Social conditions in the colonies, however, opened the door to
roles
women rarely assumed in England. A widow or one of the few
women
who never married could sometimes take advantage of her legal
status
as a femme sole (a woman alone, who enjoyed an independent
legal iden-
tity denied to married women) to make contracts and conduct
business.
Margaret Brent, who emigrated to the Chesapeake in 1638,
acquired land,
Processing tobacco was as labor
intensive as caring for the plant in
the fields. Here slaves and female
indentured servants work with the
crop after it has been harvested.
Women’s lives

managed her own plantation, and acted as a lawyer in court. But
because
most women came to Virginia as indentured servants, they could
look
forward only to a life of hard labor in the tobacco fields and
early death.
The Maryland Experiment
The second Chesapeake colony, Maryland, followed a similar
course of
development. As in Virginia, tobacco came to dominate the
economy and
tobacco planters the society. But in other ways, Maryland’s
history was
strikingly different.
Maryland was established in 1632 as a proprietary colony, that
is, a
grant of land and governmental authority to a single individual.
This was
Cecilius Calvert, the son of a recently deceased favorite of King
Charles I.
The charter granted him “full, free, and absolute power,”
including control
of trade and the right to initiate all legislation, with an elected
assembly
confined to approving or disapproving his proposals. Although
Calvert
disliked representative institutions, the charter guaranteed to
colonists
“all privileges, franchises, and liberties” of Englishmen. While
these were
not spelled out, they undoubtedly included the idea of a
government lim-
ited by the law. Here was a recipe for conflict, and Maryland

had more than
its share during the seventeenth century.
Religion in Maryland
Further aggravating instability in the colony was the fact that
Calvert, a
Catholic, envisioned Maryland as a refuge for his persecuted
coreligion-
ists in England, especially the younger sons of Catholic gentry
who had
few economic or political prospects in England. In Maryland, he
hoped,
Protestants and Catholics could live in a harmony unknown in
Europe.
Most appointed officials were Catholic, including relatives of
the propri-
etor. But Protestants always formed a majority of the settlers.
Most, as in
Virginia, came as indentured servants.
As in Virginia, the death rate remained very high. Almost 70
percent of
male settlers in Maryland died before reaching the age of fifty,
and half the
children born in the colony did not live to adulthood. But at
least initially,
Maryland seems to have offered servants greater opportunity for
landown-
ership than Virginia. Unlike in the older colony, freedom dues
in Maryland
included fifty acres of land. As tobacco planters engrossed the
best land later
in the century, however, the prospects for landless men
diminished.

Maryland as a refuge for
persecuted Catholics
Proprietary colony
53T H E N E W E N G L A N D W A Y
T H E N E W E N G L A N D W A Y
The Rise of Puritanism
As Virginia and Maryland evolved toward societies dominated
by a small
aristocracy ruling over numerous bound laborers, a very
different social
order emerged in seventeenth-century New England. The early
history of
that region is intimately connected to the religious movement
known as
“Puritanism,” which arose in England late in the sixteenth
century. The
term was initially coined by opponents to ridicule those not
satisfied with
the progress of the Protestant Reformation in England. Puritans
differed
among themselves on many issues. But all shared the conviction
that the
Church of England retained too many elements of Catholicism
in its reli-
gious rituals and doctrines. Puritans saw elaborate church
ceremonies,
the rule that priests could not marry, and ornate church
decorations as
vestiges of “popery.” Many rejected the Catholic structure of

religious
authority descending from a pope or king to archbishops,
bishops, and
priests. Only independent local congregations, they believed,
should
choose clergymen and determine modes of worship. These
Puritans were
called “Congregationalists.” They believed that neither the
church nor the
nation was living up to its ideals.
Puritans considered religious belief a complex and demanding
matter
and urged believers to seek the truth by reading the Bible and
listening to
sermons by educated ministers, rather than devoting themselves
to sacra-
ments administered by priests and to what Puritans considered
formulaic
prayers. The sermon was the central rite of Puritan practice. In
the course
of a lifetime, according to one estimate, the average Puritan
listened to
some 7,000 sermons. In their religious beliefs, Puritans
followed the
ideas of the French-born Swiss theologian John Calvin. The
world, Calvin
taught, was divided between the elect and the damned, but no
one knew
who was destined to be saved, which had already been
determined by God.
Nevertheless, leading a good life and prospering economically
might be
indications of God’s grace, whereas idleness and immoral
behavior were
sure signs of damnation.

Moral Liberty
Puritanism was characterized by a zeal that alienated many who
held
differing religious views. A minority of Puritans (such as those
who
settled in Plymouth Colony) became separatists, abandoning
the Church
of England entirely to form their own independent churches.
Most,
The Bible and the sermon
John Calvin
What made the English settlement of New England distinctive?
Puritanism and the Protestant
Reformation in England
however, hoped to purify the church from within. But in the
1620s and
1630s, as Charles I seemed to be moving toward a restoration of
Catholic
ceremonies and the Church of England dismissed Puritan
ministers
and censored their writings, many Puritans decided to emigrate.
When
Puritans emigrated to New England, they hoped to escape what
they
believed to be the religious and worldly corruptions of English

society.
They would establish a “city set upon a hill,” a Bible
Commonwealth
whose influence would flow back across the Atlantic and rescue
England
from godlessness and social decay.
Like so many other emigrants to America, Puritans came in
search
of liberty, especially the right to worship and govern themselves
in what
they deemed a truly Christian manner. Freedom certainly did
not mean
unrestrained action, improper religious practices, or sinful
behavior, of
which, Puritans thought, there were far too many examples in
England.
In a 1645 speech to the Massachusetts legislature explaining the
Puritan
conception of freedom, John Winthrop, the colony’s governor,
distin-
guished sharply between two kinds of liberty. “Natural” liberty,
or acting
without restraint, suggested “a liberty to do evil.” This was the
false idea
of freedom supposedly adopted by the Irish, Indians, and bad
Christians
generally. Genuine “moral” liberty meant “a liberty to that only
which is
good.” It was quite compatible with severe restraints on speech,
religion,
and personal behavior. True freedom, Winthrop insisted,
depended on
“subjection to authority,” both religious and secular; otherwise,
anarchy
was sure to follow. To Puritans, liberty meant that the elect had

a right to
establish churches and govern society, not that others could
challenge their
beliefs or authority.
The Pilgrims at Plymouth
The first Puritans to emigrate to America were a group of
separatists
known as the Pilgrims. They had already fled to the Netherlands
in 1608.
A decade later, fearing that their children were being corrupted
by the
surrounding culture, they decided to emigrate to Virginia. In
September
1620, the Mayflower, carrying 150 settlers and crew (among
them many
non-Puritans), embarked from England. Blown off course, they
landed
not in Virginia but hundreds of miles to the north, on Cape Cod.
Here the
102 who survived the journey established the colony of
Plymouth. Before
landing, the Pilgrim leaders drew up the Mayflower Compact, in
which
the adult men going ashore agreed to obey “just and equal laws”
enacted
by representatives of their own choosing. This was the first
written frame
of government in what is now the United States.
A portrait of John Winthrop, first
governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, painted in the 1640s.

Freedom and subjection to
authority
Plymouth colony
The Pilgrims arrived in an area whose native population had
recently
been decimated by smallpox. They established Plymouth on the
site of an
abandoned Indian village whose fields had been cleared before
the epi-
demic and were ready for cultivation. Nonetheless, the settlers
arrived six
weeks before winter without food or farm animals. Half died
during the
first winter, and the remaining colonists survived only through
the help of
local Indians. In the autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims invited their
Indian allies
to a harvest feast celebrating their survival, the first
Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims hoped to establish a society based on the lives of
the
early Christian saints. Their government rested on the principle
of con-
sent, and voting was not restricted to church members. All land
was held
in common until 1627, when it was divided among the settlers.

Plymouth
survived as an independent colony until 1691, but it was soon
overshad-
owed by Massachusetts Bay to its north.
The Great Migration
Chartered in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Company was
founded by a
group of London merchants who hoped to further the Puritan
cause and
turn a profit through trade with the Indians. The first five ships
sailed from
England in 1629, and by 1642 some 21,000 Puritans had
emigrated to Mas-
sachusetts, a flow of population long remembered as the Great
Migration.
After 1640, migration to New England virtually ceased, and in
some
years more colonists left the region than arrived. Nonetheless,
the Great
Migration established the basis for a stable and thriving society.
In many ways, the settling of New England was unique.
Although ser-
vants represented about one-quarter of the Great Migration,
most settlers
arrived in Massachusetts in families. Compared with colonists
in Virginia
and Maryland, they were older and more prosperous, and the
number of
men and women more equally balanced. Because of the even sex
ratio and
New England’s healthier climate, the population grew rapidly,
doubling
every twenty-seven years. By 1700 New England’s white

population of
91,000 outnumbered that of both the Chesapeake and the West
Indies.
The Puritan Family
Whatever their differences with other Englishmen on religious
mat-
ters, Puritans shared with the larger society a belief in male
authority
within the household as well as an adherence to the common-
law tradition
that severely limited married women’s legal and economic
rights. Male
authority was especially vital in America because in a farming
society
Seal of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. The Indian’s scanty attire
suggests a lack of civilization. His
statement “Come Over and Help Us,”
based on an incident in the Bible,
illustrates the English conviction
that they were liberating the native
population, rather than exploiting
them as other empires had.
A migration of families

Male authority in the
household
without large numbers of slaves or servants, control over the
labor of one’s
family was essential to a man’s economic success.
To be sure, Puritans deemed women to be the spiritual equals of
men, and women were allowed to become full church members.
Although
all ministers were men, the Puritan belief in the ability of
believers to
interpret the Bible opened the door for some women to claim
positions of
religious leadership. The ideal Puritan marriage was based on
reciprocal
affection and companionship, and divorce was legal. Yet within
the house-
hold, the husband’s authority was virtually absolute.
The family was the foundation of strong communities, and
unmar-
ried adults seemed a danger to the social fabric. The typical
New England
woman married at twenty-two, a younger age than her English
counter-
part, and gave birth seven times. Because New England was a
far healthier
environment than the Chesapeake, more children survived
infancy. Thus,
much of a woman’s adult life was devoted to bearing and

rearing children.
Government and Society in Massachusetts
Since Puritans feared excessive individualism and lack of social
unity, the
leaders of Massachusetts organized the colony in self-governing
towns.
Groups of settlers received a land grant from the colony’s
government and
then subdivided it, with residents awarded house lots in a
central area
and land on the outskirts for farming. Much land remained in
commons,
The Savage Family, a 1779 painting
by the New England artist Edward
Savage, depicts several generations
of a typically numerous Puritan family.
Family and society
Women and Puritan religion
either for collective use or to be divided among later settlers or
the sons of
the town’s founders. Each town had its own Congregational

Church. Each,
according to a law of 1647, was required to establish a school,
since the
ability to read the Bible was central to Puritan belief. To train
an educated
ministry, Harvard College was established in 1636 (nearly a
century after
the Royal University of Mexico, founded in 1551), and two
years later the
first printing press in English America was established in
Cambridge.
Wishing to rule the colony without outside interference and to
pre-
vent non-Puritans from influencing decision making, the eight
sharehold-
ers of the Massachusetts Bay Company emigrated to America,
taking the
charter with them and transforming a commercial document into
a form of
government. In 1634, a group of deputies elected by freemen
(landowning
church members) was added to form a single ruling body, the
General
Court. Ten years later, company officers and elected deputies
were
divided into two legislative houses. Unlike Virginia, whose
governors
were appointed first by a faraway company and, after 1624, by
the crown,
or Maryland, where authority rested with a single proprietor, the
freemen
of Massachusetts elected their governor.
The principle of consent was central to Puritanism. Churches
were formed by voluntary agreement among members, who

elected the
The New England town
The Massachusetts Bay Charter
An embroidered banner depicting
the main building at Harvard, the first
college established in the English
colonies. It was probably made by a
Massachusetts woman for a husband
or son who attended Harvard.
minister. No important church decision was made without the
agreement
of the male members. Towns governed themselves, and local
officials,
delegates to the General Court, and the colonial governor were
all elected.
Puritans, however, were hardly believers in equality. Church
member-
ship, a status that carried great prestige and power, was a
restrictive
category. Anyone could worship at a church, but to be a full
member
required demonstrating that one had experienced divine grace
and could

be considered a “visible saint,” usually by testifying about a
conversion
experience. Voting in colony-wide elections was limited to men
who had
been accepted as full church members. Puritan democracy was
for those
within the circle of church membership; those outside the
boundary occu-
pied a secondary place in the Bible Commonwealth.
Church and State in Puritan Massachusetts
Seventeenth-century New England was a hierarchical society in
which
socially prominent families were assigned the best land and the
most
desirable seats in church. Ordinary settlers were addressed as
“goodman”
and “goodwife,” while the better sort were called “gentleman”
and “lady”
or “master” and “mistress.” When the General Court in 1641
issued a Body
of Liberties outlining the rights and responsibilities of
Massachusetts
colonists, it adopted the traditional understanding of liberties as
privileges
that derived from one’s place in the social order. Inequality was
considered
an expression of God’s will, and while some liberties, such as
freedom of
speech and assembly, applied to all inhabitants, there were
separate lists
of rights for freemen, women, children, and servants. The Body
of Liberties
also allowed for slavery. The first African slave appears in the
records of

Massachusetts Bay in 1640.
Massachusetts forbade ministers to hold office so as not to
interfere
with their spiritual responsibilities. But church and state were
closely
interconnected. The law required each town to establish a
church and to
levy a tax to support the minister. Massachusetts prescribed the
death
penalty for, among other things, worshiping “any god, but the
lord god,”
practicing witchcraft, or committing blasphemy.
Like many others in the seventeenth century, Puritans believed
that
religious uniformity was essential to social order. Thus, the
church and
civil government were intimately interconnected. Puritans did
not believe
in religious toleration—there was one truth, and their faith
embodied it.
Religious liberty meant the liberty to practice this truth. But the
desire
to give autonomy to local congregations soon clashed with the
desire for
religious uniformity.
The Body of Liberties
Church membership
Religious uniformity

59N E W E N G L A N D E R S D I V I D E D
N E W E N G L A N D E R S D I V I D E D
Modern ideas of individualism, privacy, and personal freedom
would have
struck Puritans as quite strange. They considered too much
emphasis on
the “self” dangerous to social harmony and community stability.
In the
closely knit towns of New England, residents carefully
monitored one
another’s behavior and chastised or expelled those who violated
com-
munal norms. Towns banished individuals for such offenses as
criticizing
the church or government, complaining about the colony in
letters home
to England, or, in the case of one individual, Abigail Gifford,
for being
“a very burdensome woman.” Tolerance of difference was not
high on the
list of Puritan values.
What were the main sources of discord in early New England?
Hartford
Mystic
Boston
Plymouth
Cambridge

New Haven
New Amsterdam
Providence
York
Salem
Gloucester
Newport
Easthampton
Stamford
Stratford
Windsor
Springfield
Weymouth
Provincetown
Barnstable
Edgartown
Portsmouth
Sandwich
Exeter
Portland

(1629–1630)
(1636–1649)
(1638)
(1636–1643)
(1636) (1620)
Pequot War,
1637
CONNECTICUT
MASSACHUSETTS
RHODE
ISLAND
PLYMOUTH
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
MAINE
M a rt h a's
V i ne ya rd
Na nt ucke t
Ca pe Co d
Long I s land

ABENAKI
PENNACOOK
MASSACHUSETT
POKANOKET
WAMPANOAG
NARRAGANSETT
MOHEGAN
NIPMUCK
Saco R.
Salm
on Falls R.
M
errim
ack R.
C
on
ne
ct
ic
ut

R
.
Th
am
es
R
.
H
ousatonic R.
H
ud
so
n
R.
Lake
Champlain
Massachusetts
Bay
Cape Cod
Bay
Long I
sland S
ound

Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
25
25
50 miles
50 kilometers
Date of settlement
Massachusetts
Plymouth
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New Haven
(1620)
E N G L I S H S E T T L E M E N T I N N E W E N G L A N
D , c a . 1 6 4 0
By the mid-seventeenth century,
English settlement in New England
had spread well inland and up and
down the Atlantic coast.

Roger Williams
Differences of opinion about how to organize a Bible
Commonwealth,
however, emerged almost from the founding of Massachusetts.
With its
emphasis on individual interpretation of the Bible, Puritanism
contained
the seeds of its own fragmentation. The first sustained criticism
of the
existing order came from the young minister Roger Williams,
who arrived
in Massachusetts in 1631 and soon began to insist that its
congregations
withdraw from the Church of England and that church and state
be sepa-
rated. Williams believed that any law-abiding citizen should be
allowed to
practice whatever form of religion he chose.
Williams aimed to strengthen religion, not weaken it. The
embrace
of government, he insisted, corrupted the purity of Christian
faith and
drew believers into endless religious wars like those that racked
Europe.
Furthermore, Williams rejected the conviction that Puritans
were an elect
people on a divine mission to spread the true faith. Williams
denied that
God had singled out any group as special favorites.

Rhode Island and Connecticut
Banished from Massachusetts in 1636, Williams and his
followers moved
south, where they established the colony of Rhode Island, which
eventu-
ally received a charter from London. Rhode Island became a
beacon of
religious freedom. It had no established church, no religious
qualifica-
tions for voting until the eighteenth century, and no requirement
that
citizens attend church. It became a haven for Dissenters
(Protestants who
belonged to denominations other than the established church)
and Jews
persecuted in other colonies. Rhode Island’s frame of
government was
also more democratic. The assembly was elected twice a year,
the governor
annually, and town meetings were held more frequently than
elsewhere
in New England.
Religious disagreements in Massachusetts generated other
colonies
as well. In 1636, the minister Thomas Hooker established a
settlement at
Hartford. Its system of government, embodied in the
Fundamental Orders
of 1639, was modeled on that of Massachusetts—with the
significant excep-
tion that men did not have to be church members to vote. Quite
different
was the colony of New Haven, founded in 1638 by emigrants
who wanted

an even closer connection between church and state. In 1662,
Hartford
and New Haven received a royal charter that united them as the
colony of
Connecticut.
Religious freedom in Rhode
Island
Connecticut
Roger Williams, New England’s most
prominent advocate of religious
toleration.
The Trials of Anne Hutchinson
Another threat to the Puritan establishment both because of her
gender
and influential following was Anne Hutchinson. A midwife and
the daugh-
ter of a clergyman, Hutchinson, wrote John Winthrop, was “a
woman
of a ready wit and bold spirit.” Hutchinson began holding
meetings in
her home, where she led discussions of religious issues among
men and
women, including a number of prominent merchants and public

officials.
In Hutchinson’s view, salvation was God’s direct gift to the
elect and
could not be earned by good works, devotional practices, or
other human
effort. Most Puritans shared this belief. What set Hutchinson
apart was
her charge that nearly all the ministers in Massachusetts were
guilty of
faulty preaching for distinguishing “saints” from the damned on
the basis
of activities such as church attendance and moral behavior
rather than an
inner state of grace.
Critics denounced Hutchinson for Antinomianism (a term for
put-
ting one’s own judgment or faith above both human law and the
teach-
ings of the church). In 1637, she was tried in civil court for
sedition
(expressing opinions dangerous to authority). An articulate
woman,
Hutchinson ably debated her university-educated accusers
during her
trial. But when she said God spoke to her directly rather than
through
ministers or the Bible, she violated Puritan doctrine and sealed
her own
fate. Such a claim, the colony’s leaders felt, posed a threat to
organized
churches—and, indeed, to all authority. Hutchinson and a
number of her
followers were banished.
Anne Hutchinson lived in New England for only eight years, but

she left
her mark on the region’s religious culture. As in the case of
Roger Williams,
her career showed how the Puritan belief in individual
interpretation of the
Bible could easily lead to criticism of the religious and political
establish-
ment. It would take many years before religious toleration—
which violated
the Puritans’ understanding of “moral liberty” and social
harmony—came
to Massachusetts.
Puritans and Indians
Along with disruptive religious controversies, New England,
like
other colonies, had to deal with the difficult problem of
relations with
Indians. The native population of New England numbered
perhaps
100,000 when the Puritans arrived. But because of recent
epidemics,
the migrants encountered fewer Indians near the coast than in
other
Hutchinson’s criticisms of
Puritan leaders
Hutchinson’s trial
Significance of Anne
Hutchinson

Anne Hutchinson began holding religious meetings in her home
in Massachusetts
in 1634. She attracted followers who believed that most
ministers were not adhering
strictly to Puritan theology. In 1637, she was placed on trial for
sedition. In her
defense, she claimed to be inspired by a revelation from God, a
violation of Puritan
beliefs. The examination of Hutchinson is a classic example of
the clash between
established power and individual conscience.
GOV. JOHN WINTHROP: Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here
as one of those that have troubled
the peace of the commonwealth and the churches here; you are
known to be a woman that
hath had a great share in the promoting and divulging of those
opinions that are the cause of
this trouble, . . . and you have maintained a meeting and an
assembly in your house that hath
been condemned by the general assembly as a thing not
tolerable nor comely on the sight of
God nor fitting for your sex . . .
MRS. ANNE HUTCHINSON: That’s matter of conscience, Sir.
GOV. JOHN WINTHROP: Your conscience you must keep, or it
must be kept for you. . . . Your
course is not to be suffered for. Besides we find such a course
as this to be greatly prejudicial
to the state. . . . And besides that it will not well stand with the

commonwealth that families
should be neglected for so many neighbors and dames and so
much time spent. We see no
rule of God for this. We see not that any should have authority
to set up any other exercises
besides what authority hath already set up . . .
MRS. ANNE HUTCHINSON: I bless the Lord, he hath let me
see which was the clear ministry and
which the wrong. . . . Now if you do condemn me for speaking
what in my conscience I know
to be truth I must commit myself unto the Lord.
MR. NOWEL (ASSISTANT TO THE COURT): How do you
know that was the spirit?
MRS. ANNE HUTCHINSON: By an immediate revelation.
DEP. GOV. THOMAS DUDLEY: How! An immediate
revelation. . . .
GOV. JOHN WINTHORP: Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the
court you hear is that your are
banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit
for our society, and are to be
imprisoned till the court shall send you away.
From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637)
From John Winthrop,
Speech to the Massachusetts General Court
(July 3, 1645)

John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
describes two very
different definitions of liberty in this speech.
The great questions that have troubled the country, are about the
authority of the magistrates
and the liberty of the people. . . . Concerning liberty, I observe
a great mistake in the country
about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our
nature is now corrupt) and civil
or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other
creatures. By this, man, as he
stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he
lists; it is a liberty to do evil as
well as to [do] good. This liberty is incompatible and
inconsistent with authority, and cannot
endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The
exercise and maintaining of this
liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than
brute beasts. . . . This is that
great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the
ordinances of God are bent
against, to restrain and subdue it.
The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal, it may also be
termed moral. . . . This
liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot
subsist without it; and it
is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. . . .
This liberty is maintained
and exercised in a way of subjection to
authority; it is of the same kind of liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free. The
woman’s own choice makes . . . a man her
husband; yet being so chosen, he is her

lord, and she is to be subject to him, yet in
a way of liberty, not of bondage; and a true
wife accounts her subjection her honor and
freedom, and would not think her condition
safe and free, but in her subjection to her
husband’s authority. Such is the liberty of
the church under the authority of Christ.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. To what extent does Hutchinson’s
being a woman play a part in the
accusations against her?
2. Why does Winthrop consider “natu-
ral” liberty dangerous?
3. How do Hutchinson and Winthrop
differ in their understanding of
religious liberty?
parts of eastern North America. In areas of European settlement,
colo-
nists quickly outnumbered the native population. Some settlers,
nota-
bly Roger Williams, sought to treat the Indians with justice.
Williams

insisted that the king had no right to grant land already
belonging to
someone else. No town, said Williams, should be established
before its
site had been purchased. John Winthrop, on the other hand,
believed
uncultivated land could legitimately be taken. Although he
recognized
the benefits of buying land rather than simply seizing it, he
insisted that
such purchases require Indians to submit to English authority
and pay
tribute to the colonists.
To New England’s leaders, the Indians represented both
savagery
and temptation. They enjoyed freedom but of the wrong kind—
what
Winthrop condemned as undisciplined “natural liberty.”
Puritans feared
that Indian society might attract colonists who lacked the proper
moral
fiber. In 1642, the Connecticut General Court set a penalty of
three years
at hard labor for any colonist who abandoned “godly society” to
live with
the Indians. To counteract the attraction of Indian life, the
leaders of New
England also encouraged the publication of “captivity”
narratives by
those captured by Indians. The most popular was The
Sovereignty and
Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson, who was seized with
other set-
tlers and held for three months until ransomed during an Indian
war in

the 1670s. Rowlandson acknowledged that she had been well
treated and
suffered “not the least abuse or unchastity,” but her book’s
overriding
theme was her determination to return to Christian society.
Puritans announced that they intended to bring Christian faith to
the Indians, but they did nothing in the first two decades of
settlement to
accomplish this. They generally saw Indians as an obstacle to be
pushed
aside, rather than as potential converts.
The Pequot War
Indians in New England lacked a paramount chief like Powhatan
in
Virginia. Coastal Indian tribes, their numbers severely reduced
by disease,
initially sought to forge alliances with the newcomers to
enhance their
own position against inland rivals. But as the white population
expanded
and new towns proliferated, conflict with the region’s Indians
became
unavoidable. The turning point came in 1637 when a fur trader
was killed
by Pequots—a powerful tribe who controlled southern New
England’s fur
trade and exacted tribute from other Indians. A force of
Connecticut and
Massachusetts soldiers, augmented by Narragansett allies,
surrounded
the main Pequot fortified village at Mystic and set it ablaze,
killing those

The title page of a translation of the
Bible into the Massachusett language,
published by John Eliot in 1663.
Conflict between Indians and
New England colonists
who tried to escape. Over 500 men, women, and children lost
their lives in
the massacre. By the end of the war a few months later, most of
the Pequot
had been exterminated or sold into Caribbean slavery. The
treaty that
restored peace decreed that their name be wiped from the
historical record.
The colonists’ ferocity shocked their Indian allies, who
considered
European military practices barbaric. Pilgrim leader William
Bradford
agreed: “It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire,” he
wrote of the
raid on Mystic. But to most Puritans, the defeat of a “barbarous
nation” by
“the sword of the Lord” offered further proof that Indians were
unworthy
of sharing New England with the visible saints of the church.

The New England Economy
The leaders of the New England colonies prided themselves on
the idea
that religion was the primary motivation for emigration. But
economic
motives were hardly unimportant. One promotional pamphlet of
the 1620s
spoke of New England as a place “where religion and profit
jump together.”
Most Puritans came from the middle ranks of society and paid
for
their family’s passage rather than indenturing themselves to
labor. They
sought in New England not only religious liberty but also
economic
An engraving from John Underhill’s
News from America, published
in London in 1638, shows the
destruction of the Pequot village on
the Mystic River in 1637. The colonial
forces, firing guns, are aided by
Indian allies with bows and arrows.
Massacre at Mystic
Economic motivation for
emigrants

Chapter 2
Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary.
Painted by an anonymous artist in
the 1670s, this portrait depicts the
wife and daughter of John Freake,
a prominent Boston merchant and
lawyer. To illustrate the family’s
wealth, Mrs. Freake wears a triple
strand of pearls, a garnet bracelet,
and a gold ring, and her child wears
a yellow silk dress.
advancement—if not riches, then at least a “competency,” the
economic
independence that came with secure landownership or craft
status.
Lacking a marketable staple like sugar or tobacco, New
Englanders
turned to fishing and timber for exports. With very few slaves
in seventeenth-
century New England, most households relied on the labor of
their own

members, including women in the home and children in the
fields. Sons
remained unmarried into their mid-twenties, when they could
expect to
receive land from their fathers, from local authorities, or by
moving to a
new town.
A Growing Commercial Society
Per capita wealth in New England lagged far behind that of the
Chesapeake,
but it was much more equally distributed. A majority of New
England
families owned their own land, the foundation for a comfortable
indepen-
dence. Nonetheless, as in the Chesapeake, economic
development pro-
duced some social inequalities. For example, on completing
their terms,
indentured servants rarely achieved full church membership or
received
grants of land. Most became disenfranchised wage earners.
New England gradually assumed a growing role within the
British
empire based on trade. As early as the 1640s, New England
merchants
shipped and marketed the staples of other colonies to markets in
Europe
and Africa. They engaged in a particularly profitable trade with
the West
Indies, whose growing slave plantations they supplied with fish,
timber,
and agricultural produce gathered at home. Especially in
Boston, a powerful

class of merchants arose who challenged some key Puritan
policies, includ-
ing the subordination of economic activity to the common good.
As early as
the 1630s, when the General Court established limits on prices
and wages
and gave a small group of merchants a monopoly on imports
from Europe,
others protested. Some left Boston to establish a new town at
Portsmouth,
in the region eventually chartered as the royal colony of New
Hampshire.
Others remained to fight, with increasing success, for the right
to conduct
business as they pleased. By the 1640s, Massachusetts had
repealed many
of its early economic regulations. Eventually, the Puritan
experiment
would evolve into a merchant-dominated colonial government.
Some Puritan leaders were understandably worried about their
soci-
ety’s growing commercialization. By 1650, less than half the
population of
Boston had become full church members, which forced Puritan
leaders to
deal with the religious status of the third generation. Should
they uphold
the rigorous admission standards of the Congregational Church,
thus
limiting its size? Or should they make admission easier and
remain con-
Fish and timber exports

67R E L I G I O N , P O L I T I C S , A N D F R E E D O M
nected to more people? The Half-Way Covenant of 1662 tried to
address
this problem by allowing for the baptism of and a kind of “half-
way”
membership for grandchildren of those who emigrated during
the Great
Migration. But church membership continued to stagnate.
By the 1660s and 1670s, ministers were regularly castigating
the
people for selfishness and a “great backsliding” from the
colony’s original
purposes. These warnings, called “jeremiads” after the ancient
Hebrew
prophet Jeremiah, interpreted crop failures and disease as signs
of divine
disapproval and warned of further punishment to come if New
Englanders
did not mend their ways. Yet hard work and commercial success
had
always been central Puritan values. In this sense, the
commercialization of
New England was as much a fulfillment of the Puritan mission
in America
as a betrayal.
R E L I G I O N , P O L I T I C S , A N D F R E E D O M
The Rights of Englishmen
Even as English emigrants began the settlement of colonies in
North
America, England itself became enmeshed in political and

religious con-
flict, in which ideas of liberty played a central role. By 1600,
the traditional
definition of “liberties” as a set of privileges confined to one or
another social
group still persisted, but alongside it had arisen the idea that
certain “rights
of Englishmen” applied to all within the kingdom. This tradition
rested on
the Magna Carta (or Great Charter) of 1215. An agreement
between King
John and a group of barons, the Magna Carta listed a series of
“liberties”
granted by the king to “all the free men of our realm,” a
restricted group at
the time, since many residents of England were serfs. The
liberties men-
tioned in the Magna Carta included protection against arbitrary
imprison-
ment and the seizure of one’s property without due process of
law.
Over time, the document came to be seen as embodying the idea
of
“English freedom”—that the king was subject to the rule of law,
and that
all persons should enjoy security of person and property. These
rights
were embodied in the common law, whose provisions, such as
habeas
corpus (a protection against being imprisoned without a legal
charge), the
right to face one’s accuser, and trial by jury came to apply to all
free sub-
jects of the English crown. As serfdom slowly disappeared, the
number of

Englishmen considered “freeborn,” and therefore entitled to
these rights,
expanded enormously.
The Magna Carta
Rights of “free borns”
Jeremiads
The execution of Charles I in 1649, a
central event of the English Civil War.
The English Civil War
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when English
emigrants
began arriving in the New World, “freedom” still played only a
minor role
in England’s political debates. But the political upheavals of
that century
elevated the notion of “English freedom” to a central place. The
struggle for
political supremacy between Parliament and the Stuart
monarchs James I
and Charles I culminated in the English Civil War of the 1640s.
The leaders of the House of Commons (the elective body that,
along

with the hereditary aristocrats of the House of Lords, makes up
the
English Parliament) accused the Stuart kings of endangering
liberty by
imposing taxes without parliamentary consent, imprisoning
political
foes, and leading the nation back toward Catholicism. Civil war
broke
out in 1642, resulting in a victory for the forces of Parliament.
In 1649,
Charles I was beheaded, the monarchy abolished, and England
declared
“a Commonwealth and Free State”—a nation governed by the
will of the
people. Oliver Cromwell, the head of the victorious
Parliamentary army,
ruled for almost a decade after the execution of the king. In
1660, the
monarchy was restored and Charles II assumed the throne. But
by then,
the breakdown of authority had stimulated intense discussions
of liberty,
authority, and what it meant to be a “freeborn Englishman.”
England’s Debate over Freedom
The idea of freedom suddenly took on new and expanded
meanings
between 1640 and 1660. The writer John Milton called for
freedom of
speech and of the press. New religious sects sprang up,
demanding reli-
The struggles of monarchy
and Parliament

The Levellers and the Diggers
69R E L I G I O N , P O L I T I C S , A N D F R E E D O M
How did the English Civil War affect the colonies in America?
gious toleration for all Protestants as well as the end of public
financing
and special privileges for the Anglican Church. The Levellers,
history’s
first democratic political movement, proposed a written
constitution, the
Agreement of the People, which began by proclaiming “at how
high a
rate we value our just freedom.” Although “democracy” was
still widely
equated with anarchy, the document proposed to abolish the
monarchy
and House of Lords and to greatly expand the right to vote.
The Levellers offered a glimpse of the modern definition of
freedom as
a universal entitlement in a society based on equal rights, not a
function of
social class. Another new group, the Diggers, went even further,
hoping to
give freedom an economic underpinning through the common
ownership
of land. Previous discussion of freedom, declared Gerard
Winstanley, the
Diggers’ leader, said that true freedom applied equally “to the
poor as well
as the rich”; all were entitled to “a comfortable livelihood in
this their own

land.” Some of the ideas of liberty that flourished during the
1640s and
1650s would be carried to America by English emigrants.
The Civil War and English America
The Civil War, accompanied by vigorous discussions of the
rights of free-
born Englishmen, inevitably reverberated in England’s colonies,
dividing
them from one another and internally. Most New Englanders
sided with
Parliament in the Civil War of the 1640s. Some returned to
England to join
the Parliamentary army or take up pulpits to help create a godly
common-
wealth at home. But Puritan leaders were increasingly
uncomfortable as
the idea of religious toleration for Protestants gained favor in
England.
Meanwhile, a number of followers of Anne Hutchinson became
Quakers, one of the sects that sprang up in England during the
Civil War.
Quakers held that the spirit of God dwelled within every
individual, not
just the elect, and that this “inner light,” rather than the Bible
or teach-
ings of the clergy, offered the surest guidance in spiritual
matters. When
Quakers appeared in Massachusetts, colonial officials had them
whipped,
fined, and banished. In 1659 and 1660, four Quakers who
returned from
exile were hanged. When Charles II, after the restoration of the
monarchy

in 1660, reaffirmed the Massachusetts charter, he ordered the
colony to
recognize the “liberty of conscience” of all Protestants.
In Maryland, the combination of the religious and political
battles of the
Civil War, homegrown conflict between Catholic and Protestant
settlers, and
anti-proprietary feeling produced a violent civil war within the
colony, later
recalled as the “plundering time.” Indeed, Maryland in the
1640s verged on
total anarchy, with a pro-Parliament force assaulting those loyal
to Charles I.
The Quakers
Meeting of the General Council of the
Army at Putney, scene of the debate
in 1647 over liberty and democracy
between Levellers and more-
conservative army officers.
After years of struggle between the Protestant planter class and
the
Catholic elite, Maryland in 1649 adopted an Act Concerning
Religion,
which institutionalized the principle of toleration that had

prevailed from
the colony’s beginning. All Christians were guaranteed the “free
exercise”
of religion. Although the Act did not grant this right to non-
Christians, it
did, over time, bring some political stability to Maryland. The
law was also
a milestone in the history of religious freedom in colonial
America.
Cromwell and the Empire
Oliver Cromwell, who ruled England from 1649 until his death
in 1658,
undertook an aggressive policy of colonial expansion, the
promotion of
Protestantism, and commercial empowerment in the British Isles
and the
Western Hemisphere. His army forcibly extended English
control over
Ireland, massacring civilians, banning the public practice of
Catholicism,
and seizing land owned by Catholics. In the Caribbean, England
seized
Jamaica, a valuable sugar island, from Spain.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, several English
colonies
existed along the Atlantic coast of North America. Established
as part of
an ad hoc process rather than arising under any coherent
national plan,
they differed enormously in economic, political, and social
structure. The
seeds had been planted, in the Chesapeake, for the development
of planta-

tion societies based on unfree labor, and in New England, for
settlements
centered on small towns and family farms. Throughout the
colonies, many
residents enjoyed freedoms they had not possessed at home,
especially
access to land and the right to worship as they desired. Others
found them-
selves confined to unfree labor for many years or an entire
lifetime.
The next century would be a time of crisis and consolidation as
the
population expanded, social conflicts intensified, and Britain
moved to
exert greater control over its flourishing North American
colonies.
England’s colonial expansion
Religious freedom in Maryland
1. Compare and contrast settlement patterns, treatment of
Indians, and religion of the Spanish and English in the
Americas.
2. For English settlers, land was the basis of independence
and liberty. Explain the reasoning behind that concept
and how it differed from the Indians’ conception of land.
3. Describe the factors promoting and limiting religious free-
dom in the New England and Chesapeake colonies.

4. Describe who chose to emigrate to North America from
England in the seventeenth century and explain their reasons.
5. In what ways did the economy, government, and house-
hold structure differ in New England and the Chesapeake
colonies?
6. The English believed that, unlike the Spanish, their
motives for colonization were pure, and that the growth of
empire and freedom would always go hand-in-hand. How
did the expansion of the British empire affect the freedoms
of Native Americans, the Irish, and even many English
citizens?
7. Considering politics, social tensions, and debates over
the meaning of liberty, how do the events and aftermath
of the English Civil War demonstrate that the English
colonies in North America were part of a larger Atlantic
community?
8. How did the tobacco economy draw the Chesapeake colo-
nies into the greater Atlantic World?
K E Y T E R M S
Virginia Company (p. 39)
Roanoke (p. 41)
A Discourse Concerning
Western Planting (p. 41)
enclosure movement (p. 42)
indentured servant (p. 44)

John Smith (p. 47)
headright system (p. 48)
House of Burgesses (p. 48)
Uprising of 1622 (p. 49)
tobacco (p. 50)
dower rights (p. 51)
Puritanism (p. 53)
John Winthrop (p. 54)
Moral liberty (p. 54)
Pilgrims (p. 54)
Mayflower Compact (p. 54)
Great Migration (p. 55)
captivity narratives (p. 64)
The Sovereignty and Goodness
of God (p. 64)
Pequot War (p. 64)
Half-Way Covenant (p. 67)
English freedom (p. 67)

Act Concerning Religion (p. 70)
C E S
71C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U
R C E S
RESOURCES AND MORE
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C R E A T I N G
A N G L O - A M E R I C A
C H A P T E R 3

1 6 6 0 – 1 7 5 0
1651 First Navigation Act issued
by Parliament
1664 English seize New Nether-
land, which becomes New
York
1670 First English settlers arrive
in Carolina
1675 Lords of Trade established
1675– King Philip’s War
1676
1676 Bacon’s Rebellion
1677 Covenant Chain alliance
1681 William Penn granted
Pennsylvania
1682 Charter of Liberty drafted
by Penn
1683 Charter of Liberties and
Privileges drafted by New
York assembly
1686– Dominion of New England
1689
1688 Glorious Revolution

in England
1689 Parliament enacts a Bill
of Rights
Maryland Protestant
Association revolts
Leisler’s Rebellion
Parliament passes
Toleration Act
1691 Plymouth colony absorbed
into Massachusetts
1692 Salem witch trials
1705 Virginia passes Slave Code
1715– Yamasee uprising
1717
1737 Walking Purchase
The Residence of David Twining, a
painting of a Pennsylvania farm as it
appeared in the eighteenth century.
Edward Hicks, who had lived there as a
youth, painted the scene from memory
in the 1840s. Hicks depicts a prosperous

farm, largely self-sufficient but also
producing for the market, typical of
colonial eastern Pennsylvania. One of
the farm workers is a slave.
73C R E A T I N G A N G L O - A M E R I C A
I n the last quarter of the seventeenth century, a series of crises
rocked the European colonies of North America. Social and
political ten-sions boiled over in sometimes ruthless conflicts
between rich and
poor, free and slave, settler and Indian, and members of
different reli-
gious groups. At the same time, struggles within and between
European
empires echoed in the colonies.
The bloodiest and most bitter conflict occurred in southern New
England, where in 1675 an Indian alliance launched attacks on
farms and
settlements that were encroaching on Indian lands. It was the
most dra-
matic and violent warfare in the region in the entire seventeenth
century.
New Englanders described the Wampanoag leader Metacom
(known
to the colonists as King Philip) as the uprising’s mastermind,
although in
fact most tribes fought under their own leaders. By 1676, Indian

forces
had attacked nearly half of New England’s ninety towns.
Twelve in Mas-
sachusetts were destroyed. As refugees fled eastward, the line
of settle-
ment was pushed back almost to the Atlantic coast. Some 1,000
set tlers,
out of a population of 52,000, and 3,000 of New England’s
20,000 Indi-
ans, perished in the fighting.
In mid-1676, the tide of battle turned and a ferocious
counterattack
broke the Indians’ power once and for all. Although the uprising
united
numerous tribes, others remained loyal to the colonists. The role
of
the Iroquois in providing essential military aid to the colonists
helped
to solidify their developing alliance with the government of
New York.
Together, colonial and Indian forces inflicted devastating
punishment
on the rebels. Metacom was executed, Indian villages were
destroyed,
and captives were killed or sold into slavery in the West Indies.
Both
sides committed atrocities in this merciless conflict, but in its
aftermath
the image of Indians as bloodthirsty savages became firmly
entrenched in
the New England mind.
In the long run, King Philip’s War produced a broadening of
free-
dom for white New Englanders by expanding their access to

land. But this
freedom rested on the final dispossession of the region’s
Indians.
How did the English
empire in America expand
in the mid-seventeenth
century?
How was slavery estab-
lished in the Western
Atlantic world?
What major social and
political crises rocked the
colonies in the late seven-
teenth century?
What were the directions
of social and economic
change in the eighteenth-
century colonies?
How did patterns of class

and gender roles change
in eighteenth-century
America?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
-America74
G L O B A L C O M P E T I T I O N A N D T H E
E X P A N S I O N O F E N G L A N D ’ S E M P I R E
The Mercantilist System
By the middle of the seventeenth century, it was apparent that
the colonies
could be an important source of wealth for England. According
to the
prevailing theory known as “mercantilism,” governments should
regulate
economic activity so as to promote national power. They should
encourage
manufacturing and commerce by special bounties, monopolies,
and other
measures. Above all, trade should be controlled so that more
gold and sil-
ver flowed into countries than left them. That is, exports of
goods, which
generated revenue from abroad, should exceed imports, which
required
paying foreigners for their products. In the mercantilist outlook,

the role
of colonies was to serve the interests of the mother country by
producing
marketable raw materials and importing manufactured goods
from home.
“Foreign trade,” declared an influential work written in 1664 by
a London
merchant, formed the basis of “England’s treasure.” Commerce,
not territo-
rial plunder, was the foundation of empire.
Parliament in 1651 passed the first Navigation Act, which aimed
to
wrest control of world trade from the Dutch, whose merchants
profited from
free trade with all parts of the world and all existing empires.
Additional
measures followed in 1660 and 1663. According to the
Navigation laws,
certain “enumerated” goods—essentially the most valuable
colonial prod-
ucts, such as tobacco and sugar—had to be transported in
English ships
and sold initially in English ports, although they could then be
re-exported
to foreign markets. Similarly, most European goods imported
into the
colonies had to be shipped through England, where customs
duties were
paid. This enabled English merchants, manufacturers,
shipbuilders, and
sailors to reap the benefits of colonial trade, and the
government to enjoy
added income from taxes. As members of the empire, American
colonies
would profit as well, since their ships were considered English.

Indeed,
the Navigation Acts stimulated the rise of New England’s
shipbuilding
industry.
The Conquest of New Netherland
The restoration of the English monarchy when Charles II
assumed the
throne in 1660 sparked a new period of colonial expansion. The
govern-
ment chartered new trading ventures, notably the Royal African
Company,
The role of colonies
Enumerated goods
75G L O B A L C O M P E T I T I O N A N D T H E E X P A
N S I O N O F E N G L A N D ’ S E M P I R E
How did the English empire in America expand in the mid-
which was given a monopoly of the slave trade. Within a
generation, the
number of English colonies in North America doubled.
First to come under English control was New Netherland, seized
in 1664
during an Anglo-Dutch war that also saw England gain control
of Dutch
trading posts in Africa. King Charles II awarded the colony to
his younger

brother James, the duke of York, with “full and absolute power”
to govern
as he pleased. (Hence the colony’s name became New York.)
English rule
transformed this minor military base into an important imperial
outpost,
a seaport trading with the Caribbean and Europe, and a
launching pad for
military operations against the French. New York’s European
population,
around 9,000 when the English assumed control, rose to 20,000
by 1685.
English rule expanded the freedom of some New Yorkers, while
reduc-
ing that of others. The terms of surrender guaranteed that the
English
would respect the religious beliefs and property holdings of the
colony’s
many ethnic communities. But English law ended the Dutch
tradition by
which married women conducted business in their own name
and inher-
ited some of the property acquired during marriage. There had
been many
female traders in New Amsterdam, but few remained by the end
of the
seventeenth century.
The English also introduced more restrictive attitudes toward
blacks.
In colonial New York City, as in New Amsterdam, those
residents who
enjoyed the status of “freeman,” obtained by birth in the city or
by an act
of local authorities, enjoyed special privileges, including the

right to work
in various trades. But the English, in a reversal of Dutch
practice, expelled
free blacks from many skilled jobs.
Others benefited enormously from English rule. The duke of
York
and his appointed governors continued the Dutch practice of
awarding
immense land grants to favorites. By 1700, nearly 2 million
acres of land
were owned by only five New York families who intermarried
regu-
larly, exerted considerable political influence, and formed one
of colonial
America’s most tightly knit landed elites.
New York and the Indians
Initially, English rule also strengthened the position of the
Iroquois
Confederacy of upstate New York. Sir Edmund Andros, who had
been
appointed governor of New York after fighting the French in the
Caribbean,
formed an alliance known as the Covenant Chain, in which the
imperial
ambitions of the English and Indians reinforced one another.
The Five
(later Six) Iroquois Nations assisted Andros in clearing parts of
New
York of rival tribes and helped the British in attacks on the
French and
English rule in New York

The Iroquois Nations
English rule and blacks
-America76
Charles Town
(Charleston)
Savannah
Jamestown
Williamsburg
Henrico
Baltimore
Wilmington
(Fort Christina) Philadelphia
New Amsterdam
New Haven (1638)
Hartford
Narragansett Bay Providence (1636)
Boston
Montreal
Quebec (1608)
Port Royal

(1606)
Fort Orange
van Rensselaer Estate
West Mystic
(May 26, 1637)
Raleigh expedition to
Roanoke Island (1585)
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
THE CHESAPEAKE
CAROLINA
(1663)
GEORGIA
(1732)
MASSACHUSETTS BAY
(1629–1630)
PLYMOUTH (1620)
RHODE ISLAND (1636–1643)
CONNECTICUT (1636–1639)
NEW
NETHERLAND
(1624)

NEW YORK
(1664)
PENNSYLVANIA
(1681)
MARYLAND (1632)
VIRGINIA
(1607)
NEW FRANCE
PENOBSCOT
ABENAKI
KENNEBECHURON
OTTAWA
OTTAWA
WESTERN
DELAWARE
SENECA
TUSCARORA
CAYUGA
ONONDAGA
ONEIDA
MOHAWK
IROQUOIS

NARRAGANSETT
PEQUOT
DELAWARE
SHAWNEE
CATAWBA
YAMASEE
UPPER
CHEROKEE
MIDDLE
CHEROKEE
LOWER
CHEROKEE
UPPER
NATCHEZ
LOWER
NATCHEZ
CREEK
St
. L
aw
ren

ce R
.
James R.
Lake H
uron
Lake E
rie
Lake Ontario
Lake
Champlain
La
ke
M
ich
ig
an
Lake Superior
Ba
y o
f F
un
dy

Gulf of
St. Lawrence
At lant ic
Oce an
0
0
100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers
Date of settlement
Dutch settlement *English from 1664
English settlement
French settlement
Spanish settlement
(1585)
E A S T E R N N O R T H A M E R I C A I N T H E S E V E
N T E E N T H
A N D E A R L Y E I G H T E E N T H C E N T U R I E S
By the early eighteenth century, numerous English colonies
populated eastern North America, while the French had
established their
own presence to the north and west.

their Indian allies. Andros, for his part, recognized the Iroquois
claim to
authority over Indian communities in the vast area stretching to
the Ohio
River. But beginning in the 1680s, Indians around the Great
Lakes and
Ohio Valley regrouped and with French aid attacked the
Iroquois, pushing
them to the east. By the end of the century, the Iroquois Nations
adopted a
policy of careful neutrality, seeking to play the European
empires off one
another while continuing to profit from the fur trade.
The Charter of Liberties
Many New York colonists, meanwhile, began to complain that
they were
being denied the “liberties of Englishmen,” especially the right
to consent
to taxation. In 1683, the duke of York agreed to call an elected
assembly,
whose first act was to draft a Charter of Liberties and
Privileges. The
Charter required that elections be held every three years among
male
property owners and the freemen of New York City; it also
reaffirmed tradi-

tional English rights such as trial by jury and security of
property, as well
as religious toleration for all Protestants.
The Founding of Carolina
For more than three decades after the establishment of Maryland
in 1634,
no new English settlement was planted in North America. Then,
in 1663,
Charles II awarded to eight proprietors the right to establish a
colony
An engraving representing the Grand
Council of the Iroquois Nations of
the area of present-day upstate New
York. From a book about American
Indians published in Paris by a Jesuit
missionary, who depicts the Indians in
the attire of ancient Romans. Note the
prevalence of wampum belts in the
image, in the foreground and in
the hand and at the feet of the central
figure. Wampum was used to certify
treaties and other transactions.

English rights
-America78
to the north of Florida, as a barrier to Spanish expansion. Not
until 1670
did the first settlers arrive to found Carolina. In its early years,
Carolina
was the “colony of a colony,” an offshoot of the tiny island of
Barbados. In
the mid-seventeenth century, Barbados was the Caribbean’s
richest plan-
tation economy, but a shortage of available land led wealthy
planters to
seek opportunities in Carolina for their sons. At first,
Carolinians armed
friendly Indians, employing them on raids into Spanish Florida,
and
enslaved others, shipping them to other mainland colonies and
the West
Indies. Between 1670 and 1720, the number of Indian slaves
exported from
Charleston was larger than the number of African slaves
imported. In 1715,
the Yamasee and Creek rebelled, but the uprising was crushed,
and most
of the remaining Indians were enslaved or driven out of the
colony into
Spanish Florida.
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, issued by the
proprietors
in 1669, proposed to establish a feudal society with a hereditary

nobility,
serfs, and slaves. Needing to attract settlers quickly, however,
the propri-
etors also provided for an elected assembly and religious
toleration—by
now recognized as essential to enticing migrants to North
America. They
also instituted a generous headright system, offering 150 acres
for each
member of an arriving family (in the case of indentured
servants, of course,
the land went to the employer) and 100 acres to male servants
who com-
pleted their terms.
The proprietors instituted a rigorous legal code that promised
slave-
owners “absolute power and authority” over their human
property and
included imported slaves in the headright system. This allowed
any per-
sons who settled in Carolina and brought with them slaves
instantly to
acquire large new landholdings. In its early days, however, the
economy
centered on cattle raising and trade with local Indians. Carolina
grew
slowly until planters discovered the staple—rice—that would
make them
the wealthiest elite in English North America and their colony
an epicenter
of mainland slavery.
The Holy Experiment
The last English colony to be established in the seventeenth

century was
Pennsylvania in 1681. The proprietor, William Penn, envisioned
it as a
place where those facing religious persecution in Europe could
enjoy spiri-
tual freedom, and colonists and Indians would coexist in
harmony.
A devout member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, Penn
was
particularly concerned with establishing a refuge for his
coreligionists,
who faced increasing persecution in England. He had already
assisted
Carolina as a barrier to
Spanish expansion
The Fundamental
Constitutions of Carolina
William Penn
a group of English Quakers in purchasing half of what
became the colony of New Jersey from Lord John
Berkeley, who had received a land grant from the
duke of York. Penn was largely responsible for
the frame of government announced in 1677,

the West Jersey Concessions, which created
an elected assembly with a broad suffrage
and established religious liberty.
Like the Puritans, Penn considered
his colony a “holy experiment,” but of a
different kind—“a free colony for all man-
kind that should go hither.” He hoped that
Pennsylvania could be governed according to
Quaker principles, among them the equality of
all persons (including women, blacks, and Indians)
before God and the primacy of the individual conscience.
To Quakers, liberty was a universal entitlement, not the posses-
sion of any single people—a position that would eventually
make them the
first group of whites to repudiate slavery. Penn also treated
Indians with
a consideration almost unique in the colonial experience,
arranging to
purchase land before reselling it to colonists and offering refuge
to tribes
driven out of other colonies by warfare. Since Quakers were
pacifists who
came to America unarmed and did not even organize a militia
until the
1740s, peace with the native population was essential.
Religious freedom was Penn’s most fundamental principle. His
Charter
of Liberty, approved by the assembly in 1682, offered
“Christian liberty” to
all who affirmed a belief in God and did not use their freedom
to promote
“licentiousness.” There was no established church in
Pennsylvania, and
attendance at religious services was entirely voluntary, although

Jews
were barred from office by a required oath affirming belief in
the divinity of
Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Quakers upheld a strict code
of personal
morality. Penn’s Frame of Government prohibited swearing,
drunkenness,
and adultery. Not religious uniformity but a virtuous citizenry
would be
the foundation of Penn’s social order.
Land in Pennsylvania
Given the power to determine the colony’s form of government,
Penn
established an appointed council to originate legislation and an
assembly
elected by male taxpayers and “freemen” (owners of 100 acres
of land for
free immigrants and 50 acres for former indentured servants).
These rules
A Quaker Meeting, a painting by an
unidentified British artist, dating from
the late eighteenth or early nineteenth
century. It illustrates the prominent
place of women in Quaker gatherings.
Penn and religious liberty

-America80
made a majority of the male population eligible to vote. Penn
owned all the
colony’s land and sold it to settlers at low prices, which helped
the colony
prosper. Pennsylvania’s religious toleration, healthy climate,
and inex-
pensive land, along with Penn’s aggressive efforts to publicize
the colony’s
advantages, soon attracted immigrants from all over western
Europe.
Ironically, the freedoms Pennsylvania offered to European
immigrants
contributed to the deterioration of freedom for others. The
colony’s success-
ful efforts to attract settlers would eventually come into conflict
with Penn’s
benevolent Indian policy. And the opening of Pennsylvania
caused fewer
indentured servants to choose Virginia and Maryland, a
development that
did much to shift those colonies toward reliance on slave labor.
O R I G I N S O F A M E R I C A N S L A V E R Y
The incessant demand for workers spurred by the spread of
tobacco cul-
tivation eventually led Chesapeake planters to turn to the
transatlantic
trade in slaves. Compared with indentured servants, slaves
offered plant-
ers many advantages. As Africans, they could not claim the
protections
of English common law. Slaves’ terms of service never expired,

and they
therefore did not become a population of unruly landless men.
Their chil-
dren were slaves, and their skin color made it more difficult for
them to
escape into the surrounding society. African men, moreover,
unlike their
Native American counterparts, were accustomed to intensive
agricultural
labor, and they had encountered many diseases known in Europe
and
developed resistance to them, so were less likely to succumb to
epidemics.
Englishmen and Africans
The English had long viewed alien peoples with disdain,
including the
Irish, Native Americans, and Africans. They described these
strangers
in remarkably similar language as savage, pagan, and
uncivilized, often
comparing them to animals. “Race”—the idea that humanity is
divided into
well-defined groups associated with skin color—is a modern
concept that
had not fully developed in the seventeenth century. Nor had
“racism”—an
ideology based on the belief that some races are inherently
superior to oth-
ers and entitled to rule over them.
Nonetheless, anti-black stereotypes flourished in seventeenth-
century
England. Africans were seen as so alien—in color, religion, and
social

Freedoms in Pennsylvania
The turn to slavery
English views of alien peoples
81O R I G I N S O F A M E R I C A N S L A V E R Y
How was slavery established in the Western Atlantic world?
practices—that they were “enslavable” in a way that poor
Englishmen were
not. Most English also deemed Indians to be uncivilized. But
the Indian
population declined so rapidly, and it was so easy for Indians,
familiar with
the countryside, to run away, that Indian slavery never became
viable in the
Atlantic colonies.
Slavery in History
Slavery has existed for nearly the entire span of human history.
It was
central to the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. In the
Mediterranean
world, a slave trade in Slavic peoples survived into the fifteenth
century.
(The English word “slavery” derives from “Slav.”) In West
Africa, as noted
in Chapter 1, slavery and a slave trade predated the coming of
Europeans,
and small-scale slavery existed among Native Americans. But

slavery in
nearly all these instances differed greatly from the institution
that devel-
oped in the New World.
In the Americas, slavery was based on the plantation, an
agricul-
tural enterprise that brought together large numbers of workers
under
the control of a single owner. This imbalance magnified the
possibility of
slave resistance and made it necessary to police the system
rigidly. Labor
on slave plantations was far more demanding than the household
slavery
common in Africa, and the death rate among slaves much
higher. In the
New World, slavery would come to be associated with race, a
concept that
drew a permanent line between whites and blacks.
Slavery in the West Indies
A sense of Africans as alien and inferior made their
enslavement by the
English possible. But prejudice by itself did not create North
American
slavery. For this institution to take root, planters and
government authori-
ties had to be convinced that importing African slaves was the
best way to
solve their persistent shortage of labor. During the seventeenth
century,
the shipping of slaves from Africa to the New World became a
major
international business. By 1600, huge sugar plantations worked

by slaves
from Africa had made their appearance in Brazil, a colony of
Portugal. In
the seventeenth century, England, Holland, Denmark, and
France joined
Spain as owners of West Indian islands.
With the Indian population having been wiped out by disease,
and with
the white indentured servants unwilling to do the back-
breaking, monoto-
nous work of sugar cultivation, the massive importation of
slaves from Africa
Plantation slavery
Sugar and slavery
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began. On Barbados, for example, the slave
population increased from 20,000 to more
than 80,000 between 1660 and 1670. By the
end of the seventeenth century, huge sugar
plantations manned by hundreds of slaves
dominated the West Indian economy, and on
most of the islands the African population far
outnumbered that of European origin.
Sugar was the first crop to be mass-
marketed to consumers in Europe. Before
its emergence, international trade consisted
largely of precious metals like gold and sil-
ver, and luxury goods aimed at an elite mar-

ket, like the spices and silks imported from
Asia. Sugar was by far the most important
product of the British, French, and Portuguese empires, and
New World
sugar plantations produced immense profits. Saint Domingue,
today’s
Haiti, was the jewel of the French empire. In 1660, Barbados
generated
more trade than all the other English colonies combined.
Compared with its rapid introduction in Brazil and the West
Indies, slav-
ery developed slowly in North America. Slaves cost more than
indentured
servants, and the high death rate among tobacco workers made
it economi-
cally unappealing to pay for a lifetime of labor. As late as 1680,
there were
only 4,500 blacks in the Chesapeake, a little over 5 percent of
the region’s
population. The most important social distinction in the
seventeenth-
century Chesapeake was not between black and white but
between the
white plantation owners who dominated politics and society and
everybody
else—small farmers, indentured servants, and slaves.
Slavery and the Law
Centuries before the voyages of Columbus, Spain had enacted a
series of
laws granting slaves certain rights relating to marriage, the
holding of
property, and access to freedom. These laws were transferred to

Spain’s
American empire. They were often violated but nonetheless
gave slaves
opportunities to claim rights under the law. The law of slavery
in English
North America would become far more repressive than in the
Spanish
empire, especially on the all-important question of whether
avenues
existed by which slaves could obtain freedom.
For much of the seventeenth century, however, the legal status
of
Chesapeake blacks remained ambiguous and the line between s
lavery
Cutting Sugar Cane, an engraving
from Ten Views in Antigua, published
in 1823. Male and female slaves
harvest and load the sugar crop while
an overseer on horseback addresses
a slave. During the eighteenth
century, sugar was the chief crop
produced by Western Hemisphere
slaves.
English and Spanish empires
on slavery

and freedom more permeable than it would later become. The
first
Africans, twenty in all, arrived in Virginia in 1619. Although
the first black
arrivals were almost certainly treated as slaves, it appears that
at least
some managed to become free after serving a term of years. To
be sure,
racial distinctions were enacted into law from the outset. As
early as the
1620s, the law barred blacks from serving in the Virginia
militia. In 1643, a
poll tax (a tax levied on individuals) was imposed on African
but not white
women. In both Virginia and Maryland, however, free blacks
could sue
and testify in court, and some even managed to acquire land and
purchase
white servants or African slaves. Blacks and whites labored side
by side in
the tobacco fields, sometimes ran away together, and
established intimate
relationships.
The Rise of Chesapeake Slavery
Not until the 1660s did the laws of Virginia and Maryland refer
explicitly
to slavery. As tobacco planting spread and the demand for labor

increased,
the condition of black and white servants diverged sharply.
Authorities
sought to improve the status of white servants, hoping to
counteract the
widespread impression in England that Virginia was a death
trap. At the
same time, access to freedom for blacks receded.
A Virginia law of 1662 provided that in the case of a child one
of whose
parents was free and one slave, the status of the offspring
followed that
of the mother. (This provision not only reversed the European
practice of
defining a child’s status through the father but also made the
sexual abuse
of slave women profitable for slaveholders, since any children
that resulted
remained the owner’s property.) In 1667, the Virginia House of
Burgesses
decreed that religious conversion did not release a slave from
bondage.
Thus, Christians could own other Christians as slaves.
Authorities also
defined all offspring of interracial relationships as illegitimate.
By 1680,
even though the black population was still small, notions of
racial differ-
ence were well entrenched in the law. In British North America,
unlike the
Spanish empire, no distinctive mulatto, or mixed-race, class
existed; the
law treated everyone with African ancestry as black.
Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in Virginia

Virginia’s shift from white indentured servants to African
slaves as the
main plantation labor force was accelerated by one of the most
dramatic
confrontations of this era, Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. Governor
William
Legal changes in the 1660s
Rights of the free blacks
Black slavery
-America84
Berkeley had for thirty years run a corrupt regime in alliance
with an inner
circle of the colony’s wealthiest tobacco planters. He rewarded
his follow-
ers with land grants and lucrative offices. But as tobacco
farming spread
inland, planters connected with the governor engrossed the best
lands,
leaving freed servants (a growing population, since Virginia’s
death rate
was finally falling) with no options but to work as tenants or to
move to
the frontier. By the 1670s, poverty among whites had reached
levels remi-
niscent of England. In addition, the right to vote, previously
enjoyed by all
adult men, was confined to landowners in 1670. Governor
Berkeley main-

tained peaceful relations with Virginia’s remaining native
population. His
refusal to allow white settlement in areas reserved for Indians
angered
many land-hungry colonists.
Long-simmering social tensions coupled with widespread
resent-
ment against the injustices of the Berkeley regime erupted in
Bacon’s
Rebellion. In 1676, after a minor confrontation between Indians
and
colonists on Virginia’s western frontier, settlers demanded that
the gov-
ernor authorize the extermination or removal of the colony’s
Indians, to
open more land for whites. When Berkeley refused, a series of
Indian
massacres quickly grew into a full-fledged rebellion against
Berkeley
and his system of rule.
To some extent, Bacon’s Rebellion was a conflict
within the Virginia elite—between Berkeley’s men and
the backers of Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy and ambi-
tious planter who disdained Berkeley’s cronies. But
Bacon’s call for the removal of all Indians from the
colony, a reduction of taxes at a time of economic reces-
sion, and an end to rule by “grandees” rapidly gained
support from small farmers, landless men, indentured
servants, and even some Africans. The bulk of his army
consisted of discontented men who had recently been
servants.
Bacon promised freedom (including access to
Indian lands) to all who joined his ranks. In 1676,

Bacon gathered an armed force for an unauthorized and
indiscriminate campaign against those he called the
governor’s “protected and darling Indians.” He refused
Berkeley’s order to disband and marched on Jamestown,
burning it to the ground. The governor fled, and Bacon
became the ruler of Virginia. Only the arrival of a squad-
ron of warships from England restored order.
Sir William Berkeley, governor of
colonial Virginia, 1641–1652 and
1660–1677, in a portrait by Sir Peter
Lely. Berkeley’s authoritarian rule
helped to spark Bacon’s Rebellion.
Social tension in Virginia
The specter of a civil war among whites greatly frightened
Virginia’s
ruling elite, who took dramatic steps to consolidate their power
and
improve their image after Bacon’s death in October 1676. They
restored
property qualifications for voting, which Bacon had rescinded,
and reduced
taxes. They also adopted a more aggressive Indian policy,
opening western

areas to small farmers, many of whom prospered from a rise in
tobacco
prices after 1680. To avert the further rise of a rebellious
population of
landless former indentured servants, Virginia’s authorities
accelerated the
shift to slaves (who would never become free) on the tobacco
plantations.
A Slave Society
Between 1680 and 1700, slave labor began to supplant
indentured ser-
vitude on Chesapeake plantations. Bacon’s Rebellion
contributed to this
development, but so did other factors. As the death rate began
to fall, it
became more economical to purchase a laborer for life.
Moreover, the Royal
Africa Company’s monopoly on the English slave trade ended,
thus open-
ing the door to other traders and reducing the price of imported
African
slaves.
By 1700, blacks constituted more than 10 percent of Virginia’s
popula-
tion. Fifty years later, they made up nearly half. Recognizing
the growing
importance of slavery, the House of Burgesses in 1705 enacted
a new slave
code. Slaves were property, completely subject to the will of
their masters
and, more generally, of the white community. They could be
bought and
sold, leased, fought over in court, and passed on to one’s

descendants.
Henceforth, blacks and whites were tried in separate courts. No
black, free
or slave, could own arms, strike a white man, or employ a white
servant.
Virginia had changed from a “society with slaves,” in which
slavery was
one system of labor among others, to a “slave society,” where
slavery stood
at the center of the economic process.
One sentiment shared by Europeans, Native Americans, and
Africans
was fear of enslavement. Throughout history, slaves have run
away and in
other ways resisted bondage. They did the same in the colonial
Chesapeake.
Colonial newspapers were filled with advertisements for
runaway slaves.
These notices described the appearance and skills of the fugitive
and
included such comments as “he has great notions of freedom.”
After the
suppression of a slave conspiracy in 1709, Alexander
Spotswood, the gov-
ernor of Virginia, warned planters to be vigilant. The desire for
freedom, he
reminded them, can “call together all those who long to shake
off the fetters
of slavery.”
Effects of Bacon’s Rebellion
Slave code of 1705
Runaway slaves

-America86
A scene from King Philip’s War,
included on a 1675 map of New
England.
C O L O N I E S I N C R I S I S
King Philip’s War of 1675 and Bacon’s Rebellion the following
year coin-
cided with disturbances in other colonies. In Maryland, where
the pro-
prietor, Lord Baltimore, in 1670 had suddenly restricted the
right to vote
to owners of fifty acres of land or a certain amount of personal
property,
a Protestant uprising unsuccessfully sought to oust his
government
and restore the suffrage for all freemen. In several colonies,
increasing
settlement on the frontier led to resistance by alarmed Indians.
The Pueblo
Revolt of 1680 (discussed in Chapter 1) indicated that the crisis
of colonial
authority was not confined to the British empire.
The Glorious Revolution
Turmoil in England also reverberated in the colonies. In 1688,
the long
struggle for domination of English government between

Parliament and
the crown reached its culmination in the Glorious Revolution,
which
established parliamentary supremacy once and for all and
secured the
Uprisings
Parliamentary supremacy
87C O L O N I E S I N C R I S I S
What major social and political crises rocked the colonies in the
late seventeenth century?
Protestant succession to the throne. Under Charles II,
Parliament had
asserted its authority in the formation of national policy. When
Charles
died in 1685, he was succeeded by his brother James II
(formerly the duke
of York), a practicing Catholic and a believer that kings ruled
by divine
right. In 1687, James decreed religious toleration for both
Protestant
Dissenters and Catholics. The following year, the birth of
James’s son
raised the alarming prospect of a Catholic succession. A group
of English
aristocrats invited the Dutch nobleman William of Orange, the
husband
of James’s Protestant daughter Mary, to assume the throne in
the name
of English liberties. As the landed elite and leaders of the

Anglican Church
rallied to William’s cause, James II fled and the revolution was
complete.
Unlike the broad social upheaval that marked the English Civil
War
of the 1640s, the Glorious Revolution was in effect a coup
engineered by a
small group of aristocrats in alliance with an ambitious Dutch
prince. But
the overthrow of James II entrenched more firmly than ever the
notion
that liberty was the birthright of all Englishmen and that the
king was
subject to the rule of law. To justify the ouster of James II,
Parliament in
1689 enacted a Bill of Rights, which listed parliamentary
powers such
as control over taxation as well as rights of individuals,
including trial
by jury. In the following year, the Toleration Act allowed
Protestant
Dissenters (but not Catholics) to worship freely, although only
Anglicans
could hold public office.
As always, British politics were mirrored in the American
colonies.
After the Glorious Revolution, Protestant domination was
secured in
most of the colonies, with the established churches of England
(Anglican)
and Scotland (Presbyterian) growing the fastest, while Catholics
and
Dissenters suffered various forms of discrimination. Throughout
English

America the Glorious Revolution powerfully reinforced among
the colo-
nists the sense of sharing a proud legacy of freedom and
Protestantism
with the mother country.
The Glorious Revolution in America
The Glorious Revolution exposed fault lines in colonial society
and offered
local elites an opportunity to regain authority that had recently
been chal-
lenged. Until the mid-1670s, the North American colonies had
essentially
governed themselves, with little interference from England.
Governor
Berkeley ran Virginia as he saw fit; proprietors in New York,
Maryland,
and Carolina governed in any fashion they could persuade
colonists to
accept; and New England colonies elected their own officials
and openly
flouted trade regulations. In 1675, however, England
established the
English authority and colonial
autonomy
Liberty as the birthright of all
Englishmen
-America88
Lords of Trade to oversee colonial affairs. Three years later, the

Lords
questioned the Massachusetts government about its compliance
with the
Navigation Acts. They received the surprising reply that since
the colony
had no representatives in Parliament, the Acts did not apply to
it unless
the Massachusetts General Court approved.
In the 1680s, England moved to reduce colonial autonomy.
Shortly
before his death, Charles II revoked the Massachusetts charter,
citing whole-
sale violations of the Navigation Acts. James II between 1686
and 1688 com-
bined Connecticut, Plymouth, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island,
New York, and East and West Jersey into a single super-colony,
the Dominion
of New England. It was ruled by the former New York governor
Sir Edmund
Andros, who did not have to answer to an elected assembly.
These events
reinforced the impression that James II was an enemy of
freedom.
In 1689, news of the overthrow of James II triggered rebellions
in
several American colonies. In April, the Boston militia seized
and jailed
Edmund Andros and other officials, whereupon the New
England colo-
nies reestablished the governments abolished when the
Dominion of New
England was created. In May, a rebel militia headed by Captain
Jacob

Leisler established a Committee of Safety and took control of
New York.
Two months later, Maryland’s Protestant Association overthrew
the gov-
ernment of the colony’s Catholic proprietor, Lord Baltimore.
All of these new regimes claimed to have acted in the name of
English
liberties and looked to London for approval. But the degrees of
success of
these coups varied markedly. Concluding that Lord Baltimore
had mis-
managed the Maryland colony, William revoked his charter
(although the
proprietor retained his land and rents) and established a new,
Protestant-
dominated government. In 1715, after the Baltimore family had
converted
to Anglicanism, proprietary power was restored. But the events
of 1689
transformed the ruling group in Maryland and put an end to the
colony’s
unique history of religious toleration.
The outcome in New York was far different. Although it was
not his
intention, Jacob Leisler’s regime divided the colony along
ethnic and eco-
nomic lines. Members of the Dutch majority reclaimed local
power after
more than two decades of English rule, while bands of rebels
ransacked
the homes of wealthy New Yorkers. William refused to
recognize Leisler’s
authority and dispatched a new governor, backed by troops.
Many of

Leisler’s followers were imprisoned, and he himself was
executed, a reflec-
tion of the hatred the rebellion had inspired. For generations,
the rivalry
between Leisler and anti-Leisler parties polarized New York
politics.
The New England colonies, after deposing Edmund Andros,
lobbied
hard in London for the restoration of their original charters.
Most were
Turmoil in New York
Rebellions in American
colonies
89C O L O N I E S I N C R I S I S
successful, but Massachusetts was not. In 1691, the crown
issued a new
charter that absorbed Plymouth into Massachusetts and
transformed
the political structure of the Bible Commonwealth. Town
government
remained intact, but henceforth property ownership, not church
mem-
bership, would be the requirement to vote in elections for the
General
Court. The governor was now appointed in London rather than
elected.
Massachusetts became a royal colony, the majority of whose
voters were no
longer Puritan “saints.” Moreover, it was required to abide by

the English
Toleration Act of 1690—that is, to allow all Protestants to
worship freely.
These events produced an atmosphere of considerable tension in
Massachusetts, exacerbated by raids by French troops and their
Indian
allies on the northern New England frontier. The advent of
religious tolera-
tion heightened anxieties among the Puritan clergy, who
considered other
Protestant denominations a form of heresy. Indeed, not a few
Puritans
thought they saw the hand of Satan in the events of 1690 and
1691.
The Salem Witch Trials
Belief in magic, astrology, and witchcraft was widespread in
seventeenth-
century Europe and America, existing alongside the religious
beliefs
sanctioned by the clergy and churches. Witches were
individuals, usually
women, who were accused of having entered into a pact with the
devil to
obtain supernatural powers, which they used to harm others or
to interfere
with natural processes. When a child was stillborn or crops
failed, many
believed that witchcraft was at work.
In Europe and the colonies, witchcraft was punishable by
execution. It is
estimated that between the years 1400 and 1800, more than
50,000 people

were executed in Europe after being con-
victed of witchcraft. Witches were, from time
to time, hanged in seventeenth-century New
England. Most were women beyond child-
bearing age who were outspoken, economi-
cally independent, or estranged from their
husbands, or who in other ways violated
traditional gender norms.
Until 1692, the prosecution of witches
had been sporadic. But in that year, a series
of trials and executions took place in Salem
that made its name to this day a byword
for fanaticism and persecution. The crisis
began when several young girls began to
An engraving from Ralph Gardiner’s
England’s Grievance Discovered,
published in 1655, depicts women
hanged as witches in England. The
letters identify local officials: A is
the hangman, B the town crier,
C the sheriff, and D a magistrate.
Political change in
Massachusetts
What major social and political crises rocked the colonies in the
late seventeenth century?

-America90
suffer fits and nightmares, attributed by their elders to
witchcraft. Soon,
three witches had been named, including Tituba, an Indian from
the
Caribbean who was a slave in the home of one of the girls.
Since the only
way to avoid prosecution was to confess and name others,
accusations of
witchcraft began to snowball. By the middle of 1692, hundreds
of residents
of Salem had come forward to accuse their neighbors. Although
many of
the accused confessed to save their lives, fourteen women and
five men
were hanged, protesting their innocence to the end.
As accusations and executions multiplied, it became clear that
some-
thing was seriously wrong with the colony’s system of justice.
The gover-
nor of Massachusetts dissolved the Salem court and ordered the
remaining
prisoners released. The events in Salem discredited the tradition
of pros-
ecuting witches and encouraged prominent colonists to seek
scientific
explanations for natural events such as comets and illnesses,
rather than
attribute them to magic.
T H E G R O W T H O F C O L O N I A L A M E R I C A

As stability returned after the crises of the late seventeenth
century, English
North America experienced an era of remarkable growth.
Between 1700
and 1770, crude backwoods settlements became bustling
provincial capitals.
The hazards of disease among colonists diminished, agricultural
settlement
pressed westward, and hundreds of thousands of newcomers
arrived from
the Old World. Thanks to a high birthrate and continuing
immigration, the
population of England’s mainland colonies, 265,000 in 1700,
grew nearly
tenfold, to over 2.3 million seventy years later. (It is worth
noting, however,
that because of the decline suffered by the Indians, the North
American
population was considerably lower in 1770 than it had been in
1492.)
A Diverse Population
Probably the most striking characteristic of colonial American
society in
the eighteenth century was its sheer diversity. In 1700, the
colonies were
essentially English outposts. In the eighteenth century, African
and non-
English European arrivals skyrocketed, while the number
emigrating
from England declined.
About 30 percent of European immigrants to the colonies during
the eighteenth century continued to arrive as bound laborers
who had

Population increase
Executions in Salem
Surge in African and non-
English arrivals
91T H E G R O W T H O F C O L O N I A L A M E R I C A
What were the directions of social and economic change in the
eighteenth-century colonies?
tem porarily sacrificed their freedom to make the voyage to the
New World.
But as the colonial economy prospered, poor indentured
migrants were
increasingly joined by professionals and skilled craftsmen—
teachers, min-
isters, weavers, carpenters—whom England could ill afford to
lose. This
brought to an end official efforts to promote English
emigration.
Nevertheless, the government in London remained convinced
that
colonial development enhanced the nation’s power and wealth.
To bolster
the Chesapeake labor force, nearly 50,000 convicts (a group not
desired
in Britain) were sent to work in the tobacco fields. Officials
also actively
encouraged Protestant immigration from the non-English (and
less pros-

perous) parts of the British Isles and from the European
continent, promis-
ing newcomers easy access to land and the right to worship
freely.
Among eighteenth-century migrants from the British Isles, the
70,000
English newcomers were considerably outnumbered by 145,000
from
Scotland and Ulster, the northern part of Ireland, where many
Scots had set-
tled as part of England’s effort to subdue the island. Mostly
Presbyterians,
they added significantly to religious diversity in North America.
The German Migration
Germans, 85,000 in all, formed the largest group of newcomers
from the
European continent. In the eighteenth century, Germany was
divided into
numerous small states, each with a ruling prince who
determined the
INDENTURED
TOTAL SLAVES SERVANTS CONVICTS FREE
TABLE 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants to British
North American Colonies, 1700–1775
Africa 278,400 278,400 — — —
Ireland 108,600 — 39,000 17,500 52,100
Germany 84,500 — 30,000 — 54,500

England/Wales 73,100 — 27,200 32,500 13,400
Scotland 35,300 — 7,400 2,200 25,700
Other 5,900 — — — 5,900
Total 585,800 278,400 103,600 52,200 151,600
Germans the largest group of
newcomers from Europe
End of official English
emigration efforts
Only a minority of emigrants from Europe to British North
America in the eighteenth
century came from the British Isles. Some English settlers, such
as the authors of this
petition from Pennsylvania to the authorities in London, found
the growing diversity
of the colonial population quite disturbing.
How careful every European state, that has Colonies in
America, has been of preserving the
advantages arising from them wholly to their own Nation and
People, is obvious to all who
will consider the policy & conduct of the Spanish, French &
others in relation to theirs. . . .

About the year 1710 a Company of religious People called
Menists [Mennonites] from
the Palatinate of the Rhine, transported themselves into the
Province of Pennsylvania
from Holland in British shipping, and purchased Lands at low
rates towards the River
Susquehanna. The Terms & Reception they met with proved so
encouraging, that they invited
diverse of their relations and friends to follow them. In the
succeeding years . . . several
thousands were settled in that Province. . . . We are now
assured by the same people that five
or six thousand more are to follow them this next ensuing year.
. . .
All these men young & old who arrived since the first, come
generally very well armed.
Many of them are Papists, & most of them appear inured to War
& other hardships. They
retire commonly back into the woods amongst or behind the
remoter inhabitants, sometimes
purchase land, but often sit down on any piece they find vacant
that they judge convenient for
them without asking questions. . . . Few of them apply now to
be Naturalized, [and] they . . .
generally . . . adhere to their own customs. The part of the
country they principally settle
in is that towards the French of Canada, whose interest, it may
be apprehended, . . . (since
several of them speak their language) [they] would as willingly
favor as the English. . . . It is
hoped therefore that nothing need be added to shew the present
necessity of putting a stop
to that augmentation of their strength. . . . A general provision
against all Foreigners may be
necessary.

From Memorial against Non-English Immigration
(December 1727)
-America92
Germans were among the most numerous immigrants to the
eighteenth-century
colonies. Many wrote letters to family members at home,
relating their experiences
and impressions.
Dearest Father, Brother, and Sister and Brother-in-law,
I have told you quite fully about the trip, and I will tell you
what will not surprise you—that
we have a free country. Of the sundry craftsmen, one may do
whatever one wants. Nor does
the land require payment of tithes [taxes to support a local
landlord, typical in Europe]. . . .
The land is very big from Canada to the east of us to Carolina in
the south and to the Spanish
border in the west. . . . One can settle wherever one wants
without asking anyone when he
buys or leases something. . . .
I have always enough to do and we have no shortage of food.
Bread is plentiful. If I work
for two days I earn more bread than in eight days [at home]. . . .
Also I can buy many things so
reasonably [for example] a pair of shoes for

[roughly] seven Pennsylvania shillings. . . . I
think that with God’s help I will obtain land.
I am not pushing for it until I am in a better
position.
I would like for my brother to come . . . and
it will then be even nicer in the country. . . . I
assume that the land has been described to
you sufficiently by various people and it is
not surprising that the immigrant agents
[demand payment]. For the journey is long
and it costs much to stay away for one
year. . . .
Johannes Hänner
From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant to
Pennsylvania
(August 23, 1769)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. What do the petitioners find objection-
able about non-English migrants to
Pennsylvania?
2. What does Johannes Hänner have in
mind when he calls America a “free
country”?

3. How do these documents reflect differ-
ent views of who should be entitled to
the benefits of freedom in the American
colonies?
-America94
Savannah
Charleston
Charlotte
Fayetteville New Bern
Williamsburg
Baltimore
Augusta
Montreal
Quebec
Portland
Portsmouth
Boston

Providence
Newport
Hartford
New
Haven
New York
Philadelphia
Richmond
J
J
J
J
J
W
W
S S
FF
F
F

F
F
F
F
FLORIDA
GEORGIA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
MARYLAND
DELAWARE
PENNSYLVANIA
NEW
JERSEY
NEW YORK
CONNECTICUT
RHODE
ISLAND
MASSACHUSETTS

NEW
HAMPSHIRE
MAINE
(to Massachusetts)
NEW FRANCE
A P
P A
L A
C
H
I A
N
M
O
U
N
T
A
I N
S
Long
I s land

St.
La
wr
enc
e R.
C
on
ne
ct
icu
t R
.
H
ud
so
n
R.
Oh
io R
.
Lake H
uron

Lake
Erie
Lake Ontario
A t lan t ic
Oc e an
0
0
100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers
English
French
German
Dutch
Africans
Scotch-Irish
Highland Scots
Jews
Swedes
Welsh
French Huguenots
J
S

W
F
E U R O P E A N S E T T L E M E N T A N D E T H N I C
D I V E R S I T Y O N T H E A T L A N T I C C O A S T
O F N O R T H A M E R I C A , 1 7 6 0
Among the most striking features
of eighteenth-century colonial
society was the racial and ethnic
diversity of the population (except
in New England). This resulted from
increased immigration from the non-
English parts of the British Isles and
from mainland Europe, as well as the
rapid expansion of the slave trade
from Africa.
official religion. Those who found themselves worshiping the
“wrong”
religion—Lutherans in Catholic areas, Catholics in Lutheran
areas, and
everywhere, followers of small Protestant sects such as
Mennonites,
Moravians, and Dunkers—faced persecution. Many decided to

emigrate.
Other migrants were motivated by persistent agricultural crises
and the
difficulty of acquiring land.
English and Dutch merchants created a well-organized system
whereby “redemptioners” (as indentured families were called)
received
passage in exchange for a promise to work off their debt in
America. Most
settled in frontier areas—rural New York, western
Pennsylvania, and the
southern backcountry—where they formed tightly knit farming
commu-
nities in which German for many years remained the dominant
language.
Religious Diversity
Eighteenth-century British America was not a “melting pot” of
cultures.
Ethnic groups tended to live and worship in relatively
homogeneous com-
munities. But outside of New England, which received few
immigrants and
retained its overwhelmingly English ethnic character, American
society
had a far more diverse population than Britain. Nowhere was

this more
evident than in the practice of religion.
Apart from New Jersey (formed from East and West Jersey in
1702),
Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, the colonies did not adhere to
a modern
separation of church and state. Nearly every colony levied taxes
to pay the
salaries of ministers of an established church, and most barred
Catholics
and Jews from voting and holding public office. But
increasingly, de facto tol-
eration among Protestant denominations flourished. By the mid-
eighteenth
century, dissenting Protestants in most colonies had gained the
right to
worship as they pleased and own their churches, although many
places still
barred them from holding public office and
taxed them to support the official church. A
visitor to Pennsylvania in 1750 described the
colony’s religious diversity: “We find there
Lutherans, Reformed, Catholics, Quakers,
Menonists or Anabaptists, Herrnhuters or
Moravian Brethren, Pietists, Seventh Day
Baptists, Dunkers, Presbyterians, . . . Jews,
Mohammedans, Pagans.”
Indian Life in Transition
The tide of newcomers, who equated liberty
with secure possession of land, threatened
to engulf the surviving Indian populations.
By the eighteenth century, Indian societies

William Penn’s Treaty with the
Indians. Penn’s grandson, Thomas,
the proprietor of Pennsylvania,
commissioned this romanticized
painting from the artist Benjamin
West in 1771, by which time
harmony between Indians and
colonists had long since turned to
hostility. In the nineteenth century,
many reproductions of this image
circulated, reminding Americans that
Indians had once been central figures
in their history.
German settlements
C -America96
that had existed for centuries had disappeared, the victims of
disease and
warfare, and the communities that remained were well
integrated into the

British imperial system. Indeed, Indian warriors did much of the
fighting
in the century’s imperial wars. Few Indians chose to live among
whites
rather than in their own communities. But they had become well
accus-
tomed to using European products like knives, hatchets,
needles, kettles,
and firearms. Alcohol introduced by traders created social chaos
in many
Indian communities. One Cherokee told the governor of South
Carolina
in 1753, “The clothes we wear, we cannot make ourselves. . . .
We use their
ammunition with which we kill deer. . . . Every necessary thing
we must
have from the white people.”
While traders saw in Indian villages potential profits and
British
officials saw allies against France and Spain, farmers and
planters viewed
Indians as little more than an obstruction to their desire for
land. They
expected Indians to give way to white settlers. In Pennsylvania,
for
example, the flood of German and Scotch-Irish settlers into the
back-
country upset the relatively peaceful Indian-white relations
constructed
by William Penn. The infamous Walking Purchase of 1737
brought
the fraudulent dealing so common in other colonies to
Pennsylvania. The
Lenni Lanape Indians agreed to cede a tract of land bounded by
the dis-

tance a man could walk in thirty-six hours. To their amazement,
Governor
James Logan hired a team of swift runners, who marked out an
area far in
excess of what the Indians had anticipated. By 1760, when
Pennsylvania’s
population, a mere 20,000 in 1700, had grown to 220,000,
Indian-colonist
relations, initially the most harmonious in British North
America, had
become poisoned by suspicion and hostility.
Regional Diversity
By the mid-eighteenth century, the different regions of the
British colonies
had developed distinct economic and social orders. Small farms
tilled by
family labor and geared primarily to production for local
consumption
predominated in New England and the new settlements of the
backcoun-
try (the area stretching from central Pennsylvania southward
through
the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and into upland North and
South
Carolina). The backcountry was the most rapidly growing
region in North
America. By the eve of the American Revolution, the region
contained one-
quarter of Virginia’s population and half of South Carolina’s.
Most were
farm families raising grain and livestock.
In the older portions of the Middle Colonies of New York, New
Jersey,

and Pennsylvania, farmers were more oriented to commerce than
on the
Indians and settlers
The backcountry
frontier. They grew grain both for their own use and for sale
abroad and
supplemented the work of family members by employing wage
laborers,
tenants, and in some instances slaves. With its fertile soil,
favorable climate,
initially peaceful Indian relations, generous governmental land
distribu-
tion policy, and rivers that facilitated long-distance trading,
Pennsylvania
came to be known as “the best poor man’s country.” Ordinary
colonists
there enjoyed a standard of living unimaginable in Europe.
The Consumer Revolution
During the eighteenth century, Great Britain eclipsed the Dutch
as the lead-
ing producer and trader of inexpensive consumer goods,
including colonial
products like coffee and tea, and such manufactured goods as
linen, metal-
ware, pins, ribbons, glassware, ceramics, and clothing. Trade
integrated the
British empire. As the American colonies were drawn more and

more fully
into the system of Atlantic commerce, they shared in the era’s
consumer
revolution. In port cities and small inland towns, shops
proliferated and
American newspapers were filled with advertisements for
British goods.
Consumerism in a modern sense—the mass production, advertis-
ing, and sale of consumer goods—did not exist in colonial
America.
Nonetheless, even modest farmers and artisans owned books,
ceramic
plates, metal cutlery, and items made of imported silk and
cotton. Tea, once
a luxury enjoyed only by the wealthy, became virtually a
necessity of life.
Colonial Cities
Colonial cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Charleston
were quite small by the standards of Europe or Spanish
America.
In 1700, when the population of Mexico City stood at 100,000,
Boston had 6,000 residents and New York 4,500.
British North American cities were mainly gathering
places for agricultural goods and for imported items to be
distributed to the countryside. Nonetheless, the expan-
sion of trade encouraged the rise of port cities, home to a
growing population of colonial merchants and artisans
(skilled craftsmen) as well as an increasing number of
poor. In 1770, with some 30,000 inhabitants, Philadelphia
was “the capital of the New World,” at least its British com-
ponent, and, after London and Liverpool, the empire’s third

busiest port. The financial, commercial, and cultural center of
British America, Philadelphia founded its growth on economic
This piece of china made in England
and exported to New England
celebrates the coronation of James
II in 1685. It is an example of the
growing colonial demand for English
consumer goods.
“The best poor man’s country”
Inexpensive consumer goods
-America98
integration with the rich agricultural region nearby.
Philadelphia mer-
chants organized the collection of farm goods, supplied rural
storekeepers,
and extended credit to consumers. They exported flour, bread,
and meat to
the West Indies and Europe.
The city was also home to a large population of furniture
makers, jew-

elers, and silversmiths serving wealthier citizens, and hundreds
of lesser
artisans like weavers, blacksmiths, coopers, and construction
workers. The
typical artisan owned his own tools and labored in a small
workshop, often
his home, assisted by family members and young journeymen
and appren-
tices learning the trade. The artisan’s skill gave him a far
greater degree of
economic freedom than those dependent on others for a
livelihood.
Despite the influx of British goods, American craftsmen
benefited
from the expanding consumer market. Most journeymen enjoyed
a reason-
able chance of rising to the status of master and establishing
workshops of
their own.
An Atlantic World
People, ideas, and goods flowed back and forth across the
Atlantic, knitting
together the empire and its diverse populations—British
merchants and
consumers, American colonists, African slaves, and surviving
Indians—
and creating webs of interdependence among the European
empires. As
trade expanded, the North American and West Indian colonies
became
the major overseas market for British manufactured goods.
Although
most colonial output was consumed at home, North Americans

shipped
farm products to Britain, the West Indies, and with the
exception of goods
like tobacco “enumerated” under the Navigation Acts, outside
the empire.
Virtually the entire Chesapeake tobacco crop was marketed in
Britain,
with most of it then re-exported to Europe by British merchants.
Most of
the bread and flour exported from the colonies was destined for
the West
Indies. African slaves there grew sugar that could be distilled
into rum, a
product increasingly popular among both North American
colonists and
Indians, who obtained it by trading furs and deerskins that were
then
shipped to Europe. The mainland colonies carried on a
flourishing trade in
fish and grains with southern Europe. Ships built in New
England made
up one-third of the British empire’s trading fleet.
Membership in the empire had many advantages for the
colonists.
Most Americans did not complain about British regulation of
their trade
because commerce enriched the colonies as well as the mother
country and
lax enforcement of the Navigation Acts allowed smuggling to
flourish. In a
dangerous world, moreover, the Royal Navy protected American
shipping.
American craftsmen and the
expanding consumer market

Trade in the Atlantic world
Advantages of British empire
99S O C I A L C L A S S E S I N T H E C O L O N I E S
And despite the many differences between life in England and
its colonies,
eighteenth-century English America drew closer to, and in some
ways
became more similar to, the mother country across the Atlantic.
S O C I A L C L A S S E S I N T H E C O L O N I E S
The Colonial Elite
Most free Americans benefited from economic growth, but as
colonial soci-
ety matured an elite emerged that, while neither as powerful or
wealthy as
the aristocracy of England, increasingly dominated politics and
society. In
New England and the Middle Colonies, expanding trade made
possible the
emergence of a powerful upper class of merchants, often linked
by family or
commercial ties to great trading firms in London. By 1750, the
colonies of the
Chesapeake and Lower South were dominated by slave
plantations produc-
ing staple crops, especially tobacco and rice, for the world
market. Here great
planters accumulated enormous wealth. The colonial elite also

included the
rulers of proprietary colonies like Pennsylvania and Maryland.
America had no titled aristocracy as in Britain. But throughout
British America, men of prominence controlled colonial
government. In
Virginia, the upper class was so tightly knit and intermarried so
often
that the colony was said to be governed by a “cousinocracy.”
Nearly every
Virginian of note achieved prominence through family
connections.
Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather was a justice of the peace (an
impor-
tant local official), militia captain, and sheriff, and his father
was a
member of the House of Burgesses. George
Washington’s father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather had been justices of the
peace. The Virginia gentry used its control
of provincial government to gain posses-
sion of large tracts of land as western areas
opened for settlement.
The richest group of mainland colo-
nists were South Carolina planters. Like
their Virginia counterparts, South Carolina
grandees lived a lavish lifestyle amid
imported furniture, fine wines, silk cloth-
ing, and other items from England. Their
wealth enabled them to spend much of their
A 1732 portrait of Daniel, Peter, and
Andrew Oliver, sons of a wealthy

Boston merchant. The prominent
display of their delicate hands tells
the viewer that they have never had
to do manual labor.
Merchants, gentry, and
planters
-America100
time enjoying the social life of Charleston, the only real urban
center south
of Philadelphia and the richest city in British North America.
Anglicization
For much of the eighteenth century, the American colonies had
more regu-
lar trade and communications with Britain than among
themselves. Rather
than thinking of themselves as distinctively American, they
became more
and more English—a process historians call “Anglicization.”
Wealthy Americans tried to model their lives on British
etiquette and
behavior. Somewhat resentful at living in provincial isolation—
“at the end

of the world,” as one Virginia aristocrat put it—they sought to
demonstrate
their status and legitimacy by importing the latest London
fashions and
literature, sending their sons to Britain for education, and
building homes
equipped with fashionable furnishings modeled on the country
estates and
town houses of the English gentry.
Throughout the colonies, elites emulated what they saw as
England’s
balanced, stable social order. Liberty, in their eyes, meant, in
part, the
power to rule—the right of those blessed with wealth and
prominence
to dominate others. They viewed society as a hierarchical
structure in
which some men were endowed with greater talents than others
and
were destined to rule. Each place in the hierarchy carried with it
different
responsibilities, and one’s status was revealed in dress,
manners, and the
splendor of one’s home. On both sides of the Atlantic, elites
viewed work as
something reserved for common folk and slaves. Freedom from
labor was
the mark of the gentleman.
Poverty in the Colonies
At the other end of the social scale, poverty emerged as a
visible feature of
eighteenth-century colonial life. Although not considered by
most colonists

part of their society, the growing number of slaves lived in
impoverished
conditions. Among free Americans, poverty was hardly as
widespread as
in Britain, where in the early part of the century between one-
quarter and
one-half of the people regularly required public assistance. But
as the colo-
nial population expanded, access to land diminished rapidly,
especially in
long-settled areas, forcing many propertyless males to seek
work in their
region’s cities or in other colonies.
In colonial cities, the number of propertyless wage earners
subsisting
at the poverty line steadily increased. In Boston, one-third of
the popula-
tion in 1771 owned no property at all. In rural Augusta County,
carved out
Increase in poverty in
eighteenth-century colonies
Colonial elites and English
identity
101S O C I A L C L A S S E S I N T H E C O L O N I E S
of Virginia’s Shenandoah River valley in 1738, land was
quickly engrossed
by planters and speculators. By the 1760s, two-thirds of the
county’s white
men owned no land and had little prospect of obtaining it unless

they
migrated farther west. Taking the colonies as a whole, half of
the wealth at
mid-century was concentrated in the hands of the richest 10
percent of the
population.
Attitudes and policies toward poverty in colonial America
mirrored
British precedents. The better-off colonists generally viewed the
poor as
lazy, shiftless, and responsible for their own plight. To
minimize the bur-
den on taxpayers, poor persons were frequently set to labor in
workhouses,
where they produced goods that reimbursed authorities for part
of their
upkeep.
The Middle Ranks
The large majority of free Americans lived between the
extremes of wealth
and poverty. Along with racial and ethnic diversity, what
distinguished
the mainland colonies from Europe was the wide distribution of
land
and the economic autonomy of most ordinary free families.
Altogether,
perhaps two-thirds of the free male population were farmers
who owned
their own land.
By the eighteenth century, colonial farm families viewed
landowner-
ship almost as a right, the social precondition of freedom. They

strongly
resented efforts, whether by Native Americans, great landlords,
or colonial
governments, to limit their access to land. A dislike of personal
dependence
and an understanding of freedom as not relying on others for a
livelihood
sank deep roots in British North America.
Women and the Household
Economy
In the household economy of eighteenth-
century America, the family was the cen-
ter of economic life. The independence of
the small farmer depended in considerable
measure on the labor of dependent women
and children. “He that hath an industrious
family shall soon be rich,” declared one
colonial saying, and the high birthrate in
part reflected the need for as many hands as
possible on colonial farms.
This portrait of the Cheney family by
an unknown late-eighteenth-century
artist illustrates the high birthrate in
colonial America and suggests how
many years of a woman’s life were
spent bearing and raising children.
Landownership and freedom

The richest 10 percent
How did patterns of class and gender roles change in
eighteenth-century America?
-America102
As the population grew and the death rate declined, family life
stabi-
lized and more marriages became lifetime commitments. Free
women were
expected to devote their lives to being good wives and mothers.
As colonial
society became more structured, opportunities that had existed
for women
in the early period receded. In Connecticut, for example, the
courts were
informal and unorganized in the seventeenth century, and
women often
represented themselves. In the eighteenth century, it became
necessary to
hire a lawyer as one’s spokesman in court. Women, barred from
practic-
ing as attorneys, disappeared from judicial proceedings.
Because of the
desperate need for labor in the seventeenth century, men and
women both
did various kinds of work. In the eighteenth century, the
division of labor
along gender lines solidified. Women’s work was clearly
defined, including
cooking, cleaning, sewing, making butter, and assisting with
agricultural

chores. Even as the consumer revolution reduced the demands
on many
women by making available store-bought goods previously
produced at
home, women’s work seemed to increase. Lower infant
mortality meant
more time spent in child care and domestic chores.
North America at Mid-Century
By the mid-eighteenth century, the area that would become the
United
States was home to a remarkable diversity of peoples and
different kinds
of social organization, from Pueblo villages of the Southwest to
tobacco
plantations of the Chesapeake, towns and small farms of New
England,
and fur-trading outposts of the northern and western frontier.
Elites tied
to imperial centers of power dominated the political and
economic life of
nearly every colony. But large numbers of colonists enjoyed far
greater
opportunities for freedom—access to the vote, prospects of
acquiring
land, the right to worship as they pleased, and an escape from
oppressive
government—than existed in Europe. The colonies’ economic
growth con-
tributed to a high birthrate, long life expectancy, and expanding
demand
for consumer goods.
Yet many others found themselves confined to the partial
freedom

of indentured servitude or to the complete absence of freedom
in slavery.
Both timeless longings for freedom and new and unprecedented
forms of
unfreedom had been essential to the North American colonies’
remarkable
development.
Division of labor along gender
lines
Opportunities for freedom
Freedom and unfreedom
1. Both the Puritans and William Penn viewed their colonies
as “holy experiments.” How did they differ?
2. The textbook states “Prejudice by itself did not create
American slavery.” Examine the economic forces, events,
and laws that shaped the experiences of enslaved people.
3. How did English leaders understand the place and role of
the American colonies in England’s empire?
4. How did King Philip’s War, Bacon’s Rebellion, and the
Salem witch trials illustrate a widespread crisis in British
North America in the late seventeenth century?
5. The social structure of the eighteenth-century colonies was
growing more open for some but not for others. Consider
the statement with respect to: men and women; whites and

blacks; and rich and poor.
6. By the end of the seventeenth century, commerce was
the foundation of empire and the leading cause of com-
petition between European empires. Explain how the
North American colonies were directly linked to Atlantic
commerce by laws and trade.
7. If you traveled from New England to the South, how
would you describe the diversity you saw between the dif-
ferent colonies?
8. What impact did the family’s being the center of economic
life have on gender relations and the roles of women?
K E Y T E R M S
Metacom (p. 73)
King Philip’s War (p. 73)
mercantilism (p. 74)
Navigation Acts (p. 74)
Covenant Chain (p. 75)
Society of Friends (Quakers)
(p. 78)
sugar (p. 82)
Bacon’s Rebellion (p. 83)
slave code of 1705 (p. 85)

Glorious Revolution (p. 86)
English Bill of Rights (p. 87)
Lords of Trade (p. 88)
Dominion of New England
(p. 88)
English Toleration Act (p. 89)
Salem witch trials (p. 89)
redemptioners (p. 95)
Walking Purchase (p. 96)
backcountry (p. 96)
artisans (p. 97)
“cousinocracy” (p. 99)
C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U
R C E S
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103 C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O
U R C E S
book&p=137.0
1689 Locke’s Two Treatises of
Government published
1707 Act of Union creating
Great Britain
1712 Slave uprising in
New York City
1718 French establish New
Orleans
1728 Pennsylvania Gazette
established
1730s Beginnings of the Great
Awakening
1733 Georgia colony founded
1735 John Peter Zenger tried
for libel

1739 Stono Rebellion
1791 Rumors of slave revolt in
New York
1749 Virginia awards land to the
Ohio Company
1754– Seven Years’
1763 War
1754 Albany Plan of Union
proposed
1763 Pontiac’s Rebellion
Proclamation of 1763
1764 Paxton Boys march on
Philadelphia
1769 Father Serra establishes
first mission in California
1789 The Interesting Narrative of
the Life of Olaudah Equiano
published
The Old Plantation, a late-eighteenth-
century watercolor, depicts slaves
dancing in a plantation’s slave quarters,
perhaps at a wedding. The musical

instruments and pottery are African in
origin while much of the clothing is of
European manufacture, indicating the
mixing of African and white cultures
among the era’s slaves. The artist has
recently been identified as John Rose,
owner of a rice plantation near Beaufort,
South Carolina.
S L A V E R Y , F R E E D O M ,
A N D T H E S T R U G G L E
F O R E M P I R E
C H A P T E R 4
T O 1 7 6 3
105S L A V E R Y , F R E E D O M , A N D T H E S T R U
G G L E F O R E M P I R E
S ometime in the mid-1750s, Olaudah Equiano, the eleven-year-
old son of a West African village chief, was kidnapped by slave

traders. He soon found himself on a ship headed for Barbados.
Equiano was sold to a plantation owner in Virginia and then
purchased
by a British sea captain, who renamed him Gustavus Vassa.
While still
a slave, he enrolled in a school in England where he learned to
read and
write, and then enlisted in the Royal Navy. In 1763, however,
Equiano
was sold once again and returned to the Caribbean. Three years
later, he
was able to purchase his freedom and went on to experience
shipwrecks,
a colonizing venture in Central America, and even an expedition
to the
Arctic Circle.
Equiano eventually settled in London, and in 1789 he published
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, the
African, which he described as a “history of neither a saint, a
hero, nor
a tyrant,” but of a victim of slavery who through luck or fate
ended up
more fortunate than most of his people. He condemned the idea
that
Africans were inferior to Europeans and therefore deserved to
be slaves.
The book became the era’s most widely read account by a slave
of his own
experiences. Equiano died in 1797.
Recent scholars have suggested that Equiano may have been
born
in the New World rather than Africa. In either case, while his

life was
no doubt unusual, it illuminates broad patterns of eighteenth-
century
American history. As noted in the previous chapter, this was a
period
of sustained development for British North America. Compared
with
England and Scotland—united to create Great Britain by the Act
of Union
of 1707—the colonies were growing much more rapidly.
Ideas, people, and goods flowed back and forth across the
ocean.
Even as the colonies’ populations became more diverse, they
were
increasingly integrated into the British empire. Their laws and
political
institutions were extensions of those of Britain, their ideas
about society
and culture reflected British values, their economies were
geared to
serving the empire’s needs.
Equiano’s life also underscores the greatest irony in the history
of
the eighteenth century—the simultaneous expansion of freedom
and
slavery. This was the era when the idea of the “freeborn
Englishman”
became powerfully entrenched in the outlook of both colonists
and
Britons. More than any other principle, liberty was seen as what
made
the British empire distinct. Yet the eighteenth century was also
the
height of the Atlantic slave trade, a commerce increasingly

dominated by
British merchants and ships. Although concentrated in the
Chesapeake
How did African slav-
ery differ regionally in
eighteenth-century North
America?
What factors led to
distinct African-American
cultures in the eighteenth
century?
What were the meanings of
British liberty in the eigh-
teenth century?
What concepts and institu-
tions dominated colonial
politics in the eighteenth
century?
How did the Great Awak-

ening challenge the reli-
gious and social structure
of British North America?
How did the Spanish
and French empires in
America develop in the
eighteenth century?
What was the impact of
the Seven Years’ War on
imperial and Indian–
white relations?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
and areas farther south, slavery existed in every colony of
British North
America. And unlike Equiano, very few slaves were fortunate
enough to
gain their freedom.
S L A V E R Y A N D E M P I R E

Of the estimated 7.7 million Africans transported to the New
World
between 1492 and 1820, more than half arrived between 1700
and 1800.
The Atlantic slave trade would later be condemned by statesmen
and gen-
eral opinion as a crime against humanity. But in the eighteenth
century, it
was a regularized business in which European merchants,
African trad-
ers, and American planters engaged in complex bargaining over
human
lives, all with the expectation of securing a profit. The slave
trade was a
vital part of world commerce.
In the British empire of the eighteenth century, free laborers
working
for wages were atypical and slavery was the norm. The first
mass consumer
goods in international trade were produced by slaves—sugar,
rice, coffee,
and tobacco. The rising demand for these products fueled the
rapid growth
of the Atlantic slave trade.
Atlantic Trade
In the eighteenth century, the Caribbean remained the
commercial focus
of the British empire and the major producer of revenue for the
crown.
A series of triangular trading routes crisscrossed the Atlantic,
carrying
British manufactured goods to Africa and the colonies, colonial

products
including tobacco, indigo, sugar, and rice to Europe, and slaves
from
Africa to the New World. Most colonial vessels, however, went
back
and forth between cities like New York, Charleston, and
Savannah, and
to ports in the Caribbean. Merchants in New York,
Massachusetts, and
Rhode Island participated actively in the slave trade, shipping
slaves
from Africa to the Caribbean or southern colonies. The slave
economies
of the West Indies were the largest market for fish, grain,
livestock, and
lumber exported from New England and the Middle Colonies. In
Britain
itself, the profits from slavery and the slave trade stimulated the
rise of
ports like Liverpool and Bristol and the growth of banking,
shipbuild-
ing, and insurance. They also helped to finance the early
industrial
revolution.
Triangular trade routes
The frontispiece of Olaudah Equiano’s
account of his life, the best-known
narrative by an eighteenth-century
slave. The portrait of Equiano in
European dress and holding a Bible

challenges stereotypes of blacks as
“savages” incapable of becoming
civilized.
107S L A V E R Y A N D E M P I R E
How did African slavery differ regionally in eighteenth-century
North America?
With slavery so central to Atlantic commerce, it should not be
surpris-
ing that for large numbers of free colonists and Europeans,
freedom meant
in part the power and right to enslave others. And as slavery
became more
and more entrenched, so too, as the Quaker abolitionist John
Woolman
commented in 1762, did “the idea of slavery being connected
with the black
color, and liberty with the white.”
Africa and the Slave Trade
A few African societies, like Benin for a time, opted out of the
Atlantic
slave trade, hoping to avoid the disruptions it inevitably caused.
But
most African rulers took part, and they proved quite adept at
playing
Boston

Newport
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Norfolk
Wilmington
Charleston
Savannah
London
Lisbon
Cadiz
Bristol
Glasgow
Furs, fish,
naval stor
es
Manufact
ured good
s
Manufa
ctured
goods

Manu
factur
ed goo
ds
Manufactured goods
Lin
en
s,
ho
rse
s
Tobacc
o
Rice, i
ndigo,
hides
Grain, rum, fish, lumber
Mo
lass
es,
frui
t
Europ

ean p
roduc
ts
Wine W
in
e,
fr
ui
t
M
anufactured goods
Slaves
RumSlaves, gold
Fish, livestock, flour, lum
ber
Slaves, sugar
Sl
av
es
, s
ug
ar
Rice Slaves

ENGLAND
SPAIN
PO
RTUGAL
FRANCE
GOLD
COAST
IVORY
COAST
SLAVE
COAST
BRITISH
COLONIES
SPANISH
FLORIDA
NORTH
AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
AFRICA
EUROPE
S A H A R A D E S E R T
WEST I N D I ES

Caribbean
Sea
Atla n tic Oce an
0
0
500
500
1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
A T L A N T I C T R A D I N G R O U T E S
A series of trading routes
crisscrossed the Atlantic, bringing
manufactured goods to Africa and
Britain’s American colonies, slaves to
the New World, and colonial products
to Europe.

the Europeans off against one another, collecting taxes from
foreign mer-
chants, and keeping the capture and sale of slaves under their
own control.
Few Europeans ventured inland from the coast. Traders
remained in
their “factories” and purchased slaves brought to them by
African rulers
and dealers.
From a minor institution, slavery grew to become more and
more
central to West African society, a source of wealth for African
merchants
and of power for newly emerging African kingdoms. The loss
every year of
tens of thousands of men and women in the prime of their lives
to the slave
trade weakened and distorted West Africa’s society and
economy.
Spanish Colonies 13%
Dutch
Colonies 7%
Portuguese Emp
ire 32%
British Caribbean 24%
French Caribbean 17%
3%
4%

The Middle Passage
ENGLAND
SPAIN
PO
RTUGAL
FRANCE
OYO
BRAZIL
GUIANAS
CENTRAL
AMERICA
KONGO
ANGOLA
BENINAshanti
DAHOMEY
SEGU
KAARTA
HAUSA
KANEM-
BORNU

BR
IT
IS
H
CO
LO
NIE
S
NORTH
AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
AFRICA
EUROPE
S A H A R A D E S E R TW E ST
I N D I ES
ARAB
BERBER
TEKE
NSUNDI
MBUNDU
Caribbean

Sea
Atlan tic Ocean
0
0
500
500
1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
T H E S L A V E T R A D E I N T H E A T L A N T I C
W O R L D , 1 4 6 0 – 1 7 7 0
The Atlantic slave trade expanded
rapidly in the eighteenth century. The
mainland colonies received only a tiny
proportion of the Africans brought to
the New World, most of whom were
transported to Brazil and the West
Indies.
Slavery’s impact in West Africa

North America?
The Middle Passage
For slaves, the voyage across the Atlantic—
known as the Middle Passage because it
was the second, or middle, leg in the trian-
gular trading routes linking Europe, Africa,
and America—was a harrowing experience.
Men, women, and children were crammed
aboard vessels as tightly as possible to max-
imize profits. Equiano, who later described
“the shrieks of the women and the groans
of the dying,” survived the Middle Passage,
but many Africans did not. Diseases such
as measles and smallpox spread rapidly,
and about one slave in five perished before
reaching the New World. Ship captains
were known to throw the sick overboard in
order to prevent the spread of epidemics.
Only a small proportion (less than 5 percent) of slaves carried
to the
New World were destined for mainland North America. The vast
majority
landed in Brazil or the West Indies, where the high death rate
on the sugar
plantations led to a constant demand for new slave imports.
Overall, the
area that was to become the United States imported between
400,000
and 600,000 slaves. By 1770, due to the natural reproduction of

the slave
population, around one-fifth of the estimated 2.3 million
persons (not
including Indians) living in the English colonies of North
America were
Africans and their descendants.
Chesapeake Slavery
By the mid-eighteenth century, three distinct slave systems were
well
entrenched in Britain’s mainland colonies: tobacco-based
plantation slav-
ery in the Chesapeake, rice-based plantation slavery in South
Carolina
and Georgia, and nonplantation slavery in New England and the
Middle
Colonies. The largest and oldest of these was the plantation
system of the
Chesapeake, where more than 270,000 slaves resided in 1770,
nearly half
of the region’s population. Virginia and Maryland were as
closely tied to
Britain as any other colonies and their economies were models
of mercan-
tilist policy (described in Chapter 3).
As Virginia expanded westward, so did slavery. By the eve of
the
American Revolution, the center of gravity of slavery in the
colony had
This image, made by a sailor in 1769
for the ship’s owner, a merchant in

Nantes, France, depicts the interior
of a slave-trading vessel, the Marie-
Séraphique. The cargo carried in
barrels, generally guns, cloth, and
metal goods, were to be traded for
slaves. The third image from the left
depicts the conditions under which
slaves endured the Middle Passage
across the Atlantic. The ship carried
over 300 slaves. The broadside also
included a calculation of the profit of
the voyage.
Tobacco-based plantation
slavery
shifted from the Tidewater (the region along the coast) to the
Piedmont
farther inland. Most Chesapeake slaves, male and female,
worked in the
tobacco fields, but thousands labored as teamsters, as boatmen,

and in
skilled crafts. Numerous slave women became cooks,
seamstresses, dairy
maids, and personal servants. Slavery was common on small
farms as well
as plantations; nearly half of Virginia’s white families owned at
least one
slave in 1770.
Slavery transformed Chesapeake society into an elaborate
hierarchy
of degrees of freedom. At the top stood large planters, below
them numer-
ous lesser planters and landowning yeomen, and at the bottom a
large
population of convicts, indentured servants, tenant farmers (who
made up
half the white households in 1770), and, of course, the slaves.
Violence lay
at the heart of the slave system. Even a planter like Landon
Carter, who
prided himself on his concern for the well-being of his slaves,
noted casu-
ally in his diary, “they have been severely whipped day by day.”
Race took on more and more importance as a line of social
division.
Whites increasingly considered free blacks dangerous and
undesirable.
Free blacks lost the right to employ white servants and to bear
arms, were
subjected to special taxes, and could be punished for striking a
white per-
son, regardless of the cause. In 1723, Virginia revoked the
voting privileges
of property-owning free blacks. Because Virginia law required

that freed
slaves be sent out of the colony, free blacks remained only a
tiny part of the
population—less than 4 percent in 1750.
The Rice Kingdom
As in early Virginia, frontier conditions allowed leeway to
South Carolina’s
small population of African-born slaves, who farmed, tended
livestock,
and were initially allowed to serve in the militia to fight the
Spanish and
Indians. And as in Virginia, the introduction of a marketable
staple crop,
in this case rice, led directly to economic development, the
large-scale
importation of slaves, and a growing divide between white and
black.
In the 1740s, another staple, indigo (a crop used in producing
blue dye),
was developed. Like rice, indigo required large-scale cultivation
and was
grown by slaves.
Since rice production requires considerable capital investment
to
drain swamps and create irrigation systems, it is economically
advanta-
geous for rice plantations to be as large as possible. Thus, South
Carolina
planters owned far more land and slaves than their counterparts
in
Virginia. Moreover, since mosquitoes bearing malaria (a disease
to which

Race as a line of social
division
Large-scale rice plantations
Hierarchy of Chesapeake society
North America?
Africans had developed partial immunity) flourished in the
watery rice
fields, planters tended to leave plantations under the control of
overseers
and the slaves themselves.
In the Chesapeake, field slaves worked in groups under constant
supervision. Under the “task” system that developed in
eighteenth-
century South Carolina, individual slaves were assigned daily
jobs, the
completion of which allowed them time for leisure or to
cultivate crops of
their own. In 1762, one rice district had a population of only 76
white males
among 1,000 slaves. By 1770, the number of South Carolina
slaves had
reached 100,000, well over half the colony’s population.
The Georgia Experiment
Rice cultivation also spread into Georgia. The colony was

founded in 1733
by a group of philanthropists led by James Oglethorpe, a
wealthy reformer
who sought to improve conditions for imprisoned debtors and
abolish
slavery. Oglethorpe hoped to establish a haven where the
“worthy poor”
of England could enjoy economic opportunity. The government
in London
supported the creation of Georgia to protect South Carolina
against the
Spanish and their Indian allies in Florida.
Initially, the proprietors banned liquor and slaves, leading to
con-
tinual battles with settlers, who desired both. By the 1740s,
Georgia offered
Benjamin Latrobe’s watercolor,
An Overseer Doing His Duty, was
sketched near Fredericksburg,
Virginia, in 1798. The title is meant to
be ironic: the well-dressed overseer
relaxes while two female slaves work
in the fields.
The task system
James Oglethorpe

Slavery, Freedom, and the Struggle for Empire112
the spectacle of colonists pleading for the “English liberty” of
self-government
so that they could enact laws introducing slavery. In 1751, the
proprietors
surrendered the colony to the crown. The colonists quickly won
the right to
an elected assembly, which met in Savannah. It repealed the ban
on slavery
(and liquor), as well as an early measure that had limited
landholdings to
500 acres. Georgia became a miniature version of South
Carolina. By 1770, as
many as 15,000 slaves labored on its coastal rice plantations.
Slavery in the North
Unlike in the plantation regions, slavery was far less central to
the
economies of New England and the Middle Colonies, where
small farms
predominated. Slaves made up only a small percentage of these
colonies’
populations, and it was unusual for even rich families to own
more than
one slave. Nonetheless, slavery was not entirely marginal to
northern
colonial life. Slaves worked as farm hands, in artisan shops, as
stevedores
loading and unloading ships, and as per-
sonal servants. But with slaves so small
a part of the population that they seemed

to pose no threat to the white majority,
laws were less harsh than in the South. In
New England, where in 1770 the 17,000
slaves represented less than 3 percent of
the region’s population, slave marriages
were recognized in law; the severe physical
punishment of slaves was prohibited; and
slaves could bring suits in court, testify
against whites, and own property and pass
it on to their children—rights unknown in
the South.
Slavery had been present in New
York from the earliest days of Dutch set-
tlement. As New York City’s role in the
slave trade expanded, so did slavery in the
city. In 1746, its 2,440 slaves amounted to
one-fifth of New York City’s total popula-
tion. Most were domestic workers, but
slaves worked in all sectors of the econ-
omy. In 1770, about 27,000 slaves lived
in New York and New Jersey, 10 per cent
TABLE 4.1 Slave Population as
Percentage of Total Population of
Original Thirteen Colonies, 1770
New Hampshire 654 1%
Massachusetts 4,754 2
Connecticut 5,698 3
Rhode Island 3,761 6
New York 19,062 12

New Jersey 8,220 7
Pennsylvania 5,561 2
Delaware 1,836 5
Maryland 63,818 32
Virginia 187,600 42
North Carolina 69,600 35
South Carolina 75,168 61
Georgia 15,000 45
SLAVE
COLONY POPULATION PERCENTAGE
Social and political change
in Georgia
Small farms in northern colonies
113S L A V E C U L T U R E S A N D S L A V E R E S I S
T A N C E
of their total population. Slavery was also a significant presence
in
Philadelphia, although the institution stagnated after 1750 as
artisans
and merchants relied increasingly on wage laborers, whose
numbers

were augmented by population growth and the completion of the
terms
of indentured servants.
S L A V E C U L T U R E S A N D
S L A V E R E S I S T A N C E
Becoming African-American
The nearly 300,000 Africans brought to the mainland colonies
during
the eighteenth century were not a single people. They came
from different
cultures, spoke different languages, and practiced many
religions. Slavery
threw together individuals who would never otherwise have
encountered
one another and who had never considered their color or
residence on
a single continent a source of identity or unity. Their bond was
not kin-
ship, language, or even “race,” but slavery itself. The process of
creating
a cohesive culture took many years. But by the nineteenth
century, slaves
no longer identified themselves as Ibo, Ashanti, Yoruba, and so
on, but
as African-Americans. In music, art, folklore, language, and
religion,
their cultural expressions emerged as a synthesis of African
traditions,
European elements, and new conditions in America.
For most of the eighteenth century, the majority of American
slaves

were African by birth. Advertisements seeking information
about run-
aways often described them by African origin (“young Gambia
Negro,”
“new Banbara Negro fellow”) and spoke of their bearing on
their bodies
“country marks”—visible signs of ethnic identity in Africa.
Indeed, during
the eighteenth century, black life in the colonies was “re-
Africanized” as
the earlier Creoles (slaves born in the New World) came to be
outnum-
bered by large-scale importations from Africa.
African Religion in Colonial America
No experience was more wrenching for African slaves in the
colonies than
the transition from traditional religions to Christianity.
Although African
religions varied as much as those on other continents, they
shared some
North America?
African-American culture
Diverse origins
le for Empire114
elements, especially belief in the presence of spiritual forces in
nature and

a close relationship between the sacred and secular worlds. In
the religions
of West Africa, the region from which most slaves brought to
British North
America originated, there was no hard and fast distinction
between the
secular and spiritual worlds. Nature was suffused with spirits
and the
dead could influence the living. It was customary, Equiano
wrote, before
eating, to set aside some food for the spirits of departed
ancestors.
Although some slaves came to the colonies familiar with
Christianity
or Islam, the majority of North American slaves practiced
traditional
African religions (which many Europeans deemed superstition
or
even witchcraft) well into the eighteenth century. When they
did adopt
Christian practices, many slaves merged them with traditional
beliefs,
adding the Christian God to their own pantheon of lesser spirits,
whom
they continued to worship.
African-American Cultures
By the mid-eighteenth century, the three slave systems in
British North
America had produced distinct African-American cultures. In
the Chesa-
peake, because of a more healthful climate, the slave population
began to
reproduce itself by 1740. Because of the small size of most

plantations and
the large number of white yeoman farmers, slaves here were
continuously
exposed to white culture. They soon learned English, and many
were swept
up in the religious revivals known as the Great Awakening,
discussed later
in this chapter.
In South Carolina and Georgia, two very different black
societies
emerged. On the rice plantations, slaves lived in extremely
harsh condi-
tions and had a low birthrate throughout the eighteenth century,
making
An advertisement seeking the return
of a runaway slave from Port Royal,
in the Sea Islands of South Carolina.
“Mustee” was a term for a person of
mixed European and African ancestry.
From the South Carolina Gazette,
June 11, 1747.
Distinctive cultures
115S L A V E C U L T U R E S A N D S L A V E R E S I S
T A N C E

What factors led to distinct African-American cultures in the
eighteenth century?
rice production dependent on continued slave imports from
Africa. The
slaves seldom came into contact with whites. They constructed
African-
style houses, chose African names for their children, and spoke
Gullah, a
language that mixed various African roots and was
unintelligible to most
whites. In Charleston and Savannah, however, the experience of
slaves
who labored as servants or skilled workers was quite different.
They
assimilated more quickly into Euro-American culture, and
sexual liaisons
between white owners and slave women produced the beginning
of a class
of free mulattos.
In the northern colonies, where slaves represented a smaller part
of
the population, dispersed in small holdings among the white
population,
a distinctive African-American culture developed more slowly.
Living in
close proximity to whites, they enjoyed more mobility and
access to the
mainstream of life than their counterparts farther south. But
they had
fewer opportunities to create stable family life or a cohesive
community.
Resistance to Slavery

The common threads that linked these regional African-
American cultures
were the experience of slavery and the desire for freedom.
Throughout the
eighteenth century, blacks risked their lives in efforts to resist
enslavement.
Colonial newspapers, especially in the southern colonies, were
filled with
advertisements for runaway slaves. In South Carolina and
Georgia, they
fled to Florida, to uninhabited coastal and river swamps, or to
Charleston
and Savannah, where they could pass for free. In the
Chesapeake and
Middle Colonies, fugitive slaves tended to be familiar with
white culture
and therefore, as one advertisement put it, could “pretend to be
free.”
What Edward Trelawny, the colonial governor of Jamaica,
called
“a dangerous spirit of liberty” was widespread among the New
World’s
slaves. The eighteenth century’s first slave uprising occurred in
New
York City in 1712, when a group of slaves set fire to houses on
the out-
skirts of the city and killed the first nine whites who arrived on
the scene.
During the 1730s and 1740s, continuous warfare involving
European
empires and Indians opened the door to slave resistance. In
1731, a slave
rebellion in Louisiana, where the French and the Natchez
Indians were at

war, temporarily halted efforts to introduce the plantation
system in that
region.
Slaves seized the opportunity for rebellion offered by the War
of Jenkins’
Ear, which pitted England against Spain. In September 1739, a
group of
South Carolina slaves, most of them recently arrived from
Kongo where
some, it appears, had been soldiers, seized a store containing
numerous
Regional differences
Slaves’ desire for freedom
Slave rebellions
weapons at the town of Stono. Beating drums to attract
followers, the armed
band marched southward toward Florida, burning houses and
barns, kill-
ing whites they encountered, and shouting “Liberty.” The Stono
Rebellion
took the lives of more than two dozen whites and as many as
200 slaves.
Some slaves managed to reach Florida, where in 1740 they were
armed by
the Spanish to help repel an attack on St. Augustine by a force
from Georgia.

In 1741, a panic (which some observers compared to the fear of
witches in Salem in the 1690s) swept New York City. Rumors
spread that
slaves, with some white allies, planned to burn part of the city,
seize weap-
ons, and either turn New York over to Spain or murder the
white popula-
tion. More than 150 blacks and 20 whites were arrested, and 34
alleged
conspirators, including 4 white persons, were executed.
Historians still
disagree as to how extensive the plot was or whether it existed
at all. In
eighteenth-century America, dreams of freedom knew no racial
boundary.
A N E M P I R E O F F R E E D O M
British Patriotism
Despite the centrality of slavery to its empire, eighteenth-
century Great
Britain prided itself on being the world’s most advanced and
freest nation.
It was not only the era’s greatest naval and commercial power
but also
the home of a complex governmental system, with a powerful
Parliament
representing the interests of a self-confident landed aristocracy
and mer-
chant class. For much of the eighteenth century, Britain found
itself at war
with France, which had replaced Spain as its major continental
rival. This
situation led to a large military, high taxes, and the creation of
the Bank of

England to help finance the conflicts. For both Britons and
colonists, war
helped to sharpen a sense of national identity against foreign
foes.
British patriotic sentiment became more assertive as the
eighteenth
century progressed. Symbols of British identity proliferated: the
songs
“God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia,” and even the
modern rules
of cricket, the national sport. Writers hailed commerce as a
progressive,
civilizing force, a way for different peoples to interact for
mutual benefit
without domination or military conflict. Especially in contrast
to France,
Britain saw itself as a realm of widespread prosperity,
individual liberty,
the rule of law, and the Protestant faith. Wealth, religion, and
freedom
went together.
Panic in New York
British power
British identity
117A N E M P I R E O F F R E E D O M
What were the meanings of British liberty in the eighteenth
century?

The British Constitution
Central to this sense of British identity was
the concept of liberty. Eighteenth-century
Britons believed power and liberty to be
natural antagonists. To mediate between
them, advocates of British freedom cel-
ebrated the rule of law, the right to live
under legislation to which one’s represen-
tatives had consented, restraints on the
arbitrary exercise of political authority,
and rights such as trial by jury enshrined
in the common law. In its “balanced con-
stitution” and the principle that no man,
even the king, is above the law, Britons claimed to have devised
the best
means of preventing political tyranny. Until the 1770s, most
colonists
believed themselves to be part of the freest political system
mankind had
ever known.
These ideas sank deep roots not only within the “political
nation”—
those who voted, held office, and engaged in structured political
debate—
but also far more broadly in British and colonial society.
Increasingly, the
idea of liberty lost its traditional association with privileges
derived from
membership in a distinct social class and became more and more
identi-
fied with a general right to resist arbitrary government.
Ordinary persons
thought nothing of taking to the streets to protest efforts by
merchants to

raise the cost of bread above the traditional “just price” or the
Royal Navy’s
practice of “impressment”—kidnapping poor men on the streets
for mari-
time service.
Republican Liberty
Liberty was central to two sets of political ideas that flourished
in the
Anglo-American world. One is termed by scholars
“republicanism,”
which celebrated active participation in public life by
economically inde-
pendent citizens as the essence of liberty. Republicans assumed
that only
property-owning citizens possessed “virtue”—defined in the
eighteenth
century not simply as a personal moral quality but as the
willingness to
subordinate self-interest to the pursuit of the public good.
In eighteenth-century Britain, this body of thought about
freedom
was most closely associated with a group of critics known as the
“Country
Power, liberty, and law
A 1770 engraving from the Boston
Gazette by Paul Revere illustrates the
association of British patriotism and
liberty. Britannia sits with a liberty cap

and her national shield, and releases
a bird from a cage.
Moral and economic ideas
of liberty
Party” because much of their support arose from the landed
gentry. They
called for the election of men of “independence” who could not
be con-
trolled by the ministry, and they criticized the expanding
national debt
and the growing wealth of financial speculators. Britain, they
claimed,
was succumbing to luxury and political manipulation—in other
words,
a loss of virtue—thereby endangering the careful balance of its
system of
government and, indeed, liberty itself. In Britain, Country Party
writings
had little impact, but they were eagerly devoured in the
American colo-
nies, whose elites were attracted to the emphasis on the political
role of the
independent landowner and their warnings against the constant
tendency
of political power to infringe on liberty.
Liberal Freedom

The second set of eighteenth-century political ideas celebrating
freedom
came to be known as “liberalism” (although its meaning was
quite dif-
ferent from what the word suggests today). Whereas republican
liberty
had a public and social quality, liberalism was essentially
individual and
private. The leading philosopher of liberalism was John Locke,
whose
Two Treatises of Government, written around 1680, had limited
influence in
his own lifetime but became extremely well known in the next
century.
Government, he wrote, was formed by a mutual agreement
among equals
(the parties being male heads of households, not all persons). In
this “social
contract,” men surrendered a part of their right to govern
themselves in
order to enjoy the benefits of the rule of law. They retained,
however, their
natural rights, whose existence predated the establishment of
political
authority. Protecting the security of life, liberty, and property
required
shielding a realm of private life and personal concerns—
including family
relations, religious preferences, and economic activity—from
interference
by the state. During the eighteenth century, Lockean ideas—
individual
rights, the consent of the governed, the right of rebellion
against unjust
or oppressive government—would become familiar on both
sides of the

Atlantic.
Like other Britons, Locke spoke of liberty as a universal right
yet
seemed to exclude many persons from its full benefits. The free
individual
in liberal thought was essentially the propertied white man.
Slaves, he
wrote, “cannot be considered as any part of civil society.”
Nonetheless, by
proclaiming that all individuals possess natural rights that no
government
may violate, Lockean liberalism opened the door to the poor,
women, and
even slaves to challenge limitations on their own freedom.
The title page of John Locke’s Two
Treatises of Government, which
traced the origins of government
to an original state of nature and
insisted that political authorities must
not abridge mankind’s natural rights.
The “Country Party”
119T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E
What were the meanings of British liberty in the eighteenth
century?

In the eighteenth century, republicanism and liberalism often
rein-
forced each other. Both political outlooks could inspire a
commitment to
constitutional government and restraints on despotic power.
Both empha-
sized the security of property as a foundation of freedom. Both
traditions
were transported to eighteenth-century America and would
eventually
help to divide the empire.
T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E
Colonial politics for most of the eighteenth century was
considerably less
tempestuous than in the seventeenth, with its bitter struggles for
power
and frequent armed uprisings. Political stability in Britain
coupled with the
maturation of local elites in America made for more tranquil
government.
The Right to Vote
In many respects, politics in eighteenth-century America had a
more
democratic quality than in Great Britain. Suffrage requirements
varied
from colony to colony, but as in Britain the linchpin of voting
laws was the
property qualification. Its purpose was to ensure that men who
possessed
an economic stake in society and the independence of judgment
that went

with it determined the policies of the government. Slaves,
servants, ten-
ants, adult sons living in the homes of their parents, the poor,
and women
all lacked a “will of their own” and were therefore ineligible to
vote. The
wide distribution of property in the colonies, however, meant
that a far
higher percentage of the population enjoyed voting rights than
in the Old
World. It is estimated that between 50 and 80 percent of adult
white men
could vote in eighteenth-century colonial America, as opposed
to fewer
than 5 percent in Britain at the time.
Colonial politics, however, was hardly democratic in a modern
sense.
Voting was almost everywhere considered a male prerogative.
In some
colonies, Jews, Catholics, and Protestant Dissenters like
Baptists and
Quakers could not vote. Propertied free blacks, who enjoyed the
franchise
in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in the
early
days of settlement, lost that right during the eighteenth century
(although
North Carolina restored it in the 1730s). In the northern
colonies, although
the law did not bar blacks from voting, local custom did. Native
Americans
were generally prohibited from voting.
Property and the vote

Limits on voting
Relationship between
republicanism and liberalism
Political Cultures
Despite the broad electorate among white men, “the people”
existed only on
election day. Between elections, members of colonial
assemblies remained
out of touch with their constituents. Strongly competitive
elections were
the norm only in the Middle Colonies. Considerable power in
colonial poli-
tics rested with those who held appointive, not elective, office.
Governors
and councils were appointed by the crown in the nine royal
colonies and
by the proprietors of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Moreover,
laws passed
by colonial assemblies could be vetoed by governors or in
London. In New
England, most town officers were elected, but local officials in
other colo-
nies were appointed by the governor or by powerful officials in
London.
Property qualifications for officeholding were far higher than
for vot-
ing. In South Carolina, for example, nearly every adult white
male could

meet the voting qualification of fifty acres of land or payment
of twenty
shillings in taxes, but to sit in the assembly one had to own 500
acres of
land and ten slaves or town property worth £1,000. As a result,
through-
out the eighteenth century nearly all of South Carolina’s
legislators were
planters or wealthy merchants.
In some colonies, an ingrained tradition of “deference”—the
assump-
tion among ordinary people that wealth, education, and social
prominence
carried a right to public office—sharply limited effective choice
in elections.
Virginia politics, for example, combined political democracy
for white men
with the tradition that voters should choose among candidates
from the
gentry. Aspirants for public office actively sought to ingratiate
themselves
with ordinary voters, distributing food and liquor freely at the
courthouse
where balloting took place. In Thomas Jefferson’s first
campaign for the
House of Burgesses in 1768, his expenses included hiring two
men “for
This 1765 engraving depicting an
election in Pennsylvania suggests
the intensity of political debate in
the Middle Colonies, as well as the

social composition of the electorate.
Those shown arguing outside the
Old Court House in Philadelphia
include physicians (with wigs and
gold-topped canes), ministers, and
lawyers. A line of men wait on the
steps to vote.
Democracy and deference
Appointive office
Qualifications for voting
and office
What concepts and institutions dominated colonial politics in
the eighteenth century?
bringing up rum” to the polling place. Even in New England,
with its
larger number of elective positions, town leaders were generally
the larg-
est property holders, and offices frequently passed down from
generation
to generation in the same family.

The Rise of the Assemblies
In the seventeenth century, the governor was the focal point of
political
authority, and colonial assemblies were weak bodies that met
infre-
quently. But in the eighteenth, as economic development
enhanced the
power of American elites, the assemblies they dominated
became more
and more assertive. Their leaders insisted that assemblies
possessed the
same rights and powers in local affairs as the House of
Commons enjoyed
in Britain. The most successful governors were those who
accommodated
the rising power of the assemblies and used their appointive
powers and
control of land grants to win allies among assembly members.
Many of the conflicts between governors and elected assemblies
stemmed from the colonies’ economic growth. To deal with the
scarcity
of gold and silver coins, the only legal form of currency, some
colonies
printed paper money, although this was strongly opposed by the
gover-
nors, authorities in London, and British merchants who did not
wish to be
paid in what they considered worthless paper. Numerous battles
also took
place over land policy (sometimes involving divergent attitudes
toward
the remaining Indian population) and the level of rents charged
to farmers

on land owned by the crown or proprietors.
In their negotiations and conflicts with royal governors, leaders
of
the assemblies drew on the writings of the English Country
Party, whose
emphasis on the constant tension between liberty and political
power and
the dangers of executive influence over the legislature made
sense of their
own experience. Of the European settlements in North America,
only the
British colonies possessed any considerable degree of popular
participation
in government. This fact reinforced the assemblies’ claim to
embody the
rights of Englishmen and the principle of popular consent to
government.
Politics in Public
The language of liberty reverberated outside the relatively
narrow world
of elective and legislative politics. The “political nation” was
dominated
by the American gentry, whose members addressed each other
in letters,
speeches, newspaper articles, and pamphlets filled with Latin
expressions
Conflicts between governors
and assemblies
Popular participation in
British colonial government

Colonial governors
and references to classical learning. But especially in colonial
towns and
cities, the eighteenth century witnessed a considerable
expansion of the
“public sphere”—the world of political organization and debate
indepen-
dent of the government, where an informed citizenry openly
discussed
questions that had previously been the preserve of officials.
In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, clubs proliferated
where liter-
ary, philosophical, scientific, and political issues were debated.
Such groups
were generally composed of men of property and commerce, but
some drew
ordinary citizens into discussions of public affairs. Colonial
taverns and cof-
feehouses also became important sites not only for social
conviviality but
also for political debates. In Philadelphia, one clergyman
commented, “the
poorest laborer thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiments
in matters
of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or
scholar.”
The Colonial Press
Neither the Spanish possessions of Florida and New Mexico nor

New
France possessed a printing press, although missionaries had
established
one in Mexico City in the 1530s. In British North America,
however, the
press expanded rapidly during the eighteenth century. So did the
number
of political broadsides and pamphlets published, especially at
election
time. By the eve of the American Revolution, some three-
quarters of the
free adult male population in the colonies (and more than one-
third of
the women) could read and write, and a majority of American
families
owned at least one book. Circulating libraries appeared in many
colonial
cities and towns, making possible a wider dissemination of
knowledge at
a time when books were still expensive. The first, the Library
Company of
Philadelphia, was established by Benjamin Franklin in 1731.
The first continuously published colonial newspaper, the Boston
News-Letter, appeared in 1704. There were thirteen colonial
newspapers by
1740 and twenty-five in 1765, mostly weeklies with small
circulations—an
average of 600 sales per issue. Probably the best-edited
newspaper was
the Pennsylvania Gazette, established in 1728 in Philadelphia
and purchased
the following year by Benjamin Franklin. At its peak, the
Gazette attracted
2,000 subscribers. By the 1730s, political commentary was
widespread in

the American press.
Freedom of Expression and Its Limits
The public sphere thrived on the free exchange of ideas. But
freedom
of expression was not generally considered one of the ancient
rights of
The public sphere
Taverns and coffeehouses
Literacy in colonial America
Newspapers
Englishmen. The phrase “freedom of speech” originated in
Britain dur-
ing the sixteenth century. A right of legislators, not ordinary
citizens, it
referred to the ability of members of Parliament to express their
views
without fear of reprisal, on the grounds that only in this way
could they
effectively represent the people. Outside of Parliament, free
speech had
no legal protection. A subject could be beheaded for accusing
the king of

failing to hold “true” religious beliefs, and language from
swearing to criti-
cism of the government exposed a person to criminal penalties.
As for freedom of the press, governments on both sides of the
Atlantic
viewed this as extremely dangerous. Until 1695, when a British
law requiring
the licensing of printed works before publication lapsed, no
newspaper, book,
or pamphlet could legally be printed without a government
license. After
1695, the government could not censor newspapers, books, and
pamphlets
before they appeared in print, although it continued to try to
manage the
press by direct payments to publishers and individual
journalists. Authors
and publishers could still be prosecuted for “seditious libel”—a
crime that
included defaming government officials—or punished for
contempt.
Elected assemblies, not governors, most frequently discouraged
free-
dom of the press in colonial America. Dozens of publishers
were hauled
before assemblies and forced to apologize for comments
regarding one or another member. Colonial newspapers
vigorously defended freedom of the press as a central
component of liberty, insisting that the citizenry had a
right to monitor the workings of government and sub-
ject public officials to criticism. But since government
printing contracts were crucial for economic success,
few newspapers attacked colonial governments unless
financially supported by an opposition faction.

The Trial of Zenger
The most famous colonial court case involving free-
dom of the press demonstrated that popular sentiment
opposed prosecutions for criticism of public officials.
This was the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, a German-
born printer who had emigrated to New York as a youth.
Financed by wealthy opponents of Governor William
Cosby, Zenger’s newspaper, the Weekly Journal, lam-
basted the governor for corruption, influence peddling,
and “tyranny.” New York’s council ordered four issues
burned and had Zenger himself arrested and tried for
The first page of the New York
Weekly Journal, edited by John Peter
Zenger, one of four issues ordered to
be burned by local authorities.
Freedom of speech
re124
seditious libel. Zenger’s attorney, Andrew Hamilton, urged the
jury to
judge not the publisher but the governor. If they decided that
Zenger’s
charges were correct, they must acquit him, and, Hamilton
proclaimed,
“every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless
you.”

Zenger was found not guilty. The case sent a warning to
prosecutors
that libel cases might be very difficult to win, especially in the
superheated
atmosphere of New York partisan politics. The outcome helped
to promote
the idea that the publication of truth should always be
permitted, and it
demonstrated that the idea of free expression was becoming
ingrained in
the popular imagination.
The American Enlightenment
During the eighteenth century, many educated Americans began
to be
influenced by the outlook of the European Enlightenment. This
philo-
sophical movement, which originated among French thinkers
and soon
spread to Britain, sought to apply the scientific method of
careful inves-
tigation based on research and experiment to political and social
life.
Enlightenment ideas crisscrossed the Atlantic along with goods
and
people. Enlightenment thinkers insisted that every human
institution,
authority, and tradition be judged before the bar of reason. The
self-
educated Benjamin Franklin’s wide range of activities—
establishing a
newspaper, debating club, and library; publishing the widely
circulated
Poor Richard’s Almanack; and conducting experiments to

demonstrate that
lightning is a form of electricity—exemplified the
Enlightenment spirit and
made him probably the best-known American in the eighteenth-
century
world.
Enlightenment thinkers hoped that “reason,” not religious
enthu-
siasm, could govern human life. During the eighteenth century,
many
prominent Americans moved toward the position called
Arminianism,
which taught that reason alone was capable of establishing the
essentials
of religion. Others adopted Deism, a belief that God essentially
withdrew
after creating the world, leaving it to function according to
scientific laws
without divine intervention. Belief in miracles, in the revealed
truth of the
Bible, and in the innate sinfulness of mankind were viewed by
Arminians,
Deists, and others as outdated superstitions that should be
abandoned in
the modern age.
In the seventeenth century, the English scientist Isaac Newton
had
revealed the natural laws that governed the physical universe.
Here,
Deists believed, was the purest evidence of God’s handiwork.
Deists con-
cluded that the best form of religious devotion was to study the
workings

A 1762 portrait of Benjamin Franklin,
done in London by the English artist
Mason Chamberlain while Franklin
was in the city as agent for the
Pennsylvania Assembly. Franklin is
depicted as a scientist making notes
on his experiments, rather than a
politician.
Freedom of expression
125T H E G R E A T A W A K E N I N G
of nature, rather than to worship in organized churches or
appeal to divine
grace for salvation. By the late colonial era, a small but
influential group of
leading Americans, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Jefferson,
could be classified as Deists.
T H E G R E A T A W A K E N I N G
Like freedom of the press, religion was another realm where the

actual
experience of liberty outstripped its legal recognition. Religion
remained
central to eighteenth-century American life. Sermons,
theological trea-
tises, and copies of the Bible were by far the largest category of
material
produced by colonial printers.
Religious Revivals
Many ministers were concerned that westward expansion,
commercial
development, the growth of Enlightenment rationalism, and lack
of
individual engagement in church services were undermining
religious
devotion. These fears helped to inspire the revivals that swept
through
the colonies beginning in the 1730s. Known collectively as the
Great
Awakening, the revivals were less a coordinated movement than
a series
of local events united by a commitment to a “religion of the
heart,” a
more emotional and personal Christianity than that offered by
existing
churches.
The eighteenth century witnessed a revival of religious
fundamental-
ism in many parts of the world, in part a response to the
rationalism of the
Enlightenment and a desire for greater religious purity. In the
Middle East
and Central Asia, where Islam was widespread, followers of a

form of the
religion known as Wahabbism called for a return to the
practices of the
religion’s early days. Methodism and other forms of
enthusiastic religion
were flourishing in Europe. Like other intellectual currents of
the time, the
Great Awakening was a transatlantic movement.
During the 1720s and 1730s, the New Jersey Dutch Reformed
clergy-
man Theodore Frelinghuysen, his Presbyterian neighbors
William and
Gilbert Tennent, and the Massachusetts Congregationalist
minister Jonathan
Edwards pioneered an intensely emotional style of preaching.
Edwards’s
famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God portrayed
sinful man
as a “loathsome insect” suspended over a bottomless pit of
eternal fire by a
A more emotional and
personal Christianity
Jonathan Edwards
Deists
e Struggle for Empire126
slender thread that might break at any moment. Only a “new
birth”—imme-
diately acknowledging one’s sins and pleading for divine

grace—could save
men from eternal damnation.
The Preaching of Whitefield
More than any other individual, the English minister George
Whitefield,
who declared “the whole world his parish,” sparked the Great
Awakening.
For two years after his arrival in America in 1739, Whitefield
brought
his highly emotional brand of preaching to colonies from
Georgia to New
England. God, Whitefield proclaimed, was merciful. Rather than
being
predestined for damnation, men and women could save
themselves by
repenting of their sins. Whitefield appealed to the passions of
his listen-
ers, powerfully sketching the boundless joy of salvation and the
horrors
of damnation.
Tens of thousands of colonists flocked to Whitefield’s sermons,
which
were widely reported in the American press, making him a
celebrity and
helping to establish the revivals as the first major intercolonial
event in
North American history. In Whitefield’s footsteps, a host of
traveling
preachers or “evangelists” (meaning, literally, bearers of good
news) held
revivalist meetings, often to the alarm of established ministers.
The Awakening’s Impact

By the time they subsided in the 1760s, the revivals had
changed the reli-
gious configuration of the colonies and enlarged the boundaries
of liberty.
Whitefield had inspired the emergence of numerous Dissenting
churches.
Congregations split into factions headed by Old Lights
(traditionalists)
and New Lights (revivalists), and new churches proliferated—
Baptist,
Methodist, Presbyterian, and others. Many of these new
churches began
to criticize the colonial practice of levying taxes to support an
established
church; they defended religious freedom as one of the natural
rights gov-
ernment must not restrict.
Although the revivals were primarily a spiritual matter, the
Great
Awakening threw into question many forms of authority, and
inspired
criticism of aspects of colonial society. Revivalist preachers
frequently crit-
icized commercial society, insisting that believers should make
salvation,
not profit, “the one business of their lives.” Preaching to the
small farmers
of the southern backcountry, Baptist and Methodist revivalists
criticized
the worldliness of wealthy planters and attacked as sinful
activities such
George Whitefield, the English

evangelist who helped to spark the
Great Awakening in the colonies.
Painted around 1742 by John
Wollaston, who had emigrated from
England to the colonies, the work
depicts Whitefield’s powerful effect
on male and female listeners. It also
illustrates Whitefield’s eye problem,
which led critics to dub him
“Dr. Squintum.”
Critique of commercial society
127
as gambling, horse racing, and lavish entertainments on the
Sabbath. A
few preachers explicitly condemned slavery. Especially in the
Chesapeake,
the revivals brought numerous slaves into the Christian fold, an
important
step in their acculturation as African-Americans.
The revivals encouraged many colonists to trust their own views
rather than those of established elites. In listening to the

sermons of self-
educated preachers, forming Bible study groups, and engaging
in intense
religious discussions, ordinary colonists asserted the right to
independent
judgment. Although the revivalists’ aim was spiritual salvation,
the inde-
pendent frame of mind they encouraged would have significant
political
consequences.
I M P E R I A L R I V A L R I E S
Spanish North America
The rapid growth of Britain’s North American colonies took
place at a time
of increased jockeying for power among European empires. But
the colo-
nies of England’s rivals, although covering immense territories,
remained
thinly populated and far weaker economically. The Spanish
empire encom-
passed an area that stretched from the Pacific coast and New
Mexico into
the Great Plains and eastward through Texas and Florida. After
1763, it also
included Louisiana, which Spain obtained from France. On
paper a vast
territorial empire, Spanish North America actually consisted of
a few small
and isolated urban clusters, most prominently St. Augustine in
Florida,
San Antonio in Texas, and Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New
Mexico.

New Mexico’s population in 1765 was only 20,000, equally
divided
between Spanish settlers and Pueblo Indians. Spain began the
coloniza-
tion of Texas at the beginning of the eighteenth century, partly
as a buffer
to prevent French commercial influence, then spreading in the
Mississippi
Valley, from intruding into New Mexico. The Spanish
established com-
plexes consisting of religious missions and presidios (military
outposts) at
Los Adaes, La Bahía, and San Antonio. But the region attracted
few settlers.
Texas had only 1,200 Spanish colonists in 1760. Florida
stagnated as well.
The Spanish in California
On the Pacific coast, Russian fur traders in the eighteenth
century estab-
lished a series of forts and trading posts in Alaska. Spain,
alarmed by
I M P E R I A L R I V A L R I E S
How did the Great Awakening challenge the religious and social
structure of British North America?
Colonization of Texas
Independent judgement
Extent of Spanish empire

he Struggle for Empire128
what it saw as a danger to its American empire, ordered the
coloniza-
tion of California. A string of Spanish missions and presidios
soon dotted
the California coastline, from San Diego to Los Angeles, Santa
Barbara,
Monterey, San Francisco, and Sonoma. Born on the Spanish
Mediterranean
island of Mallorca, Father Junípero Serra became one of the
most contro-
versial figures in California’s early history. He founded the first
California
mission, in San Diego, in 1769 and administered the mission
network until
his death in 1784. Serra was widely praised in Spain for
converting thou-
sands of Indians to Christianity. But forced labor and disease
took a heavy
toll among Indians who lived at the missions Serra directed.
Present-day California was a densely populated area, with a
native
population of perhaps 250,000 when Spanish settlement began.
But as in
Baton Rouge
El Paso del Norte
San Blas
New Orleans

Santa Fe
Quebec
Montreal Trois RivieresSault Ste. Marie
Cahokia
Ste. Genevieve Kaskaskia
Los Adaes
St.
Marks
St. Augustine
Apalachee
Albuquerque
Socorro
Havana
Port Royal
Boston
Salem
Albany
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Williamsburg

Savannah
CharlestonSan Diego
San Francisco
Monterey
Santa
Barbara
Ft. La Jonquiere
Ft. Dauphin
Ft. Frontenac
Ft. St. Joseph
Ft. St. Joseph
Ft. Pontchartrain
Ft. Miami
Ft. Vincennes
Ft. Toulouse
Ft. Arkansas
Nacogdoches
Natchitoches
Tucson
Guaymas
Ft. Prudhomme
Ft. Crevecoeur

Ft. St. Louis
Ft. St. Croix
San Luis Obispo
San Gabriel
San Juan Capistrano
Guevavi
Ft. Duquesne
Ft. Le Boeuf
Ft. Niagara
San Antonio
La Bahía
NEW
MEXICO
CALIFORNIA
LOUISIANA
TEXAS
MEXICO
FLORIDA
CUBA
JAMAICA

HAITI
BAHAMAS
CANADA
Gulf of Mexico
At lant ic
Oce an
Pac i f ic
Ocean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Fort or presidio
Mission
British settlement
British land claims
Area of French influence
Area of Spanish influence
E U R O P E A N E M P I R E S I N N O R T H A M E R I C
A , c a . 1 7 5 0

Three great empires—the British,
French, and Spanish—competed for
influence in North America for much
of the eighteenth century.
129I M P E R I A L R I V A L R I E S
How did the Spanish and French empires in America develop in
other regions, the coming of soldiers and missionaries proved a
disaster for
the Indians. More than any other Spanish colony, California was
a mission
frontier. These outposts served simultaneously as religious
institutions
and centers of government and labor. Father Serra and other
missionaries
hoped to convert the natives to Christianity and settled farming.
The mis-
sions also relied on forced Indian labor to grow grain, work in
orchards
and vineyards, and tend cattle. By 1821, when Mexico won its
independence
from Spain, California’s native population had declined by more
than one-
third. But the area had not attracted Spanish settlers. When
Spanish rule
came to an end in 1821, Californios (California residents of
Spanish descent)
numbered only 3,200.

The French Empire
A greater rival to British power in North America—as well as in
Europe
and the Caribbean—was France. During the eighteenth century,
the popu-
lation and economy of Canada expanded. At the same time,
French traders
pushed into the Mississippi River valley southward from the
Great Lakes
and northward from Mobile, founded in 1702, and New Orleans,
estab-
lished in 1718. In the St. Lawrence River valley of French
Canada, prosper-
ous farming communities developed. By 1750, the area had a
population
of about 55,000 colonists. Another 10,000 (about half
Europeans, half
African-American slaves) resided in Louisiana.
Despite these gains, the population of French North America
contin-
ued to be dwarfed by the British colonies. Prejudice against
emigration
to North America remained widespread in France because many
there
viewed the French colony as a place of cruel exile for criminals
and social
outcasts. Nonetheless, by claiming control of a large arc of
territory and
by establishing close trading and military relations with many
Indian
tribes, the French empire posed a real challenge to the British.
French

A sketch of New Orleans as it
appeared in 1720.
Spanish missions
French expansion
French ties to Indian tribes
Chapter 4
forts and trading posts ringed the British colonies. The French
were a
presence on the New England and New York frontiers and in
western
Pennsylvania.
B A T T L E F O R T H E C O N T I N E N T
The Middle Ground
For much of the eighteenth century, the western frontier of
British North
America was the flashpoint of imperial rivalries. The Ohio
Valley became
caught up in a complex struggle for power involving the French,
British, rival
Indian communities, and settlers and land companies pursuing
their own
interests. On this “middle ground” between European empires
and Indian
sovereignty, villages sprang up where members of numerous
tribes lived

side by side, along with European traders and the occasional
missionary.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Indians had learned that direct
mili-
tary confrontation with Europeans meant suicide, and that an
alliance
with a single European power exposed them to danger from
others. The
Indians of the Ohio Valley sought (with some success) to play
the British
and French empires off one another and to control the lucrative
commerce
with whites. The Iroquois were masters of balance-of-power
diplomacy.
In 1750, few white settlers inhabited the Ohio Valley. But
already,
Scotch-Irish and German immigrants, Virginia planters, and
land specu-
lators were eyeing the region’s fertile soil. In 1749, the
government of
Virginia awarded an immense land grant—half a million acres—
to the Ohio
Company. The company’s members included the colony’s royal
governor,
Robert Dinwiddie, and the cream of Virginia society—Lees,
Carters, and the
young George Washington. The land grant sparked the French to
bolster
their presence in the region. It was the Ohio Company’s demand
for French
recognition of its land claims that inaugurated the Seven Years’
War (known
in the colonies as the French and Indian War), the first of the
century’s impe-

rial wars to begin in the colonies and the first to result in a
decisive victory
for one combatant. It permanently altered the global balance of
power.
The Seven Years’ War
Only in the eighteenth century, after numerous wars against its
great
rivals France and Spain, did Britain emerge as the world’s
leading empire
and its center of trade and banking. By the 1750s, British
possessions and
The Ohio Valley
The Ohio Company
The world’s leading empire
131B A T T L E F O R T H E C O N T I N E N T
What was the impact of the Seven Years’ War on imperial and
Indian–white relations?
trade reached around the globe. The existence of global empires
implied
that warfare among them would also be global.
What became a worldwide struggle for imperial domination,
which
eventually spread to Europe, West Africa, and Asia, began in
1754 with
British efforts to dislodge the French from forts they had

constructed in
western Pennsylvania. In the previous year, George Washington,
then only
twenty-one years old, had been dispatched by the colony’s
governor on an
unsuccessful mission to persuade French soldiers to abandon a
fort they
were building on lands claimed by the Ohio Company. In 1754,
Washington
returned to the area with two companies of soldiers. After an
ill-considered
attempt against a larger French and Indian force, resulting in the
loss of
one-third of his men, Washington was forced to surrender. Soon
afterward,
an expedition led by General Edward Braddock against Fort
Duquesne
(today’s Pittsburgh) was ambushed by French and Indian forces,
leaving
Braddock and two-thirds of his 3,000 soldiers dead or wounded.
For two years, the war went against the British. The southern
back-
country was ablaze with fighting among British forces,
colonists, and
Indians. Inhumanity flourished on all sides. Indians killed
hundreds of
colonists in western Pennsylvania and pushed the line of
settlement all
the way back to Carlisle, only 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
In Nova
Scotia, the British rounded up around 5,000 local French
residents, called
Acadians, confiscated their land, and expelled them from the
region, selling
their farms to settlers from New England. Some of those

expelled eventu-
ally returned to France; others ended up as far away as
Louisiana, where
their descendants came to be known as Cajuns.
As the British government under Secretary of State William
Pitt, who
took office in 1757, raised huge sums of money and poured men
and naval
forces into the war, the tide of battle turned. By 1759, Britain—
with colonial
and Indian soldiers playing a major role—had captured the
pivotal French
outposts Forts Duquesne, Ticonderoga (north of Albany), and
Louisbourg
on Cape Breton Island, which guarded the mouth of the St.
Lawrence
River. In September of that year, a French army was defeated on
the Plains
of Abraham near Quebec. British forces also seized nearly all
the islands in
the French Caribbean and established control of India.
A World Transformed
Britain’s victory fundamentally reshaped the world balance of
power. In
the Peace of Paris in 1763, France ceded Canada to Britain,
receiving back
in return the sugar islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique (far
more lucra-
tive colonies from the point of view of French authorities).
Spain ceded
Benjamin Franklin produced this

famous cartoon in 1754, calling on
Britain’s North American colonies to
unite against the French.
William Pitt
The global balance of power
Florida to Britain in exchange for the return of the Philippines
and Cuba
(seized by the British during the war). Spain also acquired from
France the
vast Louisiana colony. France’s 200-year-old North American
empire had
come to an end. The entire continent east of the Mississippi
River was now
in British hands.
Eighteenth-century warfare, conducted on land and sea across
the
globe, was enormously expensive. The Seven Years’ War put
strains on all
the participants. The war’s cost produced a financial crisis in
France that
almost three decades later would help to spark the French
Revolution. The
British would try to recoup part of the cost of war by increasing
taxes on
their American colonies.

Pontiac’s Rebellion
Throughout eastern North America, the abrupt departure of the
French
in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War eliminated the
balance-of-power
diplomacy that had enabled groups like the Iroquois to maintain
a sig-
nificant degree of autonomy. Domination by any outside power,
Indians
feared, meant the loss of freedom. Without consulting them, the
French
had ceded land Indians claimed as their own to British control.
The Treaty
of Paris left Indians more dependent than ever on the British
and ushered
in a period of confusion over land claims, control of the fur
trade, and tribal
relations in general.
In 1763, in the wake of the French defeat, Indians of the Ohio
Valley
and Great Lakes launched a revolt against British rule.
Although known
as Pontiac’s Rebellion after an Ottawa war leader, the rebellion
owed at
least as much to the teachings of Neolin, a Delaware religious
prophet.
During a religious vision, the Master of Life instructed Neolin
that his
people must reject European technology, free themselves from
commer-
cial ties with whites and dependence on alcohol, clothe
themselves in the
garb of their ancestors, and drive the British from their territory
(although

friendly French inhabitants could remain). Neolin combined this
mes-
sage with the relatively new idea of pan-Indian identity. All
Indians, he
preached, were a single people, and only through cooperation
could they
regain their lost independence.
The Proclamation Line
In the spring and summer of 1763, Ottawas, Hurons, and other
Indians
besieged Detroit, then a major British military outpost, seized
nine other
forts, and killed hundreds of white settlers who had intruded
onto Indian
The costs of war
Neolin’s message
Effect on Indians
E A S T E R N N O R T H A M E R I C A A F T E R T H E
P E A C E O F P A R I S , 1 7 6 3
The Peace of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War, left all
of North America east of the Mississippi in British hands,
ending the

French presence on the continent.
Halifax
Quebec
Montreal
Detroit
Portsmouth
Boston
Albany
NewportHartford
New Haven
New York
Annapolis
Williamsburg
Mose
St. Augustine
New Orleans
Perth Amboy
Burlington
Philadelphia
New Castle
New Bern

Charleston
Savannah
HUDSON'S BAY
COMPANY
PROVINCE OF
QUEBEC
EAST FLORIDA
GEORGIA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH
CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
PENNSYLVANIA
NEW JERSEY
CONNECTICUT
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
RHODE ISLAND
NEW HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS

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(part of Massachusetts)
WEST FLORIDA
NEW
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ABNAKIS
MOHEGANS
ALGONQUIANS
NIPISSINGS
OJIBWAS
FOXES
SAUKS
POTAWATOMIS
WYANDOTS
DELAWARES
TUSCARORAS
COREESCHEROKEES
SHAWNEES
IROQUOIS
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200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers
Colonial capitals
Proclamation line of 1763
Spanish territory
English territory
Pontiac was a leader of the pan-Indian resistance to English rule
known as Pontiac’s
Rebellion, which followed the end of the Seven Years’ War.
Neolin was a Delaware
religious prophet who helped to inspire the rebellion.
Englishmen, although you have conquered the French, you have
not yet conquered us! We
are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods, and mountains
were left to us by our ancestors.
They are our inheritance; and we will part with them to none.
Your nation supposes that we,
like the white people, cannot live without bread and pork and
beef! But you ought to know
that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has provided food
for us in these spacious lakes,

and on these woody mountains.
[The Master of Life has said to Neolin:]
I am the Maker of heaven and earth, the trees, lakes, rivers, and
all else. I am the Maker
of all mankind; and because I love you, you must do my will.
The land on which you live I
have made for you and not for others. Why do you suffer the
white man to dwell among you?
My children, you have forgotten the customs and traditions of
your forefathers. Why do
you not clothe yourselves in skins, as they did, use bows and
arrows and the stone-pointed
lances, which they used? You have bought guns, knives, kettles
and blankets from the white
man until you can no longer do without them; and what is
worse, you have drunk the poison
firewater, which turns you into fools. Fling all these things
away; live as your wise forefathers
did before you. And as for these English—these dogs dressed in
red, who have come to rob
you of your hunting-grounds, and drive away the game—you
must lift the hatchet against
them. Wipe them from the face of the earth, and then you will
win my favor back again, and
once more be happy and prosperous.
From Pontiac, Speeches
(1762 and 1763)

Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, published in London, was
the most prominent
account of the slave experience written in the eighteenth
century. In this passage,
which comes after Equiano’s description of a slave auction in
the Caribbean, he calls
on white persons to live up to their professed belief in liberty.
We were not many days in the merchant’s custody before we
were sold after their usual
manner, which is this: On a signal given (as the beat of a drum),
the buyers rush in at once into
the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that
parcel they like best. . . . In
this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends
separated, most of them never to see
each other again. I remember in the vessel in which I was
brought over, . . . there were several
brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was
very moving on this occasion
to see and hear their cries at parting.
O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you, learned
you this from your
God? Who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men
should do unto you? Is it not
enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for
your luxury and lust of
gain? Must every tender feeling be sacrificed
to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and
relations, now rendered more dear by their
separation from their kindred, still to be
parted from each other, and thus prevented

from cheering the gloom of slavery with the
small comfort of being together and mingling
their sufferings and sorrows? Why are
parents to lose their children, brothers their
sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this
is a new refinement in cruelty.
From The Interesting Narrative
of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,
or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. What elements of Indian life does
Neolin criticize most strongly?
2. What aspect of slavery does Equiano
emphasize in his account, and why do
you think he does so?
3. How do Pontiac and Equiano differ in
the ways they address white audiences?
lands. British forces soon launched a counterattack, and over

the next few
years the tribes one by one made peace. But the uprising
inspired the gov-
ernment in London to issue the Proclamation of 1763,
prohibiting further
colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. These
lands were
reserved exclusively for Indians. Moreover, the Proclamation
banned the
sale of Indian lands to private individuals.
The British aim was less to protect the Indians than to stabilize
the
situation on the colonial frontier and to avoid being dragged
into an end-
less series of border conflicts. But the Proclamation enraged
both settlers
and speculators hoping to take advantage of the expulsion of the
French
to consolidate their claims to western lands. They ignored the
new policy.
George Washington himself ordered his agents to buy up as
much Indian
land as possible, while keeping the transactions “a profound
secret”
because of their illegality. Failing to offer a viable solution to
the question
of westward expansion, the Proclamation of 1763 ended up
further exacer-
bating settler-Indian relations.
Pennsylvania and the Indians
The Seven Years’ War not only redrew the map of the world but
pro duced
dramatic changes within the American colonies as well. In

Pennsylvania,
the conflict shattered the decades-old rule of the Quaker elite
and dealt
the final blow to the colony’s policy of accommodation with the
Indians.
During the war, with the frontier ablaze with battles between
settlers
and French and Indian warriors, western Pennsylvanians
demanded
that colonial authorities adopt a more aggressive stance. When
the gov-
ernor declared war on hostile Delawares, raised a militia, and
offered
a bounty for Indian scalps, many of the assembly’s pacifist
Quakers
resigned their seats, effectively ending their control of
Pennsylvania
politics.
In December 1763, while Pontiac’s Rebellion still raged, a party
of
fifty armed men, mostly Scotch-Irish farmers from the vicinity
of the
Pennsylvania town of Paxton, destroyed the Indian village of
Conestoga,
massacring half a dozen men, women, and children who lived
there
under the protection of Pennsylvania’s governor. When the
Paxton Boys
marched on Philadelphia in February 1764, intending to attack
Moravian
Indians who resided near the city, the governor ordered the
expulsion
of much of the Indian population. By the 1760s, Pennsylvania’s
Holy
Experiment was at an end and with it William Penn’s promise of

“true
friendship and amity” between colonists and the native
population.
Frontier tensions
The Paxton Boys
Proclamation of 1763
Colonial Identities
Before the war, the colonies had been largely isolated from one
another.
Outside of New England, more Americans probably traveled to
England
than from one colony to another. The Albany Plan of Union of
1754,
drafted by Benjamin Franklin at the outbreak of the Seven
Years’ War,
envisioned the creation of a Grand Council composed of
delegates from
each colony, with the power to levy taxes and deal with Indian
relations
and the common defense. Rejected by the colonial assemblies,
whose pow-
ers Franklin’s proposal would curtail, the plan was never sent to
London
for approval.

Participation in the Seven Years’ War created greater bonds
among
the colonies. But the war also strengthened colonists’ pride in
being mem-
bers of the British empire. It has been said that Americans were
never
more British than in 1763. British victory in the Seven Years’
War seemed
a triumph of liberty over tyranny. The defeat of the Catholic
French rein-
forced the equation of British nationality, Protestantism, and
freedom.
But soon, the American colonists would come to believe that
member-
ship in the empire jeopardized their liberty. When they did, they
set out on
a road that led to independence.
The war and American
identity
1. How did Great Britain’s position in North America
change relative to the other European powers during the
first three-quarters of the eighteenth century?
2. How did the ideas of republicanism and liberalism differ
in eighteenth-century British North America?

3. Three distinct slave systems were well entrenched in
Britain’s mainland colonies. Describe the main
characteristics of each system.
4. How and why did the colonists’ sense of a collective
British identity change during the years before 1764?
5. What ideas generated by the American Enlightenment
and the Great Awakening prompted challenges to
religious, social, and political authorities in the British
colonies?
6. How were colonial merchants in British America involved
in the Atlantic economy, and what was the role of the
slave trade in that economy?
7. We often consider the impact of the slave trade only on
the United States, but its impact extended much further.
How did it affect West African nations and society, other
regions of the New World, and the nations of Europe?
8. How was an African-American collective identity created
in these years and what role did slave rebellions play in
that process?
C E S
138
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RESOURCES AND MORE

A chapter outline
Interactive maps
Map worksheets
K E Y T E R M S
Atlantic slave trade (p. 106)
Middle Passage (p. 109)
Stono Rebellion (p. 116)
republicanism (p. 117)
virtue (p. 117)
liberalism (p. 118)
freedom of the press (p. 123)
American Enlightenment
(p. 124)
Great Awakening (p. 125)
Father Junípero Serra (p. 128)
“middle ground” (p. 130)

Acadians (p. 131)
Pontiac’s Rebellion (p. 132)
Albany Plan of Union (p. 137)
book&p=172.0
1760 George III assumes the
British throne
1764 Sugar Act
1765 Stamp Act
Sons of Liberty organized
Stamp Act Congress
1767 Townshend Acts
1767– Letters from a Farmer in
1768 Pennsylvania
British troops stationed in
Boston
1770 Boston Massacre
1773 Tea Act
Boston Tea Party

1774 Intolerable Acts
First Continental Congress
convenes
1775 Battles at Lexington and
Concord
Lord Dunmore’s
proclamation
1776 Thomas Paine’s Common
Sense
Declaration of
Independence
Battle of Trenton
1777 Battle of Saratoga
1778 Treaty of Amity and
Commerce with France
1781 Cornwallis surrenders at
Yorktown
1783 Treaty of Paris
T H E A M E R I C A N
R E V O L U T I O N
C H A P T E R 5

A rare print from 1776 depicts George
Washington as commander of the
American armies, “the supporter of
liberty,” and “benefactor of mankind.”
It illustrates the linkage of liberty and
American independence, and Americans’
conviction that their struggle was of
worldwide significance.
1 7 6 3 – 1 7 8 3
O n the night of August 26, 1765, a violent crowd of Bostonians
assaulted the elegant home of Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice
and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Hutchinson and his
family barely had time to escape before the crowd broke down
the front
door and proceeded to destroy or carry off most of their
possessions,
including paintings, furniture, silverware, and notes for a
history of
Massachusetts Hutchinson was writing. By the time the crowd
departed,
only the outer walls of the home remained standing.
The immediate cause of the riot was the Stamp Act, a recently

enacted British tax that many colonists felt violated their
liberty. Only a
few days earlier, Hutchinson had helped to disperse a crowd
attacking
a building owned by his relative Andrew Oliver, a merchant
who had
been appointed to help administer the new law. Both crowds
were led by
Ebenezer Mackintosh, a shoemaker who enjoyed a wide
following among
Boston’s working people.
The riot of August 26 was one small episode in a series of
events
that launched a half-century of popular protest and political
upheaval
throughout the Western world. The momentous era that came to
be
called the Age of Revolution began in British North America,
spread to
Europe and the Caribbean, and culminated in the Latin
American wars
for independence. In all these struggles, liberty emerged as the
foremost
rallying cry for popular discontent. Rarely has the idea played
so central
a role in political debate and social upheaval.
If the attack on Hutchinson’s home demonstrated the depths of
feeling
aroused by Britain’s efforts to impose greater control over its
empire, it
also revealed that revolution is a dynamic process whose
consequences
no one can anticipate. The crowd’s fury expressed resentments
against

the rich and powerful quite different from colonial leaders’
objections to
Parliament’s attempt to tax the colonies. The Stamp Act crisis
inaugurated
not only a struggle for colonial liberty in relation to Great
Britain but also
a multisided battle to define and extend liberty within America.
T H E C R I S I S B E G I N S
Consolidating the Empire
When George III assumed the throne of Great Britain in 1760,
no one
on either side of the Atlantic imagined that within two decades
Britain’s
American colonies would separate from the empire. Having
treated the
What were the roots and
significance of the Stamp
Act controversy?
What key events sharp-
ened the divisions between
Britain and the colonists
in the late 1760s and early
1770s?
What key events marked

the move toward American
independence?
How were American forces
able to prevail in the
Revolutionary War?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
141
What were the roots and significance of the Stamp Act
controversy?
colonists as allies during the war, Britain
reverted in the mid-1760s to seeing them as
subordinates whose main role was to enrich
the mother country. During this period,
the government in London concerned itself
with the colonies in unprecedented ways,
hoping to make British rule more efficient
and systematic and to raise funds to help
pay for the war and to finance the empire.
Nearly all British political leaders sup-
ported the new laws that so enraged the
colonists. Americans, Britons felt, should
be grateful to the empire. To fight the Seven Years’ War,
Britain had bor-
rowed from banks and individual investors more than £150

million (the
equivalent of tens of trillions of dollars in today’s money). It
seemed only
reasonable that the colonies should help pay this national debt,
foot part of
the bill for continued British protection, and stop cheating the
treasury by
violating the Navigation Acts.
Nearly all Britons, moreover, believed that Parliament
represented
the entire empire and had a right to legislate for it. Millions of
Britons,
including the residents of major cities like Manchester and
Birmingham,
had no representatives in Parliament. But according to the
widely accepted
theory of “virtual representation”—which held that each
member rep-
resented the entire empire, not just his own district—the
interests of all
who lived under the British crown were supposedly taken into
account.
When Americans began to insist that because they were
unrepresented in
Parliament, the British government could not tax the colonies,
they won
little support in the mother country.
The British government had already alarmed many colonists by
issu-
ing writs of assistance to combat smuggling. These were general
search
warrants that allowed customs officials to search anywhere they
chose
for smuggled goods. In a celebrated court case in Boston in

1761, the law-
yer James Otis insisted that the writs were “an instrument of
arbitrary
power, destructive to English liberty, and the fundamental
principles of
the Constitution,” and that Parliament therefore had no right to
authorize
them. (“American independence was then and there born,” the
Boston
lawyer John Adams later remarked—a considerable
exaggeration.) Many
colonists were also outraged by the Proclamation of 1763
(mentioned in the
previous chapter), which barred further settlement on lands west
of the
Appalachian Mountains.
T H E C R I S I S B E G I N S
According to the doctrine of “virtual
representation,” the House of
Commons represented all residents
of the British empire, whether or not
they could vote for members. In this
1775 cartoon criticizing the idea, a
blinded Britannia, on the far right,
stumbles into a pit. Next to her, two
colonists complain of being robbed

by British taxation. In the background,
according to an accompanying
explanation of the cartoon, stand
the “Catholic” city of Quebec and
the “Protestant town of Boston,” the
latter in flames.
Outrage in the colonies
Taxing the Colonies
In 1764, the Sugar Act, introduced by Prime Minister George
Grenville,
reduced the existing tax on molasses imported into North
America from
the French West Indies from six pence to three pence per
gallon. But the
act also established a new machinery to end widespread
smuggling by
colonial merchants. And to counteract the tendency of colonial
juries to
acquit merchants charged with violating trade regulations, it
strengthened
the admiralty courts, where accused smugglers could be judged
without
benefit of a jury trial. Thus, colonists saw the measure not as a

welcome
reduction in taxation but as an attempt to get them to pay a levy
they would
otherwise have evaded. At the same time, the Currency Act
reaffirmed the
earlier ban on colonial assemblies’ issuing paper as “legal
tender”—that is,
money that individuals are required to accept in payment of
debts.
The Sugar Act was an effort to strengthen the long-established
(and
long-evaded) Navigation Acts. The Stamp Act of 1765 was a
new depar-
ture in imperial policy. For the first time, Parliament attempted
to raise
money from direct taxes in the colonies rather than through the
regulation
of trade. The act required that all sorts of printed material
produced in
the colonies—such as newspapers, books, court documents,
commercial
papers, land deeds, almanacs—carry a stamp purchased from
authorities.
Its purpose was to help finance the operations of the empire,
including the
cost of stationing British troops in North America, without
seeking rev-
enue from colonial assemblies.
Whereas the Sugar Act had mainly affected residents of colonial
ports, the Stamp Act managed to offend virtually every free
colonist—rich
and poor, farmers, artisans, and merchants. It was especially
resented by
members of the public sphere who wrote, published, and read

books and
newspapers and followed political affairs. The prospect of a
British army
permanently stationed on American soil also alarmed many
colonists. And
by imposing the stamp tax without colonial consent, Parliament
directly
challenged the authority of local elites who, through the
assemblies they
controlled, had established their power over the raising and
spending of
money. They were ready to defend this authority in the name of
liberty.
Opposition to the Stamp Act was the first great drama of the
revolu-
tionary era and the first major split between colonists and Great
Britain
over the meaning of freedom. Nearly all colonial political
leaders opposed
the act. In voicing their grievances, they invoked the rights of
the freeborn
Englishman, which, they insisted, colonists should also enjoy.
Opponents
of the act occasionally referred to the natural rights of all
mankind. More
frequently, however, they drew on time-honored British
principles such as
The Sugar Act of 1764
The Stamp Act of 1765
Opposition to the Stamp Act

143T H E C R I S I S B E G I N S
a community’s right not to be taxed except by its elected
representatives.
Liberty, they insisted, could not be secure where property was
“taken
away without consent.”
Taxation and Representation
At stake were clashing ideas of the British empire itself.
American lead-
ers viewed the empire as an association of equals in which free
settlers
overseas enjoyed the same rights as Britons at home. Colonists
in other
outposts of the empire, such as India, the West Indies, and
Canada, echoed
this outlook. All, in the name of liberty, claimed the right to
govern their
own affairs. The British government and its appointed
representatives
in America, by contrast, saw the empire as a system of unequal
parts in
which different principles governed different areas, and all were
subject
to the authority of Parliament. To surrender the right to tax the
colonies
would set a dangerous precedent for the empire as a whole.
Some opponents of the Stamp Act distinguished between
“internal”
taxes like the stamp duty, which they claimed Parliament had no
right to
impose, and revenue legitimately raised through the regulation

of trade.
But more and more colonists insisted that Britain had no right to
tax them
at all, since Americans were unrepresented in the House of
Commons.
“No taxation without representation” became their rallying cry.
Virginia’s
House of Burgesses approved four resolutions offered by the
fiery orator
Patrick Henry. They insisted that the colonists enjoyed the same
“liberties,
privileges, franchises, and immunities” as residents of the
mother country
and that the right to consent to taxation was a cornerstone of
“British free-
dom.” (The House of Burgesses rejected as too radical three
other resolu-
tions, including Henry’s call for outright resistance to unlawful
taxation,
but these were also reprinted in colonial newspapers.)
In October 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, with twenty-seven
del-
egates from nine colonies, including some of the most
prominent men in
America, met in New York and endorsed Virginia’s position. Its
resolu-
tions began by affirming the “allegiance” of all colonists to the
“Crown
of Great Britain” and their “due subordination” to Parliament.
But they
went on to insist that the right to consent to taxation was
“essential to the
freedom of a people.” Soon, merchants throughout the colonies
agreed to
boycott British goods until Parliament repealed the Stamp Act.

This was
the first major cooperative action among Britain’s mainland
colonies. In a
sense, by seeking to impose uniformity on the colonies rather
than dealing
with them individually as in the past, Parliament had
inadvertently united
America.
controversy?
This teapot protesting the Stamp
Act was produced in England and
marketed in colonial America,
illustrating the close political and
economic connections between
the two.
Views of the British empire
“No taxation without
representation”
Liberty and Resistance
No word was more frequently invoked by critics of the Stamp

Act than
“liberty.” Throughout the colonies, opponents of the new tax
staged mock
funerals in which liberty’s coffin was carried to a burial ground,
only to
have the occupant miraculously revived at the last moment,
whereupon
the assembled crowd repaired to a tavern to celebrate. As the
crisis contin-
ued, symbols of liberty proliferated. The large elm tree in
Boston on which
protesters had hanged an effigy of the stamp distributor Andrew
Oliver
to persuade him to resign his post came to be known as the
Liberty Tree.
Its image soon appeared in prints and pamphlets throughout the
colonies.
Colonial leaders resolved to prevent the new law’s
implementation,
and by and large they succeeded. Even before the passage of the
Stamp
Act, a Committee of Correspondence in Boston communicated
with other
colonies to encourage opposition to the Sugar and Currency
Acts. Now,
such committees sprang up in other colonies, exchanging ideas
and infor-
mation about resistance. Initiated by colonial elites, the
movement against
the Stamp Act quickly drew in a far broader range of
Americans. The
act, wrote John Adams, who drafted a set of widely reprinted
resolutions
against the measure, had inspired “the people, even to the
lowest ranks,”

to become “more attentive to their liberties, more inquisitive
about them,
and more determined to defend them, than they were ever before
known.”
Opponents of the Stamp Act, however, did not rely solely on
debate.
Even before the law went into effect, crowds forced those
chosen to admin-
ister it to resign and destroyed shipments of stamps. In 1765,
New York City
residents were organized by the newly created Sons of Liberty,
who led
them in protest processions, posted notices reading “Liberty,
Property, and
No Stamps,” and took the lead in enforcing the boycott of
British imports.
Stunned by the ferocity of American resistance
and pressured by London merchants and manufactur-
ers who did not wish to lose their American markets,
the British government retreated. In 1766, Parliament
repealed the Stamp Act. But this concession was
accompanied by the Declaratory Act, which rejected
Americans’ claims that only their elected representatives
could levy taxes. Parliament, proclaimed this measure,
possessed the power to pass laws for “the colonies and
people of America . . . in all cases whatsoever.” Since
the debt-ridden British government continued to need
money raised in the colonies, passage of the Declaratory
Act promised further conflict.
Organized resistance
The Liberty Tree

A warning by the Sons of Liberty
against using the stamps required by
the Stamp Act, which are shown on
the left.
145
The Regulators
The Stamp Act crisis was not the only example of violent social
turmoil dur-
ing the 1760s. Many colonies experienced contentious internal
divisions as
well. As population moved westward, the conflicting land
claims of settlers,
speculators, colonial governments, and Indians sparked fierce
disputes. As
in the Stamp Act crisis, “liberty” was the rallying cry, but in
this case liberty
had less to do with imperial policy than secure possession of
land.
Beginning in the mid-1760s, a group of wealthy residents of the
South
Carolina backcountry calling themselves Regulators protested
the under-
representation of western settlements in the colony’s assembly
and the
legislators’ failure to establish local governments that could
regularize
land titles and suppress bands of outlaws.

A parallel movement in North Carolina mobilized small
farmers,
who refused to pay taxes, kidnapped local officials, assaulted
the homes
of land speculators, merchants, and lawyers, and disrupted court
pro-
ceedings. Here, the complaint was not a lack of government, but
corrupt
county authorities. Demanding the democratization of local
government,
the Regulators condemned the “rich and powerful” (the colony’s
elite)
who used their political authority to prosper at the expense of
“poor
industrious” farmers. At their peak, the Regulators numbered
around
8,000 armed farmers. The region remained in turmoil until
1771, when,
in the “battle of Alamance,” the farmers were suppressed by the
colony’s
militia.
The emerging rift between Britain and America eventually
super-
imposed itself on conflicts within the colonies. But the social
divisions
revealed in the Stamp Act riots and backcountry uprisings made
some
members of the colonial elite fear that opposition to British
measures
might unleash turmoil at home. As a result, they were more
reluctant to
challenge British authority when the next imperial crisis arose.
T H E R O A D T O R E V O L U T I O N

The Townshend Crisis
In 1767, the government in London decided to impose a new set
of taxes
on Americans. They were devised by the chancellor of the
Exchequer
(the cabinet’s chief financial minister), Charles Townshend. In
opposing
Backcountry tensions
Social divisions and politics
T H E R O A D T O R E V O L U T I O N
controversy?
ican Revolution146
the Stamp Act, some colonists had seemed to suggest that they
would
not object if Britain raised revenue by regulating trade. Taking
them at
their word, Townshend persuaded Parliament to impose new
taxes on
goods imported into the colonies and to create a new board of
customs
commissioners to collect them and suppress smuggling.
Although many
merchants objected to the new enforcement procedures,
opposition to the
Townshend duties developed more slowly than in the case of the

Stamp
Act. Leaders in several colonies nonetheless decided in 1768 to
reimpose
the ban on importing British goods.
The boycott began in Boston and soon spread to the southern
colonies.
Reliance on American rather than British goods, on homespun
clothing
rather than imported finery, became a symbol of American
resistance. It
also reflected, as the colonists saw it, a virtuous spirit of self-
sacrifice as
compared with the self-indulgence and luxury many Americans
were
coming to associate with Britain. Women who spun and wove at
home so
as not to purchase British goods were hailed as Daughters of
Liberty.
The idea of using homemade rather than imported goods espe-
cially appealed to Chesapeake planters, who found themselves
owing
increasing amounts of money to British merchants.
Nonimportation,
wrote George Washington, gave “the extravagant man” an
opportunity
to “retrench his expenses” by reducing the purchase of British
luxuries,
without having to advertise to his neighbors that he might be in
financial
distress.
Urban artisans, who welcomed an end to competition from
imported
British manufactured goods, strongly supported the boycott.

Philadelphia
and New York merchants at first were reluctant to take part,
although
they eventually agreed to go along. Nonimportation threatened
their liveli-
hoods and raised the prospect of unleashing further lower-class
turmoil.
As had happened during the Stamp Act crisis, the streets of
American cit-
ies filled with popular protests against the duties imposed by
Parliament.
Extralegal local committees attempted to enforce the boycott of
British
goods.
The Boston Massacre
Boston once again became the focal point of conflict. Royal
troops had been
stationed in the city in 1768 after rioting that followed the
British seizure of
the ship Liberty for violating trade regulations. The soldiers,
who competed
for jobs on Boston’s waterfront with the city’s laborers, became
more and
more unpopular. On March 5, 1770, a fight between a
snowball-throwing
Nonimportation
Royal troops in Boston
Homespun clothing, a symbol
of American resistance

147T H E R O A D T O R E V O L U T I O N
crowd of Bostonians and British troops
escalated into an armed confrontation that
left five Bostonians dead. One of those who
fell in what came to be called the Boston
Massacre was Crispus Attucks, a sailor
of mixed Indian-African-white ancestry.
The commanding officer and eight soldiers
were put on trial in Massachusetts. Ably
defended by John Adams, who viewed
lower-class crowd actions as a dangerous
method of opposing British policies, seven
were found not guilty, while two were con-
victed of manslaughter. But Paul Revere, a
member of the Boston Sons of Liberty and
a silversmith and engraver, helped to stir
up indignation against the British army by
producing a widely circulated (and quite
inaccurate) print of the Boston Massacre
depicting a line of British soldiers firing into
an unarmed crowd.
By 1770, as merchants’ profits shriveled and many members of
the
colonial elite found they could not do without British goods, the
non-
importation movement was collapsing. British merchants, who
wished
to remove a possible source of future interruption of trade,
pressed for
repeal of the Townshend duties. When the British ministry
agreed, leav-
ing in place only a tax on tea, and agreed to remove troops from
Boston,

American merchants quickly abandoned the boycott.
Wilkes and Liberty
Once again, an immediate crisis had been resolved.
Nonetheless, many
Americans concluded that Britain was succumbing to the same
pat-
tern of political corruption and decline of liberty that afflicted
other
countries. The overlap of the Townshend crisis with a
controversy in
Britain over the treatment of John Wilkes reinforced this
sentiment. A
radical journalist known for scandalous writings about the king
and
ministry, Wilkes had been elected to Parliament from London
but was
expelled from his seat. “Wilkes and Liberty” became a popular
rallying
cry on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition, rumors circulated
in the
colonies that the Anglican Church in England planned to send
bishops
What key events sharpened the divisions between Britain and
the colonists?
The Boston Massacre. Less than a
month after the Boston Massacre of
1770, in which five colonists died,
Paul Revere produced this engraving

of the event. Although it inaccurately
depicts what was actually a
disorganized brawl between residents
of Boston and British soldiers,
this image became one of the
most influential pieces of political
propaganda of the revolutionary era.
to America. Among members of other Protestant denominations,
the
rumors—strongly denied in London—sparked fears that bishops
would
establish religious courts like those that had once persecuted
Dissenters.
The Tea Act
The next crisis underscored how powerfully events in other
parts of
Britain’s global empire affected the American colonies. The
East India
Company, a giant trading monopoly, effectively governed
recently acquired
British possessions in India. Numerous British merchants,
bankers, and
other individuals had invested heavily in its stock. A classic

speculative
bubble ensued, with the price of stock in the company rising
sharply and
then collapsing. To rescue the company and its investors, the
British gov-
ernment decided to help it market its enormous holdings of
Chinese tea in
North America.
To further stimulate its sales and bail out the East India
Company,
the British government, now headed by Frederick Lord North,
offered the
company a series of rebates and tax exemptions. These enabled
it to dump
low-priced tea on the American market, undercutting both
established
merchants and smugglers.
The tax on tea was not new. But many colonists insisted that to
pay it
on this large new body of imports would acknowledge Britain’s
right to tax
the colonies. As tea shipments arrived, resistance developed in
the major
ports. On December 16, 1773, a group of colonists disguised as
Indians
boarded three ships at anchor in Boston Harbor and threw more
than
300 chests of tea into the water. The event became known as the
Boston
Tea Party. The loss to the East India Company was around
£10,000 (the
equivalent of more than $4 million today).
The Intolerable Acts

The British government, declared Lord North, must now
demonstrate
“whether we have, or have not, any authority in that country.”
Its response
to the Boston Tea Party was swift and decisive. Parliament
closed the port
of Boston to all trade until the tea was paid for. It radically
altered the
Massachusetts Charter of 1691 by curtailing town meetings and
authoriz-
ing the governor to appoint members to the council—positions
previously
filled by election. Parliament also empowered military
commanders to
lodge soldiers in private homes. These measures, called the
Coercive or
Intolerable Acts by Americans, united the colonies in
opposition to what
was widely seen as a direct threat to their political freedom.
William Hogarth’s depiction of John
Wilkes holding a liberty cap. Wilkes’s
publication, North Briton, bitterly
attacked the king and prime minister,
for which Wilkes was arrested, tried,
and acquitted by a London jury. He
became a popular symbol of freedom
on both sides of the Atlantic.

British response to the Tea
Party
149
At almost the same time, Parliament
passed the Quebec Act. This extended
the southern boundary of that Canadian
province to the Ohio River and granted
legal toleration to the Roman Catholic
Church in Canada. The act not only threw
into question land claims in the Ohio
country but persuaded many colonists
that the government in London was
conspiring to strengthen Catholicism—
dreaded by most Protestants—in its
American empire.
T H E C O M I N G O F I N D E P E N D E N C E
The Continental Congress
Opposition to the Intolerable Acts now spread to small towns
and rural
areas that had not participated actively in previous resistance.
In Septem-
ber 1774, in the town of Worcester, Massachusetts, 4,600
militiamen
from thirty-seven towns (half the adult male population of the
entire
county) lined both sides of Main Street as the British-appointed
officials
walked the gauntlet between them. In the same month, a

convention of
delegates from Massachusetts towns approved a series of
resolutions
(called the Suffolk Resolves for the county in which Boston is
located) that
urged Americans to refuse obedience to the new laws, withhold
taxes, and
prepare for war.
To coordinate resistance to the Intolerable Acts, a Continental
Con-
g ress convened in Philadelphia that month, bringing together
the most
prominent political leaders of twelve mainland colonies
(Georgia did
not take part). From Massachusetts came the “brace of
Adamses”—John
and his more radical cousin Samuel. Virginia’s seven delegates
included
George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and the renowned
orator Patrick
Henry. “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians,
New
Yorkers, and New Englanders,” Henry declared, “are no more. I
am not
a Virginian, but an American.” In March 1775, Henry concluded
a speech
urging a Virginia convention to begin military preparations with
a legend-
ary credo: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
The Mitred Minuet, a British cartoon
from 1774, shows four Roman
Catholic bishops dancing around a

copy of the Quebec Act. On the left,
British officials Lord Bute, Lord North,
and Lord Mansfield look on, while the
devil oversees the proceedings.
Suffolk Resolves
Leaders of the Congress
What key events sharpened the divisions between Britain and
the colonists?
The Continental Association
Before it adjourned at the end of October 1774, the Congress
endorsed the
Suffolk Resolves and adopted the Continental Association,
which called
for an almost complete halt to trade with Great Britain and the
West Indies
(at South Carolina’s insistence, exports of rice to Europe were
exempted).
Congress authorized local Committees of Safety to oversee its
mandates
and to take action against “enemies of American liberty,”
including busi-

nessmen who tried to profit from the sudden scarcity of goods.
The Committees of Safety began the process of transferring
effective
political power from established governments whose authority
derived
from Great Britain to extralegal grassroots bodies reflecting the
will of the
people. By early 1775, some 7,000 men were serving on local
committees
throughout the colonies, a vast expansion of the “political
nation.” The
committees became training grounds where small farmers, city
artisans,
propertyless laborers, and others who had heretofore had little
role in gov-
ernment discussed political issues and exercised political
power. When
the New York assembly refused to endorse the association, local
commit-
tees continued to enforce it anyway.
The Sweets of Liberty
By 1775, talk of liberty pervaded the colonies. The past few
years had wit-
nessed an endless parade of pamphlets with titles like A Chariot
of Liberty
and Oration on the Beauties of Liberty. (The latter, a sermon
delivered in
Boston by Joseph Allen in 1772, became the most popular
public address of
the years before independence.) Sober men spoke longingly of
the “sweets
of liberty.” One anonymous essayist reported a “night vision” of
the word

written in the sun’s rays. Commented a British emigrant who
arrived in
Maryland early in 1775: “They are all liberty mad.”
As the crisis deepened, Americans increasingly based their
claims
not simply on the historical rights of Englishmen but on the
more
abstract language of natural rights and universal freedom. The
First
Continental Congress defended its actions by appealing to the
“principles
of the English constitution,” the “liberties of free and natural-
born subjects
within the realm of England,” and the “immutable law of
nature.” John
Locke’s theory of natural rights offered a powerful justification
for colonial
resistance, as did Thomas Jefferson in A Summary View of the
Rights of British
America, written in 1774. Americans, Jefferson declared, were
“a free people
claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and
not as the gift
of their chief magistrate.”
The Committees of Safety
Natural rights
151T H E C O M I N G O F I N D E P E N D E N C E
What key events marked the move toward American
independence?

The Outbreak of War
By the time the Second Continental Congress
convened in May 1775, war had broken out
between British soldiers and armed citi-
zens of Massachusetts. On April 19, a force
of British soldiers marched from Boston
toward the nearby town of Concord seeking
to seize arms being stockpiled there. Riders
from Boston, among them Paul Revere,
warned local leaders of the troops’ approach. Militiamen took
up arms and
tried to resist the British advance. Skirmishes between
Americans and
British soldiers took place at Lexington and again at Concord.
By the time
the British retreated to the safety of Boston, some forty-nine
Americans and
seventy-three members of the Royal Army lay dead.
What the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson would later call
“the shot
heard ’round the world” began the American War of
Independence. In May
1775, Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys from Vermont,
together
with militiamen from Connecticut led by Benedict Arnold,
surrounded Fort
Ticonderoga in New York and forced it to surrender. The
following winter,
Henry Knox, George Washington’s commander of artillery,
arranged for
some of the Ticonderoga cannon to be dragged hundreds of
miles to the east
to reinforce the siege of Boston, where British forces were

ensconced. On
June 17, 1775, two months after Lexington and Concord, the
British had dis-
lodged colonial militiamen from Breed’s Hill, although only at
a heavy cost
in casualties. (The battle came to be named after the nearby
Bunker Hill.)
But the arrival of American cannon in March 1776 and their
entrenchment
above the city made the British position in Boston untenable.
The British
army under the command of Sir William Howe was forced to
abandon the
city. Before leaving, Howe’s forces cut down the original
Liberty Tree.
Meanwhile, the Second Continental Congress authorized the
raising
of an army, printed money to pay for it, and appointed George
Washington
its commander. In response, Britain declared the colonies in a
state of
rebellion, dispatched thousands of troops, and ordered the
closing of all
colonial ports.
Independence?
By the end of 1775, the breach with Britain seemed irreparable.
But many
colonists shied away from the idea of independence. Pride in
membership
in the British empire was still strong, and many political
leaders, especially
Conflict in Boston

In March 1776, James Pike, a
soldier in the Massachusetts militia,
carved this scene on his powder
horn to commemorate the battles of
Lexington and Concord. At the center
stands the Liberty Tree.
The Second Continental
Congress
ution152
in colonies that had experienced internal turmoil, feared that a
complete
break with the mother country might unleash further conflict.
Such fears affected how colonial leaders responded to the idea
of inde-
pendence. The elites of Massachusetts and Virginia, who felt
supremely
confident of their ability to retain authority at home, tended to
support a
break with Britain. Southern leaders not only were highly
protective of
their political liberty but also were outraged by a proclamation
issued in
November 1775 by Lord Dunmore, the British governor and
military com-

mander in Virginia, offering freedom to any slave who escaped
to his lines
and bore arms for the king.
In New York and Pennsylvania, however, the diversity of the
popula-
tion made it difficult to work out a consensus on how far to go
in resisting
British measures. Many established leaders drew back from
further resis-
tance. Joseph Galloway, a Pennsylvania leader and delegate to
the Second
Continental Congress who worked to devise a compromise
between British
and colonial positions, warned that independence would be
accompanied
by constant disputes within America. He even predicted a war
between the
northern and southern colonies.
Paine’s Common Sense
As 1776 dawned, America presented the unusual spectacle of
colonists
at war against the British empire but still pleading for their
rights within
it. Ironically, it was a recent emigrant from England, not a
colonist from
a family long-established on American soil, who grasped the
inner logic
of the situation and offered a vision of the broad significance of
American
independence. Thomas Paine had emigrated to Philadelphia late
in 1774.
He quickly became associated with a group of advocates of the
American

cause, including John Adams and Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leading
Philadelphia physician. It was Rush who suggested to Paine that
he write a
pamphlet supporting American independence.
Common Sense appeared in January 1776. The pamphlet began
not with
a recital of colonial grievances but with an attack on the “so
much boasted
Constitution of England” and the principles of hereditary rule
and monarchi-
cal government. Rather than being the most perfect system of
government
in the world, Paine wrote, the English monarchy was headed by
“the royal
brute of England,” and the English constitution was composed
in large part
of “the base remains of two ancient tyrannies . . . monarchical
tyranny in the
person of the king [and] aristocratical tyranny in the persons of
the peers.”
Turning to independence, Paine drew on the colonists’
experiences
to make his case. “There is something absurd,” he wrote, “in
supposing a
The Dunmore proclamation
Fear of domestic turmoil
Paine on monarchy and
aristocracy

153T H E C O M I N G O F I N D E P E N D E N C E
independence?
Continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” With
independence,
moreover, the colonies could for the first time trade freely with
the entire
world and insulate themselves from involvement in the endless
imperial
wars of Europe. Membership in the British empire, Paine
insisted, was a
burden to the colonies, not a benefit.
Toward the close of the pamphlet, Paine moved beyond
practical con-
siderations to outline a breathtaking vision of the historical
importance
of the American Revolution. “The cause of America,” he
proclaimed in
stirring language, “is in great measure, the cause of all
mankind.” The new
nation would become the home of freedom, “an asylum for
mankind.”
Most of Paine’s ideas were not original. What made Common
Sense
unique was his mode of expressing them and the audience he
addressed.
Previous political writings had generally been directed toward
the edu-
cated elite. Paine, however, pioneered a new style of political
writing, one
designed to expand dramatically the public sphere where
political discus-

sion took place. He wrote clearly and directly, and he avoided
the complex
language and Latin phrases common in pamphlets aimed at
educated
readers. Common Sense quickly became one of the most
successful and
influential pamphlets in the history of political writing, selling,
by Paine’s
estimate, some 150,000 copies. Paine directed that his share of
the profits
be used to buy supplies for the Continental army.
In the spring of 1776, scores of American communities adopted
resolutions calling for a separation from Britain. Only six
months elapsed
between the appearance of Common Sense and the decision by
the Second
Continental Congress to sever the colonies’ ties with Great
Britain.
The Declaration of Independence
On July 2, 1776, the Congress formally declared the United
States an
independent nation. Two days later, it approved the Declaration
of
Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and revised by the
Congress
before approval. (See the Appendix for the full text.) Most of
the Declaration
consists of a lengthy list of grievances directed against King
George III,
ranging from quartering troops in colonial homes to imposing
taxes
without the colonists’ consent. One clause in Jefferson’s draft,
which con-

demned the inhumanity of the slave trade and criticized the king
for over-
turning colonial laws that sought to restrict the importation of
slaves, was
deleted by the Congress at the insistence of Georgia and South
Carolina.
The Declaration’s enduring impact came not from the
complaints
against George III but from Jefferson’s preamble, especially the
second
paragraph, which begins, “We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all
The cover of Common Sense,
Thomas Paine’s influential pamphlet
denouncing the idea of hereditary
rule and calling for American
independence.
Jefferson’s preamble
Colonial grievances
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of

Happiness.” By “unalienable rights,” Jefferson meant rights so
basic, so
rooted in human nature itself, that no government could take
them away.
Jefferson then went on to justify the breach with Britain.
Government,
he wrote, derives its powers from “the consent of the
governed.” When
a government threatens its subjects’ natural rights, the people
have the
authority “to alter or to abolish it.” The Declaration of
Independence is
ultimately an assertion of the right of revolution.
The Declaration also changed forever the meaning of American
free-
dom. It completed the shift from the rights of Englishmen to the
rights of
mankind as the object of American independence. No longer a
set of specific
rights, no longer a privilege to be enjoyed by a corporate body
or people in
certain social circumstances, liberty had become a universal
entitlement.
When Jefferson substituted the “pursuit of happiness” for
property
in the familiar triad that opens the Declaration, he tied the new
nation’s
star to an open-ended, democratic process whereby individuals
develop
their own potential and seek to realize their own life goals.
Individual self-
fulfillment, unimpeded by government, would become a central
element

of American freedom. Tradition would no longer rule the
present, and
Americans could shape their society as they saw fit.
An Asylum for Mankind
A distinctive definition of nationality resting on American
freedom
was born in the Revolution. From the beginning, the idea of
“American
exceptionalism”—the belief that the United
States has a special mission to be a ref-
uge from tyranny, a symbol of freedom,
and a model for the rest of the world—
has occupied a central place in American
nationalism. The new nation declared
itself, in the words of Virginia leader James
Madison, the “workshop of liberty to the
Civilized World.” Countless sermons,
political tracts, and newspaper articles of
the time repeated this idea. Unburdened
by the institutions—monarchy, aristocracy,
hereditary privilege—that oppressed the
peoples of the Old World, America and
America alone was the place where the
America as a Symbol of Liberty,
a 1775 engraving from the cover
of the Pennsylvania Magazine,
edited by Thomas Paine soon after
his arrival in America. The shield

displays the colony’s coat of arms.
The female figure holding a liberty
cap is surrounded by weaponry
of the patriotic struggle, including
a cartridge box marked “liberty,”
hanging from a tree (right).
The Declaration and American
freedom
“Unalienable rights”
155
principle of universal freedom could take
root. This was why Jefferson addressed the
Declaration to “the opinions of mankind,”
not just the colonists themselves or Great
Britain.
First to add his name to the Declaration
of Independence was the Massachusetts
merchant John Hancock, president of the
Second Continental Congress, with a sig-
nature so large, he declared, according to
legend, that King George III could read it
without his spectacles.

The Global Declaration of Independence
The American colonists were less concerned with securing
human
rights for all mankind than with winning international
recognition in
their struggle for independence from Britain. But Jefferson
hoped that
this rebellion would become “the signal of arousing men to
burst the
chains . . . and to assume the blessings and security of self-
government.”
And for more than two centuries, the Declaration has remained
an
inspiration not only to generations of Americans denied the
enjoyment
of their natural rights but to colonial peoples around the world
seeking
independence. The Declaration quickly appeared in French and
German
translations, although not, at first, in Spanish, since the
government
feared it would inspire dangerous ideas among the peoples of
Spain’s
American empire.
In the years since 1776, numerous anti-colonial movements
have
modeled their own declarations of independence on America’s,
often
echoing Jefferson’s own words. Today more than half the
countries in
the world, in places as far-flung as China (issued after the
revolution of
1911) and Vietnam (1945), have such declarations, though few
of them

include a list, like Jefferson’s, of the rights of citizens that their
govern-
ments cannot abridge.
But even more than the specific language of the Declaration, the
principle that legitimate political authority rests on the will of
“the
people” has been adopted around the world. The idea that “the
people”
possess rights was quickly internationalized. Slaves in the
Caribbean,
colonial subjects in India, and indigenous inhabitants of Latin
America
could all speak this language, to the dismay of those who
exercised power
over them.
independence?
Inspired by the American Revolution,
the British reformer John Cartwright
published an appeal for the annual
election of Parliament as essential
to liberty in Britain. He included an
engraving contrasting the principles
of reform, on the left, with despotism,

on the right.
The will of “the people”
Legacy of the Declaration
A recent emigrant from England, Thomas Paine in January 1776
published Common
Sense, a highly influential pamphlet that in stirring language
made the case for
American independence.
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts,
plain arguments, and common
sense. . . .
Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the
distinctions of heaven;
but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the
rest, and distinguished like
some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are
the means of happiness or
of misery to mankind. . . . One of the strongest natural proofs
of the folly of hereditary right
in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not
so frequently turn it into
ridicule, by giving mankind an ass for a lion. . . .
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the
affair of a city, a country, a

province, or a kingdom, but of a continent—of at least one
eighth part of the habitable globe.
’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are
virtually involved in the context,
and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by
the proceedings now. Now is the
seed time of continental union, faith and honor. . . .
I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a
single advantage that
this continent can reap by being connected with Great Britain. .
. . But the injuries and
disadvantages which we sustain by that connection, are without
number. . . . Any submission
to, or dependence on, Great Britain, tends directly to involve
this Continent in European wars
and quarrels, and set us at variance with nations who would
otherwise seek our friendship,
and against whom we have neither anger nor complaint.
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the
tyranny, but the tyrant, stand
forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.
Freedom hath been hunted
round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.
Europe regards her like a stranger,
and England hath given her warning to depart. O! Receive the
fugitive, and prepare in time
an asylum for mankind.
From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

An English-born Episcopal minister, Jonathan Boucher preached
in Virginia from
1759 to 1775, when he returned to England after receiving
threats on his life because
of his loyalty to the crown. In 1797 he published in London a
series of sermons he had
delivered in 1775 explaining his opposition to the revolutionary
movement.
Obedience to government is every man’s duty, because it is
every man’s interest; but it is
particularly incumbent on Christians, because . . . it is enjoined
by the positive commands
of God; and, therefore, when Christians are disobedient to
human ordinances, they are also
disobedient to God. If the form of government . . . be mild and
free, it is our duty to enjoy
it with gratitude and with thankfulness and, in particular, to be
careful not to abuse it by
licentiousness. If it be less indulgent and less liberal than in
reason it ought to be, still it is
our duty not to disturb and destroy the peace of the community
by becoming refractory and
rebellious subjects. . . . However humiliating such acquiescence
may seem to men of warm
and eager minds, the wisdom of God in having made it our duty
is manifest. For, as it is the
natural temper and bias of the human mind to be impatient
under restraint, it was wise and
merciful in the blessed Author of our religion . . . with the
whole weight of his authority,
altogether to discountenance every tendency to disobedience. . .
.

Liberty is not the setting at nought and despising established
laws—much less the making
our own wills the rule of our own actions, or the actions of
others . . . but it is the being
governed by law and by law only. The Greeks described
Eleutheria, or Liberty, as the daughter
of Jupiter, the supreme fountain of power and
law. . . . Their idea, no doubt, was that liberty
was the fair fruit of just authority and that
it consisted in men’s being subjected to law.
The more carefully well-devised restraints
of law are enacted, and the more rigorously
they are executed in any country, the greater
degree of civil liberty does that country
enjoy. To pursue liberty, then, in a manner
not warranted by law, whatever the pretense
may be, is clearly to be hostile to liberty; and
those persons who thus promise you liberty are
themselves the servants of corruption.
From Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and
Consequences of the American Revolution (1775)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. What does Paine see as the global sig-
nificance of the American struggle for
independence?
2. Why does Boucher believe that obedi-

ence to government is particularly
important for Christians?
3. How do the two writers differ in their
understanding of freedom?
S E C U R I N G I N D E P E N D E N C E
The Balance of Power
Declaring Americans independent was one thing; winning
independence
another. The newly created American army confronted the
greatest mili-
tary power on earth. Viewing the Americans as traitors, Britain
resolved
to crush the rebellion. On the surface, the balance of power
seemed heavily
weighted in Britain’s favor. It had a well-trained army
(supplemented by
hired soldiers from German states like Hesse), the world’s most
powerful
navy, and experienced military commanders. The Americans had
to rely
on local militias and an inadequately equipped Continental
army.
On the other hand, American soldiers were fighting on their
own soil

for a cause that inspired devotion and sacrifice. During the eight
years of
war from 1775 to 1783, some 200,000 men bore arms in the
American army
(whose soldiers were volunteers) and militias (where service
was required
of every able-bodied man unless he provided a substitute). The
patriots
suffered dearly for the cause. Of the colonies’ free white male
population
aged sixteen to forty-five, one in twenty died in the War of
Independence,
the equivalent of nearly 3 million deaths in today’s population.
But so long
as the Americans maintained an army in the field, the idea of
independence
remained alive no matter how much territory the British
occupied.
Despite British power, to conquer the thirteen colonies would
be an
enormous and expensive task, and it was not at all certain that
the public at
home wished to pay the additional taxes that a lengthy war
would require.
Moreover, European rivals, notably France, welcomed the
prospect of
a British defeat. If the Americans could forge an alliance with
France, a
world power second only to Britain, it would go a long way
toward equal-
izing the balance of forces.
Blacks in the Revolution
At the war’s outset, George Washington refused to accept black

recruits. But
he changed his mind after Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation,
which offered
freedom to slaves who joined the British cause. Some 5,000
blacks enlisted
in state militias and the Continental army and navy. Since
individuals
drafted into the militia were allowed to provide a substitute,
slaves suddenly
gained considerable bargaining power. Not a few acquired their
freedom by
agreeing to serve in place of an owner or his son. In 1778,
Rhode Island, with
a higher proportion of slaves in its population than any other
New England
state, formed a black regiment and promised freedom to slaves
who enlisted,
Britain’s advantages
American advantages
The role of France
Trading military service
for freedom
159S E C U R I N G I N D E P E N D E N C E
How were American forces able to prevail in the Revolutionary
War?
while compensating the owners for their
loss of property. Blacks who fought under

George Washington and in other state mili-
tias did so in racially integrated companies
(although invariably under white officers).
They were the last black American soldiers
to do so officially until the Korean War.
Except for South Carolina and Georgia,
the southern colonies also enrolled free
blacks and slaves to fight. They were not
explicitly promised freedom, but many
received it individually after the war ended.
Fighting on the side of the British also offered opportunities for
freedom. Before his forces were expelled from Virginia, 800 or
more
slaves had escaped from their owners to join Lord Dunmore’s
Ethiopian
Regiment, wearing uniforms that bore the motto “Liberty to
Slaves.”
Other escaped slaves served the Royal Army as spies, guided
their troops
through swamps, and worked as military cooks, laundresses, and
con-
struction workers. George Washington himself saw seventeen of
his
slaves flee to the British, some of whom signed up to fight the
colonists.
“There is not a man of them, but would leave us, if they
believed they
could make their escape,” his cousin Lund Washington reported.
“Liberty
is sweet.”
The First Years of the War
Had the British commander, Sir William Howe, prosecuted the

war
more vigorously at the outset, he might have nipped the
rebellion in
the bud by destroying Washington’s army. But although
Washington
suffered numerous defeats in the first years of the war, he
generally
avoided direct confrontations with the British and managed to
keep
his army intact. Having abandoned Boston, Howe attacked New
York
City in the summer of 1776. Washington’s army had likewise
moved
from Massachusetts to Brooklyn to defend the city. Howe
pushed
American forces back and almost cut off Washington’s retreat
across the
East River.
Howe pursued the American army but never managed to inflict
a decisive defeat. Demoralized by successive failures, however,
many
American soldiers simply went home. Once 28,000 men,
Washington’s
army dwindled to fewer than 3,000. To restore morale and
regain the
initiative, he launched successful surprise attacks on Hessian
soldiers
American Foot Soldiers, Yorktown
Campaign, a 1781 watercolor by a
French officer, includes a black soldier
from the First Rhode Island Regiment,

an all-black unit of 250 men.
Early setbacks
Albany
Boston
Halifax
New York
York
Philadelphia
Morristown
Valley Forge
Detroit
Fort Ticonderoga
July 1777
Bennington
Aug. 1777
Lexington
April 1775
Concord
April 1775

Bunker Hill
June 1775
Saratoga
Oct. 1777
Princeton
Jan. 1777
Trenton
Dec. 1776
New York City
Sep. 1776
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American victories
Forts
British troop movements
A i t t
T H E R E V O L U T I O N A R Y W A R I N T H E N O R
T H 1 7 7 5 – 1 7 8 1
Key battles in the North during the War of Independence
included Lexington and Concord, which began the armed
conflict; the
campaign in New York and New Jersey; and Saratoga,
sometimes called the turning point of the war.

War?
at Trenton, New Jersey, on December 26, 1776, and on a British
force at
Princeton on January 3, 1777. Shortly before crossing the
Delaware River
to attack the Hessians, Washington had Thomas Paine’s
inspiring essay
The American Crisis read to his troops. “These are the times
that try men’s
souls,” Paine wrote. “The summer soldier and the sunshine
patriot will,
in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he
that stands it
now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The Battle of Saratoga
In the summer of 1777, a second British army, led by General
John
Burgoyne, advanced south from Canada, hoping to link up with
Howe
and isolate New England. But in July, Howe instead moved his
forces
from New York City to attack Philadelphia. In September, the
Continental
Congress fled to Lancaster in central Pennsylvania, and Howe
occupied
the City of Brotherly Love. Not having been informed of
Burgoyne’s plans,
Howe had unintentionally abandoned him. American forces
blocked

Burgoyne’s way, surrounded his army, and on October 17, 1777,
forced
him to surrender at Saratoga. The victory provided a significant
boost to
American morale.
During the winter of 1777–1778, the British army, now
commanded
by Sir Henry Clinton, was quartered in Philadelphia. (In the
Revolution,
as in most eighteenth-century wars, fighting came to a halt
during the
winter.) Meanwhile, Washington’s army remained encamped at
Valley
Forge, where they suffered terribly from the frigid weather.
Men who had
other options simply went home. By the end of that difficult
winter, recent
immigrants and African-Americans made up half the soldiers at
Valley
Forge, and most of the rest were landless or unskilled laborers.
But Saratoga helped to persuade the French that American
victory
was possible. In 1778, American diplomats led by Benjamin
Franklin
concluded a Treaty of Amity and Commerce in which France
recognized
the United States and agreed to supply military assistance. Soon
after-
ward, Spain also joined the war on the American side. French
assistance
would play a decisive part in the war’s end. At the outset,
however,
the French fleet showed more interest in attacking British
outposts

in the West Indies than directly aiding the Americans.
Nonetheless,
French and Spanish entry transformed the War of Independence
into a
global conflict. By putting the British on the defensive in places
ranging
from Gibraltar to the West Indies, it greatly complicated their
military
prospects.
Howe and Burgoyne
Valley Forge
Alliance with France
The War in the South
In 1778, the focus of the war shifted to the South. Here the
British hoped
to exploit the social tensions between backcountry farmers and
wealthy
planters that had surfaced in the Regulator movements, to enlist
the
support of the numerous colonists in the region who remained
loyal to
the crown, and to disrupt the economy by encouraging slaves to
escape. In
December 1778, British forces occupied Savannah, Georgia. In
May 1780,
Clinton captured Charleston, South Carolina, and with it an
American

army of 5,000 men.
The year 1780 was arguably the low point of the struggle for
independence. Congress was essentially bankrupt, and the army
went
months without being paid. The British seemed successful in
playing on
social conflicts within the colonies, as thousands of southern
Loyalists
joined up with British forces (fourteen regiments from Savannah
alone)
and tens of thousands of slaves sought freedom by fleeing to
British
lines. In August, Lord Charles Cornwallis routed an American
army
at Camden, South Carolina. The following month one of
Washington’s
ablest commanders, Benedict Arnold, defected and almost
succeeded
in turning over to the British the important fort at West Point on
the
Hudson River.
But the British failed to turn these advantages into victory.
British
commanders were unable to consolidate their hold on the South.
Wherever
their forces went, American militias harassed them. Hit-and-run
attacks
by militiamen under Francis Marion, called the “swamp fox”
because his
men emerged from hiding places in swamps to strike swiftly and
then dis-
appear, eroded the British position in South Carolina. A bloody
civil war
engulfed North and South Carolina and Georgia, with patriot

and Loyalist
militias inflicting retribution on each other and plundering the
farms of
their opponents’ supporters. The brutal treatment of civilians by
British
forces under Colonel Banastre Tarleton persuaded many
Americans to
join the patriot cause.
Victory at Last
In January 1781, American forces under Daniel Morgan dealt a
crush-
ing defeat to Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina. Two months
later, at
Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, General Nathanael
Greene, while
conducting a campaign of strategic retreats, inflicted heavy
losses on
Lord Charles Cornwallis, the British commander in the South.
Cornwallis
moved into Virginia and encamped at Yorktown, located on a
peninsula Yorktown
Setbacks in 1780
Militia attacks
War?
New York

Wilmington
Greensboro
Charlotte
Philadelphia
York
Mt. Vernon
Richmond
Hillsborough
Yorktown
Aug. 30–Oct. 19, 1781
Guilford Court House
March 15, 1781
Camden
Aug. 16, 1780
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S O U T H , 1 7 7 5 – 1 7 8 1
After 1777, the focus of the War of Independence shifted to the
South, where it culminated in 1781
with the British defeat at Yorktown.
4
The newly independent United States occupied only a small part
of the North American continent in 1783.
Disputed by
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War?
that juts into Chesapeake Bay. Brilliantly
recognizing the opportunity to surround
Cornwallis, Washington rushed his forces,
augmented by French troops under the
Marquis de Lafayette, to block a British
escape by land. Meanwhile, a French fleet
controlled the mouth of the Chesapeake,
preventing supplies and reinforcements
from reaching Cornwallis’s army.
Imperial rivalries had helped to create
the American colonies. Now, the rivalry
of European empires helped to secure
American independence. Taking land and
sea forces together, more Frenchmen than Americans
participated in the
decisive Yorktown campaign. On October 19, 1781, Cornwallis
surren-
dered his army of 8,000 men. When the news reached London,
public
support for the war evaporated and peace negotiations soon
began.
Two years later, in September 1783, American and British
negotiators
concluded the Treaty of Paris. The American delegation—John
Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay—achieved one of the greatest
diplo-
matic triumphs in the country’s history. They not only won

recognition
of American independence but also gained control of the entire
region
between Canada and Florida east of the Mississippi River and
the right of
Americans to fish in Atlantic waters off of Canada (a matter of
consider-
able importance to New Englanders). At British insistence, the
Americans
agreed that colonists who had remained loyal to the mother
country would
not suffer persecution and that Loyalists’ property that had been
seized by
local and state governments would be restored.
Until independence, the thirteen colonies had formed part of
Britain’s
American empire, along with Canada and the West Indies. But
Canada
rebuffed repeated calls to join the War of Independence, and
leaders of the
West Indies, fearful of slave uprisings, also remained loyal to
the crown.
With the Treaty of Paris, the United States of America became
the Western
Hemisphere’s first independent nation. Its boundaries reflected
not so
much the long-standing unity of a geographical region, but the
circum-
stances of its birth.
Territorial gains
A French engraving depicts New
Yorkers tearing down the statue of

King George III in July 1776, after
the approval of the Declaration of
Independence. Slaves are doing
the work, while whites look on. The
statue was later melted down to
make bullets for the Continental army.
1. Patrick Henry proclaimed that he was not a Virginian,
but rather an American. What unified the colonists and
what divided them at the time of the Revolution?
2. Discuss the ramifications of using slaves in the British
and Continental armies. Why did the British authorize
the use of slaves? Why did the Americans? How did the
slaves benefit?
3. Why did the colonists reach the conclusion that member-
ship in the empire threatened their freedoms, rather than
guaranteed them?
4. How did new ideas of liberty contribute to tensions
between the social classes in the American colonies?
5. Why did people in other countries believe that
the American Revolution (or the Declaration of
Independence) was important to them or their own

countries?
6. Summarize the difference of opinion between British offi-
cials and colonial leaders over the issues of taxation and
representation.
7. How did the actions of the British authorities help to unite
the American colonists during the 1760s and 1770s?
K E Y T E R M S
virtual representation
(p. 141)
writs of assistance (p. 141)
Sugar Act (p. 142)
Committee of Correspondence
(p. 144)
Sons of Liberty (p. 144)
Regulators (p. 145)
Daughters of Liberty (p. 146)
Boston Massacre (p. 147)
Boston Tea Party (p. 148)
Lord Dunmore (p. 152)
Common Sense (p. 152)
Declaration of Independence

(p. 153)
Treaty of Paris (p. 165)
wwnorton.com
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book&p=200.0
1700 Samuel Sewall’s The
Selling of Joseph, first
antislavery tract in America

1770s Freedom petitions
presented by slaves to
New England courts and
legislatures
1776 Adam Smith’s The Wealth
of Nations
John Adams’s Thoughts on
Government
1777 Vermont state constitution
bans slavery
1779 Thomas Jefferson writes
Bill for Establishing
Religious Freedom
Phillipsburgh Proclamation
1780 Ladies’ Association of
Philadelphia founded
1782 Deborah Sampson enlists
in Continental army
T H E R E V O L U T I O N
W I T H I N
C H A P T E R 6
Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences.
This 1792 painting by Samuel Jennings

is one of the few visual images of the
early republic explicitly linking slavery
with tyranny and liberty with abolition.
The female figure offers books to newly
freed slaves. Other forms of knowledge
depicted include a globe and an artist’s
palette. Beneath her left foot lies a
broken chain. In the background, free
slaves enjoy some leisure time.
on Within168
B orn in Massachusetts in 1744, Abigail Adams became one of
the revolutionary era’s most articulate and influential women.
At a time when educational opportunities for girls were
extremely
limited, she taught herself by reading books in the library of her
father,
a Congregational minister. In 1764, she married John Adams.
During the
War of Independence, with her husband away in Philadelphia
and Europe
serving the American cause, she stayed behind at their
Massachusetts
home, raising their four children and managing the family’s
farm. The

letters they exchanged form one of the most remarkable
correspondences
in American history. A keen observer of public affairs, she kept
her
husband informed of events in Massachusetts and offered
opinions on
political matters. Later, when Adams served as president, he
relied on
her for advice more than on members of his cabinet.
In March 1776, a few months before the Second Continental
Congress
declared American independence, Abigail Adams wrote her
best-known
letter to her husband. She began by commenting indirectly on
the evils
of slavery. How strong, she wondered, could the “passion for
Liberty”
be among those “accustomed to deprive their fellow citizens of
theirs.”
She went on to urge Congress, when it drew up a “Code of
Laws” for the
new republic, to “remember the ladies.” All men, she warned,
“would be
tyrants if they could.”
It was the leaders of colonial society who initiated resistance to
British taxation. But as Abigail Adams’s letter illustrates, the
struggle
for American liberty emboldened other colonists to demand
more liberty
for themselves. At a time when so many Americans—slaves,
indentured
servants, women, Indians, apprentices, propertyless men—were
denied
full freedom, the struggle against Britain threw into question

many forms
of authority and inequality.
Abigail Adams accepted the prevailing belief that a woman’s
primary
responsibility was to her family. But she resented the “absolute
power”
husbands exercised over their wives. Her letter is widely
remembered
today. Less familiar is John Adams’s response, which
illuminated how
the Revolution had unleashed challenges to all sorts of inherited
ideas of
deference and authority: “We have been told that our struggle
has loosened
the bands of government everywhere; that children and
apprentices were
disobedient; that schools and colleges were grown turbulent;
that Indians
slighted their guardians, and negroes grew insolent to their
masters.” To
John Adams, this upheaval, including his wife’s claim to greater
freedom,
was an affront to the natural order of things. To others, it
formed the
essence of the American Revolution.
How did equality become
a stronger component of
American freedom after
the Revolution?
How did the expansion

of religious liberty after
the Revolution reflect the
new American ideal of
freedom?
How did the definition of
economic freedom change
after the Revolution, and
who benefited from the
changes?
How did the Revolution
diminish the freedoms of
both Loyalists and Native
Americans?
What was the impact of the
Revolution on slavery?
How did the Revolution
affect the status of women?
F O C U S

Q U E S T I O N S
169D E M O C R A T I Z I N G F R E E D O M
How did equality become a stronger component of American
freedom after the Revolution?
D E M O C R A T I Z I N G F R E E D O M
The Dream of Equality
The American Revolution took place at three levels
simultaneously. It
was a struggle for national independence, a phase in a century-
long global
battle among European empires, and a conflict over what kind
of nation an
independent America should be.
The Revolution unleashed public debates and political and
social
struggles that enlarged the scope of freedom and challenged
inherited
structures of power within America. In rejecting the crown and
the prin-
ciple of hereditary aristocracy, many Americans also rejected
the society
of privilege, patronage, and fixed status that these institutions
embodied.
The idea of liberty became a revolutionary rallying cry, a
standard by
which to judge and challenge homegrown institutions as well as
imperial
ones.

Jefferson’s seemingly straightforward assertion in the
Declaration
of Independence that “all men are created equal” announced a
radical
principle whose full implications no one could anticipate. In
both Britain
and its colonies, a well-ordered society was widely thought to
depend
on obedience to authority—the power of rulers over their
subjects, hus-
bands over wives, parents over children, employers over
servants and
apprentices, slaveholders over slaves. Inequality had been
fundamental
to the colonial social order; the Revolution challenged it in
many ways.
Henceforth, American freedom would be forever linked with the
idea of
equality—equality before the law, equality in political rights,
equality of
economic opportunity, and, for some, equality of condition.
“Whenever
I use the words freedom or rights,” wrote Thomas Paine, “I
desire to be
understood to mean a perfect equality of them. . . . The floor of
Freedom is
as level as water.”
Expanding the Political Nation
In political, social, and religious life, previously marginalized
groups chal-
lenged the domination by a privileged few. In the end, the
Revolution did
not undo the obedience to which male heads of household were

entitled
from their wives and children, and, at least in the southern
states, their
slaves. For free men, however, the democratization of freedom
was dra-
matic. Nowhere was this more evident than in challenges to the
traditional
limitation of political participation to those who owned
property.
Abigail Adams, a portrait by Gilbert
Stuart, painted over several years
beginning in 1800. Stuart told a friend
that, as a young woman, Adams must
have been a “perfect Venus.”
The Revolution and equality
Political participation
In the political thought of the eighteenth century, “democracy”
had
several meanings. One, derived from the writings of Aristotle,
defined
democracy as a system in which the entire people governed
directly.
However, this was thought to mean mob rule. British thinkers
sometimes

used the word when referring to the House of Commons, the
“democratic”
branch of a mixed government. In the wake of the American
Revolution,
the term came into wider use to express the popular aspirations
for greater
equality inspired by the struggle for independence.
Throughout the colonies, election campaigns became
freewheeling
debates on the fundamentals of government. Universal male
suffrage,
religious toleration, and even the abolition of slavery were
discussed
not only by the educated elite but also by artisans, small
farmers, and
laborers, now emerging as a self-conscious element in politics.
In many
colonies-turned-states, members of the militia demanded the
right to elect
all their officers and to vote for public officials whether or not
they met
age and property qualifications. They thereby established the
tradition
that service in the army enabled excluded groups to stake a
claim to full
citizenship.
The Revolution in Pennsylvania
The Revolution’s radical potential was more evident in
Pennsylvania than
in any other state. Nearly the entire prewar elite opposed
independence,
fearing that severing the tie with Britain would lead to rule by
the “rabble”

and to attacks on property. The vacuum of political leadership
opened the
door for the rise of a new pro-independence grouping, based on
the artisan
and lower-class communities of Philadelphia, and organized in
extralegal
committees and the local militia.
Staunch advocates of equality, Pennsylvania’s radical leaders
par-
ticularly attacked property qualifications for voting. “God gave
mankind
freedom by nature,” declared the anonymous author of the
pamphlet The
People the Best Governors, “and made every man equal to his
neighbors.” The
people, therefore, were “the best guardians of their own
liberties,” and
every free man should be eligible to vote and hold office. Three
months
after independence, Pennsylvania adopted a new state
constitution that
sought to institutionalize democracy by concentrating power in
a one-
house legislature elected annually by all men over age twenty-
one who
paid taxes. It abolished the office of governor, dispensed with
property
qualifications for officeholding, and provided that schools with
low fees be
established in every county. It also included clauses
guaranteeing “free-
dom of speech, and of writing,” and religious liberty.
John Dickinson’s copy of the

Pennsylvania constitution of 1776,
with handwritten proposals for
changes. Dickinson, one of the
more conservative advocates of
independence, felt the new state
constitution was far too democratic.
He crossed out a provision that all
“free men” should be eligible to hold
office, and another declaring the
people not bound by laws that did
not promote “the common good.”
Democracy
171D E M O C R A T I Z I N G F R E E D O M
How did equality become a stronger component of American
freedom after the Revolution?
The New Constitutions
Like Pennsylvania, every state adopted a new constitution in the
aftermath
of independence. Nearly all Americans now agreed that their

governments
must be republics, meaning that their authority rested on the
consent of
the governed, and that there would be no king or hereditary
aristocracy.
In part to counteract what he saw as Pennsylvania’s excessive
radi-
calism, John Adams in 1776 published Thoughts on
Government, which
insisted that the new constitutions should create “balanced
governments”
whose structure would reflect the division of society between
the wealthy
(represented in the upper house) and ordinary men (who would
control the
lower). A powerful governor and judiciary would ensure that
neither class
infringed on the liberty of the other. Adams’s call for two-house
legislatures
was followed by every state except Pennsylvania, Georgia, and
Vermont.
But only his own state, Massachusetts, gave the governor an
effective veto
over laws passed by the legislature. Americans had come to
believe that
excessive royal authority had undermined British liberty. They
had long
resented efforts by appointed governors to challenge the power
of colonial
assemblies. They preferred power to rest with the legislature.
The Right to Vote
The issue of requirements for voting and officeholding proved
far more

contentious. To John Adams, as conservative on the internal
affairs of
America as he had been radical on independence, freedom and
equality
were opposites. Men without property, he believed, had no
“judgment of
their own,” and the removal of property qualifications,
therefore, would
“confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to
one com-
mon level.” Eliminating traditional social ranks, however, was
precisely
the aim of the era’s radical democrats.
Democracy gained the least ground in the southern states, whose
highly deferential political traditions enabled the landed gentry
to retain
their control of political affairs. In Virginia and South Carolina,
the new
constitutions retained property qualifications for voting and
authorized
the gentry-dominated legislature to choose the governor.
The most democratic new constitutions moved much of the way
toward the idea of voting as an entitlement rather than a
privilege, but
they generally stopped short of universal suffrage, even for free
men.
Pennsylvania’s constitution no longer required ownership of
property, but
it retained the taxpaying qualification. As a result, it
enfranchised nearly all
of the state’s free male population but still barred a small
number, mainly
New state constitutions

Power in legislature
The property qualification for
suffrage
in172
paupers and domestic servants, from voting. Nonetheless, even
with the
taxpaying requirement, it was a dramatic departure from the
colonial prac-
tice of restricting the suffrage to those who could claim to be
economically
independent. It elevated “personal liberty,” in the words of one
essayist, to a
position more important than property ownership in defining the
boundar-
ies of the political nation.
By the 1780s, except in Virginia, Maryland, and New York, a
large
majority of the adult white male population could meet voting
require-
ments. New Jersey’s new state constitution of 1776 granted the
suffrage to
all “inhabitants” who met a property qualification. Until the
state added
the word “male” (along with “white”) in 1807, property-owning
women,
mostly widows, did cast ballots. In the popular language of
politics if not in
law, freedom and an individual’s right to vote had become
interchangeable.

T O W A R D R E L I G I O U S T O L E R A T I O N
As remarkable as the expansion of political freedom was the
Revolution’s
impact on American religion. Religious toleration, declared one
Virginia
patriot, was part of “the common cause of Freedom.” We have
already seen
that some colonies, like Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, had
long made a
practice of toleration. But freedom of worship before the
Revolution arose
more from the reality of religious pluralism than from a well-
developed
theory of religious liberty. Most colonies supported religious
institutions
with public funds and discriminated in voting and officeholding
against
Freedom and the right to vote
Religious pluralism
A 1771 image of New York City lists
some of the numerous churches
visible from the New Jersey shore,
illustrating the diversity of religions
practiced in the city.

173T O W A R D R E L I G I O U S T O L E R A T I O N
How did the expansion of religious liberty reflect the new
American ideal of freedom?
Catholics, Jews, and even dissenting Protestants. On the very
eve of inde-
pendence, Baptists who refused to pay taxes to support local
Congrega-
tional ministers were still being jailed in Massachusetts. “While
our
country are pleading so high for liberty,” the victims
complained, “yet
they are denying of it to their neighbors.”
Catholic Americans
The War of Independence weakened the deep tradition of
American
anti-Catholicism. When the Second Continental Congress
decided on an
ill-fated invasion of Canada, it invited the inhabitants of
predominantly
Catholic Quebec to join in the struggle against Britain, assuring
them that
Protestants and Catholics could readily cooperate. In 1778, the
United
States formed an alliance with France, a Catholic nation. The
indispens-
able assistance provided by France to American victory
strengthened the
idea that Catholics had a role to play in the newly independent
nation. In
fact, this was a marked departure from the traditional notion
that the full
rights of Englishmen applied only to Protestants. When

America’s first
Roman Catholic bishop, John Carroll of Maryland, visited
Boston in 1791,
he received a cordial welcome.
Separating Church and State
Many of the leaders of the Revolution con-
sidered it essential for the new nation to
shield itself from the unruly passions and
violent conflicts that religious differences
had inspired during the past three cen-
turies. Men like Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams, James Madison, and Alexander
Hamilton viewed religious doctrines
through the Enlightenment lens of ratio-
nalism and skepticism. They believed in a
benevolent Creator but not in supernatural
interventions into the affairs of men.
The drive to separate church and state
brought together Deists like Jefferson, who
hoped to erect a “wall of separation” that
would free politics and the exercise of
the intellect from religious control, with
Anti-Catholicism weakened
In Side of the Old Lutheran Church
in 1800, York, Pa. A watercolor by
a local artist depicts the interior
of one of the numerous churches

that flourished after independence.
While the choir sings, a man chases
a dog out of the building and
another man stokes the stove. The
institutionalization of religious liberty
was one of the most important results
of the American Revolution.
n174
members of evangelical sects, who sought to protect religion
from the
corrupting embrace of government.
The movement toward religious freedom received a major
impetus
during the revolutionary era. Throughout the new nation, states
disestab-
lished their established churches—that is, deprived them of
public funding
and special legal privileges—although in some cases they
appropriated
money for the general support of Protestant denominations. The
seven
state constitutions that began with declarations of rights all
declared a
commitment to “the free exercise of religion.”

To be sure, every state but New York—whose constitution of
1777
established complete religious liberty—kept intact colonial
provisions
barring Jews from voting and holding public office.
Massachusetts retained
its Congregationalist establishment well into the nineteenth
century.
It would not end public financial support for religious
institutions until
1833. Throughout the country, however, Catholics gained the
right to wor-
ship without persecution.
Jefferson and Religious Liberty
In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson drew up a Bill for Establishing
Religious
Freedom, which was introduced in the House of Burgesses in
1779 and
adopted, after considerable controversy, in 1786. Jefferson’s
bill, whose
preamble declared that God “hath created the mind free,”
eliminated reli-
gious requirements for voting and officeholding and government
financial
support for churches, and barred the state from “forcing”
individuals to
adopt one or another religious outlook. Late in life, Jefferson
would list this
measure, along with the Declaration of Independence and the
founding of
the University of Virginia, as the three accomplishments
(leaving out his
two terms as president) for which he wished to be remembered.

Religious liberty became the model for the revolutionary
genera-
tion’s definition of “rights” as private matters that must be
protected from
governmental interference. In an overwhelmingly Christian
(though not
necessarily churchgoing) nation, the separation of church and
state drew
a sharp line between public authority and a realm defined as
“private,”
reinforcing the idea that rights exist as restraints on the power
of govern-
ment. It also offered a new justification for the idea of the
United States as
a beacon of liberty. In successfully opposing a Virginia tax for
the general
support of Christian churches, James Madison insisted that one
reason for
the complete separation of church and state was to reinforce the
principle
that the new nation offered “asylum to the persecuted and
oppressed of
every nation and religion.”
Disestablishing churches
Limits of religious freedom
Definition of “rights”
175T O W A R D R E L I G I O U S T O L E R A T I O N
How did the expansion of religious liberty reflect the new
American ideal of freedom?

The Revolution did not end the influence of religion on
American society—quite the reverse. Thanks to religious
freedom, the early repub lic witnessed an amazing pro-
liferation of religious denominations. The most well-
established churches—Anglican, Presbyterian,
and Congregationalist—found themselves con-
stantly challenged by upstarts like Free-Will
Baptists and Universalists. Today, even as
debate continues over the proper relationship
between spiritual and political authority, more
than 1,300 religions are practiced in the United
States.
Christian Republicanism
Despite the separation of church and state, colonial leaders
were not hostile to religion. Indeed, religious and secular lan-
guage merged in the struggle for independence, producing an
outlook
scholars have called Chris tian Republicanism. Proponents of
evangelical
religion and of republican government both believed that in the
absence
of some kind of moral restraint (provided by religion and
government),
human nature was likely to succumb to corruption and vice.
Samuel
Adams, for example, believed the new nation would become a
“Christian
Sparta,” in which Christianity and personal self-discipline
underpinned
both personal and national progress. American religious leaders
inter-
preted the American Revolution as a divinely sanctioned event,
part of

God’s plan to promote the development of a good society.
Rather than
being so sinful that it would have to be destroyed before Christ
returned,
as many ministers had previously preached, the world, the
Revolution
demonstrated, could be perfected.
A Virtuous Citizenry
Patriot leaders worried about the character of future citizens,
especially how
to encourage the quality of “virtue,” the ability to sacrifice self-
interest for
the public good. Some, like Jefferson, John Adams, and
Benjamin Rush, put
forward plans for the establishment of free, state-supported
public schools.
These would instruct future citizens in what Adams called “the
principles
of freedom,” equipping them for participation in the now-
expanded public
sphere and for the wise election of representatives. A broad
diffusion of
Circle of the Social and Benevolent
Affections, an engraving in The
Columbian Magazine, 1789, illustrates
various admirable qualities radiating
outward from the virtuous citizen,
including love for one’s family,

community, nation, and all humanity.
Affection only for those of the
same religion or “colour” is labeled
“imperfect.”
Plans for public schools
knowledge was essential for a government based on the will of
the people
to survive and for America to avoid the fixed class structure of
Europe. No
nation, Jefferson wrote, could “expect to be ignorant and free.”
D E F I N I N G E C O N O M I C F R E E D O M
Toward Free Labor
In economic as well as political and religious affairs, the
Revolution
rewrote the definition of freedom. In colonial America, slavery
was one
part of a broad spectrum of kinds of unfree labor. In the
generation
after independence, with the rapid decline of indentured
servitude and
apprenticeship and the transformation of paid domestic service
into an
occupation for blacks and white females, the halfway houses

between
slavery and freedom disappeared, at least for white men.
The democratization of freedom contributed to these changes.
The
lack of freedom inherent in apprenticeship and servitude
increasingly
came to be seen as incompatible with republican citizenship. In
1784, a
group of “respectable” New Yorkers released a newly arrived
shipload
of indentured servants on the grounds that their status was
“contrary
to . . . the idea of liberty this country has so happily
established.” By
1800, indentured servitude had all but disappeared from the
United
States. This development sharpened the distinction between
freedom
and slavery and between a northern economy relying on what
would
come to be called “free labor” (that is, working for wages or
owning a
farm or shop) and a southern economy ever more heavily
dependent on
the labor of slaves.
The Soul of a Republic
Americans of the revolutionary generation were preoccupied
with the
social conditions of freedom. Could a republic survive with a
sizable
dependent class of citizens? “A general and tolerably equal
distribution
of landed property,” proclaimed the educator and newspaper

editor Noah
Webster, “is the whole basis of national freedom.” “Equality,”
he added,
was “the very soul of a republic.” At the Revolution’s radical
edge, some
patriots believed that government had a responsibility to limit
accu-
mulations of property in the name of equality. To most free
Americans,
however, “equality” meant equal opportunity, rather than
equality of
Unfree labor
Decline in indentured servitude
Equal opportunity rather than
equality of condition
177D E F I N I N G E C O N O M I C F R E E D O M
How did the definition of economic freedom change after the
Revolution, and who benefited?
condition. Many leaders of the Revolution nevertheless
assumed that in
the exceptional circumstances of the New World, with its vast
areas of
available land and large population of independent farmers and
artisans,
the natural workings of society would produce justice, liberty,
and equality.
Like many other Americans of his generation, Thomas Jefferson

believed that to lack economic resources was to lack freedom.
Among his
achievements included laws passed by Virginia abolishing entail
(the limi-
tation of inheritance to a specified line of heirs to keep an estate
within a
family) and primogeniture (the practice of passing a family’s
land entirely
to the eldest son). These measures, he believed, would help to
prevent the
rise of a “future aristocracy.”
The Politics of Inflation
The Revolution thrust to the forefront of politics debates over
whether
local or national authorities should take steps to bolster
household inde-
pendence and protect Americans’ livelihoods by limiting price
increases.
To finance the war, Congress issued hundreds of millions of
dollars in
paper money. Coupled with wartime disruption of agriculture
and trade
and the hoarding of goods by some Americans hoping to profit
from short-
ages, this produced an enormous increase in prices.
Between 1776 and 1779, more than thirty incidents took place
in which
crowds confronted merchants accused of holding scarce goods
off the mar-
ket. Often, they seized stocks of food and sold them at the
traditional “just
price,” a form of protest common in eighteenth-century
England. In one

such incident, a crowd of 100 Massachusetts women accused an
“eminent,
wealthy, stingy merchant” of hoarding coffee, opened his
warehouse, and
View from Bushongo Tavern, an
engraving from The Columbian
Magazine, 1788, depicts the
landscape of York County,
Pennsylvania, exemplifying the kind of
rural independence many Americans
thought essential to freedom.
Responses to wartime inflation
Abolishing entail and
primogeniture
carted off the goods. “A large concourse of men,” wrote Abigail
Adams,
“stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction.”
The Debate over Free Trade
In 1779, with inflation totally out of control (in one month,
prices in

Philadelphia jumped 45 percent), Congress urged states to adopt
measures
to fix wages and prices. This request reflected the belief that the
task of
republican government was to promote the public good, not
individuals’
self-interest. But when a Committee of Safety tried to enforce
price controls, it
met spirited opposition from merchants and other advocates of a
free market.
In opposition to the traditional view that men should sacrifice
for the
public good, believers in free trade argued that economic
development
arose from economic self-interest. Adam Smith’s great treatise
on econom-
ics, The Wealth of Nations, published in England in 1776, was
beginning to
become known in the United States. Smith’s argument that the
“invisible
hand” of the free market directed economic life more effectively
and fairly
than governmental intervention offered intellectual justification
for those
who believed that the economy should be left to regulate itself.
Advocates of independence had envisioned America, released
from
the British Navigation Acts, trading freely with all the world.
Opponents
of price controls advocated free trade at home as well. “Natural
liberty”
would regulate prices. Here were two competing conceptions of
economic
freedom—one based on the traditional view that the interests of

the com-
munity took precedence over the property rights of individuals,
the other
that unregulated economic freedom would produce social
harmony and
public gain. After 1779, state and federal efforts to regulate
prices ceased.
But the clash between these two visions of economic freedom
would con-
tinue long after independence had been achieved.
T H E L I M I T S O F L I B E R T Y
Colonial Loyalists
Not all Americans shared in the democratization of freedom
brought on by
the American Revolution. Loyalists—those who retained their
allegiance
to the crown—experienced the conflict and its aftermath as a
loss of liberty.
Many leading Loyalists had supported American resistance in
the 1760s
A cartoon from 1777 illustrates
discontent with rising prices. One
soldier identifies “extortioners” as
“the worst enemies of the country.”
Another complains about serving
“my country for sixteen pence

per day.”
Two visions of economic
freedom
179T H E L I M I T S O F L I B E R T Y
How did the Revolution diminish the freedoms of both Loyalists
and Native Americans?
but drew back at the prospect of independence and war.
Altogether, an
estimated 20 to 25 percent of free Americans remained loyal to
the British,
and nearly 20,000 fought on their side.
There were Loyalists in every colony, but they were most
numer-
ous in New York, Pennsylvania, and the backcountry of the
Carolinas
and Georgia. Some were wealthy men whose livelihoods
depended on
close working relationships with Britain—lawyers, merchants,
Anglican
ministers, and imperial officials. Many feared anarchy in the
event of an
American victory.
The struggle for independence heightened existing tensions
between
ethnic groups and social classes within the colonies. Some
Loyalist ethnic
minorities, like Highland Scots in North Carolina, feared that
local majori-

ties would infringe on their cultural autonomy. In the South,
many back-
country farmers who had long resented the domination of public
affairs
by wealthy planters sided with the British, as did numerous
slaves, who
hoped an American defeat would bring them freedom.
The Loyalists’ Plight
The War of Independence was in some respects a civil war
among
Americans. The new state governments, or in other instances
crowds
of patriots, suppressed newspapers thought to be loyal to
Britain.
Pennsylvania arrested and seized the property of Quak ers,
Mennonites,
and Moravians—pacifist denominations who refused to bear
arms because
of their religious beliefs. With the approval of Congress, many
states
required residents to take oaths of allegiance to the new nation.
Those who
refused were d enied the right to vote and in many cases forced
into exile.
Some wealthy Loyalists saw their land confiscated and sold at
auction.
When the war ended, as many as
60,000 Loyalists (including 10,000 slaves)
were banished from the United States or
emigrated voluntarily—mostly to Britain,
Canada, or the West Indies—rather than
live in an independent United States. But
for those who remained, hostility proved to

be short-lived. In the Treaty of Paris of 1783,
as noted in Chapter 5, Americans pledged to
end the persecution of Loyalists by state and
local governments and to restore property
seized during the war. Loyalists who did not
leave the country were quickly reintegrated
A 1780 British cartoon commenting
on the “cruel fate” of American
Loyalists. Pro-independence colonists
are likened to savage Indians.
Social bases of loyalism
A sizable Loyalist population
Halifax
Boston
Charleston
NEWFOUNDLAND
NOVA
SCOTIA
MAINE
(part of MA)

NEW
HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS
CONNECTICUT
RHODE ISLAND
NEW
YORK
PENNSYLVANIA
NEW JERSEY
MARYLAND
DELAWARE
VIRGINIA
NORTH
CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
GEORGIA
UPPER
CANADA
LOWER
CANADA
FLORIDA

SPANISH
LOUISIANA
SPANISH CUBA
St . P i e r re &
Mi que lon
( France)
Be rmuda
Bahamas
Lake
Superior
La
ke
M
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hi
ga
n
Lake H
uron
Lak
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rie

L. O
ntario
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers
Strongly Loyalist colonists
Loyalists or neutral Indians
Neutral colonists
Strong patriot support
Other British territory
L O Y A L I S M I N T H E A M E R I C A N
R E V O L U T I O N
The Revolutionary War was, in some ways, a civil war within
the colonies. There were Loyalists in

every colony; they were most numerous in New York and North
and South Carolina.
181T H E L I M I T S O F L I B E R T Y
How did the Revolution diminish the freedoms of both Loyalists
and Native Americans?
into American society, although confiscated Loyalist property
was not
returned.
The Indians’ Revolution
Another group for whom American independence spelled a loss
of
freedom—the Indians—was less fortunate. About 200,000
Native
Ameri cans lived east of the Mississippi River in 1790. Like
white
Americans, Indians divided in allegiance during the War of
Indepen-
dence. Some, like the Stockbridge tribe in Massachusetts,
suffered heavy
losses fighting the British. Many tribes tried to maintain
neutrality, only
to see themselves break into pro-American and pro-British
factions.
Most of the Iroquois nations sided with the British, but the
Oneida joined
the Americans. Despite strenuous efforts to avoid conflict,
members of
the Iroquois Confederacy for the first time faced each other in
battle.

(After the war, the Oneida submitted to Congress claims for
losses suf-
fered during the war, including sheep, hogs, kettles, frying
pans, plows,
and pewter plates—evidence of how fully they had been
integrated into
the market economy.) In the South, younger Cherokee leaders
joined the
British while older chiefs tended to favor the Americans. Other
southern
tribes like the Choctaw and Creek remained loyal to the crown.
Among the grievances Jefferson listed in the Declaration of
Inde-
pendence was Britain’s enlisting “savages” to fight on its side.
But in the war
that raged throughout the western frontier, savagery was not
confined to
either combatant. In the Ohio country, the British encouraged
Indian allies
to burn frontier farms and settlements. For their part, otherwise
humane
patriot leaders ignored the traditional rules of warfare when it
came to
Indians. Washington dispatched an expedition, led by General
John
Sullivan, against hostile Iroquois, with the aim of “the total
destruction and
devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many
prisoners of
every age and sex as possible.” After his campaign ended,
Sullivan reported
that he had burned forty Indian towns, destroyed thousands of
bushels of
corn, and uprooted a vast number of fruit trees and vegetable
gardens.

Independence created governments democratically accountable
to
voters who coveted Indian land. But liberty for whites meant
loss of liberty
for Indians. Independence offered the opportunity to complete
the process
of dispossessing Indians of their rich lands in upstate New
York, the Ohio
Valley, and the southern backcountry. The only hope for the
Indians,
Jefferson wrote, lay in their “removal beyond the Mississippi.”
American independence, a group of visiting Indians told the
Spanish
governor of St. Louis, was “the greatest blow that could have
been dealt
Indians’ allegiances during the
War of Independence
Savage warfare
Dispossession of Indian lands
us.” The Treaty of Paris marked the culmination of a century in
which the
balance of power in eastern North America shifted away from
the Indians
and toward white Americans. In the treaty, the British
abandoned their
Indian allies, agreeing to recognize American sovereignty over

the entire
region east of the Mississippi River, completely ignoring the
Indian pres-
ence. In the end there seemed to be no permanent place for the
descendants
of the continent’s native population in a new nation bent on
creating an
empire in the West.
S L A V E R Y A N D T H E R E V O L U T I O N
Although Indians experienced American independence as a real
threat to
their own liberty, African-Americans saw in the ideals of the
Revolution
and the reality of war an opportunity to claim freedom. When
the United
States declared its independence in 1776, the slave population
had grown
to 500,000, about one-fifth of the new nation’s inhabitants.
The Language of Slavery and Freedom
Slavery played a central part in the language of revolution.
Apart from
“liberty,” it was the word most frequently invoked in the era’s
legal and
political literature. In the era’s debates over British rule,
slavery was pri-
marily a political category, shorthand for the denial of one’s
personal and
political rights by arbitrary government. Those who lacked a
voice in pub-
lic affairs, declared a 1769 petition demanding an expansion of
the right to
vote in Britain, were “enslaved.”

The presence of hundreds of thousands of slaves powerfully
affected
the meaning of freedom for the leaders of the American
Revolution.
In a famous speech to Parliament warning
against attempts to intimidate the colonies,
the British statesman Edmund Burke sug-
gested that familiarity with slavery made
colonial leaders unusually sensitive to
threats to their own liberties. Where free-
dom was a privilege, not a common right, he
observed, “those who are free are by far the
most proud and jealous of their freedom.”
On the other hand, many British observers
The Treaty of Paris and
Indian peoples
Advertisement for newly arrived
slaves, in a Savannah newspaper,
1774. Even as colonists defended
their own liberty against the British,
the buying and selling of slaves
continued.
183S L A V E R Y A N D T H E R E V O L U T I O N

What was the impact of the Revolution on slavery?
could not resist pointing out the colonists’ apparent hypocrisy.
“How is it,”
asked Dr. Samuel Johnson, “that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty from
the drivers of negroes?”
Obstacles to Abolition
The contradiction between freedom and slavery seems so self-
evident that
it is difficult today to appreciate the power of the obstacles to
abolition.
At the time of the Revolution, slavery was already an old
institution in
America. It existed in every colony and formed the basis of the
economy
and social structure from Maryland southward. Virtually every
founding
father owned slaves at one point in his life, including not only
southern
planters but northern merchants, lawyers, and farmers. (John
Adams and
Tom Paine were notable exceptions.) Thomas Jefferson owned
more than
100 slaves when he wrote of mankind’s unalienable right to
liberty, and
everything he cherished in his own manner of life, from lavish
entertain-
ments to the leisure that made possible the pursuit of arts and
sciences,
ultimately rested on slave labor.
Some patriots, in fact, argued that slavery for blacks made
freedom

possible for whites. Eliminating the great bulk of the dependent
poor from
the political nation left the public arena to men of propertied
indepen-
dence. Owning slaves offered a route to the economic autonomy
widely
deemed necessary for genuine freedom, a point driven home by
a 1780
Virginia law that rewarded veterans of the War of Independence
with
300 acres of land—and a slave.
The Cause of General Liberty
Nonetheless, by imparting so absolute a value to liberty and
defining free-
dom as a universal entitlement rather than a set of rights
specific to a par-
ticular place or people, the Revolution inevitably raised
questions about
the status of slavery in the new nation. Before independence,
there had
been little public discussion of the institution, even though
enlightened
opinion in the Atlantic world had come to view slavery as
morally wrong
and economically inefficient, a relic of a barbarous past.
Samuel Sewall, a Boston merchant, published The Selling of
Joseph in
1700, the first antislavery tract printed in America. All “the
sons of Adam,”
Sewall insisted, were entitled to “have equal right unto liberty.”
During
the course of the eighteenth century, antislavery sentiments had
spread

among Pennsylvania’s Quakers, whose belief that all persons
possessed
the divine “inner light” made them particularly receptive.
Slavery entrenched
Slavery amidst freedom
Freedom as universal
But it was during the revolutionary era that slavery for the first
time
became a focus of public debate. The Pennsylvania patriot
Benjamin Rush
in 1773 called on “advocates for American liberty” to “espouse
the cause
of . . . general liberty” and warned that slavery was one of
those “national
crimes” that one day would bring “national punishment.”
Petitions for Freedom
The Revolution inspired widespread hopes that slavery could be
removed
from American life. Most dramatically, slaves themselves
appreciated that
by defining freedom as a universal right, the leaders of the
Revolution had
devised a weapon that could be used against their own bondage.
The lan-
guage of liberty echoed in slave communities, North and South.
The most

insistent advocates of freedom as a universal entitlement were
African-
Americans, who demanded that the leaders of the struggle for
indepen-
dence live up to their self-proclaimed creed.
The first concrete steps toward emancipation in revolutionary
America were “freedom petitions”—arguments for liberty
presented to
New England’s courts and legislatures in the early 1770s by
enslaved
African-Americans. How, one such petition asked, could
America “seek
release from English tyranny and not seek the same for
disadvantaged
Africans in her midst?” The turmoil of war offered other
avenues to free-
dom. Many slaves ran away from their masters and tried to pass
as free-
born. The number of fugitive-slave advertisements in colonial
newspapers
rose dramatically in the 1770s and 1780s. As one owner put it in
accounting
for his slave Jim’s escape, “I believe he has nothing in view but
freedom.”
In 1776, the year of American independence,
Lemuel Haynes, a black member of the Massa-
chusetts militia and later a celebrated minister,
urged Americans to “extend” their concep-
tion of freedom. If liberty were truly “an
innate principle” for all mankind, Haynes
insisted, “even an African [had] as equally
good a right to his liberty in common with

Englishmen.” Like Haynes, many black
writers and leaders sought to make white
Americans understand slavery as a concrete
reality—the denial of all the essential ele-
ments of freedom—not a metaphor for lack of
political representation, as many whites used
the word.
African-Americans advocates
for freedom
A tray painted by an unknown artist in
the early nineteenth century portrays
Lemuel Haynes, a celebrated black
preacher and critic of slavery.
185S L A V E R Y A N D T H E R E V O L U T I O N
Most slaves of the revolutionary era were only one or two
generations
removed from Africa. They did not need the ideology of the
Revolution
to persuade them that freedom was a birthright—the experience
of their
parents and grandparents suggested as much. “My love of
freedom,” wrote

the black poet Phillis Wheatley in 1783, arose from the “cruel
fate” of being
“snatch’d from Afric’s” shore. Yet when blacks invoked the
Revolution’s
ideology of liberty to demand their own rights and defined
freedom as a
universal entitlement, they demonstrated how American they
had become.
British Emancipators
As noted in the previous chapter, some 5,000 slaves fought for
American
independence, and many thereby gained their freedom. Yet far
more
slaves obtained liberty from the British. Lord Dunmore’s
proclamation of
1775, and the Phillipsburgh Proclamation of General Henry
Clinton issued
four years later, offered sanctuary to slaves who escaped to
British lines.
All told, nearly 100,000 slaves, including one-quarter of all the
slaves in
South Carolina and one-third of those in Georgia, deserted their
owners
and fled to British lines. This was by far the largest exodus
from the planta-
tions until the outbreak of the Civil War.
Some of these escaped slaves were recaptured as the tide of
battle
turned in the patriots’ favor. But at the war’s end, more than
15,000 black
men, women, and children accompanied the British out of the
country.
They ended up in Nova Scotia, England, and Sierra Leone, a

settlement for
former slaves from the United States established by the British
on the coast
of West Africa. Some were re-enslaved in the West Indies.
The issue of compensation for the slaves who departed with the
British poisoned relations between Britain and the new United
States for
decades to come. Finally, in 1827, Britain agreed to make
payments to 1,100
Americans who claimed they had been improperly deprived of
their slave
property.
Voluntary Emancipations
For a brief moment, the revolutionary upheaval appeared to
threaten the
continued existence of slavery. During the War of
Independence, nearly
every state prohibited or discouraged the further importation of
slaves from
Africa. The war left much of the plantation South in ruins.
During the 1780s
and 1790s, a considerable number of slaveholders, especially in
Virginia
and Maryland, voluntarily emancipated their slaves. In 1796, for
example,
Richard Randolph, a member of a prominent Virginia family,
drafted a will
A portrait of the poet Phillis Wheatley
(1753–1784).
Voluntary emancipations in

the South
Freedom through the British
From their home in Massachusetts, Abigail Adams maintained a
lively correspon-
dence with her husband while he was in Philadelphia serving in
the Continental
Congress. In this letter, she suggests some of the limits of the
patriots’ commitment
to liberty.
I wish you would write me a letter half as long as I write you,
and tell me if you may where
your fleet have gone? What sort of defense Virginia can make
against our common enemy?
Whether it is so situated as to make an able defense? . . . I have
sometimes been ready to
think that the passion for Liberty cannot be equally strong in
the breasts of those who have
been accustomed to deprive their fellow creatures of theirs. Of
this I am certain, that it is
not founded upon that generous and Christian principle of doing
to others as we would that
others should do unto us. . . .
I long to hear that you have declared an independency, and by
the way in the new Code
of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I

desire you would Remember
the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than
your ancestors. Do not put such
unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all
men would be tyrants if they
could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies
we are determined to foment
a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any such laws
in which we have no voice,
or representation.
That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly
established as to admit of
no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give
up the harsh title of Master
for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not
put it out of the power of the
vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with
impunity? Men of sense in
all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals
of your sex. Regard us then
as beings placed by providence under your protection and in
imitation of the Supreme Being
make use of that power only for our happiness.
From Abigail Adams to John Adams,
Braintree, Mass. (March 31, 1776)
Many slaves saw the struggle for independence as an

opportunity to assert their
own claims to freedom. Among the first efforts toward abolition
were petitions by
Massachusetts slaves to their legislature.
The efforts made by the legislative of this province in their last
sessions to free themselves
from slavery, gave us, who are in that deplorable state, a high
degree of satisfaction. We
expect great things from men who have made such a noble stand
against the designs of their
fellow-men to enslave them. We cannot but wish and hope Sir,
that you will have the same
grand object, we mean civil and religious liberty, in view in
your next session. The divine
spirit of freedom, seems to fire every breast on this continent. .
. .
* * *
Your petitioners apprehend that they have in common with all
other men a natural and
unalienable right to that freedom which the great parent of the
universe hath bestowed
equally on all mankind and which they have never forfeited by
any compact or agreement
whatever but [they] were unjustly dragged by the hand of cruel
power from their dearest
friends and . . . from a populous, pleasant, and plentiful
country and in violation of laws of
nature and of nations and in defiance of all the tender feelings
of humanity brought here . . . to
be sold like beast[s] of burden . . . among a people professing
the mild religion of Jesus. . . .

In imitation of the laudable example
of the good people of these states your
petitioners have long and patiently waited
the event of petition after petition by them
presented to the legislative body. . . . They
cannot but express their astonishment that
it has never been considered that every
principle from which America has acted
in the course of their unhappy difficulties
with Great Britain pleads stronger than
a thousand arguments in favor of your
petitioners [and their desire] to be restored
to the enjoyment of that which is the natural
right of all men.
From Petitions of Slaves to
the Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. What does Abigail Adams have in
mind when she refers to the “unlimited
power” husbands exercise over their
wives?
2. How do the slaves employ the principles
of the Revolution for their own aims?
3. What do these documents suggest

about the boundaries of freedom in the
era of the American Revolution?
that condemned slavery as an “infamous practice,” provided for
the freedom
of about 90 slaves, and set aside part of his land for them to
own. Farther
south, however, voluntary emancipation never got under way.
Even dur-
ing the war, when South Carolina needed more troops, the
colony’s leaders
rejected the idea of emancipating some blacks to aid in the fight
against the
British. They would rather lose the war than lose their slaves.
Abolition in the North
Between 1777 (when Vermont drew up a constitution that
banned slavery)
and 1804 (when New Jersey acted), every state north of
Maryland took
steps toward emancipation, the first time in recorded history
that legisla-
tive power had been invoked to eradicate slavery. But even
here, where
slavery was peripheral to the economy, the method of abolition
reflected
how property rights impeded emancipation. Generally, abolition
laws did
not free living slaves. Instead, they provided for the liberty of
any child

born in the future to a slave mother, but only after he or she had
served the
mother’s master until adulthood as compensation for the
owner’s future
economic loss.
Because of these legal provisions, abolition in the North was a
slow,
drawn-out process. The first national census, in 1790, recorded
21,000
slaves still living in New York and 11,000 in New Jersey. The
New Yorker
John Jay, chief justice of the United States, owned five slaves
in 1800. As late
as 1830, the census revealed that there were still 3,500 slaves in
the North.
Free Black Communities
All in all, the Revolution had a contradictory impact on
American slavery
and, therefore, on American freedom. Gradual as it was, the
abolition of
slavery in the North drew a line across the new nation, creating
the danger-
ous division between free and slave states. Abolition in the
North, volun-
tary emancipation in the Upper South, and the escape of
thousands from
bondage created, for the first time in American history, a
sizable popula-
tion of free blacks (many of whose members took new family
names like
Freeman or Freeland).
On the eve of independence, virtually every black person in

America
had been a slave. Now, free communities, with their own
churches,
schools, and leaders, came into existence. They formed a
standing chal-
lenge to the logic of slavery, a haven for fugitives, and a
springboard for
further efforts at abolition. From 1776 to 1810, the number of
free blacks
residing in the United States grew from 10,000 to nearly
200,000, and
Legislation against slavery
A photograph from around 1851 of
Caesar, who had been a slave in
New York State until the institution
was finally ended in 1827.
189D A U G H T E R S O F L I B E R T Y
many free black men, especially in the North, enjoyed the right
to vote
under new state constitutions.
Nonetheless, the stark fact is that slavery survived the War of
Inde-
pendence and, thanks to the natural increase of the slave
population, con-

tinued to grow. The national census of 1790 revealed that
despite all those
who had become free through state laws, voluntary
emancipation, and
escape, the number of slaves in the United States had grown to
700,000—
200,000 more than in 1776.
D A U G H T E R S O F L I B E R T Y
Revolutionary Women
The revolutionary generation included numerous women who
contrib-
uted to the struggle for independence. Deborah Sampson, the
daughter of a
poor Massachusetts farmer, disguised herself as a man and in
1782, at age
twenty-one, enlisted in the Continental army. Ultimately, her
command-
ing officer discovered her secret but kept it to himself, and she
was honor-
ably discharged at the end of the war. Years later, Congress
awarded her
a soldier’s pension. Other patriotic women participated in
crowd actions
against unscrupulous merchants, raised funds to assist soldiers,
contrib-
uted homespun goods to the army, and passed along information
about
British army movements.
Within American households, women participated in the
political
discussions unleashed by independence. “Was not every
fireside,” John

Adams later recalled, “a theater of politics?”
Gender, nonetheless, formed a boundary
limiting those entitled to the full bless-
ings of American freedom. The principle
of “coverture” (described in Chapter 1)
remained intact in the new nation. The
husband still held legal authority over the
person, property, and choices of his wife.
Despite the expansion of democracy, politics
remained overwhelmingly a male realm.
For men, political freedom meant
the right to self-government, the power
to consent to the individuals and political
arrangements that ruled over them. For
The 1781 cipher book (a notebook
for mathematics exercises) of Martha
Ryan, a North Carolina girl, contains
images of ships and a port town
and the patriotic slogan “Liberty
or Death,” illustrating how women
shared in the political culture of the
revolutionary era.
Growth in slave population

women, however, the marriage contract superseded the social
contract. A
woman’s relationship to the larger society was mediated through
her rela-
tionship with her husband. In both law and social reality,
women lacked
the essential qualification of political participation—the
opportunity for
autonomy based on ownership of property or control of one’s
own person.
Overall, the republican citizen was, by definition, male.
Republican Motherhood
The Revolution nonetheless did produce an improvement in
status for
many women. According to the ideology of “republican
motherhood”
that emerged as a result of independence, women played an
indispensable
role by training future citizens. Even though republican
motherhood ruled
out direct female involvement in politics, it encouraged the
expansion of
educational opportunities for women, so that they could impart
political
wisdom to their children. Women, wrote Benjamin Rush, needed
to have
a “suitable education,” to enable them to “instruct their sons in
the prin-
ciples of liberty and government.”
The idea of republican motherhood reinforced the trend, already
evident in the eighteenth century, toward the idea of

“companionate”
marriage, a voluntary union held together by affection and
mutual depen-
dency rather than male authority. In her letter to John Adams
quoted
above, Abigail Adams recommended that men should willingly
give up
“the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one
of Friend.”
The structure of family life itself was altered by the Revolution.
In colo-
nial America, those living within the household often included
indentured
servants, apprentices, and slaves. After independence, southern
slaves
remained, rhetorically at least, members of the owner’s
“family.” In the
North, however, with the rapid decline of various forms of
indentured ser-
vitude and apprenticeship, a more modern definition of the
household as
consisting of parents and their children took hold. Hired
workers, whether
domestic servants or farm laborers, were not considered part of
the family.
The Arduous Struggle for Liberty
The Revolution changed the life of virtually every American. As
a result
of the long struggle against British rule, the public sphere, and
with it the
right to vote, expanded markedly. Bound labor among whites
declined
dramatically, religious groups enjoyed greater liberty, blacks

mounted
a challenge to slavery in which many won their freedom, and
women in
Portrait of John and Elizabeth Lloyd
Cadwalader and Their Daughter Anne.
This 1772 portrait of a prominent
Philadelphia businessman and his
family by the American artist Charles
Willson Peale illustrates the emerging
ideal of the “companionate” marriage,
which is based on affection rather
than male authority.
A more modern household
Significance of the Revolution
191D A U G H T E R S O F L I B E R T Y
How did the Revolution affect the status of women?
some ways enjoyed a higher status. On the other hand, for
Indians, many
Loyalists, and the majority of slaves, American independence
meant a

deprivation of freedom.
The winds of change were sweeping across the Atlantic world.
The
year 1776 saw not only Paine’s Common Sense and Jefferson’s
Declaration
but also the publication in England of Adam Smith’s Wealth of
Nations,
which attacked the British policy of closely regulating trade,
and Jeremy
Bentham’s Fragment on Government, which criticized the
nature of British
government. Moreover, the ideals of the American Revolution
helped to
inspire countless subsequent struggles for social equality and
national
independence, from the French Revolution, which exploded in
1789,
to the uprising that overthrew the slave system in Haiti in the
1790s,
to the Latin American wars for independence in the early
nineteenth
century, and numerous struggles of colonial peoples for
nationhood in
the twentieth. But within the new republic, the debate over who
should
enjoy the blessings of liberty would continue long after
independence
had been achieved.
America Triumphant and Britannia
in Distress. An elaborate allegory
representing American independence

as a triumph of liberty, from an
almanac published in Boston in
1781. An accompanying key explains
the symbolism: (1) America [on the
right] holds an olive branch of peace
and invites all nations to trade with
her. (2) News of America’s triumph
is broadcast around the world.
(3) Britain, seated next to the devil,
laments the loss of trade with
America. (4) The British flag falls
from a fortress. (5) European ships in
American waters. (6) Benedict Arnold,
the traitor, hangs himself in New York
City [in fact, Arnold died of natural
causes in London in 1801].
The Revolution’s legacy

1. For the lower classes, colonial society had been based
on inequality, deference, and obedience. How did the
American Revolution challenge that social order?
2. Why did the Revolution cause more radical changes
in Pennsylvania than elsewhere, and how was this
radicalism demonstrated in the new state constitution?
3. How did ideas of political freedom affect people’s ideas
about economic rights and relationships?
4. What role did the founders foresee for religion in
American government and society?
5. What was the impact of the American Revolution on
Native Americans?
6. What were the most important features of the new state
constitutions?
7. How did popular views of property rights prevent slaves
from enjoying all the freedoms of the social contract?
8. How did revolutionary America see both improvements
and limitations in women’s roles and rights?
K E Y T E R M S
republics (p. 171)
Thoughts on Government
(p. 171)

balanced government (p. 171)
suffrage (p. 171)
wall of separation (p. 173)
Bill for Establishing Religious
Freedom (p. 174)
Christian Republicanism (p. 175)
free labor (p. 176)
inflation (p. 177)
free trade (p. 178)
The Wealth of Nations (p. 178)
Loyalists (p. 178)
General John Sullivan (p. 181)
abolition (p. 183)
freedom petitions (p. 184)
Lemuel Haynes (p. 184)
free blacks (p. 188)
coverture (p. 189)
republican motherhood (p. 190)

C E S
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1777 Articles of Confederation
drafted
1781 Articles of Confederation
ratified
1782 Letters from an American
Farmer
1783 Treaty of Paris

1784– Land Ordinances approved
1785
1785 Jefferson’s Notes on the
State of Virginia
1786– Shays’s Rebellion
1787
1787 Constitutional Convention
Northwest Ordinance of
1787
1788 The Federalist
Constitution ratified
1790 Naturalization Act
First national census
1791 Little Turtle defeats Arthur
St. Clair’s forces
Bill of Rights ratified
1794 Little Turtle defeated at
Battle of Fallen Timbers
1795 Treaty of Greenville
1808 Congress prohibits the
slave trade

F O U N D I N G A
N A T I O N
C H A P T E R 7
Banner of the Society of Pewterers.
A banner carried by one of the many
artisan groups that took part in New
York City’s Grand Federal Procession
of 1788 celebrating the ratification of
the Constitution. The banner depicts
artisans at work in their shop and some
of their products. The words “Solid and
Pure,” and the inscription at the upper
right, link the quality of their pewter
to their opinion of the new frame of
government and hopes for the future.
The inscription reads:
The Federal Plan Most Solid and Secure
Americans Their Freedom Will Endure

All Arts Shall Flourish in Columbia’s Land
And All Her Sons Join as One Social Band
1 7 8 3 – 1 7 9 1
D uring June and July of 1788, civic leaders in cities up and
down the Atlantic coast organized colorful pageants to celebrate
the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. For one day, Benjamin
Rush commented of Philadelphia’s parade, social class “forgot
its claims,”
as thousands of marchers—rich and poor, businessman and
apprentice—
joined in a common public ceremony. The parades testified to
the strong
popular support for the Constitution in the nation’s cities.
Elaborate
banners and floats gave voice to the hopes inspired by the new
structure
of government. “May commerce flourish and industry be
rewarded,”
declared Philadelphia’s mariners and shipbuilders.
Throughout the era of the Revolution, Americans spoke of their
nation as a “rising empire,” destined to populate and control the
entire
North American continent. Whereas Europe’s empires were
governed
by force, America’s would be different. In Jefferson’s phrase, it
would
be “an empire of liberty,” bound together by a common
devotion to the

principles of the Declaration of Independence. Already, the
United States
exceeded in size Great Britain, Spain, and France combined. As
a new
nation, it possessed many advantages, including physical
isolation from
the Old World (a significant asset between 1789 and 1815, when
European
powers were almost constantly at war), a youthful population
certain to
grow much larger, and a broad distribution of property
ownership and
literacy among white citizens.
On the other hand, the nation’s prospects at the time of indepen-
dence were not entirely promising. Control of its vast territory
was by
no means secure. Nearly all of the 3.9 million Americans
recorded in the
first national census of 1790 lived near the Atlantic coast. Large
areas
west of the Appalachian Mountains remained in Indian hands.
The Brit-
ish retained military posts on American territory near the Great
Lakes,
and there were fears that Spain might close the port of New
Orleans to
American commerce on the Mississippi River.
Away from navigable waterways, communication and
transporta-
tion were primitive. The country was overwhelmingly rural—
fewer than
one American in thirty lived in a place with 8,000 inhabitants or
more.
The population consisted of numerous ethnic and religious

groups and
some 700,000 slaves, making unity difficult to achieve. No
republican
government had ever been established over so vast a territory or
with so
diverse a population. “We have no Americans in America,”
commented
John Adams. It would take time for consciousness of a common
national-
ity to sink deep roots.
Profound questions needed to be answered. What course of
develop-
ment should the United States follow? How could the competing
claims
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
What were the achieve-
ments and problems
of the Confederation
government?
What major compromises
molded the final content of
the Constitution?
How did Anti-Federalist
concerns raised during the

ratification process lead to
the creation of the Bill of
Rights?
How did the defini-
tion of citizenship in the
new republic exclude
Native Americans and
African-Americans?
195A M E R I C A U N D E R T H E C O N F E D E R A T I
O N
What were the achievements and problems of the Confederation
government?
of local self-government, sectional interests, and national
authority be
balanced? Who should be considered full-fledged members of
the Ameri-
can people, entitled to the blessings of liberty? These issues
became the
focus of heated debate as the first generation of Americans
sought to
consolidate their new republic.
A M E R I C A U N D E R T H E C O N F E D E R A T I O N

The Articles of Confederation
The first written constitution of the United States was the
Articles of
Confederation, drafted by Congress in 1777 and ratified by the
states four
years later. The Articles sought to balance the need for national
coordina-
tion of the War of Independence with widespread fear that
centralized
political power posed a danger to liberty. It explicitly declared
the new
national government to be a “perpetual union.” But it resembled
less a
blueprint for a common government than a treaty for mutual
defense—
in its own words, a “firm league of friendship” among the
states. Under
the Articles, the thirteen states retained their individual
“sovereignty,
freedom, and independence.” The national government consisted
of a one-
house Congress, in which each state, no matter how large or
populous, cast
a single vote. There was no president to enforce the laws and no
judiciary
to interpret them. Major decisions required the approval of nine
states
rather than a simple majority.
The only powers specifically granted to the national government
by the Articles of Confederation were those essential to the
struggle for
independence—declaring war, conducting foreign affairs, and
making

treaties with other governments. Congress had no real financial
resources.
It could coin money but lacked the power to levy taxes or
regulate com-
merce. Its revenue came mainly from contributions by the
individual
states. To amend the Articles required the unanimous consent of
the states,
a formidable obstacle to change.
But Congress in the 1780s did not lack for accomplishments.
The
most important was establishing national control over land to
the west
of the thirteen states and devising rules for its settlement.
Citing their
original royal charters, which granted territory running all the
way
to the “South Sea” (the Pacific Ocean), states such as Virginia,
the
Carolinas, and Connecticut claimed immense tracts of western
land. Land
specu lators, politicians, and prospective settlers from states
with clearly
Accomplishments under the
Articles
Limitations of the Articles
defined boundaries insisted that such land must belong to the
nation at

large. Only after the land-rich states, in the interest of national
unity,
ceded their western claims to the central government did the
Articles win
ratification.
Congress, Settlers, and the West
Establishing rules for the settlement of this national domain—
the area
controlled by the federal government, stretching from the
western bound-
aries of existing states to the Mississippi River—was critical.
Although
some Americans spoke of it as if it were empty, some 100,000
Indians
inhabited the region. Congress took the position that by aiding
the British,
Indians had forfeited the right to their lands. But little
distinction was
made among tribes that had sided with the enemy, aided the
patriots, or
played no part in the war at all. At peace conferences at Fort
Stanwix,
New York, in 1784 and Fort McIntosh near Pittsburgh the
following year,
American representatives demanded and received large
surrenders of
Indian land north of the Ohio River. Similar treaties soon
followed with
the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes in the South. The
treaties
secured national control of a large part of the country’s western
territory.
When it came to disposing of western land and regulating its

settle-
ment, the Confederation government faced conflicting
pressures. Many
leaders believed that the economic health of the new republic
required that
farmers have access to land in the West. But they also saw land
sales as a
potential source of revenue.
The arrival of peace meanwhile triggered a large population
move-
ment from settled parts of the original states into frontier areas
like upstate
New York and across the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky
and
Tennessee. To settlers, the right to take possession of western
lands and
use them as they saw fit was an essential element of American
freedom.
When a group of Ohioans petitioned Congress in 1785, assailing
landlords
and speculators who monopolized available acreage and asking
that pref-
erence in land ownership be given to “actual settlements,” their
motto was
“Grant us Liberty.”
At the same time, however, like British colonial officials before
them,
many leaders of the new nation feared that an unregulated flow
of popula-
tion across the Appalachian Mountains would provoke constant
warfare
with Indians. Moreover, they viewed frontier settlers as
disorderly and
lacking in proper respect for authority.

Rapid settlement in frontier
areas
Treaties to secure Indian land
Frontier fears
O N
government?
MAINE
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS
RHODE ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
NEW YORK
PENNSYLVANIA
Ceded by
CONNECTICUT,
1782

Ceded by
MASSACHUSETTS,
1786
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA
Ceded by VIRGINIA, 1784
Ceded by MASSACHUSETTS, 1785
and VIRGINIA, 1784
Ceded by CONNECTICUT, 1786
and VIRGINIA, 1784
Ceded by VIRGINIA, 1784
Ceded by
VIRGINIA, 1792
Ceded by NORTH CAROLINA,
1790
Ceded by GEORGIA, 1802
Ceded by SPAIN, 1795
Ceded by GEORGIA, 1802
Ceded by
SOUTH CAROLINA,
1787

Ceded by
CONNECTICUT, 1800
NORTH
CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
GEORGIA
NEW
JERSEY
VERMONT
(1791)
BRITISH CANADA
SPANISH
LOUISIANA
SPANISH
FLORIDA
St
. L
aw
ren
ce R
.
H
ud

so
n
R.
Ohio R.
M
ississippi R.
Lake
Michigan
Lake Superior
Lake H
uron
Lak
e Er
ie
Lake On
tario
Gulf of Mexico
At lant ic
Oce an
0
0

100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers
States after land cessions
Ceded territory
Territory ceded by New York, 1782
The creation of a nationally controlled public domain from
western land ceded by the states was one of the main
achievements of the
federal government under the Articles of Confederation.
W E S T E R N L A N D S , 1 7 8 2 – 1 8 0 2
The Land Ordinances
A series of measures approved by Congress during the 1780s
defined the
terms by which western land would be marketed and settled.
Drafted
by Thomas Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784 established stages
of self-
government for the West. The region would be divided into
districts initially
governed by Congress and eventually admitted to the Union as
member
states. By a single vote, Congress rejected a clause that would

have prohib-
ited slavery throughout the West. A second ordinance, in 1785,
regulated
land sales in the region north of the Ohio River, which came to
be known as
the Old Northwest. Land would be surveyed by the government
and then
sold in “sections” of a square mile (640 acres) at $1 per acre. In
each town-
ship, one section would be set aside to provide funds for public
education.
Like the British before them, American officials found it
difficult to
regulate the thirst for new land. The minimum purchase price of
$640,
however, put public land out of the financial reach of most
settlers. They
generally ended up buying smaller parcels from speculators and
land com-
panies. In 1787, Congress decided to sell off large tracts to
private groups,
including 1.5 million acres to the Ohio Company, organized by
New
England land speculators and army officers. (This was a
different orga-
nization from the Ohio Company of the 1750s, mentioned in
Chapter 4.)
For many years, actual and prospective settlers pressed for a
reduction in
the price of government-owned land, a movement that did not
end until
the Homestead Act of 1862 offered free land on the public
domain.
A final measure, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, called for

the
eventual establishment of from three to five states north of the
Ohio River
and east of the Mississippi. Thus was enacted the basic
principle of what
Jefferson called the “empire of liberty”—rather than ruling over
the West
as a colonial power, the United States would admit the area’s
population
as equal members of the political system. Territorial expansion
and self-
government would grow together.
The Northwest Ordinance pledged that “the utmost good faith”
would
be observed toward local Indians and that their land would not
be taken
without consent. “It will cost much less,” one congressman
noted, “to con-
ciliate the good opinion of the Indians than to pay men for
destroying them.”
But national land policy assumed that whether through
purchase, treaties,
or voluntary removal, the Indian presence would soon
disappear. The
ordinance also prohibited slavery in the Old Northwest, a
provision that
would have far-reaching consequences when the sectional
conflict between
North and South developed. But for years, owners brought
slaves into the
area, claiming that they had voluntarily signed long-term labor
contracts.
Western settlement and
self-government

Price of land
Slavery prohibited
Territorial expansion and
self-government
O N
government?
Fort
Detroit
Fort
Niagara
Fort
Michilimackinac
Oswego
Point-
au-Fer
Dutchman's
Point
WISCONSIN
(1848)

ILLINOIS
(1818)
INDIANA
(1816)
MICHIGAN
(1837)
OHIO
(1803)
MAINE
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS
RHODE ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
NEW YORK
NEW
JERSEY
PENNSYLVANIA
VIRGINIA
MARYLAND
DELAWARE
NORTH CAROLINA

KENTUCKY
(1792)
TENNESSEE (1796)
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
(CANADA)
SPANISH
LOUISIANA
St
. L
aw
ren
ce
R.
H
ud
so
n
R.
Oh
io R

.
Mississippi R.
Lake Superior
La
ke
M
ic
hi
ga
n
Lake H
uron
Lak
e E
rie
Lake
Ontario
Atlantic
Ocean
DETAIL OF SECTION
1 square mile (640 acres)
Half-section
(320 acres)

Quarter
-section
(160 acres)
Half-quarter-section
(80 acres)
Quarter-quarter-section
(40 acres each)
1 Income from section 16reserved for school support
12
13
24
25
36
2
11
14
23
26
35
3

10
15
22
27
34
4
9
16
21
28
33
5
8
17
20
29
32
6

7
18
19
30
31
DETAIL OF TOWNSHIP
36 square miles
1 mile
1 m
ile
THE SEVEN RANGES
First Area Survey
7t
h
Ra
ng
e
6t
h
Ra
ng
e

5t
h
Ra
ng
e
6
m
ile
s
4t
h
Ra
ng
e
3r
d
Ra
ng
e
6 miles
2n
d
Ra

ng
e
1s
t R
an
ge
VI
RG
IN
IA
PE
NN
SY
LV
AN
IA
0
0
100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers

Forts
Disputed boundaries
Northwest Territory
W E S T E R N O R D I N A N C E S , 1 7 8 4 – 1 7 8 7
A series of ordinances in the 1780s provided for both the
surveying and sale of lands in the public domain north of the
Ohio River and
the eventual admission of states carved from the area as equal
members of the Union.
The Confederation’s Weaknesses
Whatever the achievements of the Confederation government, in
the
eyes of many influential Americans they were outweighed by its
failings.
Both the national government and the country at large faced
worsening
economic problems. To finance the War of Independence,
Congress had
borrowed large sums of money by selling interest-bearing bonds
and pay-
ing soldiers and suppliers in notes to be redeemed in the future.
Lacking
a secure source of revenue, it found itself unable to pay either
interest
or the debts themselves. With the United States now outside the
British

empire, American ships were barred from trading with the West
Indies.
Imported goods, however, flooded the market, undercutting the
business
of many craftsmen, driving down wages, and draining money
out of the
country.
With Congress unable to act, the states adopted their own
economic
policies. Several imposed tariff duties on goods imported from
abroad. In
order to increase the amount of currency in circulation and
make it easier
for individuals to pay their debts, several states printed large
sums of
paper money. Others enacted laws postponing debt collection.
Creditors
considered such measures attacks on their property rights.
Shays’s Rebellion
In late 1786 and early 1787, crowds of debt-ridden farmers
closed the
courts in western Massachusetts to prevent the seizure of their
land for
failure to pay taxes. They called themselves “regulators”—a
term already
used by protesters in the Carolina backcountry in the 1760s. The
uprising
came to be known as Shays’s Rebellion, a name affixed to it by
its oppo-
nents, after Daniel Shays, one of the leaders and a veteran of
the War of
Independence. The participants in Shays’s Rebellion modeled
their tactics

on the crowd activities of the 1760s and 1770s and employed
liberty trees
and liberty poles as symbols of their cause. They received no
sympathy
from Governor James Bowdoin, who dispatched an army headed
by the
former revolutionary war general Benjamin Lincoln. The rebels
were dis-
persed in January 1787.
Observing Shays’s Rebellion from Paris where he was serving
as
ambassador, Thomas Jefferson refused to be alarmed. “A little
rebellion
now and then is a good thing,” he wrote to a friend. “The tree of
liberty
must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots
and
tyrants.” But the uprising was the culmination of a series of
events in the
1780s that persuaded an influential group of Americans that the
national
A Bankruptcy Scene. Creditors
repossess the belongings of a family
unable to pay its debts, while a
woman weeps in the background.
Popular fears of bankruptcy led
several states during the 1780s to
pass laws postponing the collection

of debts.
Uprising in Massachusetts
O N
government must be strengthened so that it could develop
uniform
economic policies and protect property owners from
infringements on
their rights by local majorities.
Among proponents of stronger national authority, liberty had
lost
some of its luster. The danger to individual rights, they came to
believe,
now arose not from a tyrannical central government, but from
the people
themselves. “Liberty,” declared James Madison, “may be
endangered by
the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.” To put it
another
way, private liberty, especially the secure enjoyment of
property rights,
could be endangered by public liberty—unchecked power in the
hands of
the people.
Nationalists of the 1780s
Madison, a diminutive Virginian and the lifelong disciple and
ally of

Thomas Jefferson, thought deeply and creatively about the
nature of
political freedom. He was among the group of talented and well-
organized
men who spearheaded the movement for a stronger national
government.
Another was Alexander Hamilton, who had come to North
America
from the West Indies as a youth. Hamilton was perhaps the most
vigor-
ous proponent of an “energetic” government that would enable
the new
nation to become a powerful commercial and diplomatic
presence in world
affairs. Men like Madison and Hamilton were nation builders.
They came
to believe during the 1780s that Americans were squandering
the fruits
of independence and that the country’s future greatness
depended on
enhancing national authority.
The concerns voiced by critics of the Articles found a
sympathetic
hearing among men who had developed a national consciousness
during
the Revolution. Nationalists included army officers, members of
Congress
accustomed to working with individuals from different states,
and diplomats
who represented the country abroad. Influential economic
interests also
desired a stronger national government. Among these were
bondholders
who despaired of being paid so long as Congress lacked a
source of revenue,

urban artisans seeking tariff protection from foreign imports,
merchants
desiring access to British markets, and all those who feared that
the states
were seriously interfering with property rights.
In September 1786, delegates from six states met at Annapolis,
Maryland, to consider ways for better regulating interstate and
inter-
national commerce. The delegates proposed another gathering,
in Phil-
adelphia, to amend the Articles of Confederation. Every state
except Rhode
Island, which had gone the furthest in developing its own debtor
relief
government?
James Madison, “father of the
Constitution,” in a miniature portrait
painted by Charles Willson Peale in
1783. Madison was only thirty-six
years old when the Constitutional
Convention met.
Alexander Hamilton, another youthful
leader of the nationalists of the
1780s, was born in the West Indies

in 1755. This portrait was painted
by Charles Willson Peale in the
early 1790s.
on202
and trade policies, decided to send delegates
to the Philadelphia convention. When they
assembled in May 1787, they decided to
scrap the Articles of Confederation entirely
and draft a new constitution for the United
States.
A N E W C O N S T I T U T I O N
The fifty-five men who gathered for the
Constitutional Convention included some
of the most prominent Americans. Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams, serving as dip-
lomats in Europe, did not take part. But among the delegates
were George
Washington (whose willingness to lend his prestige to the
gathering
and to serve as presiding officer was an enormous asset) and
Benjamin
Franklin (who had returned to Philadelphia after helping to
negotiate the
Treaty of Paris of 1783, and was now eighty-one years old).
John Adams
described the convention as a gathering of men of “ability,

weight, and
experience.” He might have added, “and wealth.” They earned
their liv-
ings as lawyers, merchants, planters, and large farmers. Nearly
all were
quite prosperous by the standards of the day.
At a time when fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans
attended college, more than half the delegates had college
educations.
Their shared social status and political experiences bolstered
their
common belief in the need to strengthen national authority and
curb what
one called “the excesses of democracy.” To ensure free and
candid debate,
the deliberations took place in private. Madison, who believed
the out-
come would have great consequences for “the cause of liberty
throughout
the world,” took careful notes. They were not published,
however, until
1840, four years after he became the last delegate to pass away.
The Structure of Government
It quickly became apparent that the delegates agreed on many
points. The
new constitution would create a legislature, an executive, and a
national
judiciary. Congress would have the power to raise money
without rely-
ing on the states. States would be prohibited from infringing on
the rights
of property. And the government would represent the people.
Most

The Philadelphia State House (now
called Independence Hall), where the
Declaration of Independence was
signed in 1776 and the Constitutional
Convention took place in 1787.
Elite convention delegates
Legislature, executive, and
national judiciary
203A N E W C O N S T I T U T I O N
delegates hoped to find a middle ground between the despotism
of mon-
archy and aristocracy and what they considered the excesses of
popular
self-government. “We had been too democratic,” observed
George Mason
of Virginia, but he warned against the danger of going to “the
opposite
extreme.” The key to stable, effective republican government
was finding a
way to balance the competing claims of liberty and power.
Differences quickly emerged over the proper balance between
the
federal and state governments and between the interests of large
and

small states. Early in the proceedings, Madison presented what
came
to be called the Virginia Plan. It proposed the creation of a two-
house
legislature with a state’s population determining its
representation in
each. Smaller states, fearing that populous Virginia,
Massachusetts, and
Pennsylvania would dominate the new government, rallied
behind the
New Jersey Plan. This called for a single-house Congress in
which each
state cast one vote, as under the Articles of Confederation. In
the end,
a compromise was reached—a two-house Congress consisting of
a Senate
in which each state had two members, and a House of
Representatives
apportioned according to population. Senators would be chosen
by state
legislatures for six-year terms. They were thus insulated from
sudden
shifts in public opinion. Representatives were to be elected
every two
years directly by the people.
The Limits of Democracy
Under the Articles of Confederation, no national official had
been chosen
by popular vote. Thus, the mode of choosing the House of
Representatives
signaled an expansion of democracy. The Constitution,
moreover, imposed
neither property nor religious qualifications for voting, leaving
it to the

states to set voting rules.
Overall, however, the new structure of government was less
than
democratic. The delegates sought to shield the national
government from
the popular enthusiasms that had alarmed them during the 1780s
and
to ensure that the right kind of men held office. The delegates
assumed
that the Senate would be composed of each state’s most
distinguished
citizens. They made the House of Representatives quite small
(initially
65 members, at a time when the Massachusetts assembly had
200), on
the assumption that only prominent individuals could win
election in
large districts.
Nor did the delegates provide for direct election of either
federal
judges or the president. Members of the Supreme Court would
be appointed
What major compromises molded the final content of the
Constitution?
Large vs. small states
Compromise on a two-house
Congress
Less than democratic
structure

by the president for life terms. The president would be chosen
either by
members of an electoral college or by the House of
Representatives. A state’s
electors would be chosen either by its legislature or by popular
vote.
The actual system of election seemed a recipe for confusion.
Each
elector was to cast votes for two candidates for president, with
the second-
place finisher becoming vice president. If no candidate received
a major-
ity of the electoral ballots—as the delegates seem to have
assumed would
normally be the case—the president would be chosen from
among the top
three finishers by the House of Representatives, with each state
casting
one vote. The Senate would then elect the vice president. The
delegates
devised this extremely cumbersome system of indirect election
because
they did not trust ordinary voters to choose the president and
vice presi-
dent directly.
The Division and Separation of Powers
Hammered out in four months of discussion and compromise,
the
Constitution is a spare document of only 4,000 words that

provides only
the briefest outline of the new structure of government. (See the
Appendix
for the full text.) It embodies two basic political principles—
federalism,
sometimes called the “division of powers,” and the system of
“checks and
balances” between the different branches of the national
government, also
known as the “separation of powers.”
“Federalism” refers to the relationship between the national
govern-
ment and the states. Compared with the Articles of
Confederation, the
Constitution significantly strengthened national authority. It
charged the
president with enforcing the law and commanding the military.
It empow-
ered Congress to levy taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce,
declare
war, deal with foreign nations and Indians, and promote the
“general
welfare.” The Constitution also included strong provisions to
prevent the
states from infringing on property rights. They were barred
from issuing
paper money, impairing contracts, interfering with interstate
commerce,
and levying their own import or export duties. On the other
hand, most
day-to-day affairs of government, from education to law
enforcement,
remained in the hands of the states. This principle of divided
sovereignty
was a recipe for debate, which continues to this day, over the

balance of
power between the national government and the states.
The “separation of powers,” or the system of “checks and
balances,”
refers to the way the Constitution seeks to prevent any branch
of the
national government from dominating the other two. To prevent
an accu-
mulation of power dangerous to liberty, authority within the
government
Indirect elections
Federalism
Checks and balances
is diffused and balanced against itself. Congress enacts laws,
but the presi-
dent can veto them, and a two-thirds majority is required to pass
legisla-
tion over his objection. Federal judges are nominated by the
president and
approved by Congress, but to ensure their independence, the
judges then
serve for life. The president can be impeached by the House and
removed
from office by the Senate for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The Debate over Slavery

The structure of government was not the only source of debate
at the
Constitutional Convention. As Madison recorded, “the
institution of slav-
ery and its implications” divided the delegates at many sessions.
Those
who gathered in Philadelphia included numerous slaveholders,
as well as
some dedicated advocates of abolition.
The words “slave” and “slavery” did not appear in the
Constitution—
a concession to the sensibilities of delegates who feared they
would “con-
taminate the glorious fabric of American liberty.” Nonetheless,
the docu-
ment contained strong protections for slavery. It prohibited
Congress from
abolishing the African slave trade for twenty years. It required
states to
return to their owners fugitives from bondage. And it provided
that three-
fifths of the slave population would be counted in determining
each state’s
representation in the House of Representatives and its electoral
votes for
president.
South Carolina’s delegates had come to Philadelphia determined
to
defend slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final
document.
They originated the fugitive slave clause and the electoral
college. They
insisted on strict limits on the power of Congress to levy taxes
within the

states, fearing future efforts to raise revenue by taxing slave
property.
Gouverneur Morris, one of Pennsylvania’s delegates, declared
that he
was being forced to decide between offending the southern
states or doing
injustice to “human nature.” For the sake of national unity, he
said, he
would choose the latter.
Slavery in the Constitution
The Constitution’s slavery clauses were compromises, efforts to
find a
middle ground between the institution’s critics and defenders.
Taken
together, however, they embedded slavery more deeply than
ever in
American life and politics. The slave trade clause allowed a
commerce
condemned by civilized society—one that had been suspended
during
Constitution?
This advertisement for the sale of
100 slaves from Virginia to states
farther south appeared in a Richmond
newspaper only a few months after
the signing of the Constitution.

Slavery was a major subject
of debate at the Constitutional
Convention.
The slave trade clause
South Carolina’s influence
the War of Independence—to continue until 1808. On January 1,
1808,
the first day that Congress was allowed under the Constitution,
it pro-
hibited the further importation of slaves. But in the interim,
partly to
replace slaves who had escaped to the British and partly to
provide
labor for the expansion of slavery to fertile land away from the
coast,
some 170,000 Africans were brought to the new nation as
slaves. South
Carolina and Georgia imported 100,000. This number accounted
for
more than one-quarter of all the slaves brought to mainland
North
America after 1700.
The fugitive slave clause accorded slave laws
“extraterritoriality”—
that is, the condition of bondage remained attached to a person
even if he or

she escaped to a state where slavery had been abolished. The
Constitution
gave the national government no power to interfere with slavery
in the
states. And the three-fifths clause allowed the white South to
exercise far
greater power in national affairs than the size of its free
population war-
ranted. The clause greatly enhanced the number of southern
votes in the
House of Representatives and therefore in the electoral college
(where the
number of electors for each state was determined by adding
together its
number of senators and representatives). Of the first sixteen
presidential
elections, between 1788 and 1848, all but four placed a southern
slave-
holder in the White House.
Nevertheless, some slaveholders detected a potential threat
buried in
the Constitution. Patrick Henry, who condemned slavery but
feared aboli-
tion, warned that, in time of war, the new government might
take steps to
The Signing of the Constitution, by
mid-nineteenth-century American
artist Thomas Pritchard Rossiter,
depicts the conclusion of the
Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Among the founding fathers depicted
are James Wilson, signing the
document at the table in the center,
and George Washington, presiding
from the dais with an image of the
sun behind him.
Fugitive slave clause
arm and liberate the slaves. “May Congress not say,” he asked,
“that every
black man must fight?” What Henry could not anticipate was
that the war
that eventually destroyed slavery would be launched by the
South itself to
protect the institution.
The Final Document
Gouverneur Morris put the finishing touches on the final draft
of the new
Constitution, trying to make it, he explained, “as clear as our
language
would permit.” For the original preamble, which began, “We the
people of
the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts,” etc., he

substituted the far
more powerful, “We the people of the United States.” He added
a statement
of the Constitution’s purposes, including to “establish justice,”
promote
“the general welfare,” and “secure the blessings of liberty”—
things the
Articles of Confederation, in the eyes of most of the delegates,
had failed
to accomplish.
The last session of the Constitutional Convention took place on
September 17, 1787. Benjamin Franklin urged the delegates to
put aside
individual objections and approve the document, whatever its
imperfec-
tions. Of the forty-five delegates who remained in Philadelphia,
thirty-nine
signed the Constitution. It was then sent to the states for
ratification.
Constitution?
This satirical engraving by Amos
Doolittle depicts some of the issues
in the debate over the ratification
of the Constitution. The wagon in
the center is carrying Connecticut
and sinking into the mud under the

weight of debts and paper money as
“Federals” and “Antifederals” try to
pull it out. Federals call for the state
to “comply with Congress” (that is,
to pay money requisitioned by the
national government); the Antifederals
reply “tax luxury” and “success
to Shays,” a reference to Shays’s
Rebellion. The Connecticut shoreline
and the buildings of Manhattan are
on the right. Underneath the three
merchant ships is a phrase criticizing
the tariffs that states were imposing
on imports from one another (which
the Constitution prohibited). At the
bottom is the biblical motto, “A house
divided against itself cannot stand,”
later made famous by Abraham

Lincoln.
The Preamble
The Constitution created a new framework for American
develop-
ment. It made possible a national economic market. It created
national
political institutions, reduced the powers of the states, and
sought to
place limits on popular democracy. The ratification process,
however,
unleashed a nationwide debate over the best means of
preserving
American freedom.
T H E R A T I F I C A T I O N D E B A T E A N D
T H E O R I G I N O F T H E B I L L O F R I G H T S
The Federalist
Even though the Constitution provided that it would go into
effect when
nine states, not all thirteen as required by the Articles of
Confederation,
had given their approval, ratification was by no means certain.
Each state
held an election for delegates to a special ratifying convention.
A fierce
public battle ensued, producing hundreds of pamphlets and
newspaper

articles and spirited campaigns to elect delegates. To generate
support,
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay composed a series of eighty-five
essays that
appeared in newspapers under the pen name Publius and were
gathered
as a book, The Federalist, in 1788. Today, the essays are
regarded as among
the most important American contributions to political thought.
At the
time, however, they were only one part of a much larger
national debate
over ratification.
Again and again, Hamilton and Madison repeated that rather
than
posing a danger to Americans’ liberties, the Constitution in fact
protected
them. Any government, Hamilton insisted, could become
oppressive, but
with its checks and balances and division of power, the
Constitution made
political tyranny almost impossible. At the New York ratifying
conven-
tion, Hamilton assured the delegates that the Constitution had
created “the
perfect balance between liberty and power.”
“Extend the Sphere”
Madison, too, emphasized how the Consti tution was structured
to prevent
abuses of authority. But in several essays, especially Federalist
nos. 10 and
51, he moved beyond such assurances to develop a strikingly
new vision

For ratification: Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison,
John Jay
A new framework
209T H E R A T I F I C A T I O N D E B A T E A N D T H E
O R I G I N O F T H E B I L L O F R I G H T S
How did Anti-Federalist concerns lead to the creation of the
Bill of Rights?
of the relationship between government
and society in the United States. Madison
identified the essential dilemma, as he saw
it, of the new republic—government must
be based on the will of the people, yet the
people had shown themselves susceptible
to dangerous enthusiasms. The problem of
balancing democracy and respect for prop-
erty would only grow in the years ahead
because, he warned, economic development
would inevitably increase the numbers of
poor. What was to prevent them from using
their political power to secure “a more equal
distribution” of wealth?
The answer, Madison explained, lay not
simply in the way power balanced power
in the structure of government, but in the
nation’s size and diversity. Previous repub-
lics had existed only in small territories—the
Dutch republic or the Italian city-states of the

Renaissance. But, argued Madison, the very
size of the United States was a source of stability, not, as many
feared, weak-
ness. “Extend the sphere,” he wrote. The multiplicity of
religious denomina-
tions, he argued, offered the best security for religious liberty.
Likewise, in
a nation as large as the United States, so many distinct
interests—economic,
regional, and political—would arise, that no single one would
ever be able to
take over the government and oppress the rest.
Madison’s writings did much to shape the early nation’s
understand-
ing of its new political institutions. In arguing that the size of
the republic
helped to secure Americans’ rights, they reinforced the tradition
that saw
continuous westward expansion as essential to freedom.
The Anti-Federalists
Opponents of ratification, called Anti-Federalists, insisted that
the
Constitution shifted the balance between liberty and power too
far in the
direction of the latter. Anti-Federalists lacked the coherent
leadership of
the Constitution’s defenders. They included state politicians
fearful of
seeing their influence diminish, among them such revolutionary
heroes as
Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Patrick Henry. Small
farmers, many
of whom supported the state debtor-relief measures of the 1780s

that
In this late-eighteenth-century
engraving, Americans celebrate the
signing of the Constitution beneath a
temple of liberty.
America’s size and diversity
Against ratification: Samuel
Adams, John Hancock,
Patrick Henry
A member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina,
David Ramsay
published his history of the Revolution the year after the
Constitution was ratified.
In this excerpt, he lauds the principles of representative
government and the right of
future amendment, embodied in the state constitutions and
adopted in the national
one, as unique American political principles and the best ways
of securing liberty.
The world has not hitherto exhibited so fair an opportunity for

promoting social happiness. It
is hoped for the honor of human nature, that the result will
prove the fallacy of those theories
that mankind are incapable of self government. The ancients,
not knowing the doctrine of
representation, were apt in their public meetings to run into
confusion, but in America this
mode of taking the sense of the people, is so well understood,
and so completely reduced
to system, that its most populous states are often peaceably
convened in an assembly of
deputies, not too large for orderly deliberation, and yet
representing the whole in equal
proportion. These popular branches of legislature are miniature
pictures of the community,
and from their mode of election are likely to be influenced by
the same interests and feelings
with the people whom they represent. . . .
In no age before, and in no other country, did man ever possess
an election of the kind
of government, under which he would choose to live. The
constituent parts of the ancient
free governments were thrown together by accident. The
freedom of modern European
governments was, for the most part, obtained by concessions, or
liberality of monarchs,
or military leaders. In America alone, reason and liberty
concurred in the formation of
constitutions . . . In one thing they were all perfect. They left
the people in the power of
altering and amending them, whenever they pleased. In this
happy peculiarity they placed
the science of politics on a footing with the other sciences, by
opening it to improvements
from experience, and the discoveries of future ages. By means

of this power of amending
American constitutions, the friends of mankind have fondly
hoped that oppression will one
day be no more.
From David Ramsay, The History of the
American Revolution (1789)
From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787)
A local official in Middlesex, Massachusetts, James Winthrop
published sixteen
public letters between November 1787 and February 1788
opposing ratification of
the Constitution.
It is the opinion of the ablest writers on the subject, that no
extensive empire can be governed
upon republican principles, and that such a government will
degenerate into a despotism,
unless it be made up of a confederacy of smaller states, each
having the full powers of
internal regulation. This is precisely the principle which has
hitherto preserved our freedom.
No instance can be found of any free government of
considerable extent which has been
supported upon any other plan. Large and consolidated empires

may indeed dazzle the eyes
of a distant spectator with their splendor, but if examined more
nearly are always found to
be full of misery. . . . It is under such tyranny that the Spanish
provinces languish, and such
would be our misfortune and degradation, if we should submit
to have the concerns of the
whole empire managed by one empire. To promote the
happiness of the people it is necessary
that there should be local laws; and it is necessary that those
laws should be made by the
representatives of those who are immediately subject to [them].
. . .
It is impossible for one code of laws to suit Georgia and
Massachusetts. They must,
therefore, legislate for themselves. Yet there is, I believe, not
one point of legislation that
is not surrendered in the proposed plan. Questions of every kind
respecting property
are determinable in a continental court,
and so are all kinds of criminal causes. The
continental legislature has, therefore, a right
to make rules in all cases. . . . No rights are
reserved to the citizens. . . . This new system
is, therefore, a consolidation of all the states
into one large mass, however diverse the
parts may be of which it is composed. . . .
A bill of rights . . . serves to secure the
minority against the usurpation and tyranny of
the majority. . . . The experience of all mankind
has proved the prevalence of a disposition to
use power wantonly. It is therefore as necessary
to defend an individual against the majority in
a republic as against the king in a monarchy.

Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why does Ramsay feel that the power
to amend the Constitution is so impor-
tant a political innovation?
2. Why does Winthrop believe that
a Bill of Rights is essential in the
Constitution?
3. How do Ramsay and Winthrop
differ concerning how the principle
of representation operates in the
United States?
the Constitution’s supporters deplored, also saw no need for a
stronger
central government. Some opponents of the Constitution
denounced
the document’s protections for slavery; others warned that the
powers of
Congress were so broad that it might enact a law for abolition.

Anti-Federalists repeatedly predicted that the new government
would
fall under the sway of merchants, creditors, and others hostile to
the inter-
ests of ordinary Americans. Popular self-government, they
claimed, flour-
ished best in small communities, where rulers and ruled
interacted daily.
The result of the Constitution, warned Melancton Smith of New
York,
a member of Congress under the Articles of Confederation,
would be domi-
nation of the “common people” by the “well-born.”
“Liberty” was the Anti-Federalists’ watchword. America’s
happiness,
they insisted, “arises from the freedom of our institutions and
the limited
nature of our government,” both threatened by the new
Constitution.
To the vision of the United States as an energetic great power,
Anti-
Federalists counterposed a way of life grounded in local,
democratic insti-
tutions. Anti-Federalists also pointed to the Constitution’s lack
of a Bill of
Rights, which left unprotected rights such as trial by jury and
freedom of
speech and the press.
In general, pro-Constitution sentiment flourished in the nation’s
cit-
ies and in rural areas closely tied to the commercial
marketplace. The
Constitution’s most energetic supporters were men of

substantial property.
But what George Bryan of Pennsylvania, a supporter of
ratification, called
the “golden phantom” of prosperity also swung urban artisans,
laborers, and
sailors behind the movement for a government that would use
its “energy
and power” to revive the depressed economy. Anti-Federalism
drew its
support from small farmers in more isolated rural areas such as
the Hudson
Valley of New York, western Massachusetts, and the southern
backcountry.
In the end, the supporters’ energy and organization, coupled
with their
domination of the colonial press, carried the day. Ninety-two
newspapers
and magazines existed in the United States in 1787. Of these,
only twelve
published a significant number of Anti-Federalist pieces.
Madison also won
support for the new Constitution by promising that the first
Congress would
enact a Bill of Rights. By mid-1788, the required nine states had
ratified. Only
Rhode Island and North Carolina voted against ratification, and
they subse-
quently had little choice but to join the new government. Anti-
Federalism
died. But as with other movements in American history that did
not imme-
diately achieve their goals—for example, the Populists of the
late nineteenth
century—some of the Anti-Federalists’ ideas eventually entered
the political

mainstream. To this day, their belief that a too-powerful central
government
is a threat to liberty continues to influence American political
culture.
Rule by the “well-born”
Social bases of support and
opposition
Ratification
213T H E R A T I F I C A T I O N D E B A T E A N D T H E
O R I G I N O F T H E B I L L O F R I G H T S
Bill of Rights?
MAINE
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Federalist majority (for ratification)
Anti-Federalist majority (against ratification)
Evenly divided
Politically unorganized
R A T I F I C A T I O N O F T H E C O N S T I T U T I O N
Federalists—those who supported the new Constitution—tended
to be concentrated in cities and nearby rural areas, whereas
backcountry farmers were more likely to oppose the new frame
of government.

The Bill of Rights
Ironically, the parts of the Constitution Americans most
value today—the freedoms of speech, the press, and
religion; protection against unjust criminal procedures;
equality before the law—were not in the original docu-
ment. All of these but the last (which was enshrined in
the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War) were
contained in the first ten amendments, known as the Bill
of Rights. Madison believed a Bill of Rights “redundant or
pointless.” “Parchment barriers” to the abuse of author-
ity, he observed, would prove least effective when most
needed. Madison’s prediction would be amply borne out at
future times of
popular hysteria, such as during the Red Scare following World
War I and
the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when all branches of
government joined in
trampling on freedom of expression, and during World War II,
when hatred
of a foreign enemy led to the internment of more than 100,000
Japanese-
Americans, most of them citizens of the United States.
Nevertheless, every new state constitution contained some kind
of
declaration of citizens’ rights, and large numbers of
Americans—Federalist
and Anti-Federalist alike—believed the new national
Constitution should
also have one. Madison presented to Congress a series of
amendments
that became the basis of the Bill of Rights, which was ratified
by the states

in 1791. The First Amendment prohibited Congress from
legislating with
regard to religion or infringing on freedom of speech, freedom
of the press,
or the right of assembly. The Second upheld the people’s right
to “keep
and bear arms” in conjunction with “a well-regulated militia.”
Others
prohibited abuses such as arrests without warrants and forcing a
person
accused of a crime to testify against himself, and reaffirmed the
right to
trial by jury. The Tenth Amendment, meant to answer fears that
the fed-
eral government would ride roughshod over the states, affirmed
that pow-
ers not delegated to the national government or prohibited to the
states
continued to reside with the states.
Although the roots and even the specific language of some parts
of
the Bill of Rights lay far back in English history, other
provisions reflected
the changes in American life brought about by the Revolution.
The most
remarkable of these was constitutional recognition of religious
freedom.
Unlike the Declaration of Independence, which invokes the
blessing of
divine providence, the Constitution is a purely secular document
that con-
tains no reference to God and bars religious tests for federal
officeholders.
The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from
legislating

An engraving and poem, published in
1788 in an American newspaper, after
New York became the eleventh state
to ratify the new Constitution. North
Carolina would ratify in 1789 and
Rhode Island in 1790.
First Amendment rights
Constitutional recognition of
religious freedom
215“ W E T H E P E O P L E ”
on the subject of religion—a complete departure from British
and colonial
precedent. Under the Constitution it was and remains possible,
as one
critic complained, for “a papist, a Mohomatan, a deist, yea an
atheist” to
become president of the United States. Madison was so adamant
about
separating church and state that he even opposed the
appointment of
chaplains to serve Congress and the military.
The Bill of Rights aroused little enthusiasm on ratification and
for

decades was all but ignored. Not until the twentieth century
would it
come to be revered as an indispensable expression of American
freedom.
Nonetheless, the Bill of Rights subtly affected the language of
liberty.
Applying only to the federal government, not the states, it
reinforced the
idea that concentrated national power posed the greatest threat
to freedom.
And it contributed to the long process whereby freedom came to
be dis-
cussed in the vocabulary of rights.
Among the most important rights were freedom of speech and
the
press, vital building blocks of a democratic public sphere. Once
an entitle-
ment of members of Parliament and colonial assemblies, free
speech came
to be seen as a basic right of citizenship.
“ W E T H E P E O P L E ”
National Identity
The Constitution opens with the words, “We the People.”
Although one
might assume that the “people” of the United States included all
those liv-
ing within the nation’s borders, the text made clear that this was
not the
case. The Constitution identifies three populations inhabiting
the United
States: Indians, treated as members of independent tribes and
not part

of the American body politic; “other persons”—that is, slaves;
and the
“people.” Only the third were entitled to American freedom.
Indians in the New Nation
The early republic’s policies toward Indians and African-
Americans
illustrate the conflicting principles that shaped American
nationality.
American leaders agreed that the West should not be left in
Indian hands,
but they disagreed about the Indians’ ultimate fate. The
government hoped
to encourage the westward expansion of white settlement, which
implied
one of three things: the removal of the Indian population to
lands even
Legacy of the Bill of Rights
Exclusion of Indians
and slaves
Bill of Rights?
farther west, their total disappearance, or their incorporation
into white
“civilization” with the expectation that they might one day
become part of
American society.

Indian tribes had no representation in the new government, and
the
Constitution excluded Indians “not taxed” from being counted
in deter-
mining each state’s number of congressmen. The treaty system
gave them
a unique status within the American political system. But
despite this rec-
ognition of their sovereignty, treaties were essentially ways of
transferring
land from Indians to the federal government or the states.
Open warfare continued in the Ohio Valley after ratification. In
1791,
Little Turtle, leader of the Miami Confederacy, inflicted a
humiliating
defeat on American forces led by Arthur St. Clair, the American
governor
of the Northwest Territory. With 630 dead, this was the costliest
loss
ever suffered by the U.S. Army at the hands of Indians. In 1794,
3,000
American troops under Anthony Wayne defeated Little Turtle’s
forces at
the Battle of Fallen Timbers. This led directly to the Treaty of
Greenville
of 1795, in which twelve Indian tribes ceded most of Ohio and
Indiana
to the federal government. The treaty also established the
“annuity”
system—yearly grants of federal money to Indian tribes that
institutional-
ized continuing government influence in tribal affairs and gave
outsiders
considerable control over Indian life.

Many prominent figures, however, rejected the idea that Indians
were innately inferior to white Americans. Thomas Jefferson
believed that
Indians merely lived at a less advanced stage of civilization.
Indians could
become full-fledged members of the republic by abandoning
communal
landholding and hunting in favor of small-scale farming.
To pursue the goal of assimilation,
Congress in the 1790s authorized President
Washington to distribute agricultural tools
and livestock to Indian men and spinning
wheels and looms to Indian women. To
whites, the adoption of American gender
norms, with men working the land and
women tending to their homes, would be a
crucial sign that the Indians were becom-
ing “civilized.” But the American notion of
civilization required so great a transforma-
tion of Indian life that most tribes rejected
it. One missionary was told, “If we want
to work, we know how to do it accord-
ing to our own way and as it pleases us.”
The signing of the Treaty of Greenville
of 1795, painted by an unknown
member of General Anthony Wayne’s
staff. In the treaty, a group of tribes
ceded most of the area of the current

state of Ohio, along with the site that
became the city of Chicago, to the
United States.
Political status of Indian
tribes
Continuing warfare
217“ W E T H E P E O P L E ”
How did the definition of citizenship exclude Native Americans
and African-Americans?
To Indians, freedom meant retaining tribal
autonomy and identity, including the abil-
ity to travel widely in search of game. “Since
our acquaintance with our brother white
people,” declared a Mohawk speaker at a
1796 treaty council, “that which we call free-
dom and liberty, becomes an entire stranger
to us.” There was no room for Indians who
desired to retain their traditional way of life
in the American empire of liberty.
Blacks and the Republic
By 1790, the number of African-Americans
far exceeded the Indian population within
the United States. The status of free blacks
was somewhat indeterminate. Nowhere does
the original Constitution define who in fact

are citizens of the United States. The indi-
vidual states were left free to determine the
boundaries of liberty. The North’s gradual
emancipation acts assumed that former
slaves would remain in the country, not
be colonized abroad. During the era of the
Revolution, free blacks enjoyed at least some
of the legal rights accorded to whites, includ-
ing, in most states, the right to vote. The large
majority of blacks, of course, were slaves,
and slavery rendered them all but invisible to
those imagining the American community.
One of the era’s most widely read
books, Letters from an American Farmer,
published in France in 1782 by Hector St.
John de Crèvecoeur, strikingly illustrated
this process of exclusion. Born in France,
Crèvecoeur eventually married the daugh-
ter of a prominent New York landowner
and lived with his own family on a farm
in Orange County. In this book, Crèvecoeur popularized the
idea, which
would become so common in the twentieth century, of the
United States
as a melting pot. “Here,” he wrote, “individuals of all nations
are melted
TABLE 7.1 Total Population
and Black Population of
the United States, 1790
New Hampshire 141,899 158 630
Vermont* 85,341 0 271

Massachusetts 378,556 0 5,369
Connecticut 237,655 2,764 2,771
Rhode Island 69,112 948 3,484
Maine** 96,643 0 536
New York 340,241 21,324 4,682
New Jersey 184,139 11,423 2,762
Pennsylvania 433,611 3,737 6,531
Delaware 59,096 8,887 3,899
Maryland 319,728 103,036 8,043
Virginia 747,610 292,627 12,866
North Carolina 395,005 100,572 5,041
South Carolina 249,073 107,094 1,801
Georgia 82,548 29,264 398
Kentucky* 73,677 12,430 114
Tennessee* 35,691 3,417 361
3,929,625 697,624 59,557
TOTAL FREE
STATE POPULATION SLAVES BLACKS
*Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee were territories that had

not yet been
admitted as states.
**Maine was part of Massachusetts in 1790.
into a new one.” When he posed the famous question, “What
then is the
American, this new man?” he answered, “a mixture of English,
Scotch,
Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. . . . He is either a
European,
or the descendant of a European.” This at a time when fully
one-fifth of the
population (the highest proportion in U.S. history) consisted of
Africans
and their descendants.
Like Crèvecoeur, many white Americans excluded blacks from
their conception of the American people. The Constitution
empowered
Congress to create a uniform system by which immigrants
became
citizens, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 offered the first
legislative
definition of American nationality. With no debate, Congress
restricted
the process of becoming a citizen from abroad to “free white
persons.”
The word “white” in this act excluded a large majority of the
world’s
population from emigrating to the “asylum for mankind” and

partaking
in the blessings of American freedom. For eighty years, no non-
white
immigrant could become a naturalized citizen. Africans were
allowed to
do so in 1870, but not until the 1940s did persons of Asian
origin become
eligible. (Native Americans were granted American citizenship
in 1924.)
Jefferson, Slavery, and Race
Man’s liberty, John Locke had written, flowed from “his having
reason.”
To deny liberty to those who were not considered rational
beings did not
seem to be a contradiction. White Americans increasingly
viewed blacks
as permanently deficient in the qualities that made freedom
possible—the
capacity for self-control, reason, and devotion to the larger
community.
These were the characteristics that Jefferson, in a famous
comparison
of the races in his book Notes on the State of Virginia,
published in 1785,
claimed blacks lacked, partly due to natural incapacity and
partly
because the bitter experience of slavery had (quite
understandably, he
felt) rendered them disloyal to the nation.
Jefferson was obsessed with the connection between heredity
and
environment, race and intelligence. His belief that individuals’
abilities and

achievements are shaped by social conditions inclined him to
hope that no
group was fixed permanently in a status of inferiority. In the
case of blacks,
however, he could not avoid the “suspicion” that nature had
permanently
deprived them of the qualities that made republican citizenship
possible.
Benjamin Banneker, a free African-American from Maryland
who had
taught himself the principles of mathematics, sent Jefferson a
copy of an
astronomical almanac he had published, along with a plea for
the aboli-
tion of slavery. Jefferson replied, “Nobody wishes more than I
do to see
The artist John Singleton Copley, best
known for his portraits of prominent
Americans and Britons, painted this
young African-American in the late
1770s. The subject probably worked
on a New England fishing boat. This
is one of the era’s very few portraits
of a black person.
Melting pot
American nationality

219“ W E T H E P E O P L E ”
How did the definition of citizenship exclude Native Americans
and African-Americans?
such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has
given to our black brethren, talents equal to
the other colors of men.” To his friend Joel
Barlow, however, Jefferson suggested that
a white person must have helped Banneker
with his calculations.
“Nothing is more certainly written in
the book of fate,” wrote Jefferson, “than that
these people are to be free.” Yet he felt that
America should have a homogeneous citi-
zenry with common experiences, values,
and inborn abilities. These contradictions
in Jefferson reflected the divided mind of
his generation. Some prominent Virginians
assumed that blacks could become part of the American nation.
Edward
Coles, an early governor of Illinois, brought his slaves from
Virginia, freed
them, and settled them on farms. Washington, who died in 1799,
provided
in his will that his 277 slaves would become free after the death
of his wife,
Martha. Believing the slave trade immoral, Jefferson tried to
avoid selling
slaves to pay off his mounting debts. But his will provided for
the freedom
of only five, all relatives of his slave Sally Hemings, with

whom he appears
to have had fathered one or more children.
Principles of Freedom
Even as the decline of apprenticeship and indentured servitude
narrowed
the gradations of freedom among the white population, the
Revolution
widened the divide between free Americans and those who
remained in
slavery. Race, one among many kinds of legal and social
inequality in colo-
nial America, now emerged as a convenient justification for the
existence
of slavery in a land that claimed to be committed to freedom.
Blacks’ “natu-
ral faculties,” Alexander Hamilton noted in 1779, were
“probably as good
as ours.” But the existence of slavery, he added, “makes us
fancy many
things that are founded neither in reason or experience.”
“We the people” increasingly meant only white Americans.
“Principles
of freedom, which embrace only half mankind, are only half
systems,”
declared the anonymous author of a Fourth of July speech in
Hartford,
Connecticut, in 1800. “Declaration of Independence,” he
wondered, “where
art thou now?” The answer came from a Richmond newspaper:
“Tell us not
of principles. Those principles have been annihilated by the
existence of
slavery among us.”

Emergence of racial
distinctions
Thomas Jefferson, future author of
the Declaration of Independence and
in private a sharp critic of slavery,
placed this advertisement in a Virginia
newspaper in 1769, seeking the
return of a runaway slave. Sandy was
in fact recaptured, and Jefferson sold
him in 1773.
1. How did the limited central government created by the
Articles of Confederation reflect the issues behind the
Revolution and fears for individual liberties?
2. What were the ideas and motivations that pushed
Americans to expand west?
3. What events and ideas led to the belief in 1786 and 1787
that the Articles of Confederation were not working well?

4. The Constitution has been described as a “bundle of com-
promises.” Which compromises were the most significant
in shaping the direction of the new nation and why?
5. What were the major arguments in support of the
Constitution given by the Federalists?
6. What were the major arguments against the Constitution
put forth by the Anti-Federalists?
7. How accurate was Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s
description of America as a melting pot?
K E Y T E R M S
Land Ordinances of 1784 and
1785 (p. 198)
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
(p. 198)
“empire of liberty” (p. 198)
Shays’s Rebellion (p. 200)
federalism (p. 204)
checks and balances (p. 204)
separation of powers (p. 204)
three-fifths clause (p. 206)
The Federalist (p. 208)
Anti-Federalists (p. 209)

Bill of Rights (p. 214)
Miami Confederation (p. 216)
Battle of Fallen Timbers (p. 216)
Treaty of Greenville (p. 216)
“annuity” system (p. 216)
gradual emancipation (p. 217)
Letters from an American Farmer
(p. 217)
Notes on the State of Virginia
(p. 218)
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1789 Inauguration of George
Washington
French Revolution begins
1791 First Bank of the United
States
Hamilton’s Report on
Manufactures
1791– Haitian Revolution
1804
1791 Thomas Paine’s The Rights
of Man
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft’s
A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman
1793 First federal fugitive slave
law
1794 Whiskey Rebellion
Jay’s Treaty

1797 Inauguration of John Adams
1798 XYZ affair
Alien and Sedition Acts
1800 Gabriel’s Rebellion
1801 Inauguration of Thomas
Jefferson
1801– First Barbary War
1805
1803 Louisiana Purchase
1804– Lewis and Clark
1806 expedition
1809 Inauguration of James
Madison
1812– War of 1812
1814
1814 Treaty of Ghent
Hartford Convention
S E C U R I N G T H E
R E P U B L I C
C H A P T E R 8

This colorful painting by the artist John
Archibald Woodside from around the time
of the War of 1812 contains numerous
symbols of freedom, among them the
goddess of liberty with her liberty cap,
a broken chain at the sailor’s feet, the fallen
crown (under his left foot), a broken royal
scepter, and the sailor himself, because
English interference with American
shipping was one of the war’s causes.
1 7 9 1 – 1 8 1 5
222 Chapter 8 ★ Securing the Republic
O n April 30, 1789, in New York City, the nation’s temporary
capi-tal, George Washington became the first president under
the new Constitution. All sixty-nine electors had awarded him
their
votes. Dressed in a plain suit of “superfine American broad
cloth” rather
than European finery, Washington took the oath of office on the
balcony
of Federal Hall before a large crowd that reacted with “loud and
repeated

shouts” of approval. He then retreated inside to deliver his
inaugural
address before members of Congress and other dignitaries.
Washington’s speech expressed the revolutionary generation’s
con-
viction that it had embarked on an experiment of enormous
historical
importance, whose outcome was by no means certain. “The
preservation
of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican
model of
government,” Washington proclaimed, depended on the success
of the
American experiment in self-government.
American leaders believed that maintaining political harmony
was
crucial to this success. They were especially anxious to avoid
the emer-
gence of organized political parties, which had already appeared
in sev-
eral states. Parties were considered divisive and disloyal. “They
serve to
organize faction,” Washington would later declare, and to
substitute the
aims of “a small but artful” minority for the “will of the
nation.” The Con-
stitution makes no mention of political parties, and the original
method of
electing the president assumes that candidates would run as
individuals,
not on a party ticket (otherwise, the second-place finisher would
not have
become vice president). Nonetheless, national political parties
quickly

arose. Originating in Congress, they soon spread to the general
populace.
Instead of harmony, the 1790s became, in the words of one
historian, an
“age of passion.” Political rhetoric became inflamed because the
stakes
seemed so high—nothing less than the legacy of the Revolution,
the new
nation’s future, and the survival of American freedom.
P O L I T I C S I N A N A G E O F P A S S I O N
President Washington provided a much-needed symbol of
national unity.
He brought into his cabinet some of the new nation’s most
prominent
political leaders, including Thomas Jefferson as secretary of
state and
Alexander Hamilton to head the Treasury Department. He also
appointed
a Supreme Court of six members, headed by John Jay of New
York. But
harmonious government proved short lived.
What issues made the
politics of the 1790s so
divisive?
How did competing views
of freedom and global
events promote the politi-

cal divisions of the 1790s?
What were the achieve-
ments and failures of
Jefferson’s presidency?
What were the causes and
significant results of the
War of 1812?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
Washington’s first
administration
223P O L I T I C S I N A N A G E O F P A S S I O N
What issues made the politics of the 1790s so divisive?
Hamilton’s Program
Political divisions first surfaced over the financial plan
developed by
Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton in 1790 and 1791.
Hamilton’s imme-
diate aims were to establish the nation’s financial stability,
bring to the
government’s support the country’s most powerful financial
interests, and

encourage economic development. His long-term purpose was to
make the
United States a major commercial and military power. The goal
of national
greatness, he believed, could never be realized if the
government suffered
from the same weaknesses as under the Articles of
Confederation.
Hamilton’s program had five parts. The first step was to
establish the
new nation’s credit-worthiness—that is, to create conditions
under which
persons would loan money to the government by purchasing its
bonds,
confident that they would be repaid. Hamilton proposed that the
federal
government assume responsibility for paying off at its full face
value the
national debt inherited from the War of Independence, as well
as outstand-
ing debts of the states. Second, he called for the creation of a
new national
debt. The old debts would be replaced by new interest-bearing
bonds
issued to the government’s creditors. This would give men of
economic
substance a stake in promoting the new nation’s stability,
because the
stronger and more economically secure the federal government,
the more
likely it would be to pay its debts.
The third part of Hamilton’s program called for the creation of a
Bank
of the United States, modeled on the Bank of England, to serve

as the
nation’s main financial agent. A private corporation rather than
a branch
of the government, it would hold public funds, issue bank notes
that
would serve as currency, and make loans to the government
when neces-
sary, all the while returning a tidy profit to its stockholders.
Fourth, to
raise revenue, Hamilton proposed a tax on producers of
whiskey. Finally,
in a Report on Manufactures delivered to Congress in December
1791,
Hamilton called for the imposition of a tariff (a tax on imported
foreign
goods) and government subsidies to encourage the development
of facto-
ries that could manufacture products currently purchased from
abroad.
The Emergence of Opposition
Hamilton’s vision of a powerful commercial republic won
strong support
from American financiers, manufacturers, and merchants. But it
alarmed
those who believed the new nation’s destiny lay in charting a
different
path of development. Hamilton’s plans hinged on close ties with
Britain,
America’s main trading partner. To James Madison and Thomas
Jefferson,
Liberty and Washington, painted
by an unknown artist around 1800,

depicts a female figure of liberty
placing a wreath on a bust of the first
president. She carries an American
flag and stands on a royal crown,
which has been thrown to the ground.
In the background is a liberty cap.
Washington had died in 1799 and
was now immortalized as a symbol of
freedom, independence, and national
pride.
Support for Hamilton’s plan
Chapter 8 ★ Securing the Republic224
the future lay in westward expansion, not connections with
Europe. Their
goal was a republic of independent farmers marketing grain,
tobacco, and
other products freely to the entire world. Jefferson and Madison
quickly
concluded that the greatest threat to American freedom lay in
the alliance
of a powerful central government with an emerging class of

commercial
capitalists, such as Hamilton appeared to envision.
To Jefferson, Hamilton’s system “flowed from principles
adverse to
liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the
republic.”
Hamilton’s plans for a standing army seemed to his critics a
bold threat
to freedom. The national bank and assumption of state debts,
they
feared, would introduce into American politics the same
corruption that
had undermined British liberty, and enrich those already
wealthy at
the expense of ordinary Americans. During the 1780s,
speculators had
bought up at great discounts (often only a few cents on the
dollar) govern-
ment bonds and paper notes that had been used to pay those who
fought
in the Revolution or supplied the army. Under Hamilton’s plan,
specula-
tors would reap a windfall by being paid at face value while the
original
holders received nothing. Because transportation was so poor,
moreover,
many backcountry farmers were used to distilling their grain
harvest into
whiskey, which could then be carried more easily to market.
Hamilton’s
whiskey tax seemed to single them out unfairly in order to
enrich bond-
holders.
The Jefferson-Hamilton Bargain

At first, opposition to Hamilton’s program arose almost entirely
from the
South, the region that had the least interest in manufacturing
develop-
ment and the least diversified economy. It also had fewer
holders of fed-
eral bonds than the Middle States and New England. Because
Hamilton
insisted that all his plans were authorized by the Constitution’s
broad
“general welfare” clause, many southerners who had supported
the new
Constitution now became “strict constructionists,” who insisted
that
the federal government could exercise only powers specifically
listed in
the document. Jefferson, for example, believed the new national
bank
unconstitutional, because the right of Congress to create a bank
was not
mentioned in the Constitution.
Opposition in Congress threatened the enactment of Hamilton’s
plans. Behind-the-scenes negotiations followed. They
culminated at a
famous dinner in 1790 at which Jefferson brokered an
agreement whereby
southerners accepted Hamilton’s fiscal program (with the
exception of
Venerate the Plough, a medal of
the Philadelphia Society for the
Promotion of Agriculture, 1786.

Americans such as Jefferson and
Madison believed that farmers
were the most virtuous citizens and
therefore agriculture must remain the
foundation of American life.
A bargain struck
Opposition to Hamilton’s plan
subsidies to manufacturers) in exchange for the establishment of
the
permanent national capital on the Potomac River between
Maryland and
Virginia. Major Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, a French-born veteran
of the War
of Independence, designed a grandiose plan for the “federal
city” modeled
on the great urban centers of Europe, with wide boulevards,
parks, and
fountains. When it came to constructing public buildings in the
nation’s
new capital, most of the labor was performed by slaves.
The Impact of the French Revolution

Political divisions began over Hamilton’s fiscal program, but
they deep-
ened in response to events in Europe. When it began in 1789,
nearly all
Americans welcomed the French Revolution, inspired in part by
the
example of their own rebellion. But in 1793, the revolution took
a more radi-
cal turn with the execution of King Louis XVI along with
numerous aris-
tocrats and other foes of the new government, and war broke out
between
France and Great Britain.
Events in France became a source of bitter conflict in America.
Jefferson and his followers believed that despite its excesses the
revolution
marked a historic victory for the idea of popular self-
government, which
must be defended at all costs. Enthusiasm for France inspired a
rebirth
of symbols of liberty. Liberty poles and caps reappeared on the
streets of
American towns and cities. To Washington, Hamilton, and their
support-
ers, however, the revolution raised the specter of anarchy.
The rivalry between Britain and France did much to shape early
American politics. The “permanent” alliance between France
and the
United States, which dated to 1778, complicated the situation.
No one
advocated that the United States should become involved in the
European
war, and Washington in April 1793 issued a proclamation of

American
neutrality. Meanwhile, the British seized hundreds of American
ships
trading with the French West Indies and resumed the hated
practice of
impressment— kidnapping sailors, including American citizens
of British
origin, to serve in their navy. Sent to London to present
objections, while
still serving as chief justice, John Jay negotiated an agreement
in 1794
that produced the greatest public controversy of Washington’s
presidency.
Jay’s Treaty contained no British concessions on impressment
or the
rights of American shipping. Britain did agree to abandon
outposts on the
western frontier, which it was supposed to have done in 1783.
In return,
the United States guaranteed favored treatment to British
imported goods.
Critics of the administration charged that it aligned the United
States with
The rivalry of Britain and
France
Favored treatment to British
imports
The national capital

monarchical Britain in its conflict with republican France.
Ultimately,
Jay’s Treaty sharpened political divisions in the United States
and led
directly to the formation of an organized opposition party.
Political Parties
By the mid-1790s, two increasingly coherent parties had
appeared in
Congress, calling themselves Federalists and Republicans. (The
latter had
no connection with today’s Republican Party, which was
founded in the
1850s.) Both parties laid claim to the language of liberty, and
each accused
its opponent of engaging in a conspiracy to destroy it.
The Federalists, supporters of the Washington administration,
favored
Hamilton’s economic program and close ties with Britain.
Prosperous
merchants, farmers, lawyers, and established political leaders
(especially
outside the South) tended to support the Federalists. Their
outlook was
generally elitist, reflecting the traditional eighteenth-century
view of soci-
ety as a fixed hierarchy and of public office as reserved for men
of economic
substance—the “rich, the able, and the well-born,” as Hamilton
put it.
Freedom, Federalists insisted, rested on deference to authority.
Federalists
feared that the “spirit of liberty” unleashed by the American
Revolution

was degenerating into anarchy and “licentiousness.”
The Whiskey Rebellion
The Federalists may have been the only major party in
American his-
tory forthrightly to proclaim democracy and freedom dangerous
in the
hands of ordinary citizens. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794,
which broke
out when backcountry Pennsylvania farmers sought to block
collection
of the new tax on distilled spirits, reinforced this conviction.
The “rebels”
invoked the symbols of 1776, displaying liberty poles and
banners read-
ing “Liberty or Death.” But Washington dispatched 13,000
militiamen to
western Pennsylvania (a larger force than he had commanded
during the
Revolution). He accompanied them part of the way to the scene
of the dis-
turbances, the only time in American history that a president
has actually
commanded an army in the field. The “rebels” offered no
resistance.
The Republican Party
Republicans, led by Madison and Jefferson, were more
sympathetic
to France than the Federalists and had more faith in democratic
self-
government. They drew their support from an unusual alliance
of wealthy

Opposition to the tax on
distilled spirits
Republicans favored
self-government
Federalists supported
Washington and favored
Hamilton’s economic program
A 1794 painting by the Baltimore
artist and sign painter Frederick
Kemmelmayer depicting President
George Washington as commander-
in-chief of the army dispatched to put
down the Whiskey Rebellion.
southern planters and ordinary farmers
throughout the country. Enthusiasm for the
French Revolution increasingly drew urban
artisans into Republican ranks as well.
Republicans were far more critical than the
Federalists of social and economic inequal-
ity, and more accepting of broad democratic
participation as essential to freedom.

Political language became more and more
heated. Federalists denounced Republicans
as French agents, anarchists, and traitors.
Republicans called their opponents monar-
chists intent on transforming the new national
government into a corrupt, British-style aris-
tocracy. Each charged the other with betray-
ing the principles of the War of Independence and of American
freedom.
Washington himself received mounting abuse. When he left
office, a
Republican newspaper declared that his name had become
synonymous
with “political iniquity” and “legalized corruption.”
An Expanding Public Sphere
The debates of the 1790s produced not only one of the most
intense periods
of partisan warfare in American history but also an enduring
expansion
of the public sphere and with it the democratic content of
American free-
dom. More and more citizens attended political meetings and
became avid
readers of pamphlets and newspapers. The establishment of
nearly 1,000
post offices made possible the wider circulation of personal
letters and
printed materials. The era witnessed the rapid growth of the
American
press—the number of newspapers rose from around 100 to 260
during the
1790s, and reached nearly 400 by 1810.

Inspired by the Jacobin clubs of Paris, supporters of the French
Revolution and critics of the Washington administration in 1793
and 1794 formed nearly fifty Democratic-Republican societies.
The
Republican press publicized their meetings, replete with toasts
to
French and American liberty. Federalists saw the societies as
another
example of how liberty was getting out of hand. The
government, not
“self-created societies,” declared the president, was the
authentic voice
of the American people. Forced to justify their existence, the
societies
developed a defense of the right of the people to debate political
issues
and organize to affect public policy. To the societies, political
liberty
Democratic-Republican
societies
Growth in American press
228
From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the
Equality of the Sexes” (1790)
A prominent writer of plays, novels, and poetry, Judith Sargent
Murray of Massa-

chusetts was one of the first women to demand equal
educational opportunities for
women.
Is it upon mature consideration we adopt the idea, that nature is
thus partial in her
distributions? Is it indeed a fact, that she hath yielded to one
half of the human species so
unquestionable a mental superiority? I know that to both sexes
elevated understandings,
and the reverse, are common. But, suffer me to ask, in what the
minds of females are so
notoriously deficient, or unequal. . . .
Are we deficient in reason? We can only reason from what we
know, and if an opportunity
of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of
our sex cannot fairly be deduced
from thence. . . . Will it be said that the judgment of a male of
two years old, is more sage than that
of a female’s of the same age? I believe the reverse is generally
observed to be true. But from that
period what partiality! How is the one exalted, and the other
depressed, by the contrary modes
of education which are adopted! The one is taught to aspire, and
the other is early confined and
limited. As their years increase, the sister must be wholly
domesticated, while the brother is
led by the hand through all the flowery paths of science. Grant
that their minds are by nature
equal, yet who shall wonder at the apparent superiority. . . . At
length arrived at womanhood, the
uncultivated fair one feels a void, which the employments
allotted her are by no means capable

of filling. . . . She herself is most unhappy; she feels the want
of a cultivated mind. . . . Should
it . . . be vociferated, ‘Your domestic employments are
sufficient’—I would calmly ask, is it
reasonable, that a candidate for immortality, for the joys of
heaven, an intelligent being, who is
to spend an eternity in contemplating the works of Deity, should
at present be so degraded, as to
be allowed no other ideas, than those which are suggested by
the mechanism of a pudding, or the
sewing the seams of a garment? . . .
Yes, ye lordly, ye haughty sex, our souls are by nature equal to
yours.
Chapter 8 ★ Securing the Republic
229
The creation of around fifty Democratic-Republican societies in
1793 and 1794
reflected the expansion of the public sphere. The Pennsylvania
society issued an
address defending itself against critics who questioned its right
to criticize the
administration of George Washington.
The principles and proceedings of our Association have lately
been caluminated [tarred by
malicious falsehoods]. We should think ourselves unworthy to
be ranked as Freemen, if awed

by the name of any man, however he may command the public
gratitude for past services, we
could suffer in silence so sacred a right, so important a
principle, as the freedom of opinion to
be infringed, by attack on Societies which stand on that
constitutional basis.
Freedom of thought, and a free communication of opinions by
speech through the
medium of the press, are the safeguards of our Liberties. . . .
By the freedom of opinion,
cannot be meant the right of thinking merely; for of this right
the greatest Tyrant cannot
deprive his meanest slave; but, it is freedom in the
communication of sentiments [by] speech
or through the press. This liberty is an imprescriptable
[unlimitable] right, independent of
any Constitution or social compact; it is as complete a right as
that which any man has to the
enjoyment of his life. These principles are eternal—they are
recognized by our Constitution;
and that nation is already enslaved that does
not acknowledge their truth. . . .
If freedom of opinion, in the sense we
understand it, is the right of every Citizen,
by what mode of reasoning can that right
be denied to an assemblage of Citizens? . . .
The Society are free to declare that they
never were more strongly impressed with . . .
the importance of associations . . . than
at the present time. The germ of an odious
Aristocracy is planted among us—it has taken
root. . . . Let us remain firm in attachment to
principles. . . . Let us be particularly watchful
to preserve inviolate the freedom of opinion,

assured that it is the most effectual weapon for
the protection of our liberty.
From Address of the Democratic-Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. How does Murray answer the argu-
ment that offering education to women
will lead them to neglect their “domestic
employments”?
2. Why does the Democratic-Republican
society insist on the centrality of “free
communication of opinions” in preserving
American liberty?
3. How do these documents reflect expanding
ideas about who should enjoy the freedom
to express one’s ideas in the early republic?

meant not simply voting in elections but
constant involvement in public affairs. It
included the right to “exercise watchful-
ness and inspection, upon the conduct of
public officers.” Blamed by Federalists for
helping to inspire the Whiskey Rebellion,
the societies disappeared by the end of
1795. But much of their organization and
outlook was absorbed into the emerging
Republican Party. They helped to legiti-
mize the right of “any portion of the
people,” regardless of station in life, to
express political opinions and take an
active role in public life.
The Rights of Women
The democratic ferment of the 1790s inspired renewed
discussion about
women’s rights. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published in
England her
extra ordinary pamphlet A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Wollstonecraft
did not directly challenge traditional gender roles. Her call for
greater access
to education and to paid employment for women rested on the
idea that this
would enable single women to support themselves and married
women to
perform more capably as wives and mothers. But she did “drop
a hint,” as
she put it, that women “ought to have representation” in
government. Within
two years, American editions of Wollstonecraft’s work had
appeared, signal-

ing new opportunities for women in the public sphere.
Increasing numbers
began expressing their thoughts in print. Judith Sargent Murray,
one of the
era’s most accomplished American women, wrote essays for the
Massachusetts
Magazine under the pen name “The Gleaner.” In her essay “On
the Equality
of the Sexes,” written in 1779 and published in 1790, Murray
insisted that
women had as much right as men to exercise all their talents
and should be
allowed equal educational opportunities to enable them to do so.
Women were contributing new ideas, but were they part of the
new
body politic? There was nothing explicitly limiting the rights in
the
Constitution to men. The Constitution’s use of the word “he” to
describe
officeholders, however, reflected the widespread assumption
that politics
was a realm for men. The time had not yet come for a broad
assault on
gender inequality.
The men who wrote the Constitution did not envision the active
and
continuing involvement of ordinary citizens in affairs of state.
But the rise
A print shop in the early republic. The
increasing number of newspapers
played a major role in the expansion

of the public sphere.
Mary Wollstonecraft
“On the Equality of the Sexes”
231T H E A D A M S P R E S I D E N C Y
How did competing views of freedom and global events promote
political divisions?
of political parties seeking to mobilize voters in hotly contested
elections,
the emergence of the “self-created societies,” the stirrings of
women’s
political consciousness, and even armed uprisings such as the
Whiskey
Rebellion broadened and deepened the democratization of
public life set in
motion by the American Revolution.
T H E A D A M S P R E S I D E N C Y
In 1792, Washington won unanimous reelection. Four years
later, he
decided to retire from public life, in part to establish the
precedent that the
presidency is not a life office. In his Farewell Address (mostly
drafted by
Hamilton and published in the newspapers rather than delivered
orally;
see the Appendix for excerpts from the speech), Washington
defended

his administration against criticism, warned against the party
spirit, and
advised his countrymen to steer clear of international power
politics by
avoiding “permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign
world.”
The Election of 1796
George Washington’s departure unleashed fierce party
competition over
the choice of his successor. In this, the first contested
presidential election,
two tickets presented themselves: John Adams, with Thomas
Pinckney
of South Carolina for vice president, representing the
Federalists, and
Thomas Jefferson, with Aaron Burr of New York, for the
Republicans.
Adams received seventy-one electoral votes to Jefferson’s sixty-
eight.
Because of factionalism among the Federalists, Pinckney
received only
fifty-nine votes, so Jefferson, the leader of the opposition party,
became vice
president. Voting fell almost entirely along sectional lines:
Adams carried
New England, New York, and New Jersey, while Jefferson
swept the South,
along with Pennsylvania.
In 1797, John Adams assumed leadership of a divided nation.
His
presidency was beset by crises. On the international front, the
country
was nearly dragged into the ongoing European war. As a neutral

nation,
the United States claimed the right to trade nonmilitary goods
with
both Britain and France, but both countries seized American
ships with
impunity. In 1797, American diplomats were sent to Paris to
negotiate
a treaty to replace the old alliance of 1778. French officials
presented
them with a demand for bribes before negotiations could
proceed. When
Adams made public the envoys’ dispatches, the French officials
were
An engraving from The Lady’s
Magazine and Repository of
Entertaining Knowledge, published
in Philadelphia in 1792. A woman
identified as the “Genius of the Ladies
Magazine” kneels before Liberty,
presenting a petition for the “Rights
of Women.” In the foreground are
symbols of the arts, science, and
literature—knowledge that should be
available to women as well as men.

Adams’s presidency beset by
crises
designated by the last three letters of the alphabet. This
“XYZ affair” poisoned America’s relations with its
former ally. By 1798, the United States and France were
engaged in a “quasi-war” at sea. Despite pressure from
Hamilton, who desired a declaration of war, Adams in
1800 negotiated peace with France.
Adams was less cautious in domestic affairs.
Unrest continued in many rural areas. In 1799, farm-
ers in southeastern Pennsylvania obstructed the
assessment of a tax on land and houses that Congress
had imposed to help fund an expanded army and
navy. A crowd led by John Fries, a local militia leader
and auctioneer, released arrested men from prison.
The army arrested Fries for treason and proceeded to
terrorize his supporters, tear down liberty poles, and
whip Republican newspaper editors.
The “Reign of Witches”
But the greatest crisis of the Adams administration arose
over the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Confronted
with mounting opposition, some of it voiced by immigrant
pamphleteers
and editors, Federalists moved to silence their critics. A new
Naturalization
Act extended from five to fourteen years the residency
requirement for

immigrants seeking American citizenship. The Alien Act
allowed the
deportation of persons from abroad deemed “dangerous” by
federal author-
ities. The Sedition Act (which was set to expire in 1801, by
which time
Adams hoped to have been reelected) authorized the prosecution
of virtu-
ally any public assembly or publication critical of the
government. The
new law meant that opposition editors could be prosecuted for
almost any
political comment they printed. The main target was the
Republican press.
The passage of these measures launched what Jefferson—
recalling events
in Salem, Massachusetts, a century earlier—termed a “reign of
witches.”
Eighteen individuals, including several Republican newspaper
editors,
were charged under the Sedition Act. Ten were convicted of
spreading “false,
scandalous, and malicious” information about the government.
Matthew
Lyon, a member of Congress from Vermont and editor of a
Republican
newspaper, The Scourge of Aristocracy, received a sentence of
four months in
prison and a fine of $1,000. In Massachusetts, authorities
indicted several
men for erecting a liberty pole bearing the inscription, “No
Stamp Act, no
Sedition, no Alien Bill, no Land Tax; Downfall to the Tyrants
of America.”

A New Display of the United States,
an 1803 engraving by Amos Doolittle,
depicts President John Adams
surrounded by shields of sixteen
states (the original thirteen plus
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vermont),
with the population and number of
senators and representatives of each.
At the top, an eagle holds an arrow,
an olive branch, and a banner reading
“Millions for our Defence not a Cent
for Tribute,” a motto that originated
during the XYZ affair of 1798 when
French officials demanded bribes
before entering into negotiations to
avoid war with the United States.
Matthew Lyon

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
The Sedition Act thrust freedom of expression to the center of
discussions
of American liberty. Madison and Jefferson mobilized
opposition, draft-
ing resolutions adopted by the Virginia and Kentucky
legislatures. Both
resolutions attacked the Sedition Act as an unconstitutional
violation of
the First Amendment. Virginia’s, written by Madison, called on
the federal
courts to protect free speech. The original version of Jefferson’s
Kentucky
resolution went further, asserting that states could nullify laws
of Congress
that violated the Constitution—that is, states could unilaterally
prevent the
enforcement of such laws within their borders. The legislature
prudently
deleted this passage.
No other state endorsed the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions.
Many
Americans, including many Republicans, were horrified by the
idea of state
action that might endanger the Union. But the “crisis of
freedom” of the
late 1790s strongly reinforced the idea that “freedom of
discussion” was an
indispensable attribute of American liberty and of democratic

government.
Free speech, as the Massachusetts Federalist Harrison Gray Otis
noted, had
become the people’s “darling privilege.”
The “Revolution of 1800”
“Jefferson and Liberty” became the watchword of the
Republican campaign
of 1800. By this time, Republicans had developed effective
techniques for
mobilizing voters, such as printing pamphlets, handbills, and
newspa-
pers and holding mass meetings to promote their cause. The
Federalists,
who viewed politics as an activity for a small group of elite
men, found
it difficult to match their opponents’ mobilization. Nonetheless,
they still
dominated New England and enjoyed considerable support in
the Middle
Atlantic states. Jefferson triumphed, with seventy-three
electoral votes to
Adams’s sixty-five.
Before assuming office, Jefferson was forced to weather an
unusual
constitutional crisis. Each party arranged to have an elector
throw away
one of his two votes for president, so that its presidential
candidate
would come out a vote ahead of the vice presidential. But the
designated
Republican elector failed to do so. As a result, both Jefferson
and his
running mate, Aaron Burr, received seventy-three electoral

votes. With
no candidate having a majority, the election was thrown into the
House
of Representatives that had been elected in 1798, where the
Federalists
enjoyed a slight majority. For thirty-five ballots, neither man
received a
majority of the votes. Finally, Hamilton intervened. He disliked
Jefferson
An 1800 campaign banner, with a
portrait of Thomas Jefferson and the
words, “John Adams is no more.”
Opposition to the
Sedition Act
“Freedom of discussion”
but believed him enough of a statesman to
recognize that the Federalist financial sys-
tem could not be dismantled.
Hamilton’s support for Jefferson tipped
the balance. To avoid a repetition of the cri-
sis, Congress and the states soon adopted
the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution,
requiring electors to cast separate votes for
president and vice president. The election of
1800 also set in motion a chain of events that

culminated four years later when Burr killed
Hamilton in a duel.
The events of the 1790s demonstrated
that a majority of Americans believed ordi-
nary people had a right to play an active
role in politics, express their opinions freely,
and contest the policies of their government.
To their credit, Federalists never considered
resistance to the election result. Adams’s
acceptance of defeat established the vital
precedent of a peaceful transfer of power
from a defeated party to its successor.
Slavery and Politics
Lurking behind the political battles of the 1790s lay the
potentially divi-
sive issue of slavery. Jefferson, after all, received every one of
the South’s
forty-one electoral votes. The triumph of “Jefferson and
Liberty” would
not have been possible without slavery. Had three-fifths of the
slaves not
been counted in apportionment, John Adams would have been
reelected
in 1800.
The issue of slavery would not disappear. The very first
Congress
under the new Constitution received petitions calling for
emancipa-
tion. One bore the weighty signature of Benjamin Franklin, who
in 1787
had agreed to serve as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society.

The blessings of liberty, Franklin’s petition insisted, should be
available
“without distinction of color to all descriptions of people.”
Despite heated
debate on both sides of the slavery question, Congress avoided
the issue
of emancipation. In 1793, to implement the Constitution’s
fugitive slave
clause, Congress enacted a law providing for federal and state
judges and
local officials to facilitate the return of escaped slaves.
8 7 7
21
5
4
3 8
4
8
4
3
5
12
4
6 16
9
4

Non-voting territory
Party Candidate
Republican Jefferson*
Burr**
Federalist Adams
Pinckney
Jay
73
73
65
64
1
53%
47%
Electoral
Vote
Share of
Electoral Vote
*Chosen as president by House of Representatives **Chosen
as vice president by House of Representatives
T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L E L E C T I O N
O F 1 8 0 0
Franklin and abolition

The Haitian Revolution
Events during the 1790s underscored how powerfully slavery
defined
and distorted American freedom. The same Jeffersonians who
hailed the
French Revolution as a step in the universal progress of liberty
reacted
in horror at the slave revolution that began in 1791 in Saint
Domingue,
the jewel of the French overseas empire situated not far from
the south-
ern coast of the United States. Toussaint L’Ouverture, an
educated slave
on a sugar plantation, forged the rebellious slaves into an army
able to
defeat British forces seeking to seize the island and then an
expedition
hoping to reestablish French authority. The slave uprising led to
the
establishment of Haiti as an independent nation in 1804.
Although much of the country was left in ruins by years of
warfare, the
Haitian Revolution affirmed the universality of the
revolutionary era’s creed
of liberty. It inspired hopes for freedom among slaves in the
United States.
Throughout the nineteenth century, black Americans would

celebrate the
winning of Haitian independence.
Among white Americans, the response to the Haitian Revolution
was
different. Thousands of refugees from Haiti poured into the
United States,
fleeing the upheaval. Many spread tales of the massacres of
slaveowners and
the burning of their plantations, which reinforced white
Americans’ fears of
slave insurrection at home. When Jefferson became president,
he sought to
quarantine and destroy the hemisphere’s second independent
republic.
Gabriel’s Rebellion
The momentous year of 1800 witnessed not only the
“revolution” of
Jefferson’s election but an attempted real one, a plot by slaves
in Virginia
itself to gain their freedom. It was organized by a Richmond
blacksmith,
Gabriel, and his brothers Solomon, also a blacksmith, and
Martin, a
slave preacher. The conspirators planned to march on the city,
which had
recently become the state capital, from surrounding plantations.
They
would kill some white inhabitants and hold the rest, including
Governor
James Monroe, hostage until their demand for the abolition of
slavery was
met. The plot was soon discovered and the leaders arrested.
Twenty-six

slaves, including Gabriel, were hanged and dozens more
transported out
of the state.
Blacks in 1800 made up half of Richmond’s population. One-
fifth
were free. A black community had emerged in the 1780s and
1790s, and
the conspiracy was rooted in its institutions. In cities like
Richmond, many
skilled slave craftsmen, including Gabriel himself, could read
and write
Toussaint L’Overture, leader of the
slave revolution in Saint Domingue
(modern-day Haiti). Painted in 1800
as part of a series of portraits of
French military leaders, it depicts him
as a courageous general.
Toussaint L’Ouverture
and enjoyed the privilege of hiring themselves out to
employers—that is,
negotiating their own labor arrangements, with their owner
receiving their
“wages.” Their relative autonomy helps account for slave

artisans’ promi-
nent role in the conspiracy.
Like other Virginians, the participants in the conspiracy spoke
the
language of liberty forged in the American Revolution and
reinvigorated
during the 1790s. “We have as much right,” one conspirator
declared, “to
fight for our liberty as any men.” After the rebellion, however,
the Virginia
legislature tightened controls over the black population—
making it ille-
gal for them to congregate on Sundays without white
supervision—and
severely restricted the possibility that masters could voluntarily
free
their slaves. Any slave freed after 1806 was required to leave
Virginia or
be sold back into slavery. The door to emancipation, thrown
open during
the American Revolution, had been slammed shut.
J E F F E R S O N I N P O W E R
The first president to begin his term in Washington, D.C.,
Jefferson
assumed office on March 4, 1801. The city, with its unpaved
streets, impov-
erished residents, and unfinished public buildings, scarcely
resembled
L’Enfant’s grand plan. At one point, part of the roof of the
Capitol collapsed,
narrowly missing the vice president.
Jefferson’s inaugural address was conciliatory toward his oppo-

nents. “Every difference of opinion,” he declared, “is not a
difference of
principle. . . . We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
He went on
to expound the policies his administration would follow—
economy in gov-
ernment, unrestricted trade, freedom of religion and the press,
friendship
to all nations but “entangling alliances” with none. America,
“the world’s
best hope,” would flourish if a limited government allowed its
citizens to be
“free to regulate their own pursuits.”
Jefferson hoped to dismantle as much of the Federalist system
as pos-
sible. Among his first acts as president was to pardon all those
imprisoned
under the Sedition Act. During his eight years as president, he
reduced
the number of government employees and slashed the army and
navy. He
abolished all taxes except the tariff, including the hated tax on
whiskey,
and paid off part of the national debt. He aimed to minimize
federal power
and eliminate government oversight of the economy. His
policies ensured
that the United States would not become a centralized state on a
European
model, as Hamilton had envisioned.
Tightening control over
blacks in Virginia
Jefferson’s inauguration

Dismantling the Federalist
system
237J E F F E R S O N I N P O W E R
What were the achievements and failures of Jefferson’s
presidency?
Judicial Review
Nonetheless, as Hamilton predicted, it proved impossible to
uproot
national authority entirely. Jefferson distrusted the unelected
judiciary.
But during his presidency, and for many years thereafter, the
Federalist
John Marshall headed the Supreme Court. A strong believer in
national
supremacy, Marshall established the Court’s power to review
laws of
Congress and the states.
The first landmark decision of the Marshall Court came in 1803,
in
the case of Marbury v. Madison. On the eve of leaving office,
Adams had
appointed a number of justices of the peace for the District of
Columbia.
Madison, Jefferson’s secretary of state, refused to issue
commissions (the
official documents entitling them to assume their posts) to these
“midnight
judges.” Four, including William Marbury, sued for their

offices. Marshall’s
decision declared unconstitutional the section of the Judiciary
Act of 1789
that allowed the courts to order executive officials to deliver
judges’ com-
missions. It exceeded the power of Congress as outlined in the
Constitution
and was therefore void. Marbury, in other words, may have been
entitled
to his commission, but the Court had no power under the
Constitution to
order Madison to deliver it. The Supreme Court had assumed
the right to
determine whether an act of Congress violates the
Constitution—a power
known as “judicial review.”
Seven years later, in Fletcher v. Peck, the Court extended
judicial review
to state laws. In 1794, four land companies had paid nearly
every member
of the state legislature, Georgia’s two U.S. senators, and a
number of fed-
eral judges to secure their right to purchase land in present-day
Alabama
and Mississippi claimed by Georgia. Two years later, many of
the corrupt
lawmakers were defeated for reelection, and the new legislature
rescinded
the land grant and subsequent sales. Whatever the circumstances
of the
legislature’s initial action, Marshall declared, the Constitution
prohibited
Georgia from taking any action that impaired a contract.
Therefore, the
individual purchasers could keep their land, and the legislature

could not
repeal the original grant.
The Louisiana Purchase
But the greatest irony of Jefferson’s presidency involved his
greatest
achievement, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. This resulted not
from astute
American diplomacy but because the rebellious slaves of Saint
Domingue
defeated forces sent by the ruler of France, Napoleon
Bonaparte, to recon-
quer the island. Moreover, to take advantage of the sudden
opportunity
Fletcher v. Peck
The Marshall court
to purchase Louisiana, Jefferson had to abandon his conviction
that the
federal government was limited to powers specifically
mentioned in the
Constitution, because the document said nothing about buying
territory
from a foreign power.
This vast Louisiana Territory, which stretched from the Gulf of
Mexico
to Canada and from the Mississippi River to the Rocky
Mountains, had

been ceded by France to Spain in 1762 as part of the reshuffling
of colonial
possessions at the end of the Seven Years’ War. France secretly
reacquired
it in 1800. Soon after taking office, Jefferson learned of the
arrangement.
He had long been concerned about American access to the port
of New
Orleans, which lay within Louisiana at the mouth of the
Mississippi River.
The right to trade through New Orleans, essential to western
farmers, had
been acknowledged in the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also known as
Pinckney’s
Treaty) of 1795 between the United States and Spain. But
Jefferson feared
that the far more powerful French might try to interfere with
American
commerce. Needing money for military campaigns in Europe
and with his
dreams of American empire in ruins because of his inability to
reestablish
control over Saint Domingue, Napoleon offered to sell the
entire Louisiana
Territory. The cost, $15 million (the equivalent of perhaps $250
million
in today’s money), made the Louisiana Purchase one of
history’s greatest
real estate bargains.
In a stroke, Jefferson had doubled the size of the United States
and
ended the French presence in North America. Jefferson admitted
that he
had “done an act beyond the Constitution.” But he believed the
benefits jus-

tified his transgression. Farmers, Jefferson had written, were
“the chosen
White Hall Plantation, painted around
1800, depicts a Louisiana plantation
and the dynamism of the region’s
economy on the eve of its acquisition
by the United States. Black oarsmen
man a boat carrying bales of cotton
for sale in New Orleans.
Reasons for the Louisiana
Purchase
Effects of the Purchase
people of God,” and the country would remain “virtuous” as
long as it was
“chiefly agricultural.” Now, Jefferson believed, he had ensured
the agrar-
ian character of the United States and its political stability for
centuries to
come.
Lewis and Clark

Within a year of the purchase, Jefferson dispatched an
expedition led by
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, two Virginia-born
veterans of Indian
wars in the Ohio Valley, to explore the new territory. Their
objects were
both scientific and commercial—to study the area’s plants,
animal life, and
geography, and to discover how the region could be exploited
economically.
presidency?
Great
Falls
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St. Louis
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Lewis 1806
Lew
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Fort Clatsop
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Lewis and Clark's expedition, 1804–1806
Louisiana Purchase, 1803
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T H E L O U I S I A N A P U R C H A S E
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803
doubled the land area of the
United States.
Scientific and commercial
objectives

Jefferson hoped the explorers would establish trading relations
with west-
ern Indians and locate a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
In the spring of 1804, Lewis and Clark’s fifty-member “corps of
discovery” set out from St. Louis on the most famous exploring
party in
American history. They were accompanied by a fifteen-year-old
Shoshone
Indian woman, Sacajawea, the wife of a French fur trader, who
served as
their guide and interpreter. After crossing the Rocky Mountains,
the expe-
dition reached the Pacific Ocean in the area of present-day
Oregon. They
returned in 1806, bringing with them an immense amount of
information
about the region as well as numerous plant and animal
specimens. The
success of their journey helped to strengthen the idea that
American terri-
tory was destined to reach all the way to the Pacific.
Incorporating Louisiana
The only part of the Louisiana Purchase with a significant non-
Indian
population in 1803 was the region around New Orleans. When
the United
States took control, the city had around 8,000 inhabitants,
including
nearly 3,000 slaves and 1,300 free persons of color.

Incorporating this
diverse population into the United States was by no means easy.
French
and Spanish law accorded free blacks, many of whom were the
offspring
of unions between white military officers and slave women,
nearly all the
rights of white citizens. Moreover, Spain made it easy for slaves
to obtain
their freedom through purchase or voluntary emancipation by
the owners.
The treaty that transferred Louisiana to the United States
promised
that all free inhabitants would enjoy “the rights, advantages,
and immu-
A page from William Clark’s journal
of the Lewis and Clark expedition,
depicting a salmon. Among their
tasks was to record information about
the West’s plants, animal life, and
geography.
New Orleans in 1803, at the time of
the Louisiana Purchase. The painting
shows a view of the city from a
nearby plantation. The town houses

of merchants and plantation owners
line the broad promenade along the
waterfront. At the lower center, a
slave goes about his work. An eagle
holds aloft a banner that suggests
the heady optimism of the young
republic: Under My Wings Every
Thing Prospers.
presidency?
nities of citizens.” Spanish and French civil codes, unlike
British and
American law, recognized women as co-owners of family
property. Under
American rule, Louisiana retained this principle of “community
property”
within marriage. But free blacks suffered a steady decline in
status. And
the local legislature soon adopted one of the most sweeping
slave codes in
the South. Louisiana’s slaves had enjoyed far more freedom
under the rule

of tyrannical Spain than as part of the liberty-loving United
States.
The Barbary Wars
Jefferson hoped to avoid foreign entanglements, but he found it
impossible
as president to avoid being drawn into the continuing wars of
Europe. Even
as he sought to limit the power of the national government,
foreign rela-
tions compelled him to expand it. The first war fought by the
United States
was to protect American commerce in a dangerous world.
The Barbary states on the northern coast of Africa had long
preyed
on shipping in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, receiving tribute
from
several countries, including the United States, to protect their
vessels. In
1801, Jefferson refused demands for increased payments, and
the pasha
of Tripoli declared war on the United States. The naval conflict
lasted
until 1804, when an American squadron won a victory at Tripoli
harbor
(a victory commemorated in the official hymn of the Marine
Corps, which
mentions fighting on “the shores of Tripoli”).
The Barbary Wars were the new nation’s first encounter with
the
Islamic world. In the 1790s, as part of an attempt to establish
peaceful rela-
tions, the federal government declared that the United States

was “not, in
any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” But the conflicts
helped to
establish a long-lasting pattern in which Americans viewed
Muslims as an
exotic people whose way of life did not adhere to Western
standards.
The Embargo
Far more serious in its impact on the United States was warfare
between
Britain and France, which resumed in 1803 after a brief lull. By
1806, each
combatant had declared the other under blockade, seeking to
deny trade
with America to its rival. The Royal Navy resumed the practice
of impress-
ment. By the end of 1807, it had seized more than 6,000
American sailors
(claiming they were British citizens and deserters).
To Jefferson, the economic health of the United States required
free-
dom of trade with which no foreign government had a right to
interfere.
American farmers needed access to markets in Europe and the
Caribbean.
Protecting American
commerce
Blockades by Britain and
France
Louisiana slavery

Deciding to use trade as a weapon, in December 1807 he
persuaded
Congress to enact the Embargo, a ban on all American vessels
sailing for
foreign ports. For a believer in limited government, this was an
amazing
exercise of federal power.
In 1808, American exports plummeted by 80 percent.
Unfortunately,
neither Britain nor France, locked in a death struggle, took
much notice.
But the Embargo devastated the economies of American port
cities. Just
before his term ended, in March 1809, Jefferson signed the Non-
Intercourse
Act, banning trade only with Britain and France but providing
that if either
side rescinded its edicts against American shipping, commerce
with that
country would resume.
Madison and Pressure for War
Jefferson left office at the lowest point of his career. He had
won a sweeping
reelection in 1804, receiving 162 electoral votes to only 14 for
the Federalist
candidate, Charles C. Pinckney. With the exception of
Connecticut, he
even carried the Federalist stronghold of New England. Four

years later,
his handpicked successor, James Madison, also won an easy
victory. The
Embargo, however, had failed to achieve its diplomatic aims
and was
increasingly violated by American shippers. In 1810, Madison
adopted
a new policy. Congress enacted a measure known as Macon’s
Bill No. 2,
which allowed trade to resume but provided that if either France
or Britain
ceased interfering with American rights, the president could
reimpose an
embargo on the other. With little to lose, since Britain
controlled the seas,
the French emperor Napoleon announced that he had repealed
his decrees
against neutral shipping. But the British continued to attack
American
vessels. In the spring of 1812, Madison reimposed the embargo
on trade
with Britain.
Meanwhile, a group of younger congressmen, mostly from the
West, were calling for war with Britain. Known as the War
Hawks, this
new generation of political leaders had come of age after the
winning
of independence and were ardent nationalists. Their leaders
included
Henry Clay of Kentucky, elected Speaker of the House of
Representatives
in 1810, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The War
Hawks spoke
passionately of defending the national honor against British
insults, but

they also had more practical goals in mind, notably the
annexation of
Canada and the conquest of Florida, a haven for fugitive slaves
owned
by Britain’s ally Spain. Members of Congress also spoke of the
necessity
of upholding the principle of free trade and liberating the
United States
once and for all from European infringements on its
independence.
Effects of the Embargo
Macon’s Bill No. 2
War Hawks
243T H E “ S E C O N D W A R O F I N D E P E N D E N C
E ”
What were the causes and significant results of the War of
1812?
T H E “ S E C O N D W A R O F I N D E P E N D E N C E ”
The growing crisis between the United States and Britain took
place
against the background of deteriorating Indian relations in the
West,
which also helped propel the United States down the road to
war. Jefferson
had long favored the removal beyond the Mississippi River of
Indian tribes
that refused to cooperate in “civilizing” themselves. He

encouraged traders
to lend money to Indians, in the hope that accumulating debt
would force
them to sell some of their holdings west of the Appalachian
Mountains,
thus freeing up more land for “our increasing numbers.” On the
other
hand, the government continued President Washington’s policy
of promot-
ing settled farming among the Indians.
The Indian Response
By 1800, nearly 400,000 American settlers lived west of the
Appalachian
Mountains. They far outnumbered the remaining Indians, whose
seemingly irreversible decline in power led some Indians to
rethink their
opposition to assimilation. Among the Creek and Cherokee, a
group led
by men of mixed Indian-white ancestry like Major Ridge and
John Ross
enthusiastically endorsed the federal policy of promoting
“civilization.”
Many had established businesses as traders and slaveowning
farmers
with the help of their white fathers. Their views, in turn,
infuriated “nativ-
ists,” who strongly opposed assimilation.
The period from 1800 to 1812 was an “age of prophecy” among
the
Indians, as many tribal leaders sought to revitalize Indian life.
A militant
message was expounded by two Shawnee brothers—Tecumseh, a
chief

who had refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, and
Tenskwatawa,
a religious prophet who called for complete separation from
whites, the
revival of traditional Indian culture, and resistance to federal
policies.
White people, Tenskwatawa preached, were the source of all
evil in the
world, and Indians should abandon American alcohol, clothing,
food, and
manufactured goods. His followers gathered at Prophetstown,
located on
the Wabash River in Indiana.
Tecumseh meanwhile traversed the Mississippi Valley, pressing
the
argument that the alternative to Indian resistance was
extermination. He
repudiated chiefs who had sold land to the federal government:
“Sell a
country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth?
Did not the
Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?” In 1810,
Tecumseh
called for attacks on American frontier settlements. In
November 1811,
Indian relations in the West
Tenskwatawa (the Prophet), in a
portrait by the American artist Charles
Bird King, who painted numerous
Indian leaders.

Changing attitudes toward
assimilation
while he was absent, American forces under William Henry
Harrison
destroyed Prophetstown in the Battle of Tippecanoe.
The War of 1812
In 1795, James Madison had written that war is the greatest
enemy of “true
liberty.” Nonetheless, Madison became a war president. Reports
that the
British were encouraging Tecumseh’s efforts contributed to the
coming of
the War of 1812. In June 1812, with assaults on American
shipping continu-
ing, Madison asked Congress for a declaration of war. American
nationality,
the president declared, was at stake—would Americans remain
“an inde-
pendent people” or become “colonists and vassals” of Great
Britain? The
vote revealed a deeply divided country. Both Federalists and
Republicans
representing the states from New Jersey northward, where most
of the
mercantile and financial resources of the country were
concentrated, voted
against war. The South and West were strongly in favor. The
bill passed the

House by a vote of 79–49 and the Senate by 19–13. It was the
first time the
United States declared war on another country, and it was
approved by
the smallest margin of any declaration of war in American
history.
In retrospect, it seems remarkably foolhardy for a disunited and
militarily unprepared nation to go to war with one of the
world’s two
major powers. Fortunately for the United States, Great Britain
at the outset
was preoccupied with the struggle in Europe. But it easily
repelled two
feeble American invasions of Canada and imposed a blockade
that all but
destroyed American commerce. In 1814, having finally defeated
Napoleon,
Britain invaded the United States. Its forces seized Washington,
D.C., and
burned the White House, while the government fled for safety.
Americans did enjoy a few military successes. In August 1812,
the
American frigate Constitution defeated the British warship
Guerriere.
Commodore Oliver H. Perry defeated a British naval force in
September
1813 on Lake Erie. In the following year, a British assault on
Baltimore was
repulsed when Fort McHenry at the entrance to the harbor
withstood a
British bombardment. This was the occasion when Francis Scott
Key com-
posed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” an ode to the “land of the
free and home

of the brave” that became the national anthem during the 1930s.
Like the War of Independence, the War of 1812 was a two-front
struggle—against the British and against the Indians. The war
produced
significant victories over western Indians who sided with the
British. In
1813, pan-Indian forces led by Tecumseh (who had been
commissioned a
general in the British army) were defeated, and he himself was
killed, at
the Battle of the Thames, near Detroit, by an American force led
by William
Henry Harrison. In March 1814, an army of Americans and pro-
assimilation
244
America’s first war declared
Fighting the British and the
Indians
E ”
1812?
Pensacola
Cincinnati
Baltimore

Montreal
British set up blockade
of American ports
1812
Battle of the Thames
October 5, 1813
Commodore Perry
defeats British navy
September 1813
Americans defend Fort McHenry
from British attack (August 1814)
Horseshoe Bend
March 27, 1814
General Jackson wins
Battle of New Orleans
January 8, 1815
British capture and burn
Washington, D.C.
August 24, 1814
Tippecanoe
November 7, 1811
Fort Dearborn
Fort Niagara

Jackson
SPANISH
TERRITORY
GEORGIA
MISSISSIPPI
TERRITORY
LOUISIANA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA
TENNESSEE
KENTUCKY
VIRGINIA
INDIANA
TERRITORY
ILLINOIS
TERRITORY
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
MICHIGAN
TERRITORY
OHIO

PENNSYLVANIA
NEW YORK
VERMONT
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS
CONNECTICUT
RHODE
ISLAND
MAINE
NEW
JERSEY
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
(CANADA)
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Lake Ontario
Lake
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Gulf of Mexico
Atlantic
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0
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100

100
200 miles
200 kilometers
U.S. victory
U.S. victory over Native Americans
British victory
U.S. forces
British forces
British naval blockade
T H E W A R O F 1 8 1 2
Although the British burned the nation’s capital, the War of
1812 essentially was a military draw.
Cherokees and Creeks under the command of Andrew Jackson
defeated
hostile Creeks known as the Red Sticks at the Battle of
Horseshoe Bend in
Alabama, killing more than 800 of them. He dictated terms of
surrender
that required the Indians, hostile and friendly alike, to cede
more than half
their land, over 23 million acres in all, to the federal
government.
Jackson then proceeded to New Orleans, where he engineered
the

war’s greatest American victory, fighting off a British invasion
in January
1815. Although a slaveholder, Jackson recruited the city’s free
men of color
into his forces, appealing to them as “sons of freedom” and
promising them
the same pay and land bounties as white recruits.
With neither side wishing to continue the conflict, the United
States
and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war.
Although the treaty
was signed in December 1814, ships carrying news of the
agreement did not
reach America until after the Battle of New Orleans had been
fought. The
treaty restored the previous status quo. No territory exchanged
hands, nor
did any provisions relate to impressment or neutral shipping
rights.
The War’s Aftermath
A number of contemporaries called the War of 1812 the Second
War of
Independence. Jackson’s victory at New Orleans not only made
him a
national hero but also became a celebrated example of the
ability of virtuous
citizens of a republic to defeat the forces of despotic Europe.
Moreover, the war completed the conquest of the area east of
the
Mississippi River, which had begun during the Revolution.
Never again

The Hornet and Peacock, Or, John
Bull in Distress, a watercolor by
Amos B. Doolittle from 1813,
celebrates a victory by the American
warship Hornet over the British vessel
Peacock during the War of 1812.
Britain is represented as a half-bull,
half-peacock creature being stung in
the neck by a hornet.
Battle of New Orleans
Treaty of Ghent
American control east of the
Mississippi
E ”
1812?
would the British or Indians pose a threat
to American control of this vast region.
In its aftermath, white settlers poured

into Indiana, Michigan, Alabama, and
Mississippi, bringing with them their
distinctive forms of social organization.
Britain’s defeat of Napoleon inaugu-
rated a long period of peace in Europe.
With diplomatic affairs playing less and
less of a role in American public life,
Americans’ sense of separateness from
the Old World grew ever stronger.
The End of the Federalist
Party
Jefferson and Madison succeeded in one major political aim—
the elimina-
tion of the Federalist Party. At first, the war led to a revival of
Federalist
fortunes. With antiwar sentiment at its peak in 1812, Madison
had been
reelected by the relatively narrow margin of 128 electoral votes
to 89 over
his Federalist opponent, DeWitt Clinton of New York. But then
came a
self-inflicted blow. In December 1814, a group of New England
Federalists
gathered at Hartford, Connecticut, to give voice to their party’s
long-
standing grievances, especially the domination of the federal
government
by Virginia presidents and their own region’s declining
influence as new
western states entered the Union. Contrary to later myth, the
Hartford
Convention did not call for secession or disunion. But it
affirmed the right

of a state to “interpose” its authority if the federal government
violated the
Constitution.
The Hartford Convention had barely adjourned before Jackson
electrified the nation with his victory at New Orleans. In
speeches and
sermons, political and religious leaders alike proclaimed that
Jackson’s
triumph revealed, once again, that a divine hand oversaw
America’s
destiny. The Federalists could not free themselves from the
charge of
lacking patriotism. Within a few years, their party no longer
existed.
Yet in their dying moments Federalists had raised an issue—
southern
domination of the national government—that would long outlive
their
political party. And the country stood on the verge of a
profound eco-
nomic and social transformation that strengthened the very
forces of
commercial development that Federalists had welcomed and
many
Republicans feared.
War Party at Fort Douglas, a
watercolor by the Swiss-born
Canadian artist Peter Rindisbacher.
Painted in 1823, it depicts an incident
during the War of 1812 when Indian

allies of Great Britain fired rifles into
the air to greet their commander,
Captain Andrew Bulger, pictured on
the far right.
Legacy of Federalist Party
248
1. Identify the major parts of Hamilton’s financial plan, who
supported these proposals, and why they aroused such
passionate opposition.
2. How did the French Revolution and the ensuing global
struggle between Great Britain and France shape early
American politics?
3. How did the United States become involved in foreign
affairs in this period?
4. How did the expansion of the public sphere and a new
language of rights offer opportunities to women?
5. What caused the demise of the Federalists?
6. What impact did the Haitian Revolution have on the
United States?

7. How did the Louisiana Purchase affect the situation of
Native Americans in that region?
8. Whose status was changed the most by the War of 1812—
Great Britain, the United States, or Native Americans?
K E Y T E R M S
Bank of the United States (p. 223)
Report on Manufactures (p. 223)
strict constructionists (p. 224)
impressment (p. 225)
Jay’s Treaty (p. 225)
Federalists and Republicans (p. 226)
Whiskey Rebellion (p. 226)
A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (p. 230)
Judith Sargent Murray (p. 230)
XYZ affair (p. 232)
Alien and Sedition Acts (p. 232)
Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions (p. 233)
Haitian Revolution (p. 235)

Gabriel’s Rebellion (p. 235)
Marbury v. Madison (p. 237)
Louisiana Purchase (p. 237)
expedition of Lewis and Clark (p. 239)
Barbary Wars (p. 241)
Embargo Act (p. 242)
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (p. 243)
Hartford Convention (p. 247)
C E S
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Chapter 8 ★ Securing the Republic
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1793 Eli Whitney’s cotton gin
1790s– Second Great Awakening
1830s
1806 Congress approves funds
for the National Road
1807 Robert Fulton’s steamboat
1814 Waltham textile factory
1819 Dartmouth College v.
Woodward
Adams-Onís Treaty with
Spain
1825 Erie Canal opens
1831 Cyrus McCormick’s reaper
1837 John Deere’s steel plow
Depression begins
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
“The American Scholar”

1844 Telegraph put into
commercial operation
1845 John O’Sullivan coins
phrase “manifest destiny”
1845– Ireland’s Great Famine
1851
1854 Henry David Thoreau’s
Walden
T H E M A R K E T
R E V O L U T I O N
C H A P T E R 9
A watercolor from 1829 depicts the Erie
Canal five years after it opened. Boats
carrying passengers and goods traverse
the waterway, along whose banks farms
and villages have sprung up.
1 8 0 0 – 1 8 4 0
I n 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette visited the United States.

Nearly fifty years had passed since, as a youth of twenty, the
French nobleman fought at Washington’s side in the War of
Independence.
Since 1784, when he had last journeyed to the United States, the
nation’s
population had tripled to nearly 12 million, its land area had
more than
doubled, and its political institutions had thrived. The thirteen
states
of 1784 had grown to twenty-four, and Lafayette visited every
one. He
traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers by steamboat, a
recent
invention that was helping to bring economic development to
the trans-
Appalachian West, and crossed upstate New York via the Erie
Canal, the
world’s longest man-made waterway, which linked the region
around the
Great Lakes with the Atlantic coast via the Hudson River.
Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century were fond
of
describing liberty as the defining quality of their new nation,
the unique
genius of its institutions. Likenesses of the goddess of Liberty,
a familiar
figure in eighteenth-century British visual imagery, became
even more
common in the United States, appearing in paintings and
sculpture and
on folk art from weather vanes to quilts and tavern signs. In
Democracy in
America, the French historian and politician Alexis de
Tocqueville wrote
of the “holy cult of freedom” he encountered on his own visit to

the United
States during the early 1830s. “For fifty years,” he wrote, “the
inhabitants
of the United States have been repeatedly and constantly told
that they
are the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They . . .
have an
immensely high opinion of themselves and are not far from
believing that
they form a species apart from the rest of the human race.”
Even as Lafayette, Tocqueville, and numerous other visitors
from
abroad toured the United States, however, Americans’
understandings
of freedom were changing. Three historical processes unleashed
by
the Revolution accelerated after the War of 1812: the spread of
market
relations, the westward movement of the population, and the
rise of a
vigorous political democracy. (The first two will be discussed
in this
chapter, the third in Chapter 10.) All helped to reshape the idea
of
freedom, identifying it ever more closely with economic
opportunity,
physical mobility, and participation in a vibrantly democratic
political
system.
But American freedom also continued to be shaped by the
presence
of slavery. Lafayette, who had purchased a plantation in the
West Indies
and freed its slaves, once wrote, “I would never have drawn my

sword
in the cause of America if I could have conceived that thereby I
was
founding a land of slavery.” Yet slavery was moving westward
with the
What were the main
elements of the market
revolution?
How did the market
revolution spark social
change?
How did the meanings of
American freedom change
in this period?
How did the market
revolution affect the lives
of workers, women, and
African-Americans?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S

251A N E W E C O N O M Y
What were the main elements of the market revolution?
young republic. Half a century after the winning of
independence, the
coexistence of liberty and slavery, and their simultaneous
expansion,
remained the central contradiction of American life.
A N E W E C O N O M Y
In the first half of the nineteenth century, an economic
transformation
known to historians as the market revolution swept over the
United States.
Its catalyst was a series of innovations in transportation and
communica-
tion. The market revolution was an acceleration of
developments already
under way in the colonial era. As noted in previous chapters,
southern
planters were selling the products of slave labor in the
international mar-
ket as early as the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth, many
colonists
had been drawn into Britain’s commercial empire. Consumer
goods like
sugar and tea and market-oriented tactics like the boycott of
British goods
had been central to the political battles leading up to
independence.
Nonetheless, as Americans moved across the Appalachian
Mountains

and into interior regions of the states along the Atlantic coast,
they found
themselves more and more isolated from markets. In 1800,
American
farm families produced at home most of what they needed, from
clothing
to farm implements. What they could not make themselves, they
obtained
by bartering with their neighbors or purchasing from local
stores and
from rural craftsmen like blacksmiths and shoemakers. Those
farmers
not located near cities or navigable waterways found it almost
impos-
sible to market their produce. Many Americans devoted their
energies to
solving the technological problems that inhibited commerce
within the
country.
Roads and Steamboats
In the first half of the nineteenth century, in rapid succession,
the steam-
boat, canal, railroad, and telegraph wrenched America out of its
economic
past. These innovations opened new land to settlement, lowered
trans-
portation costs, and made it far easier for economic enterprises
to sell
their products. They linked farmers to national and world
markets and
made them major consumers of manufactured goods. Americans,
wrote
Tocqueville, had “annihilated space and time.”

An economic transformation
An early version of the great seal of
Ohio, which entered the Union in
1803, depicts a canal boat.
In 1806, Congress authorized the construction of the paved
National
Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Old Northwest. It
reached
Wheeling, on the Ohio River, in 1818 and by 1838 extended to
Illinois,
where it ended. But it was improved water transportation that
most dra-
matically increased the speed and lowered the expense of
commerce.
Robert Fulton, a Pennsylvania-born artist and engineer, had
experi-
mented with steamboat designs while living in France during
the 1790s.
But not until 1807, when Fulton’s ship, the Clermont, navigated
the Hudson
River from New York City to Albany, was the steamboat’s
technological
and commercial feasibility demonstrated. The invention made
possible
upstream commerce (that is, travel against the current) on the
country’s
major rivers as well as rapid transport across the Great Lakes

and, eventu-
ally, the Atlantic Ocean. By 1811, the first steamboat had been
introduced
on the Mississippi River; twenty years later some 200 plied its
waters.
The Erie Canal
The completion in 1825 of the 363-mile Erie Canal across
upstate New
York (a remarkable feat of engineering at a time when
America’s next larg-
est canal was only twenty-eight miles long) allowed goods to
flow between
the Great Lakes and New York City. Almost instantaneously,
the canal
attracted an influx of farmers migrating from New England,
giving birth
to cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse along its path.
New York governor DeWitt Clinton, who oversaw the
construction of
the state-financed canal, predicted that it would make New York
City “the
granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of
manufac-
tures, the focus of great moneyed operations.” And, indeed, the
canal gave
A view of New York City, in 1849,
by the noted lithographer Nathaniel
Currier. Steamships and sailing
vessels of various sizes crowd the

harbor of the nation’s largest city and
busiest port.
Connecting New York City
and the Old Northwest
The Cumberland road
Advantages of the steamboat
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Memphis

Mobile
Savannah
Nashville
Charleston
Richmond
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St. Louis Louisville
Cleveland
Buffalo
Lockport Rochester
Albany
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
CumberlandWheeling
Pittsburgh
National
Road
FLORIDA

TERRITORY
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA GEORGIA
LOUISIANA
ARKANSAS
MISSOURI
ILLINOIS INDIANA
MICHIGAN
WISCONSIN
TERRITORY
IOWA
TERRITORY
OHIO
TENNESSEE
KENTUCKY
VIRGINIA
NORTH CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
PENNSYLVANIA

NEW YORK
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
VERMONT
MAINE
MASSACHUSETTS
RHODE ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
BRITISH CANADA
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Erie Canal
Lake Superior
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ke
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200 kilometers
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Navigable section of river
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T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N : R O A D S A N
D C A N A L S , 1 8 4 0
The improvement of existing roads and building of new roads
and canals sharply reduced transportation times and costs and
stimulated the growth of the market economy.
An 1827 engraving designed to show
the feasibility of railroads driven by
steam-powered locomotives, and
dedicated to the president of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which

began construction in the following
year. The engraver placed passengers
as far from the locomotive as
possible to ensure their safety in case
of an explosion.
New York City primacy over competing ports in access to trade
with the
Old Northwest. In its financing by the state government, the
Erie Canal
typified the developing transportation infrastructure.
The completion of the Erie Canal set off a scramble among
other states
to match New York’s success. Several borrowed so much money
to finance
elaborate programs of canal construction that they went
bankrupt dur-
ing the economic depression that began in 1837. By then,
however, more
than 3,000 miles of canals had been built, creating a network
linking
the Atlantic states with the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and
drastically
reducing the cost of transportation.
Railroads and the Telegraph
Canals connected existing waterways. The railroad opened vast
new areas
of the American interior to settlement, while stimulating the

mining of coal
for fuel and the manufacture of iron for locomotives and rails.
Work on the
Baltimore and Ohio, the nation’s first commercial railroad,
began in 1828.
By 1860, the railroad network had grown to 30,000 miles, more
than the
total in the rest of the world combined.
At the same time, the telegraph made possible instantaneous
commu-
nication throughout the nation. The device was invented during
the 1830s
by Samuel F. B. Morse, an artist and amateur scientist living in
New York
City, and it was put into commercial operation in 1844. Within
sixteen
years, some 50,000 miles of telegraph wire had been strung.
Initially, the
telegraph was a service for businesses, and especially
newspapers, rather
than individuals. It helped speed the flow of information and
brought uni-
formity to prices throughout the country.
State spending for internal
improvements
The Rise of the West

Improvements in transportation and communication made
possible
the rise of the West as a powerful, self-conscious region of the
new
nation. Between 1790 and 1840, some 4.5 million people
crossed the
Appalachian Mountains—more than the entire U.S. population
at the time
of Washington’s first inauguration. Most of this migration took
place after
the end of the War of 1812, which unleashed a flood of land-
hungry settlers
moving from eastern states. In the six years following the end
of the war in
1815, six new states entered the Union (Indiana, Illinois,
Missouri, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Maine—the last an eastern frontier for New
England).
Few Americans moved west as lone pioneers. More frequently,
people traveled in groups and, once they arrived in the West,
cooper-
ated with each other to clear land, build houses and barns, and
establish
communities. One stream of migration, including both small
farmers and
planters with their slaves, flowed out of the South to create the
new Cotton
Kingdom of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
Many farm
families from the Upper South crossed into southern Ohio,
Indiana, and
Illinois. A third population stream moved from New England
across New
York to the Upper Northwest—northern Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois, and

Michigan and Wisconsin.
Some western migrants became “squatters,” setting up farms on
unoc-
cupied land without a clear legal title. Those who purchased
land acquired
it either from the federal government, at the price, after 1820,
of $1.25 per
acre payable in cash or from land speculators on long-term
credit. The West
became the home of regional cultures very much like those the
migrants
Migration west
Regional cultures in the West
A watercolor by the artist Edwin
Whitefield depicts a squatter’s cabin
in the Minnesota woods.
256 Chapt
These maps illustrate how the
transportation revolution of the early
nineteenth century made possible
much more rapid travel within the
United States.

had left behind. Upstate New York and the Upper Northwest
resembled
New England, with its small towns, churches, and schools,
while the Lower
South replicated the plantation-based society of the southern
Atlantic states.
National boundaries made little difference to territorial
expansion—
in Florida, and later in Texas and Oregon, American settlers
rushed in
to claim land under the jurisdiction of foreign countries (Spain,
Mexico,
and Britain) or Indian tribes, confident that American
sovereignty would
soon follow in their wake. In 1810, American residents of West
Florida
rebelled and seized Baton Rouge, and the United States soon
annexed the
area. The drive for the acquisition of East Florida was spurred
by Georgia
and Alabama planters who wished to eliminate a refuge for
fugitive slaves
and hostile Seminole Indians. Andrew Jackson led troops into
the area in
1818. While on foreign soil, he created an international crisis
by execut-
ing two British traders and a number of Indian chiefs. Although
Jackson
withdrew, Spain, aware that it could not defend the territory,
sold it to the
United States in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 negotiated by
John
Quincy Adams.

T R A V E L T I M E S F R O M N E W Y O R K C I T Y I
N
1 8 0 0 A N D 1 8 3 0
New York New York
Ohi
o R
.
M
iss
iss
ip
pi
R
.
Ohio
R.
M
iss
iss
ip
pi
R
.

L. E
rie
L. Superior
L.
M
ic
hi
ga
n
L. H
uron L. On
tario
L. E
rie
L. Superior
L.
M
ic
hi
ga
n
L. H
uron L. O

ntari
o
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
1 day
2 days
3 days
4 days
5 days
6 days
1 week
2 weeks
3 weeks
4 weeks
5 weeks
6 weeks
1800 1830
Expansion into Florida

Successive censuses told the remarkable story of western
growth. In
1840, by which time the government had sold to settlers and
land companies
nearly 43 million acres of land, 7 million Americans—two-
fifths of the total
population—lived beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Between
1810 and
1830, Ohio’s population grew from 231,000 to more than
900,000. It reached
nearly 2 million in 1850, when it ranked third among all the
states. The careers
of the era’s leading public figures reflected the westward
movement. Andrew
Jackson, Henry Clay, and many other statesmen were born in
states along the
Atlantic coast but made their mark in politics after moving
west.
The Cotton Kingdom
Although the market revolution and westward expansion
occurred simul-
taneously in the North and the South, their combined effects
heightened
the nation’s sectional divisions. In some ways, the most
dynamic feature
of the American economy in the first thirty years of the
nineteenth cen-
tury was the rise of the Cotton Kingdom. The early industrial
revolution,
which began in England and soon spread to parts of the North,
centered

on factories producing cotton textiles with water-powered
spinning and
weaving machinery. These factories generated an immense
demand for
cotton, a crop the Deep South was particularly suited to growing
because
of its climate and soil fertility. Until 1793, the marketing of
cotton had been
slowed by the laborious task of removing seeds from the plant
itself. But
STATE 1810 1830 1850
TABLE 9.1 Population Growth of
Selected Western States, 1800–1850
(Excluding Indians)
Alabama 9,000 310,000 772,000
Illinois 12,000 157,000 851,000
Indiana 25,000 343,000 988,000
Louisiana 77,000 216,000 518,000
Mississippi 31,000 137,000 607,000
Missouri 20,000 140,000 682,000
Ohio 231,000 938,000 1,980,000
Cotton and industry
40 percent of Americans west
of the Appalachian Mountains

VIRGINIA
NORTH CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
GEORGIA
FLORIDA
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
MISSISSIPPI
LOUISIANA
ALABAMA
ARKANSAS
TERRITORY
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
MISSOURI
INDIANA
ILLINOIS

OHIO
MARYLAND
DELAWARE
VIRGINIA
NORTH
CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
GEORGIA
FLORIDA
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
MISSISSIPPI
LOUISIANA
ALABAMA
ARKANSAS
MISSOURI
INDIANAILLINOIS
OHIO MARYLAND
DELAWARE

TEXAS
REPUBLIC
INDIAN LANDS
SPANISH
TERRITORY
0
0
100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers
0
0
100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers
Each dot represents
2,000 bales of cotton

Cotton Production 1820
Each dot represents
2,000 bales of cotton
Cotton Production 1840
T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N : T H E S P R E A
D O F
C O T T O N C U L T I V A T I O N , 1 8 2 0 – 1 8 4 0
Maps of cotton production graphically illustrate the rise of the
Cotton Kingdom stretching from South Carolina to Louisiana.
259M A R K E T S O C I E T Y
in that year, Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate working in
Georgia as a private tutor, invented the cotton gin. A
fairly simple device consisting of rollers and brushes,
the gin quickly separated the seed from the cotton.
Coupled with rising demand for cotton and the opening
of new lands in the West, Whitney’s invention revo-
lutionized American slavery, an institution that many
Americans had expected to die out because its major
crop, tobacco, exhausted the soil.
After the War of 1812, the federal government
moved to consolidate American control over the Deep
South, forcing defeated Indians to cede land, encourag-
ing white settlement, and acquiring Florida. Settlers
from the older southern states flooded into the region.
Planters monopolized the most fertile land, whereas

poorer farmers were generally confined to less productive and
less acces-
sible areas in the “hill country” and piney woods. After
Congress pro-
hibited the Atlantic slave trade in 1808—the earliest date
allowed by the
Constitution—a massive trade in slaves developed within the
United
States, supplying the labor force required by the new Cotton
Kingdom.
Slave trading became a well-organized business, with firms
gathering
slaves in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina and shipping
them to mar-
kets in Mobile, Natchez, and New Orleans. Slave coffles—
groups chained
to one another on forced marches to the Deep South—became a
common
sight. Indeed, historians estimate that around 1 million slaves
were shifted
from the older slave states to the Deep South between 1800 and
1860. A
source of greater freedom for many whites, the westward
movement meant
to African-Americans the destruction of family ties, the breakup
of long-
standing communities, and receding opportunities for liberty.
In 1793, when Whitney designed his invention, the United
States pro-
duced 5 million pounds of cotton. By 1820, the crop had grown
to nearly
170 million pounds.
M A R K E T S O C I E T Y

Since cotton was produced solely for sale in national and
international
markets, the South was in some ways the most commercially
oriented
region of the United States. Yet rather than spurring economic
change,
the South’s expansion westward simply reproduced the same
agrarian,
Slave Trader, Sold to Tennessee, a
watercolor sketch by the artist Lewis
Miller from the mid-1850s. Miller
depicts a group of slaves being
marched from Virginia to Tennessee.
Once Congress voted to prohibit
the further importation of slaves into
the country, slaveowners in newly
opened areas of the country had to
obtain slaves from other parts of the
United States.
Surge in cotton production

slave-based social order of the older states. The region
remained over-
whelmingly rural. In 1860, roughly 80 percent of southerners
worked the
land—the same proportion as in 1800.
Commercial Farmers
In the North, however, the market revolution and westward
expansion
set in motion changes that transformed the region into an
integrated
economy of commercial farms and manufacturing cities. As the
Old
Northwest became a more settled society, bound by a web of
transporta-
tion and credit to eastern centers of commerce and banking,
farmers found
themselves drawn into the new market economy. They
increasingly con-
centrated on growing crops and raising livestock for sale, while
purchas-
ing at stores goods previously produced at home.
Western farmers found in the growing cities of the East a
market for
their produce and a source of credit. Loans originating with
eastern banks
and insurance companies financed the acquisition of land and
supplies
and, in the 1840s and 1850s, the purchase of fertilizer and new
agricul-
tural machinery to expand production. The steel plow, invented
by John

Deere in 1837 and mass-produced by the 1850s, made possible
the rapid
subduing of the western prairies. The reaper, a horse-drawn
machine
that greatly increased the amount of wheat a farmer could
harvest, was
invented by Cyrus McCormick in 1831 and produced in large
quanti-
ties soon afterward. Eastern farmers, unable to grow wheat and
corn as
cheaply as their western counterparts, increasingly concentrated
on pro-
ducing dairy products, fruits, and vegetables for nearby urban
centers.
The Growth of Cities
From the beginning, cities formed part of the western frontier.
Cincinnati
was known as “porkopolis,” after its slaughterhouses where
hundreds
of thousands of pigs were butchered each year and processed for
ship-
ment to eastern consumers of meat. The greatest of all the
western cities
was Chicago. In the early 1830s, it was a tiny settlement on the
shore of
Lake Michigan. By 1860, thanks to the railroad, Chicago had
become the
nation’s fourth largest city, where farm products from
throughout the
Northwest were gathered to be sent east.
Like rural areas, urban centers witnessed dramatic changes due
to
the market revolution. Urban merchants, bankers, and master

craftsmen
took advantage of the economic opportunities created by the
expanding
market among commercial farmers. The drive among these
businessmen
A trade card depicts the interior of
a chair-manufacturing workshop in
New York City. The owner stands at
the center, dressed quite differently
from his employees. The men are
using traditional hand tools; furniture
manufacturing had not yet been
mechanized.
Western cities
How did the market revolution spark social change?
to increase production and reduce labor costs fundamentally
altered the
nature of work. Traditionally, skilled artisans had manufactured
goods
at home, where they controlled the pace and intensity of their
own labor.

Now, entrepreneurs gathered artisans into large workshops in
order to
oversee their work and subdivide their tasks. Craftsmen who
traditionally
produced an entire pair of shoes or piece of furniture saw the
labor process
broken down into numerous steps requiring far less skill and
training.
They found themselves subjected to constant supervision by
their employ-
ers and relentless pressure for greater output and lower wages.
The Factory System
In some industries, most notably textiles, the factory super-
seded traditional craft production altogether. Factories gath-
ered large groups of workers under central supervision and
replaced hand tools with power-driven machinery. Samuel
Slater, an immigrant from England, established America’s first
factory in 1790 at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Since British law
made it illegal to export the plans for industrial machinery,
Slater, a skilled mechanic, built from memory a power-driven
spinning jenny, one of the key inventions of the early industrial
revolution.
A painting of Cincinnati, self-styled
Queen City of the West, from 1835.
Steamboats line the Ohio River
waterfront.
A broadside from 1853 illustrates
the long hours of work (from 5 AM

to 6:30 PM with brief breaks for
meals) in the textile mills of Holyoke,
Massachusetts. Factory labor was
strictly regulated by the clock.
Spinning factories such as Slater’s produced yarn, which was
then
sent to traditional hand-loom weavers and farm families to be
woven into
cloth. This “outwork” system, in which rural men and women
earned
money by taking in jobs from factories, typified early
industrialization.
Eventually, however, the entire manufacturing process in
textiles, shoes,
and many other products was brought under a single factory
roof.
The cutoff of British imports because of the Embargo of 1807
and the
War of 1812 stimulated the establishment of the first large-scale
American
factory utilizing power looms for weaving cotton cloth. This
was constructed
in 1814 at Waltham, Massachusetts, by a group of merchants
who came to be
called the Boston Associates. In the 1820s, they expanded their
enterprise by

creating an entirely new factory town (incorporated as the city
of Lowell in
1836) on the Merrimack River, twenty-seven miles from Boston.
Here they
built a group of modern textile factories that brought together
all phases of
production from the spinning of thread to the weaving and
finishing of cloth.
The earliest factories, including those at Pawtucket, Waltham,
and
Lowell, were located along the “fall line,” where waterfalls and
river rapids
could be harnessed to provide power for spinning and weaving
machinery.
By the 1840s, steam power made it possible for factory owners
to locate in
towns like New Bedford that were nearer to the coast, and in
large cities
like Philadelphia and Chicago with their immense local markets.
In 1850,
manufacturers produced in factories not only textiles but also a
wide vari-
ety of other goods, including tools, firearms, shoes, clocks,
ironware, and
agricultural machinery. What came to be called the “American
system
of manufactures” relied on the mass production of
interchangeable parts
that could be rapidly assembled into standardized finished
products. More
impressive, in a way, than factory production was the wide
dispersion of
mechanical skills throughout northern society. Every town, it
seemed,
had its sawmill, paper mill, iron works, shoemaker, hatmaker,

tailor, and
a host of other such small enterprises.
The “Mill Girls”
Although some factories employed entire families, the early
New England
textile mills relied largely on female and child labor. At Lowell,
the most
famous center of early textile manufacturing, young unmarried
women
from Yankee farm families dominated the workforce that tended
the
spinning machines. To persuade parents to allow their daughters
to leave
home to work in the mills, Lowell owners set up boarding
houses with
strict rules regulating personal behavior. They also established
lecture
halls and churches to occupy the women’s free time.
Women at work tending machines in
the Lowell textile mills.
Female and child labor
Steam power and factories
Interchangable parts

Somersworth
Cumberland
Fall River
Dover
Lowell
Waltham
Smithfield
Paterson
Delaware County
Warwick
MAINE
NEW
HAMPSHIREVERMONT
MASSACHUSETTS
RHODE
ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
NEW YORK
PENNSYLVANIA

NEW
JERSEY
MARYLAND
DELAWARE
Susqu
eha
nn
a R
.
D
ela
wa
re
R.
Mohawk R.
H
ud
so
n
R.
C

on
ne
cti
cu
t R
.
M
errim
ack R.
Lake Ontario
Lake
Champlain
Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
50
50
100 miles
100 kilometers
Towns with 50–499 cotton-mill employees

Towns with 500–999 cotton-mill employees
Towns with 1,000 or more cotton-mill employees
C O T T O N M I L L S , 1 8 2 0 s
The early industrial revolution was
concentrated in New England, where
factories producing textiles from raw
cotton sprang up along the region’s
many rivers, taking advantage of
water power to drive their machinery.
This was the first time in history that large numbers of women
left
their homes to participate in the public world. Most valued the
opportu-
nity to earn money independently at a time when few other jobs
were open
to women. But these women did not become a permanent class
of factory
workers. They typically remained in the factories for only a few
years, after
which they left to return home, marry, or move west.
The Growth of Immigration
Economic expansion fueled a demand for labor, which was met,
in part, by
increased immigration from abroad. Between 1790 and 1830,
immigrants
contributed only marginally to American population growth. But

between
t Revolution264
1840 and 1860, over 4 million people (more than the entire
population in
1790) entered the United States, the majority from Ireland and
Germany.
About 90 percent headed for the northern states, where job
opportunities
were most abundant and the new arrivals would not have to
compete with
slave labor. In 1860, the 814,000 residents of New York City,
the major
port of entry, included more than 384,000 immigrants, and one-
third of
the population of Wisconsin was foreign-born.
Numerous factors inspired this massive flow of population
across the
Atlantic. In Europe, the modernization of agriculture and the
industrial
revolution disrupted centuries-old patterns of life, pushing
peasants off
the land and eliminating the jobs of traditional craft workers.
The intro-
duction of the oceangoing steamship and the railroad made
long-distance
travel more practical. Moreover, America’s political and
religious free-
doms attracted Europeans, including political refugees from the
failed
revolutions of 1848, who chafed under the continent’s
repressive govern-

ments and rigid social hierarchies.
The largest number of immigrants, however, were refugees from
disaster—Irish men and women fleeing the Great Famine of
1845–1851,
when a blight destroyed the potato crop on which the island’s
diet relied.
An estimated 1 million persons starved to death and another
million
emigrated in those years, most of them to the United States.
Lacking
industrial skills and capital, these impoverished agricultural
laborers
and small farmers ended up filling the low-wage unskilled jobs
native-
born Americans sought to avoid. Male Irish immigrants built
America’s
railroads, dug canals, and worked as common laborers, servants,
long-
shoremen, and factory operatives. Irish women frequently went
to work
as servants in the homes of native-born Americans, although
some preferred factory work to domestic service. By the end of
the
1850s, the Lowell textile mills had largely replaced Yankee
farm
women with immigrant Irish families. Four-fifths of Irish immi-
grants remained in the Northeast.
The second-largest group of immigrants, Germans, included
a considerably larger number of skilled craftsmen than the Irish.
Germans also settled in tightly knit neighborhoods in eastern
cities,
but many were able to move to the West, where they established
themselves as craftsmen, shopkeepers, and farmers. The

“German
triangle,” as the cities of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee
were
sometimes called, all attracted large German populations.
Some 40,000 Scandinavians also emigrated to the United
States in these years, most of whom settled on farms in the Old
Northwest.
TABLE 9.2 Total
Number of Immigrants
by Five-Year Period
1841–1845 430,000
1846–1850 1,283,000
1851–1855 1,748,000
1856–1860 850,000
NUMBER OF
YEARS IMMIGRANTS
Young women workers from the
Amoskeag textile mills in Manchester,
New Hampshire, photographed
in 1854.

The Rise of Nativism
The idea of the United States as a refuge for those seeking
economic
opportunity or as an escape from oppression has always
coexisted with
suspicion of and hostility to foreign newcomers. American
history has
witnessed periods of intense anxiety over immigration. The
Alien Act of
1798 reflected fear of immigrants with radical political views.
During the
early twentieth century, as will be discussed below, there was
widespread
hostility to the “new immigration” from southern and eastern
Europe. In
the early twenty-first century, the question of how many
persons should be
allowed to enter the United States, and under what
circumstances, remains
a volatile political issue.
Archbishop John Hughes of New York City made the Catholic
Church
a more assertive institution. He condemned the use of the
Protestant King
James Bible in the city’s public schools, pressed Catholic
parents to send
their children to an expanding network of parochial schools, and
sought
government funding to pay for them. He aggressively sought to
win con-
verts from Protestantism.

Many Protestants found such activities alarming. Catholicism,
they
feared, threatened American institutions and American freedom.
In 1834,
Lyman Beecher, a prominent Presbyterian minister (and father
of the reli-
gious leader Henry Ward Beecher and the writers Harriet
Beecher Stowe
and Catharine Beecher), delivered a sermon in Boston, soon
published
as “A Plea for the West.” Beecher warned that Catholics were
seeking
to dominate the American West, where the future of Christianity
in the
Lyman Beecher
FIGURE 9.1
Sources of
Immigration, 1850
(77,700) (51,800)
(162,800)
(77,700)
Riot in Philadelphia, an 1844
lithograph, depicts street battles
between nativists and Irish Catholics
that left fifteen persons dead. The

violence originated in a dispute over
the use of the Protestant King James
Bible in the city’s public schools.
world would be worked out. His sermon inspired a mob to burn
a Catholic
convent in the city.
The Irish influx of the 1840s and 1850s thoroughly alarmed
many
native-born Americans and led to violent anti-immigrant riots in
New
York City and Philadelphia. Those who feared the impact of
immigration
on American political and social life were called “nativists.”
They blamed
immigrants for urban crime, political corruption, and a fondness
for
intoxicating liquor, and they accused them of undercutting
native-born
skilled laborers by working for starvation wages. Stereotypes
similar to
those directed at blacks flourished regarding the Irish as well—
childlike,
lazy, and slaves of their passions, they were said to be unsuited
for repub-
lican freedom.
The Transformation of Law

American law increasingly supported the efforts of
entrepreneurs to par-
ticipate in the market revolution, while shielding them from
interference
by local governments and liability for some of the less desirable
results of
economic growth. The corporate form of business organization
became cen-
tral to the new market economy. A corporate firm enjoys special
privileges
and powers granted in a charter from the government, among
them that
investors and directors are not personally liable for the
company’s debts.
Unlike companies owned by an individual, family, or limited
partnership,
in other words, a corporation can fail without ruining its
directors and
stockholders.
Many Americans distrusted corporate charters as a form of
government-granted special privilege. But the courts upheld
their valid-
ity, while opposing efforts by established firms to limit
competition from
newcomers. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), John
Marshall’s
Supreme Court defined corporate charters issued by state
legislatures
as contracts, which future lawmakers could not alter or rescind.
Five
years later, in Gibbons v. Ogden, the Court struck down a
monopoly the
New York legislature had granted for steamboat navigation.
And in

1837, with Roger B. Taney now the chief justice, the Court
ruled that
the Massachusetts legislature did not infringe the charter of an
existing
company that had constructed a bridge over the Charles River
when it
empowered a second company to build a competing bridge. The
commu-
nity, Taney declared, had a legitimate interest in promoting
transporta-
tion and prosperity.
Nativist stereotypes
Corporations
Court decisions on the economy
267T H E F R E E I N D I V I D U A L
T H E F R E E I N D I V I D U A L
By the 1830s, the market revolution and westward expansion
had pro-
duced a society that amazed European visitors: energetic,
materialistic,
and seemingly in constant motion. Alexis de Tocqueville was
struck by
Americans’ restless energy and apparent lack of attachment to
place. “No
sooner do you set foot on American soil,” he observed, “than
you find your-
self in a sort of tumult. All around you, everything is on the
move.”

The West and Freedom
Westward expansion and the market revolution reinforced some
older
ideas of freedom and helped to create new ones. American
freedom, for
example, had long been linked with the availability of land in
the West.
A New York journalist, John L. O’Sullivan, first employed the
phrase
“manifest destiny,” meaning that the United States had a
divinely appointed
mission, so obvious as to be beyond dispute, to occupy all of
North America.
Americans, he proclaimed, had a far better title to western lands
than could
be provided by any international treaty, right of discovery, or
long-term
settlement.
O’Sullivan wrote these words in 1845, but the essential idea
was
familiar much earlier. Many Americans believed that the
settlement and
economic exploitation of the West would prevent the United
States from
following the path of Europe and becoming a society with fixed
social
classes and a large group of wage-earning poor. In the West,
where land
was more readily available and oppressive factory labor far less
com-
mon, there continued to be the chance to achieve economic
independence,
the social condition of freedom. In national myth and ideology,

the West
would long remain, as the writer Wallace Stegner would later
put it, “the
last home of the freeborn American.”
The Transcendentalists
The restless, competitive world of the market revolution
strongly encour-
aged the identification of American freedom with the absence of
restraints
on self-directed individuals seeking economic advancement and
personal
development. The “one important revolution” of the day, the
philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in the 1830s, was “the new value
of the pri-
vate man.” In Emerson’s definition, rather than a preexisting set
of rights
How did the meanings of American freedom change in this
period?
An energetic society
The West and economic
independence
Individual freedom
or privileges, freedom was an open-ended process of self-
realization by

which individuals could remake themselves and their own lives.
Emerson was perhaps the most prominent member of a group of
New
England intellectuals known as the transcendentalists, who
insisted on
the primacy of individual judgment over existing social
traditions and
institutions. Emerson’s Concord, Massachusetts, neighbor, the
writer
Henry David Thoreau, echoed his call for individual self-
reliance. “Any
man more right than his neighbors,” Thoreau wrote, “is a
majority of one.”
In his own life, Thoreau illustrated Emerson’s point about the
pri-
macy of individual conscience in matters political, social, and
personal,
and the need to find one’s own way rather than following the
crowd.
Thoreau became persuaded that modern society stifled
individual judg-
ment by making men “tools of their tools,” trapped in
stultifying jobs by
their obsession with acquiring wealth. Even in “this
comparatively free
country,” he wrote, most persons were so preoccupied with
material
things that they had no time to contemplate the beauties of
nature.
To escape this fate, Thoreau retreated for two years to a cabin
on
Walden Pond near Concord, where he could enjoy the freedom
of isola-

tion from the “economical and moral tyranny” he believed ruled
American
society. He subsequently published Walden (1854), an account
of his expe-
riences and a critique of how the market revolution was, in his
opinion,
degrading both Americans’ values and the natural environment.
An
area that had been covered with dense forest in his youth, he
observed,
had been so transformed by woodcutters and farmers that it had
become
almost completely devoid of trees and wild animals. Thoreau
appealed to
Americans to “simplify” their lives rather than become obsessed
with the
accumulation of wealth. Genuine freedom, he insisted, lay
within.
The Second Great Awakening
The popular religious revivals that swept the country during the
Second
Great Awakening added a religious underpinning to the
celebration of
personal self-improvement, self-reliance, and self-
determination. These
revivals, which began at the turn of the century, were originally
orga-
nized by established religious leaders alarmed by low levels of
church
attendance in the young republic (perhaps as few as 10 percent
of white
Americans regularly attended church during the 1790s). But
they quickly
expanded far beyond existing churches. They reached a

crescendo in the
1820s and early 1830s, when the Reverend Charles Grandison
Finney held
months-long revival meetings in upstate New York and New
York City.
The daguerreotype, an early form
of photography, required the sitter
to remain perfectly still for twenty
seconds or longer. The philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson, depicted here,
did not like the result. He complained
in his journal that in his “zeal not to
blur the image,” every muscle had
become “rigid” and his face was
fixed in a frown as “in madness, or
in death.”
Emerson and Thoreau
269T H E F R E E I N D I V I D U A L
period?

Like the evangelists (traveling preachers) of the first Great
Awakening of
the mid-eighteenth century discussed in Chapter 4, Finney
warned of hell
in vivid language while offering the promise of salvation to
converts who
abandoned their sinful ways.
The Second Great Awakening democratized American
Christianity,
making it a truly mass enterprise. At the time of independence,
fewer than
2,000 Christian ministers preached in the United States. In
1845, they
numbered 40,000. Evangelical denominations such as the
Methodists
and Baptists enjoyed explosive growth in membership, and
smaller sects
proliferated. By the 1840s, Methodism, with more than 1
million members,
had become the country’s largest denomination. At large camp
meetings,
especially prominent on the frontier, fiery revivalist preachers
rejected
the idea that man is a sinful creature with a preordained fate,
promot-
ing instead the doctrine of human free will. At these gatherings,
rich and
poor, male and female, and in some instances whites and blacks
worshiped
alongside one another and pledged to abandon worldly sins in
favor of
the godly life.
The Awakening’s Impact

Even more than its predecessor of several decades earlier, the
Second
Great Awaken ing stressed the right of private judgment in
spiritual mat-
ters and the possibility of universal salvation through faith and
good
Religious Camp Meeting, a watercolor
from the late 1830s depicting an
evangelical preacher at a revival
meeting. Some of the audience
members seem inattentive, while
others are moved by his fiery sermon.
Democratizing American
Christianity
Camp meetings
Ralph Waldo Emerson was perhaps the most prominent
intellectual in mid-nineteenth-century
America. In this famous address, delivered at Harvard College,
he insisted on the primacy of
individual judgment over existing social traditions as the

essence of freedom.
Perhaps the time is already come, when . . . the sluggard
intellect of this continent will look from under
its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with
something better than the exertions of
mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long
apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws
to a close. . . .
In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the
scholar be—free and brave. Free even
to the definition of freedom. . . . Not he is great who can alter
matter, but he who can alter my state of
mind. They are the kings of the world who give the color of
their present thought to all nature and all
art. . . .
[A] sign of the times . . . is the new importance given to the
single individual. Every thing that tends to
insulate the individual—to surround him with barriers of natural
respect, so that each man shall feel the
world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign state
with a sovereign state—tends to true union
as well as greatness. ‘I learned,’ said the melancholy Pestalozzi
[a Swiss educator], “that no man in God’s
wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.” Help
must come from his bosom alone. . . .
We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The
spirit of the American freeman is
already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. . . . The scholar
is decent, indolent, complaisant. See
already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country taught
to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
Young men . . . do not yet see, that if the single man [should]

plant himself indomitably on his instincts,
and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. . . .
We will walk on our own feet; we will work
with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.
From Ralph Waldo Emerson,
“The American Scholar” (1837)
Beginning in the 1830s, young women who worked in the cotton
textile factories in Lowell,
Massachusetts, organized to demand shorter hours of work and
better labor conditions. In
this pamphlet from 1845, a factory worker details her
grievances as well as those of female
domestic workers, the largest group of women workers.
Philanthropists of the nineteenth century!—shall not the
operatives of our country be permitted to speak
for themselves? Shall the worthy laborer be awed into silence
by wealth and power, and for fear of being
deprived of the means of procuring his daily bread? Shall
tyranny and cruel oppression be allowed to
rivet the chains of physical and mental slavery on the millions
of our country who are the real producers
of all its improvements and wealth, and they fear to speak out in
noble self-defense? Shall they fear to

appeal to the sympathies of the people, or the justice of this far-
famed republican nation? God forbid!
Much has been written and spoken in woman’s behalf,
especially in America; and yet a large class of
females are, and have been, destined to a state of servitude as
degrading as unceasing toil can make it. I
refer to the female operatives of New England—the free states
of our union—the states where no colored
slave can breathe the balmy air, and exist as such—but yet there
are those, a host of them, too, who are
in fact nothing more nor less than slaves in every sense of the
word! Slaves to a system of labor which
requires them to toil from five until seven o’clock, with one
hour only to attend to the wants of nature,
allowed—slaves to ignorance—and how can it be otherwise?
What time has the operative to bestow on
moral, religious or intellectual culture? Common sense will
teach every one the utter impossibility of
improving the mind under these circumstances, however great
the desire may be for knowledge.
Again, we hear much said on the subject of benevolence among
the wealthy and so called,
Christian part of community. Have we not cause to question the
sincerity of those who, while they talk
benevolence in the parlor, compel their help to
labor for a mean, paltry pittance in the kitchen?
And while they manifest great concern for the
souls of the heathen in distant lands, care nothing
for the bodies and intellects of those within their
own precincts? . . .
In the strength of our united influence we
will soon show these drivelling cotton lords, this

mushroom aristocracy of New England, who so
arrogantly aspire to lord it over God’s heritage,
that our rights cannot be trampled upon with
impunity; that we WILL not longer submit to that
arbitrary power which has for the last ten years
been so abundantly exercised over us.
From “Factory Life as It Is,
by an Operative” (1845)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. How does Emerson define the freedom
of what he calls “the single individual”?
2. Why does the female factory worker
compare her conditions with those of
slaves?
3. What does the contrast between these
two documents suggest about the
impact of the market revolution on
American thought?
271V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M

works. Every person, Finney insisted, was
a “moral free agent”—that is, a person free
to choose between a Christian life and sin.
Revivalist ministers seized the oppor-
tunities offered by the market revolution to
spread their message. They raised funds,
embarked on lengthy preaching tours by
canal, steamboat, and railroad, and flooded
the country with mass-produced, inexpen-
sive religious tracts. The revivals’ opening
of religion to mass participation and their
message that ordinary Americans could
shape their own spiritual destinies reso-
nated with the spread of market values.
To be sure, evangelical preachers can
hardly be described as cheerleaders for a
market society. They regularly railed against greed and
indifference to
the welfare of others as sins. Yet the revivals thrived in areas
caught up in
the rapid expansion of the market economy, such as the region
of upstate
New York along the path of the Erie Canal. Most of Finney’s
converts
here came from the commercial and professional classes.
Evangelical
ministers promoted what might be called a controlled
individualism as
the essence of freedom. In stressing the importance of industry,
sobriety,
and self- discipline as examples of freely chosen moral
behavior, evan-

gelical preachers promoted the very qualities necessary for
success in a
market culture.
The Emergence of Mormonism
The end of governmental support for established churches
promoted com-
petition among religious groups that kept religion vibrant and
promoted the
emergence of new denominations. Among the most successful of
the religions
that sprang up was the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or
Mormons, which
hoped to create a Kingdom of God on earth. The Mormons were
founded in
the 1820s by Joseph Smith, a farmer in upstate New York who
as a youth
began to experience religious visions. He claimed to have been
led by an angel
to a set of golden plates covered with strange writing. Smith
translated and
published them as The Book of Mormon, after a fourth-century
prophet.
The Book of Mormon tells the story of three families who
traveled from
the ancient Middle East to the Americas, where they eventually
evolved
into Native American tribes. Jesus Christ plays a prominent role
in the
Das neue Jerusalem (The New
Jerusalem), an early-nineteenth-

century watercolor, in German,
illustrates the narrow gateway to
heaven and the fate awaiting sinners
in hell. These were common themes
of preachers in the Second Great
Awakening.
Joseph Smith
273T H E L I M I T S O F P R O S P E R I T Y
book, appearing to one of the family
groups in the Western Hemisphere
after his death and resurrection. The
second coming of Christ would take
place in the New World, where Smith
was God’s prophet.
Mormonism emerged in a cen-
ter of the Second Great Awakening,
upstate New York. The church
founded by Smith shared some fea-
tures with other Christian denomi-
nations including a focus on the
family and community as the basis of
social order and a rejection of alcohol.
Gradually, however, Smith began to
receive visions that led to more con-
troversial doctrines, notably polygamy, which allows one man

to have
more than one wife. By the end of his life, Smith had married
no fewer
than thirty women. Along with the absolute authority Smith
exercised
over his followers, this doctrine outraged the Mormons’
neighbors. Mobs
drove Smith and his followers out of New York, Ohio, and
Missouri before
they settled in 1839 in Nauvoo, Illinois. There, five years later,
Smith was
arrested on the charge of inciting a riot that destroyed an anti-
Mormon
newspaper. While in jail awaiting trial, Smith was murdered by
a group
of intruders. In 1847, his successor as Mormon leader, Brigham
Young, led
more than 2,000 followers across the Great Plains and Rocky
Mountains to
the shores of the Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah. By 1852,
the number
of Mormons in various settlements in Utah reached 16,000. The
Mormons’
experience revealed the limits of religious toleration in
nineteenth-century
America but also the opportunities offered by religious
pluralism. Today,
Mormons constitute the fourth largest church in the United
States, and The
Book of Mormon has been translated into over 100 languages.
T H E L I M I T S O F P R O S P E R I T Y
Liberty and Prosperity
As the market revolution progressed, the right to compete for

economic
advancement became a touchstone of American freedom.
Americans cel-
ebrated the opportunities open to the “self-made man,” a term
that came
period?
In this 1846 photograph, the massive
Mormon temple in Nauvoo, Illinois,
towers over the ramshackle wooden
buildings of this town along the
Mississippi River.
Brigham Young
into use at this time. According to this idea, those who achieved
success in
America did so not as a result of hereditary privilege or
government favor-
itism as in Europe, but through their own intelligence and hard
work. The
market revolution enriched numerous bankers, merchants,
industrialists,
and planters. It produced a new middle class—an army of
clerks, accoun-
tants, and other office employees who staffed businesses in

Boston, New
York, and elsewhere. It created new opportunities for farmers
who profited
from the growing demand at home and abroad for American
agricultural
products, and for skilled craftsmen such as Thomas Rodgers, a
machine
builder who established a successful locomotive factory in
Paterson, New
Jersey. New opportunities for talented men opened in
professions such as
law, medicine, and teaching. By the early 1820s, there were an
estimated
10,000 physicians in the United States.
Race and Opportunity
The market revolution affected the lives of all Americans. But
not all
were positioned to take advantage of its benefits. Most blacks,
of course,
were slaves, but even free blacks found themselves excluded
from the
new economic opportunities. The 220,000 blacks living in the
free states
on the eve of the Civil War (less than 2 percent of the North’s
popula-
tion) suffered discrimination in every phase of their lives. The
majority
of blacks lived in the poorest, unhealthiest sections of cities
like New
York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. And even these
neighborhoods
were subject to occasional violent assault by white mobs, like
the armed
bands that attacked blacks and destroyed their homes and

businesses in
Cincinnati in 1829.
Barred from schools and other public facilities, free blacks
laboriously
constructed their own institutional life, centered on mutual-aid
and educa-
tional societies, as well as independent churches, most notably
the African
Methodist Episcopal Church. Richard Allen of Philadelphia, a
Methodist
preacher, had been spurred to found the church after being
forcibly removed
from his former church for praying at the altar rail, a place
reserved for whites.
Whereas many white Americans could look forward to a life of
eco-
nomic accumulation and individual advancement, large numbers
of free
blacks experienced downward mobility. At the time of abolition
in the
North, because of widespread slave ownership among
eighteenth-century
artisans, a considerable number of northern blacks possessed
craft skills.
But it became more and more difficult for blacks to utilize these
skills once
they became free. Although many white artisans criticized
slavery, most
Pat Lyon at the Forge, an 1826–1827
painting of a prosperous blacksmith.
Proud of his accomplishments as a

self-made man who had achieved
success through hard work and skill
rather than inheritance, Lyon asked
the artist to paint him in his shop
wearing his work clothes.
Black institutions
Downward mobility of
free blacks
How did the market revolution affect the lives of workers,
women, and African-Americans?
viewed the freed slaves as low-wage competitors and sought to
bar them
from skilled employment.
Hostility from white craftsmen, however, was only one of many
obsta-
cles that kept blacks confined to the lowest ranks of the labor
market. White
employers refused to hire them in anything but menial
positions, and white
customers did not wish to be served by them. The result was a
rapid decline
in economic status until by mid-century, the vast majority of

northern
blacks labored for wages in unskilled jobs and as domestic
servants. The
state census of 1855 revealed 122 black barbers and 808 black
servants in
New York City, but only 1 lawyer and 6 doctors. Nor could free
blacks take
advantage of the opening of the West to improve their economic
status, a
central component of American freedom. Federal law barred
them from
access to public land, and by 1860 four states—Indiana, Illinois,
Iowa, and
Oregon—prohibited them from entering their territory
altogether.
The Cult of Domesticity
Women, too, found many of the opportunities opened by the
market revo-
lution closed to them. As the household declined as a center of
economic
production, many women saw their traditional roles undermined
by the
availability of mass-produced goods previously made at home.
Some
women, as noted above, followed work as it moved from
household to fac-
tory. Others embraced a new definition of femininity, which
glorified not a
woman’s contribution to the family’s economic well-being, but
her ability
to create a private environment shielded from the competitive
tensions of
the market economy. Woman’s “place” was in the home, a site
increasingly

emptied of economically productive functions as work moved
from the
household to workshops and factories. Her role was to sustain
nonmarket
values like love, friendship, and mutual obligation, providing
men with a
shelter from the competitive marketplace.
The earlier ideology of “republican motherhood,” which
allowed
women a kind of public role as mothers of future citizens,
subtly evolved
into the mid-nineteenth-century “cult of domesticity.” “In
whatever situ-
ation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave,”
declared The
Young Lady’s Book, one of numerous popular magazines
addressed to female
audiences of the 1820s and 1830s, “a spirit of obedience and
submission,
pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required from
her.”
With more and more men leaving the home for work, women did
exercise considerable power over personal affairs within the
family. The
rapid decline in the American birthrate during the nineteenth
century
Married, a lithograph from around
1849, depicts a young, middle-class
family at home. It exemplifies the cult
of domesticity, in which women’s

social role was to fulfill their family
responsibilities.
Limited opportunity for free
blacks
Chap
(from an average of seven children per woman in 1800
to four in 1900) cannot be explained except by the con-
scious decision of millions of women to limit the num-
ber of children they bore. But the idea of domesticity
minimized women’s even indirect participation in the
outside world. Men moved freely between the public
and private “spheres”; women were supposed to remain
cloistered in the private realm of the family.
Women and Work
Prevailing ideas concerning gender bore little relation to
the experience of those women who worked for wages
at least some time in their lives. They did so despite
severe disadvantages. Women could not compete freely for
employment,
since only low-paying jobs were available to them. Married
women still
could not sign independent contracts or sue in their own names,
and not
until after the Civil War did they, not their husbands, control
the wages they
earned. Nonetheless, for poor city dwellers and farm families,

the labor of
all family members was essential to economic survival.
Thousands of poor
women found jobs as domestic servants, factory workers, and
seamstresses.
For the expanding middle class, however, it became a badge of
respect-
ability for wives to remain at home, outside the disorderly new
market
economy, while husbands conducted business in their offices,
shops, and
factories. In larger cities, where families of different social
classes had
previously lived alongside one another, fashionable middle-
class neigh-
borhoods populated by merchants, factory owners, and
professionals like
lawyers and doctors began to develop. Work in middle-class
homes was
done by domestic servants, the largest employment category for
women
in nineteenth-century America. The freedom of the middle-class
woman—
defined in part as freedom from labor—rested on the
employment of other
women within her household.
Even though most women were anything but idle, in a market
econ-
omy where labor increasingly meant work that created monetary
value, it
became more and more difficult to think of labor as
encompassing anyone
but men. Discussions of labor rarely mentioned housewives,
domestic ser-

vants, and female outworkers, except as an indication of how
the spread of
capitalism was degrading men. The idea that the male head of
household
should command a “family wage” that enabled him to support
his wife and
children became a popular definition of social justice. It sank
deep roots not
only among middle-class Americans but among working-class
men as well.
Expanding middle class
An image from a female infant’s 1830
birth and baptismal certificate depicts
a domestic scene, with women at
work while men relax.
A “family wage”
How did the market revolution affect the lives of workers,
women, and African-Americans?
The Early Labor Movement
Although many Americans welcomed the market rev-
olution, others felt threatened by its consequences.
Surviving members of the revolutionary generation
feared that the obsession with personal economic gain

was undermining devotion to the public good.
Many Americans experienced the market revolu-
tion not as an enhancement of the power to shape their
own lives, but as a loss of freedom. The period between
the War of 1812 and 1840 witnessed a sharp economic
downturn in 1819, a full-fledged depression starting in
1837, and numerous ups and downs in between, during
which employment was irregular and numerous busi-
nesses failed. The economic transformation significantly
widened the gap between wealthy merchants and indus-
trialists on the one hand and impoverished factory work-
ers, unskilled dockworkers, and seamstresses laboring at home
on the other.
In Massachusetts, the most industrialized state in the country,
the richest
5 percent of the population owned more than half the wealth.
Alarmed at the erosion of traditional skills and the threat of
being
reduced to the status of dependent wage earners, skilled
craftsmen in the
late 1820s created the world’s first Workingmen’s Parties,
short-lived
political organizations that sought to mobilize lower-class
support for can-
didates who would press for free public education, an end to
imprisonment
for debt, and legislation limiting work to ten hours per day. In
the 1830s, a
time of rapidly rising prices, union organization spread and
strikes became
commonplace. Along with demands for higher wages and
shorter hours, the
early labor movement called for free homesteads for settlers on
public land

and an end to the imprisonment of union leaders for conspiracy.
The “Liberty of Living”
But over and above these specific issues, workers’ language of
protest drew
on older ideas of freedom linked to economic autonomy, public-
spirited
virtue, and social equality. The conviction of twenty New York
tailors in
1835 under the common law of conspiracy for combining to
seek higher
wages inspired a public procession marking the “burial of
liberty.” Such
actions and language were not confined to male workers. The
young mill
women of Lowell walked off their jobs in 1834 to protest a
reduction in
wages and again two years later when employers raised rents at
their
The Shoemakers’ Strike in Lynn—
Procession in the Midst of a Snow-
Storm, of Eight Hundred Women
Operatives, an engraving from Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,
March 17, 1860. The striking women
workers carry a banner comparing
their condition to that of slaves.

Labor actions
Demands of early labor
movement
Chapter 9
boardinghouses. They carried banners affirming their rights as
“daughters
of free men,” and, addressing the factory owners, they charged
that “the
oppressive hand of avarice [greed] would enslave us.”
Rooted in the traditions of the small producer and the
identification of
freedom with economic independence, labor’s critique of the
market econ-
omy directly challenged the idea that individual improvement—
Emerson’s
“self-trust, self-reliance, self-control, self-culture”—offered an
adequate
response to social inequality. Orestes Brownson, in his
influential essay “The
Laboring Classes” (1840), argued that the solution to workers’
problems did
not require a more complete individualism. What was needed
instead, he
believed, was a “radical change [in] existing social
arrangements” so as to
produce “equality between man and man.” Here lay the origins
of the idea,
which would become far more prominent in the late nineteenth
and twen-

tieth centuries, that economic security—a standard of life below
which no
person would fall—formed an essential part of American
freedom.
Thus, the market revolution transformed and divided American
society
and its conceptions of freedom. It encouraged a new emphasis
on individu-
alism and physical mobility among white men while severely
limiting the
options available to women and African-Americans. It opened
new opportu-
nities for economic freedom for many Americans while leading
others to fear
that their traditional economic independence was being eroded.
In a demo-
cratic society, it was inevitable that the debate over the market
revolution
and its consequences for freedom would be reflected in
American politics.
The idea of economic security
Tensions in the market
revolution
279Chapter Review and Online Resources
1. Identify the major transportation improvements in this
period, and explain how they influenced the market
economy.

2. How did state and local governments promote the national
economy in this period?
3. How did the market economy and westward expansion
entrench the institution of slavery?
4. How did westward expansion and the market revolution
drive each other?
5. What role did immigrants play in the new market society?
6. How did changes in the law promote development in the
economic system?
7. As it democratized American Christianity, the Second
Great Awakening both took advantage of the market
revolution and criticized its excesses. Explain.
8. How did the market revolution change women’s work and
family roles?
9. Give some examples of the rise of individualism in these
years.
K E Y T E R M S
steamboats (p. 252)
Erie Canal (p. 252)
railroads (p. 254)
telegraph (p. 254)
squatters (p. 255)

Cotton Kingdom (p. 257)
cotton gin (p. 259)
John Deere steel plow (p. 260)
Cyrus McCormick reaper (p. 260)
factory system (p. 261)
“American system of
manufactures” (p. 262)
mill girls (p. 262)
immigration (p. 263)
nativists (p. 266)
Dartmouth College v.
Woodward (p. 266)
manifest destiny (p. 267)
transcendentalists (p. 268)
Second Great Awakening (p. 268)
Church of Latter-Day Saints, or
Mormons (p. 272)
“self-made man” (p. 273)
cult of domesticity (p. 275)

C E S
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/studyspace
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1811 Bank of the United States
charter expires
1816 Second Bank of the United
States established
Monroe
1819 Panic of 1819
McCulloch v. Maryland

1820 Missouri Compromise
1823 Monroe Doctrine
1825 Inauguration of John
Quincy Adams
1828 “Tariff of abominations”
1829 Inauguration of Andrew
Jackson
1830 Indian Removal Act
1831 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
1832 Nullification crisis
Worcester v. Georgia
1833 Force Act
1835 Tocqueville’s Democracy in
America
1835– Second Seminole War
1842
1837 Inauguration of Martin Van
Buren
1837– Panic of 1837 and ensuing
1843 depression
1838– Trail of Tears

1839
1841 Inauguration of William
Henry Harrison
Dorr War
Justice’s Court in the Back Woods, an
1852 painting by Tompkins Harrison
Matteson, depicts the expansion of
the public sphere to include ordinary
Americans. A court is in session in a local
tavern. The justice of the peace, who
presides, is a shoemaker who has set
aside his tools but still wears his leather
work apron. A lawyer appeals to the jury,
composed of average (male) citizens.
The case has to do with an assault. The
plaintiff, his head bandaged, leans on
the table at the right, while a woman
consoles the defendant on the far left.

D E M O C R A C Y I N
A M E R I C A
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281T H E T R I U M P H O F D E M O C R A C Y
T he inauguration of Andrew Jackson on March 4, 1829, made it
clear that something had changed in American politics. The
swearing-in of the president had previously been a small,
dignified event. Jackson’s inauguration attracted a crowd of
some
20,000 people who poured into the White House after the
ceremony,
ruining furniture and breaking china and glassware in the crush.
It was
“the reign of King Mob,” lamented Justice Joseph Story of the
Supreme
Court.
Jackson’s career embodied the major developments of his era—
the
market revolution, the westward movement, the expansion of
slavery,
and the growth of democracy. He was a symbol of the self-made
man.
Unlike previous presidents, Jackson rose to prominence from a
humble
background, reflecting his era’s democratic opportunities. Born
in 1767 on

the South Carolina frontier, he had been orphaned during the
American
Revolution. While still a youth, he served as a courier for
patriotic
forces during the War of Independence. His military campaigns
against
the British and Indians during the War of 1812 helped to
consolidate
American control over the Deep South, making possible the rise
of the
Cotton Kingdom. He himself acquired a large plantation in
Tennessee.
But more than anything else, to this generation of Americans
Andrew
Jackson symbolized one of the most crucial features of national
life—the
triumph of political democracy.
Americans pride themselves on being the world’s oldest
democracy.
New Zealand, whose constitution of 1893 gave women and
Maoris (the
native population) the right to vote, may have a better claim.
Europe,
however, lagged far behind. Britain did not achieve universal
male
suffrage until the 1880s. France instituted it in 1793, abandoned
it in
1799, reintroduced it in 1848, and abandoned it again a few
years later.
More to the point, perhaps, democracy became part of the
definition of
American nationality and the American idea of freedom.
T H E T R I U M P H O F D E M O C R A C Y

Property and Democracy
The market revolution and territorial expansion were intimately
con-
nected with a third central element of American freedom—
political demo c-
racy. The challenge to property qualifications for voting, begun
during
What were the social bases
for the flourishing democ-
racy of the early mid-
nineteenth century?
What efforts strengthened
or hindered the economic
integration of the nation?
What were the major areas
of conflict between nation-
alism and sectionalism?
In what ways did Andrew
Jackson embody the con-
tradictions of democratic
nationalism?

How did the Bank War
influence the economy and
party competition?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
What were the social bases for the flourishing democracy of the
early mid-nineteenth century?
the American Revolution, reached its culmination in the early
nineteenth
century. Not a single state that entered the Union after the
original thir-
teen required ownership of property to vote. In the older states,
by 1860
all but one had ended property requirements for voting (though
several
continued to bar persons accepting poor relief, on the grounds
that they
lacked genuine independence). The personal independence
necessary in
the citizen now rested not on ownership of property but on
ownership of
one’s self—a reflection of the era’s individualism.
The Dorr War
The lone exception to the trend toward democratization was

Rhode Island,
which required voters to own real estate valued at $134 or rent
property
for at least $7 per year. A center of factory production, Rhode
Island had a
steadily growing population of propertyless wage earners unable
to vote.
In October 1841, proponents of democratic reform organized a
People’s
Convention, which drafted a new state constitution. It
enfranchised all
adult white men while eliminating entirely blacks (although in a
subse-
quent referendum, blacks’ right to vote was restored). When the
reformers
ratified their constitution in an extralegal referendum and
proceeded to
inaugurate Thomas Dorr, a prominent Rhode Island lawyer, as
governor,
President John Tyler dispatched federal troops to the state. The
movement
collapsed, and Dorr subsequently served nearly two years in
prison for
treason.
Tocqueville on Democracy
By 1840, more than 90 percent of adult white men were eligible
to vote.
A flourishing democratic system had been consolidated.
American politics
was boisterous, highly partisan, and sometimes violent, and it
engaged
the energies of massive numbers of citizens. In a country that
lacked more
tradi tional bases of nationality—a powerful and menacing

neighbor, his-
toric ethnic, religious, or cultural unity—democratic political
institutions
came to define the nation’s sense of its own identity.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French writer who visited the United
States in the early 1830s, returned home to produce Democracy
in America,
a classic account of a society in the midst of a political
transformation.
Tocqueville had come to the United States to study prisons. But
he soon
realized that to understand America, he must understand
democracy
(which as a person of aristocratic background he rather
disliked). His key
An anti-Jackson cartoon from
1832 portrays Andrew Jackson as
an aspiring monarch, wielding the
veto power while trampling on the
Constitution.
White male suffrage
Alexis de Tocqueville
283T H E T R I U M P H O F D E M O C R A C Y
insight was that democracy by this time meant far more than

either the
right to vote or a particular set of political institutions. It was
what scholars
call a “habit of the heart,” a culture that encouraged individual
initiative,
belief in equality, and an active public sphere populated by
numerous
voluntary organizations that sought to improve society.
Democracy,
Tocqueville saw, had become an essential attribute of American
freedom.
As Tocqueville recognized, the idea that sovereignty belongs to
the mass
of ordinary citizens was a profound shift in political thought.
The founders of
the republic, who believed that government must rest on the
consent of the
governed, also sought to shield political authority from
excessive influence
by ordinary people (hence the Electoral College, Supreme
Court, and other
undemocratic features of the Constitution). Nonetheless, thanks
to persis-
tent pressure from those originally excluded from political
participation,
democracy—for white males—had triumphed by the Age of
Jackson.
The Information Revolution
The market revolution and political democracy produced a large
expansion
of the public sphere and an explosion in printing sometimes
called the “infor-
mation revolution.” The application of steam power to

newspaper printing
led to a great increase in output and the rise of the mass-
circulation “penny
press,” priced at one cent per issue instead of the traditional six.
Newspapers
such as the New York Sun and New York Herald introduced a
new style of
journalism, appealing to a mass audience by emphasizing
sensationalism,
Independence Day Celebration in
Centre Square, an 1819 painting
by John Lewis Krimmel, a German-
American artist, depicts a gathering
to celebrate the Fourth of July in
Philadelphia. On the left, beneath a
portrait of George Washington, is a
depiction of a naval battle from the
War of 1812; on the right, beneath
the state flag of Pennsylvania, is an
image of the Battle of New Orleans.
The celebration, an example of rising
American nationalism, includes men

and women, soldiers, merchants, and
ordinary citizens but is entirely white
except for a young black boy in the
lower left.
Democratic culture
Popular sovereignty
The rise of the mass-circulation
press
crime stories, and exposés of official misconduct. By 1840,
according to
one estimate, the total weekly circulation of newspapers in the
United
States, whose population was 17 million, exceeded that of
Europe, with
233 million people.
The reduction in the cost of printing also made possible the
appear-
ance of “alternative” newspapers in the late 1820s and early
1830s, includ-
ing Freedom’s Journal (the first black newspaper), Philadelphia
Mechanic’s

Advocate and other labor publications, the abolitionist weekly
The Liberator,
and Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper.
The Limits of Democracy
By the 1830s, the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the
axiom that “the
people” ruled had become a universally accepted part of
American politics.
Those who opposed this principle, wrote Tocqueville, “hide
their heads.”
But the very centrality of democracy to the definition of both
freedom and
nationality made it all the more necessary to define the
boundaries of the
political nation. As older economic exclusions fell away, others
survived
and new ones were added.
The “principle of universal suffrage,” declared the United States
Maga-
zine and Democratic Review in 1851, meant that “white males
of age consti-
tuted the political nation.” How could the word “universal” be
reconciled
with barring blacks and women from political participation? As
democracy
triumphed, the intellectual grounds for exclusion shifted from
economic
dependency to natural incapacity. Gender and racial differences
were
widely understood as part of a single, natural hierarchy of
innate endow-
ments. White males were considered inherently superior in
character and

abilities to non-whites and women. The debate over which
people are and
are not qualified to take part in American democracy lasted well
into the
twentieth century. Not until 1920 was the Constitution amended
to require
states to allow women to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965
swept away
restrictions on black voting imposed by many southern states.
A Racial Democracy
If the exclusion of women from political freedom continued a
long-standing
practice, the increasing identification of democracy and
whiteness marked
something of a departure. Blacks were increasingly considered a
group
apart. Racist imagery became the stock-in-trade of popular
theatrical
presentations like minstrel shows, in which white actors in
blackface
entertained the audience by portraying African-Americans as
stupid,
Democracy, gender, and race
“Universal suffrage”
Alternative journalism
285N A T I O N A L I S M A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T
S

dishonest, and altogether ridiculous. With the exception of
Herman
Melville, who portrayed complex, sometimes heroic black
characters in
works like Moby Dick and Benito Cereno (the latter a
fictionalized account
of a shipboard slave rebellion), American authors either ignored
blacks
entirely or presented them as stereotypes—happy slaves prone
to super-
stition or long-suffering but devout Christians. Meanwhile, the
somewhat
tentative thinking of the revolutionary era about the status of
non-whites
flowered into an elaborate ideology of racial superiority and
inferiority,
complete with “scientific” underpinnings. These developments
affected
the boundaries of the political nation.
In the revolutionary era, only Virginia, South Carolina, and
Georgia
explicitly confined the vote to whites, although elsewhere,
custom often
made it difficult for free blacks to exercise the franchise. As
late as 1800,
no northern state barred blacks from voting. But every state that
entered
the Union after that year, with the single exception of Maine,
limited the
right to vote to white males. And, beginning with Kentucky in
1799 and
Maryland two years later, many states that had allowed blacks
to vote
rescinded the privilege. By 1860, blacks could vote on the same
basis as

whites in only five New England states, which contained only 4
percent of
the nation’s free black population.
In effect, race had replaced class as the boundary between those
American men who were entitled to enjoy political freedom and
those
who were not. Even as this focus on race limited America’s
political com-
munity as a whole, it helped to solidify a sense of national
identity among
the diverse groups of European origin. In a country where the
right to vote
had become central to the meaning of freedom, it is difficult to
overstate
the importance of the fact that white male immigrants could
vote in some
states almost from the moment they landed in America, whereas
nearly all
free blacks (and, of course, slaves), whose ancestors had lived
in the coun-
try for centuries, could not vote at all.
N A T I O N A L I S M A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T S
The American System
The War of 1812, which the United States and Great Britain—
the world’s
foremost military power—fought to a draw, inspired an outburst
of
nationalist pride. But the war also revealed how far the United
States still
was from being a truly integrated nation. With the Bank of the
United

“Dandy Jim,” a piece of sheet
music from 1843. Minstrel shows
were a form of nineteenth-century
entertainment in which white actors
impersonated blacks. Here, the actor
makes fun of a black man attempting
to adopt the style of middle-class
white Americans.
War of 1812 and American
nationalism
States having gone out of existence when its charter expired in
1811, the
country lacked a uniform currency and found it almost
impossible to
raise funds for the war effort. Given the primitive state of
transportation,
it proved very difficult to move men and goods around the
country. One
shipment of supplies from New England had taken seventy-five
days to

reach New Orleans. With the coming of peace, the
manufacturing enter-
prises that sprang up while trade with Britain had been
suspended faced
intense competition from low-cost imported goods. A younger
generation
of Republicans, led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun,
believed these
“infant industries” deserved national protection.
In his annual message (now known as the State of the Union
address)
to Congress in December 1815, President James Madison put
forward a
blueprint for government-promoted economic development that
came to
be known as the American System, a label coined by Henry
Clay. The
plan rested on three pillars: a new national bank, a tariff on
imported
manufactured goods to protect American industry, and federal
financing
of improved roads and canals. The last was particularly
important to those
worried about the dangers of disunity. “Let us bind the nation
together,
with a perfect system of roads and canals,” John C. Calhoun
implored
Congress in 1815. “Let us conquer space.”
Congress enacted an internal-improvements program drafted by
Calhoun, only to be astonished when the president, on the eve
of his
retirement from office in March 1817, vetoed the bill. Since
calling for its
enactment, Madison had become convinced that allowing the

national
government to exercise powers not mentioned in the
Constitution would
prove dangerous to individual liberty and southern interests.
The other
An image from a broadside from the
campaign of 1824, promoting the
American System of government-
sponsored economic development.
The illustrations represent industry,
commerce, and agriculture. The ship
at the center is named the John
Quincy Adams. Its flag, “No Colonial
Subjection,” suggests that without a
balanced economy, the United States
will remain economically dependent
on Great Britain.
Madison’s veto
Madison’s blueprint for
economic development

287N A T I O N A L I S M A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T
S
two parts of his plan, however, became law. The tariff of 1816
offered pro-
tection to goods that could be produced in the United States,
especially
cheap cotton textiles, while admitting tax-free those that could
not be
manufactured at home. Many southerners supported the tariff,
believing
that it would enable their region to develop a manufacturing
base to rival
New England’s. And in 1816, a new Bank of the United States
was created,
with a twenty-year charter from Congress.
Banks and Money
The Second Bank of the United States soon became the focus of
public
resentment. Like its predecessor, it was a private, profit-making
corpora-
tion that acted as the government’s financial agent, issuing
paper money,
collecting taxes, and paying the government’s debts. It was also
charged
with ensuring that paper money issued by local banks had real
value. In
the nineteenth century, paper money consisted of notes
promising to pay
the bearer on demand a specified amount of “specie” (gold or
silver). Since
banks often printed far more money than the specie in their
vaults, the value

of paper currency fluctuated wildly. The Bank of the United
States was
supposed to correct this problem by preventing the overissuance
of money.
The Panic of 1819
But instead of effectively regulating the currency and loans
issued by local
banks, the Bank of the United States participated in a
speculative fever
that swept the country after the end of the War of 1812. The
resumption
of trade with Europe created a huge overseas market for
American cotton
and grain. Coupled with the rapid expansion of settlement into
the West,
this stimulated demand for loans to purchase land, which local
banks and
branches of the Bank of the United States were only too happy
to meet by
printing more money. The land boom was especially acute in the
South,
where the Cotton Kingdom was expanding.
Early in 1819, as European demand for American farm products
declined to normal levels, the economic bubble burst. The Bank
of the
United States, followed by state banks, began asking for
payments from
those to whom it had loaned money. Farmers and businessmen
who could
not repay declared bankruptcy, and unemployment rose in
eastern cities.
The Panic of 1819 lasted little more than a year, but it severely

disrupted
the political harmony of the previous years. To the
consternation of credi-
tors, many states, especially in the West, suspended the
collection of debts.
Kentucky went even further, establishing a state bank that
flooded the state
with paper money that creditors were required to accept in
repayment of
Tariff of 1816
Land boom
Regulating local banks
The economic bubble bursts
What efforts strengthened or hindered the economic integration
of the nation?
loans. This eased the burden on indebted farmers but injured
those who had
loaned them the money. Overall, the panic deepened many
Americans’ tra-
ditional distrust of banks. It undermined the reputation of the
Second Bank
of the United States, which was widely blamed for causing the
panic. Several
states retaliated against the national bank by taxing its local
branches.

These tax laws produced another of John Marshall’s landmark
Supreme Court decisions, in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland
(1819).
Reasserting his broad interpretation of governmental powers,
Marshall
declared the Bank a legitimate exercise of congressional
authority under
the Constitution’s clause that allowed Congress to pass
“necessary and
proper” laws. Marshall’s interpretation of the Constitution
directly con-
tradicted the “strict construction” view that limited Congress to
powers
specifically granted in the Constitution.
The Missouri Controversy
In 1816, James Monroe handily defeated the Federalist
candidate Rufus
King, becoming the last of the Virginia presidents. By 1820, the
Federalists
fielded electoral tickets in only two states, and Monroe carried
the entire
country. Monroe’s two terms in office were years of one-party
government,
sometimes called the Era of Good Feelings. Plenty of bad
feelings, how-
ever, surfaced during his presidency. In the absence of two-
party competi-
tion, politics was organized along lines of competing sectional
interests.
In 1819, Congress considered a request from Missouri, an area
carved
out of the Louisiana Purchase, to draft a constitution in
preparation for

admission to the Union as a state. Missouri’s slave population
already
exceeded 10,000. James Tallmadge, a Republican congressman
from
New York, moved that the introduction of further slaves be
prohibited
and that children of those already in Missouri be freed at age
twenty-five.
Tallmadge’s proposal sparked two years of controversy, during
which
Republican unity shattered along sectional lines. His restriction
passed
the House, where most northern congressmen supported it over
the objec-
tions of southern representatives. It died in the Senate, however.
When
Congress reconvened in 1820, Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois
proposed a
compromise. Missouri would be authorized to draft a
constitution without
Tallmadge’s restriction. Maine, which prohibited slavery, would
be admit-
ted to the Union to maintain the sectional balance between free
and slave
states. And slavery would be prohibited in all remaining
territory within
the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30' (Missouri’s
southern bound-
ary). Congress adopted Thomas’s plan as the Missouri
Compromise.
The Missouri controversy raised for the first time what would
prove to
be a fatal issue—the westward expansion of slavery. The
sectional division

Sectional division and the
spread of slavery
Distrust of banks
Era of Good Feelings
289N A T I O N , S E C T I O N , A N D P A R T Y
The new Latin American
republics
Washington, D.C.
Missouri
Compromise line
36°30'
OREGON
TERRITORY
(Joint U.S.-British
occupation of
disputed territory)
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
ARKANSAS
TERRITORY

MO
(Admitted as a
slave state, 1821)
LA
MS
AL
GA
FLORIDA
TERRITORY
SC
NC
TN
IL
IN OH
PA
NY
NH
VT
MA
RICT
DE
MDVA

KY
ME
(Admitted as a
free state, 1820)
MICHIGAN TERRITORY
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
NEW SPAIN
(Independent Mexico, 1821)
Rio Grande
Arkansas R.
Missouri R.
Snake R.
Co
lor
ado
R.
Red R.
M
ississippi R.

Ohi
o R
.
St
. L
aw
ren
ce
R.
L. Superior
L.
M
ic
hi
ga
n
L. Huron
L. E
rie
L. O
ntario
Gulf of Mexico

Atlantic
OceanPaci f icOcean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Territory closed to slavery by the Missouri Compromise
Free states and territories
Territory opened to slavery by the Missouri Compromise
Slave states and territories
T H E M I S S O U R I C O M P R O M I S E , 1 8 2 0
The Missouri Compromise temporarily
settled the question of the expansion
of slavery by dividing the Louisiana
Purchase into free and slave areas.
it revealed aroused widespread feelings of dismay. “This
momentous ques-
tion,” wrote Jefferson, “like a fire bell in the night, awakened
and filled me
with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the union.”

For the moment,
however, the slavery issue faded once again from national
debate.
N A T I O N , S E C T I O N , A N D P A R T Y
The United States and the Latin American Wars
of Independence
Between 1810 and 1822, Spain’s Latin American colonies rose
in rebel-
lion and established a series of independent nations, including
Mexico,
Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru. By 1825, Spain’s once vast
American
empire had been reduced to the islands of Cuba and Puerto
Rico. The
uprisings inspired a wave of sympathy in the United States. In
1822, the
Monroe administration became the first government to extend
diplomatic
recognition to the new Latin American republics.
What efforts strengthened or hindered the economic integration
of the nation?
Parallels existed between the Spanish-American revolutions and
the one that had given birth to the United States. In both cases,
the cri-
sis of empire was precipitated by programs launched by the
imperial
country aimed in large measure at making the colonies

contribute more
to its finances. As had happened in British North America, local
elites
demanded status and treatment equal to residents of the imperial
power.
The Spanish-American declarations of independence borrowed
directly
from that of the United States. The first, issued in 1811,
declared that the
“United Provinces” of Venezuela now enjoyed “among the
sovereign
nations of the earth the rank which the Supreme Being and
nature has
assigned us”—language strikingly similar to Jefferson’s.
In some ways, the new Latin American constitutions—adopted
by
seventeen different nations—were more democratic than that of
the United
States. Most sought to implement the trans-Atlantic ideals of
rights and
freedom by creating a single national “people” out of the
diverse popula-
tions that made up the Spanish empire. To do so, they extended
the right to
vote to Indians and free blacks. The Latin American wars of
independence,
in which black soldiers participated on both sides, also set in
motion the
gradual abolition of slavery. But the Latin American wars of
independence
lasted longer—sometimes more than a decade—and were more
destructive
than the one in the United States had been. As a result, it
proved far more
difficult for the new Latin American republics to achieve

economic devel-
opment than the United States.
The Monroe Doctrine
John Quincy Adams, who was serving as James Monroe’s
secretary of
state, was devoted to consolidating the power of the national
government
at home and abroad. Adams feared that Spain would try to
regain its Latin
American colonies. In 1823, he drafted a section of the
president’s annual
message to Congress that became known as the Monroe
Doctrine. It
expressed three principles. First, the United States would
oppose any fur-
ther efforts at colonization by European powers in the
Americas. Second,
the United States would abstain from involvement in the wars of
Europe.
Finally, Monroe warned European powers not to interfere with
the newly
independent states of Latin America.
The Monroe Doctrine is sometimes called America’s diplomatic
dec-
laration of independence. For many decades, it remained a
cornerstone of
American foreign policy. Based on the assumption that the Old
and New
Worlds formed separate political and diplomatic systems, it
claimed for
the United States the role of dominant power in the Western
Hemisphere.

Latin American constitutions
John Quincy Adams
America’s diplomatic
declaration of independence
The Monroe Doctrine reflected a rising
sense of American nationalism. But sec-
tionalism seemed to rule domestic politics.
As the election of 1824 approached, only
Andrew Jackson could claim truly national
support. Jackson’s popularity rested not
on any specific public policy—few voters
knew his views—but on military victo-
ries over the British at the Battle of New
Orleans, and over the Creek and Seminole
Indians. Other candidates included John
Quincy Adams, Secre tary of the Treasury
William H. Crawford of Georgia, and
Henry Clay of Kentucky. Adams’s sup-
port was concentrated in New England
and, more generally, in the North, where
Republican leaders insisted the time had
come for the South to relinquish the presi-
dency. Crawford represented the South’s
Old Republicans, who wanted the party
to reaffirm the principles of states’ rights and limited
government. Clay
was one of the era’s most popular politicians, but his support in

1824 lay
primarily in the West.
Jackson received 153,544 votes and carried states in all the
regions out-
side of New England. But with four candidates in the field, none
received
a majority of the electoral votes. As required by the
Constitution, Clay,
who finished fourth, was eliminated, and the choice among the
other three
fell to the House of Representatives. Sincerely believing Adams
to be the
most qualified candidate and the one most likely to promote the
American
System, and probably calculating that the election of Jackson, a
westerner,
would impede his own presidential ambitions, Clay gave his
support to
Adams, helping to elect him. He soon became secretary of state
in Adams’s
cabinet. The charge that he had made a “corrupt bargain”—
bartering
critical votes in the presidential contest for a public office—
clung to Clay
for the rest of his career, making it all but impossible for him to
reach the
White House. The election of 1824 laid the groundwork for a
new system
of political parties. Supporters of Jackson and Crawford would
soon unite
in the Democratic Party. The alliance of Clay and Adams
became the basis
for the Whig Party of the 1830s.
3

2
3 5 9
11
1511
3
21 5
14
24
16
28
26
9
7 8
4
5 1
3
15
4
8812
17
Jackson 99 (38%) 153,544 (43%)
Adams 84 (32%) 108,740 (31%)
Crawford 41 (16%) 46,618 (13%)

Clay 37 (14%) 47,136 (13%)
Candidate
Electoral Vote
(Share)
Popular Vote
(Share)
Note: Adams won 3 electoral votes in Maryland, and 1 in
Delaware.
No Parties
O F 1 8 2 4
The “corrupt bargain”
What were the major areas of conflict between nationalism and
sectionalism?
292
From President James Monroe,
Annual Message to Congress (1823)
In the wake of the Latin American struggle for independence,

President James Monroe
included in his annual message a passage that became known as
the Monroe Doctrine. It
outlined principles that would help to govern the country’s
relations with the rest of the
world for nearly a century—that the Western Hemisphere was
no longer open to European
colonization and that the United States would remain
uninvolved in the wars of Europe.
[This] occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a
principle, . . . that the American continents,
by the free and independent condition which they have assumed
and maintain, are henceforth not to be
considered as subjects for future colonization by any European
powers. . . .
It was stated at the commencement of the last session that a
great effort was then making in Spain and
Portugal to improve the condition of the people of those
countries, and that it appeared to be conducted
with extraordinary moderation. It need scarcely be remarked
that the results have been so far very
different from what was then anticipated. Of events in that
quarter of the globe, with which we have so
much intercourse and from which we derive our origin, we have
always been anxious and interested
spectators. The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments
the most friendly in favor of the liberty
and happiness of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic.
In the wars of the European powers in
matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor

does it comport with our policy to do so.
It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that
we resent injuries or make preparation
for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are
of necessity more immediately
connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all
enlightened and impartial observers. The political
system of the allied powers [of Europe] is essentially different
in this respect from that of America. . . .
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations
existing between the United States
and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt
on their part to extend their system
to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and
safety. With the existing colonies
or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered
and shall not interfere. But with the
Governments who have declared their independence and
maintain it, and whose independence we have,
on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we
could not view any interposition for the
purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner
their destiny, by any European power in
any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States.
293
The most prominent political philosopher in the pre–Civil War
South, John C. Calhoun sought

to devise ways that the South could retain the power to protect
its interests within the Union
(especially the institution of slavery) as it fell behind the North
in population and political
power.
There are two different modes in which the sense of the
community may be taken; one, simply by the
right of suffrage, unaided; the other, by the right through a
proper organism. Each collects the sense
of the majority. But one regards numbers only, and considers
the whole community as a unit, having
but one common interest throughout; and collects the sense of
the greater number of the whole, as that
of the community. The other, on the contrary, regards interests
as well as numbers;—considering the
community as made up of different and conflicting interests, as
far as the action of the government
is concerned; and takes the sense of each, through its majority
or appropriate organ, and the united
sense of all, as the sense of the entire community. The former of
these I shall call the numerical, or
absolute majority; and the latter, the concurrent, or
constitutional majority. I call it the constitutional
majority, because it is an essential element in every
constitutional government,—be whatever form it
takes. So great is the difference, politically speaking, between
the two majorities, that they cannot be
confounded, without leading to great and fatal errors; and yet
the distinction between them has been so
entirely overlooked, that when the term majority is used in
political discussions, it is applied exclusively
to designate the numerical,—as if there were no other. . . .

The first and leading error which naturally arises from
overlooking the distinction referred to, is, to
confound the numerical majority with the people, and this is so
completely as to regard them as identical.
This is a consequence that necessarily results from
considering the numerical as the only majority. All
admit, that a popular government, or democracy,
is the government of the people. . . . Those who
regard the numerical as the only majority . . . [are]
forced to regard the numerical majority as, in
effect, the entire people. . . .
The necessary consequence of taking the sense
of the community by the concurrent majority
is . . . to give to each interest or portion of the
community a negative on the others. It is this
mutual negative among its various conflicting
interests, which invests each with the power of
protecting itself; . . . Without this, there can be no
constitution.
From John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition on
Government” (ca. 1845)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why does Monroe think that the
“systems” of Europe and the Western
Hemisphere are fundamentally
different?

2. Which Americans would be most likely
to object to Calhoun’s political system?
3. How do the two documents differ in
their conception of how powerful the
national government ought to be?
John Quincy Adams in an 1843
daguerreotype.
The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams enjoyed one of the most distinguished pre-
presidential
careers of any American president. The son of John Adams, he
had wit-
nessed the Battle of Bunker Hill at age eight and at fourteen had
worked as
private secretary and French interpreter for an American envoy
in Europe.
He had gone on to serve as ambassador to Prussia, the
Netherlands, Britain,
and Russia, and as a senator from Massachusetts.
Adams was not an engaging figure. He described himself as “a

man
of cold, austere, and foreboding manners.” But he had a clear
vision of
national greatness. At home, he strongly supported the
American System
of government-sponsored economic development. Abroad, he
hoped to
encourage American commerce throughout the world and, as
illustrated
by his authorship of the Monroe Doctrine, enhance American
influence in
the Western Hemisphere. An ardent expansionist, Adams was
certain that
the United States would eventually, and peacefully, absorb
Canada, Cuba,
and at least part of Mexico.
“Liberty Is Power”
Adams held a view of federal power far more expansive than
did most of
his contemporaries. In his first message to Congress, in
December 1825, he
set forth a comprehensive program for an activist national state.
“The spirit
of improvement is abroad in the land,” Adams announced, and
the federal
government should be its patron. He called for legislation
promoting agri-
culture, commerce, manufacturing, and “the mechanical and
elegant arts.”
His plans included the establishment of a national university, an
astro-
nomical observatory, and a naval academy. At a time when
many Americans
felt that governmental authority posed the greatest threat to

freedom,
Adams astonished many listeners with the bold statement
“liberty is power.”
Adams’s proposals alarmed all believers in strict construction
of
the Constitution. His administration spent more on internal
improve-
ments than those of his five predecessors combined, and it
enacted a steep
increase in tariff rates in 1828. But the rest of Adams’s
ambitious ideas
received little support in Congress.
Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party
Adams’s program handed his political rivals a powerful weapon.
With
individual liberty, states’ rights, and limited government as
their rally-
ing cries, Jackson’s supporters began to organize for the
election of 1828
Adams’s nationalism
almost as soon as Adams assumed office. Martin Van Buren, a
senator
from New York, supervised the task. The clash between Adams
and
Van Buren demonstrated how democracy was changing the
nature of
American politics. Adams typified the old politics—he was the

son of a
president and, like Jefferson and Madison, a man of sterling
intellectual
accomplishments. Van Buren represented the new political era.
The son
of a tavern keeper, he was a talented party manager, not a
person of great
vision or intellect.
But Van Buren did have a compelling idea. Rather than being
danger-
ous and divisive, as the founding generation had believed,
political parties,
he insisted, were necessary and desirable. Party competition
provided a
check on those in power and offered voters a real choice in
elections. And
by bringing together political leaders from different regions in
support of
common candidates and principles, national parties could
counteract the
sectionalism that had reared its head during the 1820s. National
political
parties, Van Buren realized, formed a bond of unity in a divided
nation. He
set out to reconstruct the Jeffersonian political alliance between
“the planters
of the South and the plain republicans [the farmers and urban
workers] of
the North.”
By 1828, Van Buren had established the political apparatus of
the
Democratic Party, complete with local and state party units

overseen by
a national committee and a network of local newspapers devoted
to the
party and to the election of Andrew Jackson. Apart from a
general com-
mitment to limited government, Jackson’s supporters made few
campaign
promises, relying on their candidate’s popularity and the
workings of
party machinery to get out the vote. The 1828 election campaign
was
scurrilous. Jackson’s supporters praised their candidate’s
frontier manli-
ness and ridiculed Adams’s intellectual attainments. (“Vote for
Andrew
Jackson who can fight, not John Quincy Adams who can write,”
declared
one campaign slogan.) Jackson’s opponents condemned him as a
murderer
for having executed army deserters and killing men in duels.
They ques-
tioned the morality of his wife, Rachel, because she had married
Jackson
before her divorce from her first husband had become final.
Nearly 57 percent of the eligible electorate cast ballots, more
than
double the percentage four years earlier. Jackson won a
resounding vic-
tory, carrying the entire South and West, along with
Pennsylvania. His
election was the first to demonstrate how the advent of
universal white
The new politics

Van Buren and political
parties
Van Buren’s Democratic Party
machine
What were the major areas of conflict between nationalism and
sectionalism?
male voting, organized by national political parties, had
transformed
American politics. For better or worse, the United States had
entered the
Age of Jackson.
T H E A G E O F J A C K S O N
Andrew Jackson was a man of many contradictions. Although he
had little
formal education, Jackson was capable of genuine eloquence in
his public
statements. A self-proclaimed champion of the common man, he
held a
vision of democracy that excluded any role for Indians, who he
believed
should be pushed west of the Mississippi River, and African-
Americans,
who should remain as slaves or be freed and sent abroad. A
strong nation-
alist, Jackson nonetheless believed that the states, not
Washington, D.C.,
should be the focal point of governmental activity.

The Party System
By the time of Jackson’s presidency, politics had become more
than a series
of political contests—it was a spectacle, a form of mass
entertainment, a part
of Americans’ daily lives. Every year wit-
nessed elections to some office—local, state,
or national—and millions took part in the
parades and rallies organized by the parties.
Politicians were popular heroes with mass
followings and popular nicknames. Jackson
was Old Hickory, Clay was Harry of the
West, and Van Buren the Little Magician
(or, to his critics, the Sly Fox). Thousands
of Americans willingly attended lengthy
political orations and debates.
Party machines, headed by profes-
sional politicians, reached into every
neighborhood, especially in cities. They
provided benefits like jobs to constitu-
ents and ensured that voters went to the
polls on election day. Government posts,
Jackson declared, should be open to the
people, not reserved for a privileged class
of permanent bureaucrats. He introduced
A broadside from the 1828 campaign
illustrates how Andrew Jackson’s
supporters promoted him as a military

hero and “man of the people.”
5
3 5 9
11
1511
3
3 5 16
28
14 24
16 20
8
1
7 8
15
4
8
8
3
65
Democrat Jackson
National Republican Adams
Party Candidate
Electoral Vote

(Share)
Popular Vote
(Share)
178 (68%)
83 (32%)
647,286 (56%)
508,064 (44%)
O F 1 8 2 8
297T H E A G E O F J A C K S O N
Issues for the Democratic
Party
Issues for the Whig Party
the principle of rotation in office (called the “spoils system” by
oppo-
nents) into national government, making loyalty to the party the
main
qualification for jobs like postmaster and customs official.
Large national conventions where state leaders gathered to ham-
mer out a platform now chose national candidates. Newspapers
played
a greater and greater role in politics. Every significant town, it
seemed,

had its Democratic and Whig papers whose job was not so much
to report
the news as to present the party’s position on issues of the day.
Jackson’s
Kitchen Cabinet—an informal group of advisers who helped to
write his
speeches and supervise communication between the White
House and
local party officials—mostly consisted of newspaper editors.
Democrats and Whigs
There was more to party politics, however, than spectacle and
organiza-
tion. Jacksonian politics revolved around issues spawned by the
market
revolution and the continuing tension between national and
sectional
loyalties. Democrats tended to be alarmed by the widening gap
between
social classes. They warned that “nonproducers”—bankers,
merchants,
and speculators—were seeking to use connections with
government to
enhance their wealth to the disadvantage of the “producing
classes” of farm-
ers, artisans, and laborers. They believed the government should
adopt a
hands-off attitude toward the economy and not award special
favors to
entrenched economic interests. This would enable ordinary
Americans
to test their abilities in the fair competition of the self-
regulating market.
The Democratic Party attracted aspiring entrepreneurs who
resented gov-

ernment aid to established businessmen, as well as large
numbers of farm-
ers and city workingmen suspicious of new corporate
enterprises. Poorer
farming regions isolated from markets, like the lower Northwest
and the
southern backcountry, tended to vote Democratic.
Whigs united behind the American System, believing that via a
protective tariff, a national bank, and aid to internal
improvements, the
federal government could guide economic development. They
were stron-
gest in the Northeast, the most rapidly modernizing region of
the country.
Most established businessmen and bankers supported their
program of
government-promoted economic growth, as did farmers in
regions near
rivers, canals, and the Great Lakes, who benefited from
economic changes
or hoped to do so. The counties of upstate New York along the
Erie Canal,
for example, became a Whig stronghold, whereas more isolated
rural
communities tended to vote Democratic. Many slaveholders
supported
In what ways did Andrew Jackson embody the contradictions of
democratic nationalism?
Political innovations

the Democrats, believing states’ rights to be slavery’s first line
of defense.
But like well-to-do merchants and industrialists in the North,
the largest
southern planters generally voted Whig.
Public and Private Freedom
The party battles of the Jacksonian era reflected the clash
between “pub-
lic” and “private” definitions of American freedom and their
relationship
to governmental power, a persistent tension in the nation’s
history. For
Democrats, liberty was a set of private rights best secured by
local govern-
ments and endangered by powerful national authority. “The
limitation of
power, in every branch of our government,” wrote a Democratic
newspa-
per in 1842, “is the only safeguard of liberty.” During Jackson’s
presidency,
Democrats reduced expenditures, lowered the tariff, killed the
national
bank, and refused pleas for federal aid to internal
improvements. By 1835,
Jackson had even managed to pay off the national debt. As a
result, states
replaced the federal government as the country’s main economic
actors,
planning systems of canals and roads and chartering banks and
other
corporations.
Democrats, moreover, considered individual morality a private

mat-
ter, not a public concern. They opposed attempts to impose a
unified moral
vision on society, such as “temperance” legislation, which
restricted or
outlawed the production and sale of liquor, and laws prohibiting
various
kinds of entertainment on Sundays. “In this country,” declared
the New
York Journal of Commerce in 1848, “liberty is understood to be
the absence of
government from private affairs.”
Whigs, for their part, insisted that liberty and power reinforced
each
other. “A weak government,” wrote Francis Lieber, the
founding father of
American political science, was “a negation of liberty.” An
activist national
government, on the other hand, could enhance the realm of
freedom. The
government, Whigs believed, should create the conditions for
balanced
and regulated economic development, thereby promoting a
prosperity in
which all classes and regions would share.
Whigs, moreover, rejected the premise that the government must
not
interfere in private life. To function as free—that is, self-
directed and self-
disciplined—moral agents, individuals required certain
character traits,
which government could help to instill. Many evangelical
Protestants
supported the Whigs, convinced that via public education, the

building
of schools and asylums, temperance legislation, and the like,
democratic
governments could inculcate the “principles of morality.” And
during the
The Democrats: power a threat
to liberty
The Whigs: power allied with
liberty
Government and private life
Jacksonian era, popularly elected local authorities enacted
numerous laws,
ordinances, and regulations that tried to shape public morals by
banning
prostitution and the consumption of alcohol, and regulating
other kinds of
personal behavior. Pennsylvania was as renowned in the
nineteenth cen-
tury for its stringent laws against profanity and desecrating the
Sabbath
as it had been in the colonial era for its commitment to religious
liberty.
South Carolina and Nullification
Andrew Jackson, it has been said, left office with many more
principles
than he came in with. Elected as a military hero backed by an

efficient party
machinery, he was soon forced to define his stance on public
issues. Despite
his commitment to states’ rights, Jackson’s first term was
dominated by a
battle to uphold the supremacy of federal over state law. The
tariff of 1828,
which raised taxes on imported manufactured goods made of
wool as well
as on raw materials such as iron, had aroused considerable
opposition in
the South, nowhere more than in South Carolina, where it was
called the
“tariff of abominations.” The state’s leaders no longer believed
it pos-
sible or desirable to compete with the North in industrial
development.
Insisting that the tariff on imported manufactured goods raised
the prices
paid by southern consumers to benefit the North, the legislature
threat-
ened to “nullify” it—that is, declare it null and void within their
state.
The state with the largest proportion of slaves in its population
(55 percent in 1830), South Carolina was controlled by a tightly
knit group
of large planters. They maintained their grip on power by a state
constitu-
tion that gave plantation counties far greater representation in
the legis-
lature than their population warranted, as well as through high
property
qualifications for officeholders. Behind their economic
complaints against
the tariff lay the conviction that the federal government must be

weakened
lest it one day take action against slavery.
Calhoun’s Political Theory
John C. Calhoun soon emerged as the leading theorist of
nullification.
As the South began to fall behind the rest of the country in
popula-
tion, Calhoun had evolved from the nationalist of 1812 into a
powerful
defender of southern sectionalism. Having been elected vice
president in
1828, Calhoun at first remained behind the scenes, secretly
drafting the
Exposition and Protest in which the South Carolina legislature
justified nul-
lification. The national government, Calhoun insisted, had been
created by
Calhoun’s Exposition and
Protest
Shaping public morals
Tariff of 1828
Sectional economic differences

an agreement, or compact, among sovereign states, each of
which retained
the right to prevent the enforcement within its borders of acts of
Congress
that exceeded the powers specifically spelled out in the
Constitution.
Almost from the beginning of Jackson’s first term, Calhoun’s
influ-
ence in the administration waned, while Secretary of State
Martin Van
Buren emerged as the president’s closest adviser. One incident
that helped
set Jackson against Calhoun occurred a few weeks after the
inauguration.
Led by Calhoun’s wife, Floride, Washington society women
ostracized
Peggy Eaton, the wife of Jackson’s secretary of war, because
she was the
daughter of a Washington tavern keeper and, allegedly, a
woman of “easy
virtue.” Jackson identified the criticism of Peggy Eaton with the
abuse his
own wife had suffered during the campaign of 1828.
Far weightier matters soon divided Jackson and Calhoun.
Debate over
nullification raged in Washington. In a memorable exchange in
the Senate
in January 1830, Daniel Webster, a senator from Massachusetts,
responded
to South Carolina senator Robert Y. Hayne, a disciple of
Calhoun. The
people, not the states, declared Webster, created the
Constitution, making
the federal government sovereign. He called nullification

illegal, unconsti-
tutional, and treasonous. Webster’s ending was widely hailed
throughout
the country—“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable.”
A few weeks later, at a White House dinner, Jackson delivered a
toast
while fixing his gaze on Calhoun: “Our Federal Union—it must
be pre-
served.” Calhoun’s reply came immediately: “The Union—next
to our
liberty most dear.” By 1831, Calhoun had publicly emerged as
the leading
theorist of states’ rights.
Webster-Hayne debate
Eaton affair
An 1834 print portrays the United
States as a Temple of Liberty. At
the center, a figure of liberty rises
from the flames, holding the Bill
of Rights and a staff with a liberty
cap. Justice and Minerva (Roman
goddess of war and wisdom) flank
the temple, above which flies a
banner, “The Union Must and Shall

Be Preserved.”
The Nullification Crisis
Nullification was not a purely sectional issue. South Carolina
stood alone
during the crisis, and several southern states passed resolutions
con-
demning its action. Nonetheless, the elaboration of the compact
theory of
the Constitution gave the South a well-developed political
philosophy to
which it would turn when sectional conflict became more
intense.
To Jackson, nullification amounted to nothing less than
disunion. He
dismissed Calhoun’s constitutional arguments out of hand: “Can
anyone
of common sense believe the absurdity, that a faction of any
state, or a
state, has a right to secede and destroy this union, and the
liberty of the
country with it?” The issue came to a head in 1832, when a new
tariff was
enacted. Despite a reduction in tariff rates, South Carolina
declared the tax
on imported goods null and void in the state after the following
February.
In response, Jackson persuaded Congress to enact a Force Bill
authorizing

him to use the army and navy to collect customs duties. To avert
a confron-
tation, Henry Clay, with Calhoun’s assistance, engineered the
passage of a
new tariff, in 1833, further reducing duties. South Carolina then
rescinded
the ordinance of nullification, although it proceeded to “nullify”
the Force
Act. Calhoun abandoned the Democratic Party for the Whigs,
where, with
Clay and Webster, he became part of a formidable trio of
political leaders
(even though the three agreed on virtually nothing except
hostility toward
Jackson).
Indian Removal
The nullification crisis underscored Jackson’s commitment to
the sov-
ereignty of the nation. His exclusion of Indians from the era’s
assertive
democratic nationalism led to the final act in the centuries-long
conflict
between white Americans and Indians east of the Mississippi
River. In
the slave states, the onward march of cotton cultivation placed
enormous
pressure on remaining Indian holdings. One of the early laws of
Jackson’s
administration, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, provided funds
for
uprooting the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee,
Chickasaw,
Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—with a population of around
60,000 liv-

ing in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and
Mississippi.
The law marked a repudiation of the Jeffersonian idea that
“civilized”
Indians could be assimilated into the American population.
These tribes
had made great efforts to become everything republican citizens
should be.
The Cherokee had taken the lead, establishing schools, adopting
written
laws and a constitution modeled on that of the United States,
and becoming
Jackson’s stance
Shift in Indian policy
South Carolina and the tariff
of 1832
America302
New Echota
1832
Black Hawk War, 1832
Trail of Tears

1832
1830
1832
1835
1832
LOUISIANA
ARKANSAS
MISSOURI
IOWA
TERRITORY
ILLINOIS
WISCONSIN
TERRITORY
INDIANA
MICHIGAN
OHIO
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA
GEORGIA

FLORIDA
TERRITORY
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
PENNSYLVANIA
NEW YORK
INDIAN
LANDS
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
TEXAS
REPUBLIC
(1837–1845)
FOX
SAUK
CHICKASAW
CHOCTAW
CREEK
CHEROKEE

SEMINOLES
Rio G
rande
Arkansas R.
M
ississippi R.
M
issouri R.
Oh
io R
.
Gulf of Mexico
Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers

Battle site
Routes taken by Indians
Ceded to Indians
Ceded by Indians with date of cession
I N D I A N R E M O V A L S , 1 8 3 0 – 1 8 4 0
The removal of the so-called Five
Civilized Tribes from the Southeast all
but ended the Indian presence east of
the Mississippi River.
successful farmers, many of whom owned slaves. But in his
messages to
Congress, Jackson repeatedly referred to them as “savages” and
supported
Georgia’s effort to seize Cherokee land and nullify the tribe’s
laws. In good
American fashion, Cherokee leaders went to court to protect
their rights,
guaranteed in treaties with the federal government. Their
appeals forced
the Supreme Court to clarify the unique status of American
Indians.
The Supreme Court and the Indians
In a crucial case involving Indians in 1823, Johnson v.
M’Intosh, the Court
had proclaimed that Indians were not in fact owners of their
land but
merely had a “right of occupancy.” Chief Justice John Marshall
claimed

that from the early colonial era, Indians had lived as nomads
and hunters,
not farmers. Entirely inaccurate as history, the decision struck a
serious
blow against Indian efforts to retain their lands. In Cherokee
Nation v. Georgia
(1831), Marshall described Indians as “wards” of the federal
government.
“Right of occupancy”
They deserved paternal regard and protection, but they lacked
the standing
as citizens that would allow the Supreme Court to enforce their
rights. The
justices could not, therefore, block Georgia’s effort to extend
its jurisdiction
over the tribe.
Marshall, however, believed strongly in the supremacy of the
federal
government over the states. In 1832, in Worcester v. Georgia,
the Court
seemed to change its mind, holding that Indian nations were a
distinct
people with the right to maintain a separate political identity.
They must be
dealt with by the federal government, not the states, and
Georgia’s actions
violated the Cherokees’ treaties with Washington. Jackson,
however,
refused to recognize the validity of the Worcester ruling. “John

Marshall
has made his decision,” he supposedly declared, “now let him
enforce it.”
With legal appeals exhausted, one faction of the tribe agreed to
cede
their lands, but the majority, led by John Ross, who had been
elected
“principal chief” under the Cherokee constitution, adopted a
policy of
passive resistance. Federal soldiers forcibly removed them
during the
presidency of Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren. The army
herded
18,000 Cherokee men, women, and children into stockades and
then
forced them to move west. At least one-quarter perished during
the winter
of 1838–1839 on the Trail of Tears, as the removal route from
Georgia to
the area of present-day Oklahoma came to be called. (In the
Cherokee lan-
guage, it literally meant “the trail on which we cried.”)
A lithograph from 1836 depicts
Sequoia, with the alphabet of
the Cherokee language that he
developed. Because of their written
language and constitution, the
Cherokee were considered by many

white Americans to be a “civilized
tribe.”
Buffalo Chase over Prairie Bluffs, a
painting from the 1830s by George
Catlin, who created dozens of works
depicting Native Americans in the
trans-Mississippi West. Catlin saw
himself as recording for posterity a
vanishing way of life. At the time,
millions of buffalo inhabited the West,
providing food and hides for Native
Americans.
Seminole resistance
Effects of Indian removal
Nicholas Biddle

Distrust of banks
During the 1830s, most of the other southern tribes bowed to
the inev-
itable and departed peacefully. But with the assistance of
escaped slaves,
the Seminoles of sparsely settled Florida resisted. In the Second
Seminole
War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842 (the first had followed
American
acquisition of Florida in 1819), some 1,500 American soldiers
and the
same number of Seminoles were killed, and perhaps 3,000
Indians and
500 blacks were forced to move to the West. A small number of
Seminoles
managed to remain in Florida, a tiny remnant of the once
sizable Indian
population east of the Mississippi River.
Removal of the Indians powerfully reinforced the racial
definition
of American nationhood and freedom. At the time of
independence,
Indians had been a familiar presence in many parts of the
United States.
But by 1840, in the eyes of most whites east of the Mississippi
River,
they were simply a curiosity, a relic of an earlier period of
American his-
tory. Although Indians still dominated the trans-Mississippi
West, as
American settlement pushed relentlessly westward it was clear
that their
days of freedom there also were numbered.

T H E B A N K W A R A N D A F T E R
Biddle’s Bank
The central political struggle of the Age of Jackson was the
president’s
war on the Bank of the United States. The Bank symbolized the
hopes and
fears inspired by the market revolution. The expansion of
banking helped
to finance the nation’s economic development. But many
Americans,
including Jackson, distrusted bankers as “nonproducers” who
contributed
nothing to the nation’s wealth but profited from the labor of
others. The
tendency of banks to overissue paper money, whose
deterioration in value
reduced the real income of wage earners, reinforced this
conviction.
Heading the Bank was Nicholas Biddle of Pennsylvania, who
during
the 1820s had effectively used the institution’s power to curb
the over-
issuing of money by local banks and to create a stable currency
throughout
the nation. A snobbish, aristocratic Philadelphian, Biddle was as
strong-
willed as Jackson and as unwilling to back down in a fight. In
1832, he told
a congressional committee that his Bank had the ability to
“destroy” any
state bank. He hastened to add that he had never “injured” any
of them.

But Democrats wondered whether any institution, public or
private, ought
305T H E B A N K W A R A N D A F T E R
to possess such power. Many called it the Monster Bank, an
illegitimate
union of political authority and entrenched economic privilege.
The issue
of the Bank’s future came to a head in 1832. Although the
institution’s
charter would not expire until 1836, Biddle’s allies persuaded
Congress to
approve a bill extending it for another twenty years. Jackson
saw the tactic
as a form of blackmail—if he did not sign the bill, the Bank
would use its
considerable resources to oppose his reelection.
Jackson’s veto message is perhaps the central document of his
presi-
dency. In a democratic government, Jackson insisted, it was
unaccept-
able for Congress to create a source of concentrated power and
economic
privilege unaccountable to the people. “It is to be regretted,”
he declared,
“that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of
government to their
selfish purposes.” Exclusive privileges like the Bank’s charter
widened the
gap between the wealthy and “the humble members of society—
the farm-
ers, mechanics, and laborers.” Jackson presented himself as the

defender of
these “humble” Americans.
The Bank War reflected how Jackson enhanced the power of the
pres-
idency during his eight years in office, proclaiming himself the
symbolic
representative of all the people. He was the first president to
use the veto
power as a major weapon and to appeal directly to the public for
political
support, over the head of Congress. Whigs denounced him for
usurping
the power of the legislature. But Jackson’s effective appeal to
democratic
popular sentiments helped him win a sweeping reelection
victory in 1832
over the Whig candidate, Henry Clay. His victory ensured the
death of the
Bank of the United States.
The Downfall of Mother Bank, a
Democratic cartoon celebrating the
destruction of the Second Bank of
the United States. President Andrew
Jackson topples the building by
brandishing his order removing
federal funds from the Bank. Led by
Nicholas Biddle, with the head of a

demon, the Bank’s corrupt supporters
flee, among them Henry Clay, Daniel
Webster, and newspaper editors
allegedly paid by the institution.
Enhancing the power of the
presidency
Jackson’s veto of the bank bill
How did the Bank War influence the economy and party
competition?
Pet Banks, the Economy, and the Panic of 1837
What, however, would take the Bank’s place? Not content to
wait for
the charter of the Bank of the United States to expire in 1836,
Jackson
authorized the removal of federal funds from its vaults and their
deposit
in select local banks. Not surprisingly, political and personal
connec-
tions often determined the choice of these “pet banks.” Two
secretaries of
the Treasury refused to transfer federal money to the pet banks,
since the
law creating the Bank had specified that government funds

could not be
removed except for a good cause as communicated to Congress.
Jackson
finally appointed Attorney General Roger B. Taney, a loyal
Maryland
Democrat, to the Treasury post, and he carried out the order.
When John
Marshall died in 1835, Jackson rewarded Taney by appointing
him chief
justice.
Without government deposits, the Bank of the United States lost
its
ability to regulate the activities of state banks. The value of
bank notes
in circulation rose from $10 million in 1833 to $149 million in
1837. As
prices rose dramatically, “real wages”—the actual value of
workers’ pay—
declined. Numerous labor unions emerged, which attempted to
protect the
earnings of urban workers. Meanwhile, speculators hastened to
cash in
on rising land prices. Using paper money, they bought up huge
blocks of
public land, which they resold to farmers or to eastern
purchasers of lots
in entirely nonexistent western towns.
Inevitably, the speculative boom collapsed. The government
sold
20 million acres of federal land in 1836, ten times the amount
sold in 1830,
nearly all of it paid for in paper money, often of questionable
value. In July
1836, the Jackson administration issued the Specie Circular,

declaring that
henceforth it would only accept gold and silver as payment for
public land.
At the same time, the Bank of England, increasingly suspicious
about the
value of American bank notes, demanded that American
merchants pay
their creditors in London in gold or silver. Then, an economic
downturn
in Britain dampened demand for American cotton, the country’s
major
export.
Taken together, these events triggered an economic collapse in
the
United States, the Panic of 1837, followed by a depression that
lasted to
1843. Businesses throughout the country failed, and many
farmers, unable
to meet mortgage payments because of declining income, lost
their land.
Tens of thousands of urban workers saw their jobs disappear.
The fledg-
ling labor movement collapsed as strikes became impossible,
given the
surplus of unemployed labor.
Consequences of the removal of
federal deposits
The Specie Circular
Economic collapse

Van Buren in Office
The president forced to deal with the depression was Martin
Van Buren,
who had been elected in 1836 over three regional candidates put
forward
by the Whigs. Under Van Buren, the hard money, anti-bank
wing of the
Democratic Party came to power. In 1837, the administration
announced
its intention to remove federal funds from the pet banks and
hold them in
the Treasury Department in Washington, under the control of
government
officials. Not until 1840 did Congress approve the new policy,
known as
the Independent Treasury, which completely separated the
federal gov-
ernment from the nation’s banking system. It would be repealed
in 1841
when the Whigs returned to power, but it was reinstated under
President
James K. Polk in 1846.
Despite his reputation as a political magician, Van Buren found
that with-
out Jackson’s personal popularity he could not hold the
Democratic coali-
tion together. In 1840, he also discovered that his Whig
opponents had
mastered the political techniques he had helped to pioneer.
Confronting an

unprecedented opportunity for victory because of the continuing
economic
depression, the Whigs abandoned their most prominent leader,
Henry Clay,
and nominated William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s main claim
to fame
was military success against the British and Indians during the
War of 1812.
The Independent Treasury
William Henry Harrison
competition?
The Times, an 1837 engraving that
blames Andrew Jackson’s policies
for the economic depression. The
Custom House is idle, while next
door a bank is mobbed by worried
depositors. Beneath Jackson’s
hat, spectacles, and clay pipe (with
the ironic word “glory”), images of
hardship abound.

A political cartoon from the 1840
presidential campaign shows public
opinion as the “almighty lever” of
politics in a democracy. Under the
gaze of the American eagle, “Loco-
Foco” Democrats slide into an abyss,
while the people are poised to lift
William Henry Harrison, the Whig
candidate, to victory.
The party nominated Harrison without a platform. In a flood of
publica-
tions, banners, parades, and mass meetings, they promoted him
as the “log
cabin” candidate, the champion of the common man. This tactic
proved enor-
mously effective, even though it bore little
relationship to the actual life of the wealthy
Harrison. His running mate was John Tyler,
a states’-rights Democrat from Virginia who
had joined the Whigs after the nullification
crisis and did not follow Calhoun back to the
Democrats. On almost every issue of political
significance, Tyler held views totally opposed
to those of other Whigs. But party leaders

hoped he could expand their base in the South.
By 1840, the mass democratic politics of
the Age of Jackson had absorbed the logic of
the marketplace. Selling candidates and their
images was as important as the positions for
which they stood. With two highly organized
parties competing throughout the country,
voter turnout soared to 80 per cent of those
eligible. Harrison won a sweeping victory.
“We have taught them how to conquer us,”
lamented a Democratic newspaper.
5
3
4
4 7 11
11
1515
15
23
9 21
3
30
42
7 7 10
14

4
883
10
5
Whig Harrison
Democrat Van Buren
1,275,016 (53%)
1,129,102 (47%)
234 (80%)
60 (20%)
Party Candidate
Electoral Vote
(Share)
Popular Vote
(Share)
O F 1 8 4 0
Whig success proved short-lived. Immediately on assuming
office,
Harrison contracted pneumonia. He died a month later, and John
Tyler suc-

ceeded him. When the Whig majority in Congress tried to enact
the American
System into law, Tyler vetoed nearly every measure, including a
new national
bank and higher tariff. Most of the cabinet resigned, and his
party repudiated
him. Tyler’s four years in office were nearly devoid of
accomplishment. If the
campaign that resulted in the election of Harrison and Tyler
demonstrated
how a flourishing system of democratic politics had come into
existence,
Tyler’s lack of success showed that political parties had become
central
to American government. Without a party behind him, a
president could
not govern. But a storm was now gathering that would test the
stability of
American democracy and the statesmanship of its political
leaders.
competition?
Importance of political parties
1. What global changes prompted the Monroe Doctrine?
What were its key provisions? How does it show
America’s growing international presence?

2. How did Andrew Jackson represent the major develop-
ments of the era: westward movement, the market revolu-
tion, and the expansion of democracy for some alongside
the limits on it for others?
3. How did the expansion of white male democracy run
counter to the ideals of the founders, who believed gov-
ernment should be sheltered from excessive influence by
ordinary people?
4. What were the components of the American System, and
how were they designed to promote the national economy
under the guidance of the federal government?
5. How did the Missouri Compromise and the nullification
crisis demonstrate increasing sectional competition and
disagreements over slavery?
6. According to Martin Van Buren, why were political par-
ties a desirable element of public life? What did he do to
build the party system?
7. What were the major economic, humanitarian, political,
and social arguments for and against Indian Removal?
8. What were the key issues that divided the Democratic
and Whig Parties? Where did each party stand on those
issues?
9. Explain the causes and effects of the Panic of 1837.
K E Y T E R M S
Dorr War (p. 282)
Democracy in America (p. 282)

“information revolution” (p. 283)
“infant industries” (p. 286)
American System (p. 286)
internal improvements (p. 286)
Second Bank of the United
States (p. 287)
Panic of 1819 (p. 287)
McCulloch v. Maryland (p. 288)
Missouri Compromise (p. 288)
Monroe Doctrine (p. 290)
“spoils system” (p. 297)
Democratic Party and Whig
Party (p. 297)
“tariff of abominations” (p. 299)
nullification crisis (p. 301)
Force Act (p. 301)
Indian Removal Act (p. 301)
Worcester v. Georgia (p. 303)
Trail of Tears (p. 303)

Bank War (p. 305)
“pet banks” (p. 306)
Panic of 1837 (p. 306)
C E S
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T H E P E C U L I A R
I N S T I T U T I O N

C H A P T E R 1 1 1791– Haitian Revolution1804
1800 Gabriel’s Rebellion
1811 Slave revolt in Louisiana
1822 Denmark Vesey’s slave
conspiracy
1830s States legislate against
teaching slaves to read or
write
1831 William Lloyd Garrison’s
The Liberator debuts
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
1831– Slave revolt in Jamaica
1832
1832 Virginia laws tighten the
slave system
1833 Great Britain abolishes
slavery within its empire
1838 Frederick Douglas escapes
slavery
1839 Slaves take control of the
Amistad
1841 Slave uprising on the
Creole

1849 Harriet Tubman escapes
slavery
1855 Trial of Celia
Richmond’s Slave Market Auction, by
the British artist Eyre Crowe, depicts
a scene in an auction house. A slave
sale is in progress, while on the right,
slaves wait apprehensively for their
turn to be sold. A child clings to her
mother, perhaps for the last time, while
potential buyers examine the seated
women. Crowe entered the auction
house in March 1853 after seeing an
advertisement for a slave sale, and
began sketching. When the white
crowd realized what he was doing,
they “rushed on him savagely and
obliged him to quit,” Crowe’s traveling
companion wrote to a friend. The

painting is based on his sketches.
I n an age of “self-made” men, no American rose more
dramatically from humble origins to national and international
distinction than Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery in 1818,
he became a major
figure in the crusade for abolition, the drama of emancipation,
and the
effort during Reconstruction to give meaning to black freedom.
Douglass was the son of a slave mother and an unidentified
white
man, possibly his owner. As a youth in Maryland, he gazed out
at
the ships in Chesapeake Bay, seeing them as “freedom’s swift-
winged
angels.” In violation of Maryland law, Douglass learned to read
and
write, initially with the assistance of his owner’s wife and then,
after her
husband forbade her to continue, with the help of local white
children.
“From that moment,” he later wrote, he understood that
knowledge was
“the pathway from slavery to freedom.” In 1838, having
borrowed the
free papers of a black sailor, he escaped to the North.
Frederick Douglass went on to become the most influential
African-
American of the nineteenth century and the nation’s preeminent

advocate
of racial equality. He also published a widely read
autobiography that
offered an eloquent condemnation of slavery and racism.
Indeed, his own
accomplishments testified to the incorrectness of prevailing
ideas about
blacks’ inborn inferiority. Douglass was also active in other
reform move-
ments, including the campaign for women’s rights. Douglass
argued that
in their desire for freedom, the slaves were truer to the nation’s
underlying
principles than the white Americans who annually celebrated
the Fourth
of July while allowing the continued existence of slavery.
T H E O L D S O U T H
When Frederick Douglass was born, slavery was already an old
institu-
tion in America. Two centuries had passed since the first twenty
Africans
were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship. After abolition in
the North,
slavery had become the “peculiar institution” of the South—that
is, an
institution unique to southern society. The Mason-Dixon Line,
drawn
by two surveyors in the eighteenth century to settle a boundary
dispute
between Maryland and Pennsylvania, eventually became the
dividing line
between slavery and freedom.
Despite the hope of some of the founders that slavery might die

out, in
fact the institution survived the crisis of the American
Revolution and rap-
idly expanded westward. On the eve of the Civil War, the slave
population
had risen to nearly 4 million, its high rate of natural increase
more than
How did slavery shape
social and economic rela-
tions in the Old South?
What were the legal and
material constraints on
slaves’ lives and work?
How did distinct slave
cultures emerge in the Old
South?
What were the major
forms of resistance to
slavery?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
The expansion of slavery

Mason-Dixon line
313T H E O L D S O U T H
making up for the prohibition in 1808 of further slave imports
from Africa.
In the South as a whole, slaves made up one-third of the total
population,
and in the cotton-producing states of the Deep South, around
half. By the
1850s, slavery had crossed the Mississippi River and was
expanding rap-
idly in Arkansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas.
Cotton Is King
In the nineteenth century, cotton replaced sugar as the world’s
major
crop produced by slave labor. And although slavery survived in
Brazil
and the Spanish and French Caribbean, its abolition in the
British
empire in 1833 made the United States indisputably the center
of New
World slavery.
Because the early industrial revolution centered on factories
using
cotton as the raw material to manufacture cloth, cotton had
become by far
the most important commodity in international trade. And three-
fourths
of the world’s cotton supply came from the southern United

States. Textile
manufacturers in places as far flung as Massachusetts,
Lancashire in Great
Britain, Normandy in France, and the suburbs of Moscow
depended on a
regular supply of American cotton.
As early as 1803, cotton had become the most important
American
export. Cotton sales earned the money from abroad that allowed
the
United States to pay for imported manufactured goods. On the
eve of the
Civil War, it accounted for well over half of the total value of
American
exports. In 1860, the economic investment represented by the
slave popu-
lation exceeded the value of the nation’s factories, railroads,
and banks
combined.
A photograph of Frederick Douglass,
the fugitive slave who became
a prominent abolitionist, taken
between 1847 and 1852. As a fellow
abolitionist noted at the time, “The
very look and bearing of Douglass
are an irresistible logic against the
oppression of his race.”

“Cotton Pressing in Louisiana,” from
Ballou’s Magazine in 1856, illustrates
how slaves were used to supply
power for a partially mechanized work
process.
How did slavery shape social and economic relations in the Old
South?
Economic value of slavery
The Second Middle Passage
As noted in Chapter 9, to replace the slave trade from Africa,
which had been
prohibited by Congress in 1808, a massive trade in slaves
developed within
the United States. More than 2 million slaves were sold between
1820 and
1860. The main business districts of southern cities contained
the offices
of slave traders, complete with signs reading “Negro Sales” or
“Negroes
Bought Here.” Auctions of slaves took place at public slave
markets, as in
New Orleans, or at courthouses. Southern newspapers carried
advertise-

ments for slave sales, southern banks financed slave trading,
southern ships
and railroads carried slaves from buyers to sellers, and southern
states and
municipalities earned revenue by taxing the sale of slaves.
Slavery and the Nation
Slavery shaped the lives of all Americans, white as well as
black. It helped to
determine where they lived, how they worked, and under what
conditions
they could exercise their freedoms of speech, assembly, and the
press.
Northern merchants and manufacturers participated in the slave
economy and shared in its profits. Money earned in the cotton
trade helped
to finance industrial development and internal improvements in
the North.
Northern ships carried cotton to New York and Europe, northern
bankers
financed cotton plantations, northern companies insured slave
property,
and northern factories turned cotton into
cloth. New York City’s rise to commer-
cial prominence depended as much on the
establishment of shipping lines that gath-
ered the South’s cotton and transported it
to Europe as on the Erie Canal.
The Southern Economy
There was no single South before the Civil
War. In the eight slave states of the Upper

South, slaves and slave owners made up
a smaller percentage of the total popula-
tion than in the seven Deep South states,
which stretched from South Carolina west
to Texas. The Upper South had major cen-
ters of industry in Baltimore, Richmond,
YEAR SLAVE POPULATION
1790 697,624
1800 893,602
1810 1,191,362
1820 1,538,022
1830 2,009,043
1840 2,487,355
1850 3,204,313
1860 3,953,760
TABLE 11.1 Growth of the
Slave Population
Slave trade in the South
Northern participation

South?
and St. Louis, and its economies were more diversified than
those in the
Deep South, which was heavily dependent on cotton. Not
surprisingly,
during the secession crisis of 1860–1861, the Deep South states
were the
first to leave the Union.
Nonetheless, slavery led the South down a very different path of
economic development than the North’s, limiting the growth of
industry,
discouraging immigrants from entering the region, and
inhibiting techno-
logical progress. The South did not share in the urban growth
experienced
by the rest of the country. In the Cotton Kingdom, the only city
of signifi-
cant size was New Orleans. With a population of 168,000 in
1860, New
Orleans ranked as the nation’s sixth-largest city. As the
gathering point for
cotton grown along the Mississippi River and sugar from the
plantations
of southeastern Louisiana, it was the world’s leading exporter
of slave-
grown crops.
S L A V E P O P U L A T I O N , 1 8 6 0
HoustonSan Antonio New Orleans
Vicksburg Jackson

Mobile
Montgomery
Birmingham
Jacksonville
Savannah
Atlanta
Chattanooga
Nashville
Memphis
Little Rock
Richmond
Norfolk
Wilmington
INDIAN TERRITORY
KANSAS TERRITORY
TEXAS
MISSOURI
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA
FLORIDA
GEORGIA
TENNESSEE
KENTUCKY
ILLINOIS INDIANA
OHIO
VIRGINIA
NORTH CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
PENNSYLVANIA
MD
DE
NJ
Gulf of Mexico
At lant ic
Oce an

0
0
150
150
300 miles
300 kilometers
Slave distribution
(one dot represents 200 slaves)
Rather than being evenly distributed
throughout the South, the slave
population was concentrated in areas
with the most fertile soil and easiest
access to national and international
markets. By 1860, a significant
percentage of the slave population
had been transported from the
Atlantic coast to the Deep South via
the internal slave trade.
New Orleans

In 1860, the South produced less than 10 percent of the nation’s
manufactured goods. Many northerners viewed slavery as an
obstacle to
American economic progress. But as New Orleans showed,
slavery and
economic growth could go hand in hand. In general, the
southern economy
was hardly stagnant, and slavery proved very profitable for
most owners.
The profits produced by slavery for the South and the nation as
a whole
formed a powerful obstacle to abolition. Speaking of cotton,
Senator James
Henry Hammond of South Carolina declared, “No power on
earth dares to
make war upon it. Cotton is king.”
Plain Folk of the Old South
The foundation of the Old South’s economy, slavery
powerfully shaped race relations, politics, religion,
and the law. Its influence was pervasive: “Nothing
escaped,” writes one historian, “nothing and no one.”
This was true despite the fact that the majority of white
southerners—three out of four white families—owned
no slaves. Many southern farmers lived outside the
plantation belt in hilly areas unsuitable for cotton pro-
duction. Using family labor, they raised livestock and
grew food for their own use, purchasing relatively few
goods at local stores. Unlike northern farmers, there-
fore, they did not provide a market for manufactured

This 1860 view of New Orleans
captures the size and scale of the
cotton trade in the South’s largest
city. More than 3,500 steamboats
arrived in New Orleans in 1860.
An upcountry family, dressed in
homespun, in Cedar Mountain,
Virginia. Many white families in the
pre–Civil War South were largely
isolated from the market economy.
This photograph was taken in 1862
but reflects the prewar way of life.
South?
goods. This was one of the main reasons that the South did not
develop
an industrial base.
Some poorer whites resented the power and privileges of the

great
planters. Politicians such as Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and
Joseph
Brown of Georgia rose to power as self-proclaimed spokesmen
of the com-
mon man against the “slaveocracy.” But most poor whites made
their peace
with the planters in whose hands economic and social power
was concen-
trated. Racism, kinship ties, common participation in a
democratic politi-
cal culture, and regional loyalty in the face of outside criticism
all served
to cement bonds between planters and the South’s “plain folk.”
Like
other white southerners, most small farmers believed their
economic and
personal freedom rested on slavery. Not until the Civil War
would class
tensions among the white population threaten the planters’
domination.
The Planter Class
Even among slaveholders, the planter was far from typical. In
1850, a
majority of slaveholding families owned five or fewer slaves.
Fewer than
40,000 families possessed the twenty or more slaves that
qualified them
as planters. Fewer than 2,000 families owned a hundred slaves
or more.
Nonetheless, even though the planter was not the typical
slaveholder or
white southerner, his values and aspirations dominated southern
life. The

plantation, wrote Frederick Douglass, was “a little nation by
itself, with its
own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs.” These
rules and
customs set the tone for southern society.
Ownership of slaves provided the route to wealth, status, and
influ-
ence. Planters not only held the majority of slaves but also
controlled the
most fertile land, enjoyed the highest incomes, and dom-
inated state and local offices and the leadership of both
political parties. Slavery, of course, was a profit-making
system, and slaveowners kept close watch on world
prices for their products, invested in enterprises such
as railroads and canals, and carefully supervised their
plantations. Their wives—the “plantation mistresses”
idealized in southern lore for femininity, beauty, and
dependence on men—were hardly idle. They cared for
sick slaves, directed the domestic servants, and super-
vised the entire plantation when their husbands were
away. The wealthiest Americans before the Civil War
were planters in the South Carolina low country and the
cotton region around Natchez, Mississippi.
Planters and “plain folk”
A slave dealer’s place of business
in Atlanta. The buying and selling
of slaves was a regularized part of
the southern economy, and such
businesses were a common sight in

every southern town.
Lack of southern market
for manufactures
On the cotton frontier, many planters lived in crude log homes.
But in
the older slave states, and as settled society developed in the
Deep South,
they constructed elegant mansions adorned with white columns
in the
Greek Revival style of architecture. Planters discouraged their
sons from
entering “lowly” trades such as commerce and manufacturing,
one reason
that the South remained overwhelmingly agricultural.
The Paternalist Ethos
The slave plantation was deeply embedded in the world market,
and plant-
ers sought to accumulate land, slaves, and profits. However,
planters’ val-
ues glorified not the competitive capitalist marketplace but a
hierarchical,
agrarian society in which slaveholding gentlemen took personal
responsi-
bility for the physical and moral well-being of their
dependents—women,
children, and slaves.

This outlook, known as “paternalism” (from the Latin word for
“father”), had been a feature of American slavery even in the
eighteenth
century. But it became more ingrained after the closing of the
African slave
trade in 1808, which narrowed the cultural gap between master
and slave
and gave owners an economic interest in the survival of their
human prop-
erty. Unlike the absentee planters of the West Indies, many of
whom resided
in Great Britain, southern slaveholders lived on their
plantations and thus
had year-round contact with their slaves.
The paternalist outlook both masked
and justified the brutal reality of slavery. It
enabled slaveowners to think of themselves
as kind, responsible masters even as they
bought and sold their human property—a
practice at odds with the claim that slaves
formed part of the master’s “family.”
The Proslavery Argument
In the thirty years before the outbreak of the
Civil War, even as northern criticism of the
“peculiar institution” began to deepen, pro-
slavery thought came to dominate southern
public life. Fewer and fewer white south-
erners shared the view, common among the
founding fathers, that slavery was, at best, a
“necessary evil.”
NUMBER OF
SLAVES OWNED SLAVEHOLDERS

1 68,000
2–4 105,000
5–9 80,000
10–19 55,000
20–49 30,000
50–99 6,000
100–199 1,500
200+ 250
TABLE 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850
(in Round Numbers)
Plantation hierarchy
South?
Even those who had no direct stake in slavery shared with
planters a
deep commitment to white supremacy. Indeed, racism—the
belief that blacks
were innately inferior to whites and unsuited for life in any
condition other
than slavery—formed one pillar of the proslavery ideology.

Most slavehold-
ers also found legitimation for slavery in biblical passages such
as the injunc-
tion that servants should obey their masters. Others argued that
slavery was
essential to human progress. Without slavery, they believed,
planters would
be unable to cultivate the arts, sciences, and other civilized
pursuits.
Still other defenders of slavery insisted that the institution
guaran-
teed equality for whites by preventing the growth of a class
doomed to
a life of unskilled labor. Like northerners, they claimed to be
committed
to the ideal of freedom. Slavery for blacks, they declared, was
the surest
guarantee of “perfect equality” among whites, liberating them
from the
“low, menial” jobs such as factory labor and domestic service
performed
by wage laborers in the North.
S I Z E O F S L A V E H O L D I N G S , 1 8 6 0
TEXAS
ARKANSAS
MISSOURI
LOUISIANA
MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA GEORGIA

FLORIDA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
NORTH CAROLINATENNESSEE
MARYLAND
KENTUCKY
Gulf of Mexico
At lant ic
Oce an
0
0
150
150
200 miles
200 kilometers
20+
15–20
10–15
5–10
0–5

Average number of slaves
per slaveholding, 1860
Most southern slaveholders owned
fewer than five slaves. The largest
plantations were concentrated in
coastal South Carolina and along the
Mississippi River.
Slavery and white supremacy
Equality for whites
Chapt
Abolition in the Americas
American slaveowners were well aware of developments in
slave systems elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. They
observed carefully the results of the wave of emancipations
that swept the hemisphere in the first four decades of the
century. In these years, slavery was abolished in most of
Spanish America and in the British empire.
The experience of emancipation in other parts of the
hemisphere strongly affected debates over slavery in the
United States. Southern slaveowners judged the vitality
of the Caribbean economy by how much sugar and other

crops it produced for the world market. Since many former
slaves preferred to grow food for their own families, defenders
of slavery in the United States charged that British emancipa-
tion had been a failure. Abolitionists disagreed, pointing to the
rising
standard of living of freed slaves, the spread of education
among them,
and other improvements in their lives. But the stark fact
remained that, in
a hemispheric perspective, slavery was a declining institution.
At mid-
century, significant New World slave systems remained only in
Cuba,
Puerto Rico, Brazil—and the United States.
Slavery and Liberty
Many white southerners declared themselves the true heirs of
the
American Revolution. They claimed to be inspired by “the same
spirit
of freedom and independence” that motivated the founding
generation.
Beginning in the 1830s, however, proslavery writers began to
question
the ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy so widely shared
elsewhere
in the nation. South Carolina, the only southern state where a
majority of
white families owned slaves, became the home of an aggressive
defense of
slavery that repudiated the idea that freedom and equality were
universal

entitlements. The language of the Declaration of
Independence—that all
men were created equal and entitled to liberty—was “the most
false and
dangerous of all political errors,” insisted John C. Calhoun.
The Virginia writer George Fitzhugh took the argument to its
most
radical conclusion, repudiating not only Jeffersonian ideals but
the notion
of America’s special mission in the world. Far from being the
natural con-
dition of mankind, Fitzhugh wrote, “universal liberty” was the
exception,
an experiment carried on “for a little while” in “a corner of
Europe” and
the northern United States. Taking the world and its history as a
whole,
A plate manufactured in England
to celebrate emancipation in the
British empire. After a brief period of
apprenticeship, the end of slavery
came on August 1,1838. At the
center, a family of former slaves
celebrates outside their cabin.
George Fitzhugh
Questioning founding ideals

321L I F E U N D E R S L A V E R Y
slavery, “without regard to race and color,” was “the general, . .
. normal,
natural” basis of “civilized society.”
After 1830, southern writers, newspaper editors, politicians, and
clergymen increasingly devoted themselves to spreading the
defense
of slavery. The majority of white southerners came to believe
that free-
dom for whites rested on the power to command the labor of
blacks. In
the words of the Richmond Enquirer, “freedom is not possible
without
slavery.”
L I F E U N D E R S L A V E R Y
Slaves and the Law
For slaves, the “peculiar institution” meant a life of incessant
toil, brutal
punishment, and the constant fear that their families would be
destroyed
by sale. Before the law, slaves were property. Although they
had a few
legal rights (all states made it illegal to kill a slave except in
self-defense,
and slaves accused of serious crimes were entitled to their day
in court,
before all-white judges and juries), these were haphazardly
enforced.

Slaves could be sold or leased by their owners at will and
lacked any voice
in the governments that ruled over them. They could not testify
in court
against a white person, sign contracts or acquire property, own
firearms,
hold meetings unless a white person was present, or leave the
farm or
plantation without the permission of their owner. By the 1830s,
it was
against the law to teach a slave to read or write.
Not all of these laws were rigorously enforced. Some members
of
slaveholding families taught slave children to read (although
rather few,
since well over 90 percent of the slave population was illiterate
in 1860).
It was quite common throughout the South for slaves to gather
without
white supervision at crossroads villages and country stores on
Sunday,
their day of rest.
The slave, declared a Louisiana law, “owes to his master . . . a
respect without bounds, and an absolute obedience.” No aspect
of slaves’
lives, from the choice of marriage partners to how they spent
their free
time, was immune from his interference. The entire system of
southern
justice, from the state militia and courts down to armed patrols
in each
locality, was designed to enforce the master’s control over the
persons and
labor of his slaves.

In one famous case, a Missouri court considered the “crime” of
Celia,
a slave who had killed her master in 1855 while resisting a
sexual assault.
Legal restrictions on slaves
A poster advertising the raffle of
a horse and a slave, treated as
equivalents, at a Missouri store.
Spreading defense of slavery
Slaves as property
South?
State law deemed “any woman” in such cir-
cumstances to be acting in self-defense. But
Celia, the court ruled, was not a “woman”
in the eyes of the law. She was a slave,
whose master had complete power over
her person. The court sentenced her to
death. However, since Celia was pregnant,
her execution was postponed until the
child was born, so as not to deprive her
owner’s heirs of their property rights.

Conditions of Slave Life
Compared with their counterparts in the West Indies and Brazil,
American slaves enjoyed better diets, lower rates of infant
mortality, and
longer life expectancies. Many factors contributed to improving
material
conditions. Most of the South lies outside the geographical area
where
tropical diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and typhoid fever
flourish, so
health among all southerners was better than in the Caribbean.
And with
the price of slaves rising dramatically after the closing of the
African slave
trade, it made economic sense for owners to become concerned
with the
health and living conditions of their human property.
Although slaves in the United States enjoyed better material
lives than
elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, they had far less access
to freedom.
In Brazil, it was not uncommon for an owner to free slaves as a
form of
celebration—on the occasion of a wedding in the owner’s
family, for example—
or to allow slaves to purchase their freedom. In the nineteenth-
century South,
however, more and more states set limits on voluntary
manumission, requir-
ing that such acts be approved by the legislature. Few slave
societies in history
have so systematically closed off all avenues to freedom as the
Old South.

Free Blacks in the Old South
The existence of slavery helped to define the status of those
blacks who
did enjoy freedom. On the eve of the Civil War, nearly half a
million free
blacks lived in the United States, a majority in the South. Most
were the
descendants of slaves freed by southern owners in the aftermath
of the
Revolution or by the gradual emancipation laws of the northern
states.
Their numbers were supplemented by slaves who had been
voluntarily
liberated by their masters, who had been allowed to purchase
their free-
dom, or who succeeded in running away.
Slaves outside their cabin on a
South Carolina plantation, probably
photographed in the 1850s. They had
brought their furniture outdoors to be
included in the photo.
Limiting voluntary
manumission
What were the legal and material constraints on slaves’ lives

and work?
When followed by “black” or “Negro,” the word
“free” took on an entirely new meaning. Free blacks
in the South could legally own property and marry
and, of course, could not be bought and sold. But
many regulations restricting the lives of slaves also
applied to them. Free blacks had no voice in select-
ing public officials. They were not allowed to testify
in court or serve on juries, and they had to carry at
all times a certificate of freedom. Poor free blacks
who required public assistance could be bound out
to labor alongside slaves. By the 1850s, most south-
ern states prohibited free blacks from entering their
territory. A few states even moved to expel them
altogether, offering the choice of enslavement or
departure.
In New Orleans and Charleston, on the other
hand, relatively pros perous free black communities
developed, mostly composed of mixed-race descen-
dants of unions between white men and slave women.
Many free blacks in these cities acquired an education and
worked as
skilled craftsmen such as tailors, carpenters, and mechanics.
They estab-
lished churches for their communities and schools for their
children. In
the Upper South, where the large majority of southern free
blacks lived,
they generally worked for wages as farm laborers. Overall, in
the words
of Willis A. Hodges, a member of a free Virginia family that
helped
runaways to reach the North, free blacks and slaves were “one
man of

sorrow.”
Slave Labor
First and foremost, slavery was a system of labor; “from sunup
to first
dark,” with only brief interruptions for meals, work occupied
most of
the slaves’ time. Large plantations were diversified
communities, where
slaves performed all kinds of work. The 125 slaves on one
plantation, for
instance, included a butler, two waitresses, a nurse, a
dairymaid, a gar-
dener, ten carpenters, and two shoemakers. Other plantations
counted
among their slaves engineers, blacksmiths, and weavers, as well
as
domestic workers from cooks to coachmen.
The large majority of slaves—75 percent of women and nearly
90 per-
cent of men, according to one study—worked in the fields. The
precise
organization of their labor varied according to the crop and the
size of
Slaves were an ever-present part
of southern daily life. In this 1826
portrait of the five children of
Commodore John Daniel Daniels,
a wealthy Baltimore shipowner, a

young slave lies on the floor at their
side, holding the soap for a game
of blowing bubbles, while another
hovers in the background, almost
depicted as part of the room’s
design.
Varieties of slave labor
Chapter 1
the holding. On small farms, the owner
often toiled side by side with his slaves.
The largest concentration of slaves, how-
ever, lived and worked on plantations in
the Cotton Belt, where men, women, and
children labored in gangs, often under the
direction of an overseer and perhaps a slave
“driver” who assisted him. Among slaves,
overseers had a reputation for meting out
brutal treatment.
The 150,000 slaves who worked in
the sugar fields of southern Louisiana also
labored in large gangs. Conditions here were
among the harshest in the South, for the late
fall harvest season required round-the-clock
labor to cut and process the sugarcane before

it spoiled. On the rice plantations of South Carolina and
Georgia, the system
of task labor, which had originated in the colonial era,
prevailed. With few
whites willing to venture into the malaria-infested swamps,
slaves were
assigned daily tasks and allowed to set their own pace of work.
Once a slave’s
task had been completed, he or she could spend the rest of the
day hunting,
fishing, or cultivating garden crops.
Slavery in the Cities
Businessmen, merchants, lawyers, and civil servants owned
slaves, and
by 1860 some 200,000 worked in industry, especially in the
ironworks
and tobacco factories of the Upper South. In southern cities,
thousands
were employed as unskilled laborers and skilled artisans. Most
city
slaves were servants, cooks, and other domestic laborers. But
own-
ers sometimes allowed those with craft skills to “hire their own
time.”
This meant that they could make work arrangements
individually with
employers, with most of the wages going to the slave’s owner.
Many
urban slaves even lived on their own. But slaveholders
increasingly
became convinced that, as one wrote, the growing independence
of
skilled urban slaves “exerts a most injurious influence upon the

relation
of master and servant.” For this reason, many owners in the
1850s sold
city slaves to the countryside and sought replacements among
skilled
white labor.
In this undated photograph, men,
women, and children pick cotton
under the watchful eye of an
overseer. Unlike sugarcane, cotton
does not grow to a great height,
allowing an overseer to supervise a
large number of slaves.
Skilled labor
What were the legal and material constraints on slaves’ lives
and work?
Maintaining Order
Slaveowners employed a variety of means in their attempts to
maintain
order and discipline among their human property and persuade
them to

labor productively. At base, the system rested on force. Masters
had almost
complete discretion in inflicting punishment, and rare was the
slave who
went through his or her life without experiencing a whipping.
Any infrac-
tion of plantation rules, no matter how minor, could be punished
by the
lash. One Georgia planter recorded in his journal that he had
whipped
M A J O R C R O P S O F T H E S O U T H , 1 8 6 0
TEXAS
INDIAN
TERRITORY
KANSAS
NEBRASKA
TERRITORY IOWA
MISSOURI
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA
GEORGIA
FLORIDA

SOUTH
CAROLINA
KENTUCKY
ILLINOIS
WISCONSIN
INDIANA
OHIO
MICHIGAN
PENNSYLVANIA
VIRGINIA
NEW
JERSEY
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
NEW YORK
UTAH
TERRITORY
M
iss
iss
ip

pi
R
.
M
issouri R.
Rio G
rande
Oh
io
R.
Arkansas R.
Gulf of Mexico
Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
150
150
300 miles
300 kilometers

Hemp
Cotton
Rice
Sugarcane
Tobacco
Cotton was the major agricultural
crop of the South, and, indeed, the
nation, but slaves also grew rice,
sugarcane, tobacco, and hemp.
A system based on force
a slave “for not bringing over milk for my
coffee, being compelled to take it without.”
Subtler means of control supplemented
violence. Owners encouraged and exploited
divisions among the slaves, especially
between field hands and house servants.
They created systems of incentives that
rewarded good work with time off or even
money payments. Probably the most power-
ful weapon wielded by slaveowners was the
threat of sale, which separated slaves from
their immediate families and from the com-
munities that, despite overwhelming odds, African-Americans
created on

plantations throughout the South.
S L A V E C U L T U R E
Slaves never abandoned their desire for freedom or their
determination
to resist total white control over their lives. In the face of grim
realities,
they succeeded in forging a semi-independent culture, centered
on the
family and church. This enabled them to survive the experience
of bond-
age without surrendering their self-esteem and to pass from
generation to
generation a set of ideas and values fundamentally at odds with
those of
their masters.
Slave culture drew on the African heritage. African influences
were
evident in the slaves’ music and dances, their style of religious
worship, and
the use of herbs by slave healers to combat disease. Slave
culture was a new
creation, shaped by African traditions and American values and
experiences.
The Slave Family
At the center of the slave community stood the family. On the
sugar
plantations of the West Indies, the number of males far
exceeded that of
females, the workers lived in barracks-type buildings, and
settled family
life was nearly impossible. The United States, where the slave

popula-
tion grew from natural increase rather than continued
importation from
Africa, had an even male-female ratio, making the creation of
families far
more possible. To be sure, the law did not recognize the legality
of slave
marriages. The master had to consent before a man and woman
could
A Public Whipping of Slaves in
Lexington, Missouri, in 1856, an
illustration from the abolitionist
publication The Suppressed Book
about Slavery. Whipping was a
common form of punishment for
slaves.
African heritage
Slave marriages
327S L A V E C U L T U R E
“jump over the broomstick” (the slaves’ marriage cer-
emony), and families stood in constant danger of being
broken up by sale.

Nonetheless, most adult slaves married, and their
unions, when not disrupted by sale, typically lasted
for a lifetime. To solidify a sense of family continuity,
slaves frequently named children after cousins, uncles,
grandparents, and other relatives. Most slaves lived in
two-parent families. But because of constant sales, the
slave community had a significantly higher number
of female-headed households than among whites, as
well as families in which grandparents, other relatives,
or even non-kin assumed responsibility for raising
children.
The Threat of Sale
As noted above, the threat of sale, which disrupted
family ties, was perhaps the most powerful disciplin-
ary weapon slaveholders possessed. As the domestic
slave trade expanded with the rise of the Cotton
Kingdom, about one slave marriage in three in slave-
selling states like Virginia was broken by sale. Many
children were separated from their parents by sale.
Slave traders gave little attention to preserving
family ties. A public notice, “Sale of Slaves and Stock,”
announced the 1852 auction of property belonging to
a recently deceased Georgia planter. It listed thirty-six
individuals ranging from an infant to a sixty-nine-year-
old woman and ended with the proviso: “Slaves will be sold
separate, or
in lots, as best suits the purchaser.” Sales like this were a
human tragedy.
Gender Roles among Slaves
In some ways, gender roles under slavery differed markedly
from those

in the larger society. Slave men and women experienced, in a
sense, the
equality of powerlessness. The nineteenth century’s “cult of
domesticity,”
which defined the home as a woman’s proper sphere, did not
apply to
slave women, who regularly worked in the fields. Slave men
could not act
as the economic providers for their families. Nor could they
protect their
A broadside advertising the public
sale of slaves, along with horses,
mules, and cattle, after the death
of their owner. The advertisement
notes that the slaves will be sold
individually or in groups “as best suits
the purchaser,” an indication that
families were likely to be broken up.
The prices are based on each slave’s
sex, age, and skill.
How did distinct slave cultures emerge in the Old South?
stitution328

Religion and social control
wives from physical or sexual abuse by
owners and overseers (a frequent occur-
rence on many plantations) or determine
when and under what conditions their chil-
dren worked.
When slaves worked “on their own
time,” however, more conventional gender
roles prevailed. Slave men chopped wood,
hunted, and fished, while women washed,
sewed, and assumed primary responsibil-
ity for the care of children. Some planters
allowed their slaves small plots of land
on which to grow food to supplement the
rations provided by the owner; women
usually took charge of these “garden plots.”
Slave Religion
A distinctive version of Christianity also offered solace to
slaves in the face
of hardship and hope for liberation from bondage. Some blacks,
free and
slave, had taken part in the Great Awakening of the colonial
era, and even
more were swept into the South’s Baptist and Methodist
churches during
the religious revivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.
As one preacher recalled of the great camp meeting that drew
thousands
of worshipers to Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, no distinctions
were made

“as to age, sex, color, or anything of a temporary nature; old
and young,
male and female, black and white, had equal privilege to
minister the light
which they received, in whatever way the Spirit directed.”
Even though the law prohibited slaves from gathering without a
white person present, every plantation, it seemed, had its own
black
preacher. Usually the preacher was a “self-called” slave who
possessed
little or no formal education but whose rhetorical abilities and
familiarity
with the Bible made him one of the most respected members of
the slave
community. Especially in southern cities, slaves also worshiped
in biracial
congregations with white ministers, where they generally were
required to
sit in the back pews or in the balcony. Urban free blacks
established their
own churches, sometimes attended by slaves.
To masters, Christianity offered another means of social
control. Many
required slaves to attend services conducted by white ministers,
who
preached that theft was immoral and that the Bible required
servants to
Virginian Luxuries. Originally painted
on the back panel of a formal portrait,
this image illustrates two “luxuries” of

a Virginia slaveowner—the power to
sexually abuse slave women and to
whip slaves.
Black preachers
329S L A V E C U L T U R E
How did distinct slave cultures emerge in the Old South?
obey their masters. One slave later recalled
being told in a white minister’s sermon
“how good God was in bringing us over
to this country from dark and benighted
Africa, and permitting us to listen to the
sound of the gospel.”
In their own religious gatherings,
slaves transformed the Christianity they
had embraced, turning it to their own
purposes. The biblical story of Exodus,
for example, in which God chose Moses
to lead the enslaved Jews of Egypt into a
promised land of freedom, played a cen-
tral role in black Christianity. Slaves iden-
tified themselves as a chosen people whom God in the fullness
of time
would deliver from bondage. At the same time, the figure of
Jesus Christ
represented to slaves a personal redeemer, one who truly cared
for the
oppressed. And in the slaves’ eyes, the Christian message of

brother-
hood and the equality of all souls before the Creator offered an
irrefut-
able indictment of the institution of slavery.
The Desire for Liberty
Despite their masters’ elaborate ideology defending the South’s
“peculiar
institution,” slave culture rested on a conviction of the
injustices of bond-
age and the desire for freedom. When slaves sang, “I’m bound
for the land
of Canaan,” they meant not only relief from worldly woes in an
afterlife
but also escaping to the North or witnessing the breaking of
slavery’s
chains. A fugitive who reached the North later recalled that the
“desire for
freedom” was the “constant theme” of conversations in the slave
quarters.
Most slaves, however, fully understood the impossibility of
directly
confronting such an entrenched system. Their folk tales had no
figures
equivalent to Paul Bunyan, the powerful, larger-than-life
backwoodsman
popular in white folklore. Slaves’ folklore, such as the Brer
Rabbit stories,
glorified the weak hare who outwitted stronger foes like the
bear and fox,
rather than challenging them outright. Their religious songs, or
spirituals,
spoke of lives of sorrow (“I’ve been ’buked and I’ve been
scorned”), while

holding out hope for ultimate liberation (“Didn’t my Lord
deliver Daniel?”).
Owners attempted to prevent slaves from learning about the
larger
world. But slaves created neighborhood networks that
transmitted
information between plantations. Skilled craftsmen, preachers,
pilots
Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur
Springs, Virginia, an 1838 painting
by the German-born American artist
Christian Mayr. Fashionably dressed
domestic slaves celebrate the
wedding of a couple, dressed in white
at the center.
Slave culture
Neighborhood networks
on ships, and other privileged slaves
spread news of local and national events.
James Henry Hammond of South Carolina
was “astonished and shocked” to find that

his slaves understood the political views
of the presidential candidates of 1844,
Henry Clay and James K. Polk, and knew
“most of what the abolitionists are doing.”
The world of most rural slaves was
bounded by their local communities and
kin. Nor could slaves remain indifferent to
the currents of thought unleashed by the
American Revolution or to the language of
freedom in the society around them. “I am
in a land of liberty,” wrote Joseph Taper, a Virginia slave who
escaped to
Canada around 1840. “Here man is as God intended he should
be.”
R E S I S T A N C E T O S L A V E R Y
Confronted with federal, state, and local authorities committed
to preserv-
ing slavery, and outnumbered within the South as a whole by
the white
population, slaves could only rarely express their desire for
freedom by
outright rebellion. Compared with revolts in Brazil and the
West Indies,
which experienced numerous uprisings, involving hundreds or
even thou-
sands of slaves, revolts in the United States were smaller and
less frequent.
Resistance to slavery took many forms in the Old South, from
individual
acts of defiance to occasional uprisings. These actions posed a
constant
challenge to the slaveholders’ self-image as benign paternalists

and their
belief that slaves were obedient subjects grateful for their
owners’ care.
Forms of Resistance
The most widespread expression of hostility to slavery was
“day-to-day
resistance” or “silent sabotage”—doing poor work, breaking
tools, abus-
ing animals, and in other ways disrupting the plantation routine.
Then
there was the theft of food, a form of resistance so common that
one south-
ern physician diagnosed it as a hereditary disease unique to
blacks. Less
frequent, but more dangerous, were serious crimes committed
by slaves,
including arson, poisoning, and armed assaults against
individual whites.
Plantation Burial, a painting from
around 1860 by John Antrobus, an
English artist who emigrated to New
Orleans in 1850 and later married
the daughter of a plantation owner.
A slave preacher conducts a funeral
service while black men, women, and
children look on. The well-dressed

white man and woman on the far
right are, presumably, the plantation
owner and his wife. This is a rare
eyewitness depiction of black culture
under slavery.
Everyday resistance
331R E S I S T A N C E T O S L A V E R Y
Boston
Newport
New York
Wilmington
Savannah
New Haven
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Richmond, 1800
(Gabriel’s Rebellion)
Charleston, 1822

(Denmark Vesey Conspiracy)
Insurrection aboard the
slave ship Creole, 1841
Insurrection aboard the
slave ship Amistad, 1839
Haiti, 1791–1804
Barbados, 1816
Denemarra, 1823
Louisiana, 1811
Jamaica, 1831
Southampton County, 1831
(Nat Turner’s Rebellion)
ARKANSAS
MICHIGAN
MISSOURI
ALABAMA
ILLINOIS
MISSISSIPPI
INDIANA
LOUISIANA

OHIO
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
RHODE ISLAND
NORTH
CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NEW YORK MASSACHUSETTS
MARYLAND
GEORGIA
FLORIDA
PENNSYLVANIA
CONNECTICUT
NEW
JERSEY
DELAWARE
SOUTH AMERICA
MEXICO

CUBA
HAITI
Baham
a I s lands
St . K i t t s
Nev i s Ant igu a
St . V incent
Tr in idad
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Atlantic Ocean
Paci f i c O cean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Insurrections and

major conspiracies
S L A V E R E S I S T A N C E I N T H E N I N E T E E N T
H -
C E N T U R Y A T L A N T I C W O R L D
Instances of slave resistance occurred throughout the Western
Hemisphere, on land and at sea. This map shows the location of
major
events in the nineteenth century.
What were the major forms of resistance to slavery?
332
No one knows how many slaves succeeded in escaping from
bondage before the Civil War.
Some settled in northern cities like Boston, Cincinnati, and New
York. But because the
Constitution required that fugitives be returned to slavery, many
continued northward until
they reached Canada.
One successful fugitive was Joseph Taper, a slave in Frederick
County, Virginia, who in
1837 ran away to Pennsylvania with his wife and children. Two
years later, learning that a

“slave catcher” was in the neighborhood, the Tapers fled to
Canada. In 1840, Taper wrote to a
white acquaintance in Virginia recounting some of his
experiences.
The biblical passage to which Taper refers reads: “And I will
come near to you to judgment;
and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against
the adulterers, and against false
swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his
wages, the widow, and the fatherless,
and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me,
saith the Lord of hosts.”
Dear sir,
I now take the opportunity to inform you that I am in a land of
liberty, in good health. . . . Since I have
been in the Queen’s dominions I have been well contented, Yes
well contented for Sure, man is as God
intended he should be. That is, all are born free and equal. This
is a wholesome law, not like the Southern
laws which puts man made in the image of God, on level with
brutes. O, what will become of the people,
and where will they stand in the day of Judgment. Would that
the 5th verse of the 3d chapter of Malachi
were written as with the bar of iron, and the point of a diamond
upon every oppressor’s heart that they
might repent of this evil, and let the oppressed go free. . . .
We have good schools, and all the colored population supplied
with schools. My boy Edward who will be

six years next January, is now reading, and I intend keeping him
at school until he becomes a good scholar.
I have enjoyed more pleasure within one month here than in all
my life in the land of bondage. . . . My
wife and self are sitting by a good comfortable fire happy,
knowing that there are none to molest [us] or
make [us] afraid. God save Queen Victoria. The Lord bless her
in this life, and crown her with glory in the
world to come is my prayer,
Yours With much respect
most obt, Joseph Taper
From Letter by Joseph Taper to
Joseph Long (1840)
333
White southerners developed an elaborate set of arguments
defending slavery in the period
before the Civil War. One pillar of proslavery thought was the
idea that the institution was
sanctioned by the Bible, as in this essay from the influential
southern magazine De Bow’s Review.
A very large party in the United States believe that holding
slaves is morally wrong; this party
founds its belief upon precepts taught in the Bible, and takes

that book as the standard of morality
and religion.
. . . We think we can show, that the Bible teaches clearly and
conclusively that the holding of slaves
is right; and if so, no deduction from general principles can
make it wrong, if that book is true. . . .
Slavery has existed in some form or under some name, in almost
every country of the globe. It existed
in every country known, even by name, to any one of the sacred
writers, at the time of his writing; yet none
of them condemns it in the slightest degree. Would
this have been the case had it been wrong in itself?
Would not some one of the host of sacred writers
have spoken of this alleged crime, in such terms as
to show, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that
God wished all men to be equal?
Abraham, the chosen servant of God, had his
bond servants, whose condition was similar to, or
worse than, that of our slaves. He considered them
as his property, to be bought and sold as any other
property which he owned. . . .
We find . . . that both the Old and New Testa-
ments speak of slavery—that they do not condemn
the relation, but, on the contrary, expressly allow
it or create it; and they give commands and exhor-
tations, which are based upon its legality and pro-
priety. It can not, then, be wrong.
From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850)
Q U E S T I O N S

1. How does Taper’s letter reverse the rhet-
oric, common among white Americans,
which saw the United States as a land of
freedom and the British empire as lack-
ing in liberty?
2. Why does De Bow feel that it is impor-
tant to show that the Bible sanctions
slavery?
3. How do Taper and De Bow differ in
their understanding of the relationship
of slavery and Christianity?
Even more threatening to the stability of the slave system were
slaves
who ran away. Formidable obstacles confronted the prospective
fugi-
tive. Patrols were constantly on the lookout for runaway slaves.
Slaves
had little or no knowledge of geography, apart from
understanding that

following the north star led to freedom. No one knows how
many slaves
succeeded in reaching the North or Canada—the most common
rough
estimate is around 1,000 per year. Not surprisingly, most of
those who
succeeded lived, like Frederick Douglass, in the Upper South,
especially
Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, which bordered on the free
states.
Douglass, who escaped at age twenty, was also typical in that
the large
majority of fugitives were young men. Most slave women were
not willing
to leave children behind, and taking them along on the arduous
escape
journey was nearly impossible.
In the Deep South, fugitives tended to head for cities like New
Orleans
or Charleston, where they hoped to lose themselves in the free
black com-
munity. Other escapees fled to remote areas like the Great
Dismal Swamp
of Virginia or the Florida Everglades, where the Seminole
Indians offered
refuge before they were forced to move west. Even in
Tennessee, a study
of newspaper advertisements for runaways finds that around 40
percent
were thought to have remained in the local neighborhood and 30
percent
to have headed to other locations in the South, while only 25
percent tried
to reach the North.

The Underground Railroad, a loose organization of sympathetic
abolitionists who hid fugitives in their homes and sent them on
to the
next “station,” assisted some runaway slaves. A few courageous
indi-
viduals made forays into the South to liberate slaves. The best
known
was Harriet Tubman. Born in Maryland in 1820, Tubman
escaped to
Philadelphia in 1849 and during the next decade risked her life
by mak-
ing some twenty trips back to her state of birth to lead relatives
and other
slaves to freedom.
The Amistad
In a few instances, large groups of slaves collectively seized
their freedom.
The most celebrated instance involved fifty-three slaves who in
1839 took
control of the Amistad, a ship transporting them from one port
in Cuba to
another, and tried to force the navigator to steer it to Africa.
The Amistad
wended its way up the Atlantic coast until an American vessel
seized it off
the coast of Long Island. President Martin Van Buren favored
returning
the slaves to Cuba. But abolitionists brought their case to the
Supreme
Court, where the former president John Quincy Adams argued
that since
Runaway slaves

The top part of a typical broadside
offering a reward for the capture
of four runaway slaves. This was
distributed in Mississippi County,
Missouri, in 1852. The high reward for
George, $1,000, suggests that he is
an extremely valued worker.
Fugitive destinations
they had been recently brought from Africa in violation of
international
treaties banning the slave trade, the captives should be freed.
The Court
accepted Adams’s reasoning, and most of the captives made
their way
back to Africa.
The Amistad case had no legal bearing on slaves within the
United
States. But it may well have inspired a similar uprising in 1841,
when 135
slaves being transported by sea from Norfolk, Virginia, to New
Orleans
seized control of the ship Creole and sailed for Nassau in the
British Bahamas.

Their leader had the evocative name Madison Washington. To
the dismay of
the Tyler administration, the British gave refuge to the Creole
slaves.
Slave Revolts
Resistance to slavery occasionally moved beyond such
individual and
group acts of defiance to outright rebellion. The four largest
conspiracies
in American history occurred within the space of thirty-one
years in the
early nineteenth century. The first, organized by the Virginia
slave Gabriel
in 1800, was discussed in Chapter 8. It was followed eleven
years later by
an uprising on sugar plantations upriver from New Orleans.
Somewhere
between 200 and 500 men and women, armed with sugarcane
knives,
axes, clubs, and a few guns, marched toward the city,
destroying property
as they proceeded. The white population along the route fled in
panic to
A painting depicting an incident in the
Maroon War of 1795 on the island of
Jamaica, when British troops were
ambushed near a sugar plantation.
Maroons were runaway slaves who

established independent communities
in the mountains, and fought to
prevent being returned to slavery.
Uprising near New Orleans
Success of Amistad case
New Orleans. Within two days, the militia and regular army
troops met
the rebels and dispersed them in a pitched battle, killing sixty-
six.
The next major conspiracy was organized in 1822 by Denmark
Vesey, a slave carpenter in Charleston, South Carolina, who had
pur-
chased his freedom after winning a local lottery. His conspiracy
reflected
the combination of American and African influences then
circulating
in the Atlantic world and coming together in black culture. “He
studied
the Bible a great deal,” recalled one of his followers, “and tried
to prove
from it that slavery and bondage is against the Bible.” Vesey
also quoted
the Declaration of Independence, pored over newspaper reports
of the

debates in Congress regarding the Missouri Compromise, and
made
pronouncements like “all men had equal rights, blacks as well
as whites.”
And he read to his conspirators accounts of the successful slave
revolu-
tion in Haiti. The African heritage was present in the person of
Vesey’s
lieutenant Gullah Jack, a religious “conjurer” from Angola who
claimed
to be able to protect the rebels against injury or death. The plot
was dis-
covered before it could reach fruition.
As with many slave conspiracies, evidence about the Vesey plot
is
contradictory and disputed. Much of it comes from a series of
trials in
which the court operated in secret and failed to allow the
accused to con-
front those who testified against them.
The best known of all slave rebels was Nat Turner, a slave
preacher and
religious mystic in Southampton County, Virginia, who came to
believe
that God had chosen him to lead a black uprising. Turner
traveled widely
in the county, conducting religious services. He told of seeing
black and
white angels fighting in the sky and the heavens running red
with blood.
Perhaps from a sense of irony, Turner initially chose July 4,
1831, for

his rebellion, only to fall ill on the appointed day. On August
22, he and
a handful of followers marched from farm to farm assaulting the
white
inhabitants. By the time the militia put down the uprising, about
eighty
slaves had joined Turner’s band, and some sixty whites had
been killed.
Turner was subsequently captured and, with seventeen other
rebels, con-
demned to die. Asked before his execution whether he regretted
what he
had done, Turner responded, “Was not Christ crucified?”
Turner’s rebellion sent shock waves through the entire South.
“A Nat
Turner,” one white Virginian warned, “might be in any family.”
In the panic
that followed the revolt, hundreds of innocent slaves were
whipped, and
The most prominent slave
revolt
Vesey’s influences
Panic among whites
scores executed. For one last time, Virginia’s
leaders openly debated whether steps ought

to be taken to do away with the “pecu-
liar institution.” But a proposal to commit
the state to gradual emancipation and the
removal of the black population from the
state failed to win legislative approval. The
measure gained overwhelming support in
the western part of Virginia, where slaves
represented less than 10 percent of the pop-
ulation, but it failed to win sufficient votes
in the eastern counties, where slavery was
centered.
Instead of moving toward emancipa-
tion, the Virginia legislature of 1832 decided
to fasten even more tightly the chains of
bondage. New laws prohibited blacks, free or slave, from acting
as preach-
ers (a measure that proved impossible to enforce), strengthened
the militia
and patrol systems, banned free blacks from owning firearms,
and prohib-
ited teaching slaves to read. Other southern states followed suit.
In some ways, 1831 marked a turning point for the Old South.
In that
year, Parliament launched a program for abolishing slavery
throughout
the British empire (a process completed in 1838), underscoring
the South’s
growing isolation in the Western world. Turner’s rebellion,
following only
a few months after the appearance in Boston of William Lloyd
Garrison’s
abolitionist journal, The Liberator (discussed in the next
chapter), sug-
gested that American slavery faced enemies both within and

outside
the South. The proslavery argument increasingly permeated
southern
intellectual and political life, while dissenting opinions were
suppressed.
Some states made membership in an abolitionist society a
criminal
offense, while mobs drove critics of slavery from their homes.
The South’s
“great reaction” produced one of the most thoroughgoing
suppressions of
freedom of speech in American history. Even as reform
movements arose
in the North that condemned slavery as contrary to Christianity
and to
basic American values, and national debate over the peculiar
institution
intensified, southern society closed in defense of slavery.
An engraving depicting Nat Turner’s
slave rebellion of 1831, from a book
published soon after the revolt.
A turning point
An intensifying debate
1. Given that most northern states had abolished slavery
by the 1830s, how is it useful to think of slavery as a
national—rather than regional—economic and political

system?
2. Although some poor southern whites resented the
dominance of the “slavocracy,” most supported the
institution and accepted the power of the planter class.
Why did the “plain folk” continue to support slavery?
3. How did the planters’ paternalism serve to justify the
system of slavery? How did it hide the reality of life for
slaves?
4. Identify the basic elements of the proslavery defense and
those points aimed especially at non-southern audiences.
5. Compare slaves in the Old South with those elsewhere in
the world, focusing on health, diet, and opportunities for
freedom.
6. Describe the difference between gang labor and task labor
for slaves, and explain how slaves’ tasks varied by region
across the Old South.
7. How did enslaved people create community and a culture
that allowed them to survive in an oppressive society?
8. Identify the different types of resistance to slavery. Which
ones were the most common, the most effective, and the
most demonstrative?
K E Y T E R M S
the “peculiar institution”
(p. 312)
Cotton Is King (p. 313)

Second Middle Passage (p. 314)
“plain folk” (p. 317)
paternalism (p. 318)
proslavery argument (p. 318)
slave family (p. 326)
slave religion (p. 328)
silent sabotage (p. 330)
Underground Railroad
(p. 334)
Harriet Tubman (p. 334)
the Amistad (p. 334)
Denmark Vesey (p. 336)
(p. 336)
C E S
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C H A P T E R 1 2
A N A G E O F
R E F O R M
1 8 2 0 – 1 8 4 0
An abolitionist banner. Antislavery
organizations adopted the Liberty Bell
as a symbol of their campaign to extend
freedom to black Americans. Previously,
the bell, forged in Philadelphia in the

eighteenth century, had simply been
known as the Old State House Bell.
1816 American Colonization
Society founded
1825 Owenite community
established at New
Harmony, Indiana
1826 American Temperance
Society founded
1827 First U.S. black newspaper,
Freedom’s Journal,
established
1829 David Walker’s An Appeal
to the Coloured Citizens of
the World
1833 American Anti-Slavery
Society founded
1836 Congress adopts the
“gag rule”
1837 Elijah Lovejoy killed
1845 Margaret Fuller’s Woman in
the Nineteenth Century
1848 John Humphrey Noyes
founds Oneida, New York

Seneca Falls Convention
held
1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Frederick Douglass’s
speech “What, to the
Slave, is the Fourth of
July?”
1860 Tax-supported school
systems established in all
northern states
A mong the many Americans who devoted their lives to the
crusade against slavery, few were as selfless or courageous as
Abby Kelley. As a teacher in Lynn, Massachusetts, she joined
the Female Anti-Slavery Society and, like thousands of other
northern
women, threw herself into the abolitionist movement. In 1838,
Kelley
began to give public speeches about slavery. Her first lecture
outside of
Lynn was literally a baptism of fire. Enraged by reports that
abolitionists
favored “amalgamation” of the races—that is, sexual relations
between
whites and blacks—residents of Philadelphia stormed the
meeting hall
and burned it to the ground.

For two decades, Kelley traveled throughout the North,
speaking
almost daily in churches, public halls, and antislavery homes on
“the holy
cause of human rights.” Her career illustrated the
interconnections of the
era’s reform movements. In addition to abolitionism, she was
active in
pacifist organizations—which opposed the use of force,
including war,
to settle disputes—and was a pioneer in the early struggle for
women’s
rights. She forthrightly challenged her era’s assumption that
woman’s
“place” was in the home. More than any other individual,
remarked Lucy
Stone, another women’s rights advocate, Kelley “earned for us
all the
right of free speech.”
Abby Kelley’s private life was as unconventional as her public
career.
Happily married to the ardent abolitionist Stephen S. Foster, she
gave
birth to a daughter in 1847 but soon returned to lecturing. When
criticized
for not devoting herself to the care of her infant, Kelley replied:
“I have
done it for the sake of the mothers whose babies are sold away
from them.
The most precious legacy I can leave my child is a free
country.”
T H E R E F O R M I M P U L S E
“In the history of the world,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in

1841, “the doc-
trine of reform has never such hope as at the present hour.”
Abolitionism
was only one of this era’s numerous efforts to improve
American society.
Americans established voluntary organizations that worked to
prevent
the manufacture and sale of liquor, end public entertainments
and the
delivery of the mail on Sunday, improve conditions in prisons,
expand
public education, uplift the condition of wage laborers, and
reorganize
society on the basis of cooperation rather than competitive
individualism.
Nearly all these groups worked to convert public opinion to
their cause.
They sent out speakers, gathered signatures on petitions, and
published
What were the major
movements and goals of
antebellum reform?
What were the different
varieties of abolitionism?
How did abolitionism
challenge barriers to
racial equality and free

speech?
What were the diverse
sources of the antebellum
women’s rights movement
and its significance?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
Goals of reformers
341T H E R E F O R M I M P U L S E
pamphlets. Some reform movements, like restraining the
consumption of
liquor and alleviating the plight of the blind and insane,
flourished through-
out the nation. Others, including women’s rights, labor
unionism, and edu-
cational reform, were weak or nonexistent in the South, where
they were
widely associated with antislavery sentiment. Reform was an
international
crusade. Peace, temperance, women’s rights, and antislavery
advocates
regularly crisscrossed the Atlantic to promote their cause.
Reformers adopted a wide variety of tactics to bring about
social

change. Some relied on “moral suasion” to convert people to
their cause.
Others, such as opponents of “demon rum,” sought to use the
power of the
government to force sinners to change their ways. Some
reformers decided
to withdraw altogether from the larger society and establish
their own
cooperative settlements. They hoped to change American life by
creating
“heavens on earth,” where they could demonstrate by example
the superi-
ority of a collective way of life.
Utopian Communities
About 100 reform communities were established in the decades
before the
Civil War. Historians call them “utopian” after Thomas More’s
sixteenth-
century novel Utopia, an outline of a perfect society. (The word
has also
A rare photograph of an abolitionist
meeting in New York State around
1850. Frederick Douglass is to the left
of the woman at the center.
Reform tactics
Thomas More
What were the major movements and goals of antebellum

reform?
In the first half of the nineteenth
century, dozens of utopian
communities were established in the
United States, where small groups
of men and women attempted to
establish a more perfect social order
within the larger society.
Zoar
Oneida Putney
Brook Farm
New Harmony
Utopia
Modern
Times
MAINE
NEW HAMPSHIRE

VERMONT
NEW YORK
MASSACHUSETTS
CONNECTICUT
RHODE ISLAND
NEW
JERSEY
PENNSYLVANIA
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA
OHIO
MICHIGAN
INDIANA
ILLINOIS
KENTUCKY
WISCONSIN
IOWA
MISSOURI
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY

BRITISH CANADA
Lake Superior
La
ke
M
ic
hi
ga
n
Lake H
uron
Lake
Eri
e
Lake Ontario
At lant ic
Oce an
0
0
100
100

200 miles
200 kilometers
Brook Farm
Oneidan
Owenite
Fourierist
Mormon
Pietistic
Rappite
Shaker
Others
Mainly New Englander settlement
U T O P I A N C O M M U N I T I E S , M I D - N I N E T E E
N T H C E N T U R Y
come to imply that such plans are impractical and impossible to
real-
ize.) Most communities arose from religious conviction, but
others were
inspired by the secular desire to counteract the social and
economic
changes set in motion by the market revolution.
Nearly all the communities set out to reorganize society on a
coop-
erative basis, hoping to restore social harmony to a world of
excessive
individualism and to narrow the widening gap between rich and
poor.

Through their efforts, the words “socialism” and “communism,”
mean-
ing a social organization in which productive property is owned
by
the community rather than private individuals, entered the
language
of politics. Most utopian communities also tried to find
substitutes for
conventional gender relations and marriage patterns. Some
prohibited
sexual relations between men and women altogether; others
allowed
them to change partners at will. But nearly all insisted that the
abolition
of private property must be accompanied by an end to men’s
“property”
in women.
Social harmony
The Shakers
Religious communities attracted those who sought to find a
retreat from
a society permeated by sin. But the Shakers, the most successful
of the
religious communities, also had a significant impact on the
outside world.
At their peak during the 1840s, cooperative Shaker settlements,
which
stretched from Maine to Kentucky, included more than 5,000
members.

God, the Shakers believed, had a “dual” personality, both male
and
female, and thus the two sexes were spiritually equal. “Virgin
purity”
formed a pillar of the Shakers’ faith. They completely
abandoned tradi-
tional family life. Men and women lived separately in large
dormitory-
like structures and ate in communal dining rooms. They
increased their
numbers by attracting converts and adopting children from
orphanages,
rather than through natural increase. Although they rejected the
indi-
vidual accumulation of private property, the Shakers proved
remarkably
successful economically. They were among the first to market
vegetable
and flower seeds and herbal medicines commercially and to
breed cattle
for profit. Their beautifully crafted furniture is still widely
admired today.
Oneida
Another influential and controversial community was Oneida,
founded in
1848 in upstate New York by John Humphrey Noyes, the
Vermont-born
son of a U.S. congressman. In 1836, Noyes and his followers
formed a small
An engraving of a Shaker dance,
drawn by Benson Lossing, an artist

who visited a Shaker community and
reported on life there for Harper’s
Magazine in 1857.
Shaker beliefs
John Humphrey Noyes
reform?
community in Putney, Vermont. His community became
notorious for
what Noyes called “complex marriage,” whereby any man could
propose
sexual relations to any woman, who had the right to reject or
accept his
invitation, which would then be registered in a public record
book. The
great danger was “exclusive affections,” which, Noyes felt,
destroyed the
harmony of the community.
After being indicted for adultery by local officials, Noyes in
1848
moved his community to Oneida, where it survived until 1881.
Oneida was
an extremely dictatorial environment. To become a member of
the com-

munity, one had to demonstrate command of Noyes’s religious
teachings
and live according to his rules.
Worldly Communities
To outside observers, utopian communities like Oneida seemed
cases of
“voluntary slavery.” But because of their members’ selfless
devotion to the
teachings and rules laid down by their leader, spiritually
oriented com-
munities often achieved remarkable longevity. The Shakers
survived well
into the twentieth century. Communities with a more worldly
orientation
tended to be beset by internal divisions and therefore lasted for
much
shorter periods.
The most important secular communitarian (meaning a person
who
plans or lives in a cooperative community) was Robert Owen, a
British fac-
tory owner. Appalled by the degradation of workers in the early
industrial
revolution, Owen created a model factory village at New
Lanark, Scotland,
which combined strict rules of work discipline with comfortable
housing
and free public education. Around 1815, its 1,500 employees
made New
Lanark the largest center of cotton manufacturing in the world.
In 1824,
he purchased the Harmony community in Indiana—originally
founded by

the German Protestant religious leader George Rapp, who had
emigrated
to America with his followers at the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
Here, Owen established New Harmony, where he hoped to
create a “new
moral world.”
In Owen’s scheme, children would be removed at an early age
from
the care of their parents to be educated in schools where they
would be
trained to subordinate individual ambition to the common good.
Owen
also defended women’s rights, especially access to education
and the right
to divorce. At New Harmony, he promised, women would no
longer be
“enslaved” to their husbands, and “false notions” about innate
differences
between the sexes would be abandoned.
The Crisis, a publication by the
communitarian Robert Owen and his
son, Robert Dale Owen. The cover
depicts Owen’s vision of a planned
socialist community.
“Complex marriage”

Harmony eluded the residents of New Harmony. They squabbled
about everything from the community’s constitution to the
distribution of
property. Owen’s settlement survived for only a few years, but
it strongly
influenced the labor movement, educational reformers, and
women’s
rights advocates. Owen’s vision resonated with the widely held
American
belief that a community of equals could be created in the New
World.
Religion and Reform
Most Americans saw the ownership of property as the key to
economic
independence—and, therefore, to freedom—and marriage as the
foun-
dation of the social order. Few were likely to join communities
that
required them to surrender both. Far more typical of the reform
impulse
were movements that aimed at liberating men and women either
from
restraints external to themselves, such as slavery and war, or
from forms
of internal “servitude” like drinking, illiteracy, and a tendency
toward
criminality. Many of these reform movements drew their
inspiration
from the religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening,
discussed
in Chapter 9. If, as the revivalist preachers maintained, God had
created

man as a “free moral agent,” sinners could not only reform
themselves but
could also remake the world.
The revivals popularized the outlook known as “perfectionism,”
which saw both individuals and society at large as capable of
indefinite
improvement. Under the impact of the revivals, older reform
efforts moved
in a new, radical direction. Temperance (which literally means
moderation
in the consumption of liquor) was transformed into a crusade to
eliminate
drinking entirely. Criticism of war became outright pacifism.
And, as will
be related below, critics of slavery now demanded not gradual
emancipa-
tion but immediate and total abolition.
To members of the North’s emerging middle-class culture,
reform
became a badge of respectability, an indication that individuals
had taken
control of their own lives and had become morally accountable
human
beings. The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826,
directed its
efforts to redeeming not only habitual drunkards but also the
occasional
drinker. It claimed by the 1830s to have persuaded hundreds of
thousands
of Americans to renounce liquor. By 1840, the consumption of
alcohol
per person had fallen to less than half the level of a decade
earlier. (It
had peaked in 1830 at seven gallons per person per year,

compared with
around two gallons today.)
Robert Owen’s New Harmony
Mainstream reform
reform?
A temperance banner from around
1850 depicts a young man torn
between a woman in white, who
illustrates female purity, and a
temptress, who offers him a drink
of liquor.
Critics of Reform
Many Americans saw the reform impulse as an attack on their
own
freedom. Taverns were popular meeting places for urban
workingmen,
sites not only of drinking but also of political discussions,
organizational
meetings, and recreation. Drinking was a prominent feature of
festive cel-

ebrations and events like militia gatherings. A “Liberty Loving
Citizen” of
Worcester, Massachusetts, wondered what gave one group of
citizens the
right to dictate to others how to conduct their personal lives.
American Catholics, their numbers growing because of Irish and
German immigration, proved hostile to the reform impulse.
Catholics
understood freedom in ways quite different from how Protestant
reform-
ers did. They viewed sin as an inescapable burden of individuals
and
society. The perfectionist idea that evil could be banished from
the world
struck them as an affront to genuine religion, and they bitterly
opposed
what they saw as reformers’ efforts to impose their own version
of
Protestant morality on their neighbors. Whereas reformers spoke
of man
as a free moral agent, Catholics tended to place less emphasis
on individual
independence and more on the importance of communities
centered on
family and church.
Reformers and Freedom
Reformers had to reconcile their desire to create moral order
and their
quest to enhance personal freedom. They did this through a
vision of free-
dom that was liberating and controlling at the same time. On the
one hand,
reformers insisted that their goal was to enable Americans to

enjoy genu-
ine liberty. In a world in which personal freedom increasingly
meant the
op portunity to compete for economic gain and individual self-
improve-
ment, they spoke of liberating Americans from various forms of
“slavery”
that made it impossible to succeed—slavery to drink, to
poverty, to sin.
On the other hand, reformers insisted that self-fulfillment came
through self-discipline. Their definition of the free individual
was the
person who internalized the practice of self-control. In some
ways, reform-
ers believed, American society suffered from an excess of
liberty—the
anarchic “natural liberty” John Winthrop had warned against in
the early
days of Puritan Massachusetts, as opposed to the “Christian
liberty” of the
morally upright citizen.
Many religious groups in the East worried that settlers in the
West
and immigrants from abroad lacked self-control and led lives of
vice,
exhibited by drinking, violations of the Sabbath, and lack of
Protestant
Tension between liberation
and control
Taverns
Catholics on reform

devotion. They formed the American Tract Society, the
American Bible
Society, and other groups that flooded eastern cities and the
western fron-
tier with copies of the gospel and pamphlets promoting religious
virtue.
Between 1825 and 1835, the pamphlets distributed by the Tract
Society
amounted to more than 500 million pages.
The Invention of the Asylum
The tension between liberation and control in the era’s reform
movements
was vividly evident in the proliferation of new institutions that
reformers
hoped could remake human beings into free, morally upright
citizens. In
colonial America, crime had mostly been punished by whipping,
fines, or
banishment. The poor received relief in their own homes,
orphans lived
with neighbors, and families took care of mentally ill members.
During the 1830s and 1840s, Americans embarked on a program
of
institution building—jails for criminals, poorhouses for the
destitute, asy-
lums for the insane, and orphanages for children without
families. These
institutions differed in many respects, but they shared with

communitar-
ians and religious believers in “perfectionism” the idea that
social ills once
considered incurable could in fact be eliminated. Prisons and
asylums
would eventually become overcrowded places where
rehabilitating the
inmates seemed less important than simply holding them at bay,
away
from society. At the outset, however, these institutions were
inspired by the
conviction that those who passed through their doors could
eventually be
released to become productive, self-disciplined citizens.
The Common School
The largest effort at institution building before the Civil War
came in the
movement to establish common schools—that is, tax-supported
state
school systems open to all children. In the early nineteenth
century, most
children were educated in locally supported schools, private
academies,
charity schools, or at home. Many had no access to learning at
all. School
reform reflected the numerous purposes that came together in
the era’s
reform impulse. Horace Mann, a Massachusetts lawyer and
Whig politi-
cian who served as director of the state’s board of education,
was the era’s
leading educational reformer. He hoped that universal public
education
could restore equality to a fractured society by bringing the

children of all
classes together in a common learning experience and equipping
the less
fortunate to advance in the social scale.
American Tract Society
Reform institutions
Horace Mann
reform?
With labor organizations, factory owners, and middle-class
reformers
all supporting the idea, every northern state by 1860 had
established tax-
supported school systems for its children. The common-school
movement
created the first real career opportunity for women, who quickly
came
to dominate the ranks of teachers. The South, where literate
blacks were
increasingly viewed as a danger to social order and planters had
no desire
to tax themselves to pay for education for poor white children,
lagged far
behind in public education. This was one of many ways in
which North
and South seemed to be growing apart.

T H E C R U S A D E A G A I N S T S L A V E R Y
Compared with drinking, Sabbath-breaking, and illiteracy, the
greatest
evil in American society at first appeared to attract the least
attention from
reformers. For many years, it seemed that the only Americans
willing to
challenge the existence of slavery were Quakers, slaves, and
free blacks.
Colonization
Before the 1830s, those white Americans willing to contemplate
an end
to bondage almost always coupled calls for abolition with the
“coloni-
zation” of freed slaves—their deportation to Africa, the
Caribbean, or
Central America. In 1816, proponents of this idea founded the
American
Colonization Society, which promoted the gradual abolition of
slavery
and the settlement of black Americans in Africa. It soon
established
Liberia on the coast of West Africa, an outpost of American
influence
whose capital, Monrovia, was named for President James
Monroe.
Colonization struck many observers as totally impractical.
None-
theless, numerous prominent political leaders of the Jacksonian
era—
including Henry Clay, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, and
Jackson

himself—supported the Colonization Society. Many
colonizationists
believed that slavery and racism were so deeply embedded in
American
life that blacks could never achieve equality if freed and
allowed to remain
in the country. Like Indian removal, colonization rested on the
premise
that America is fundamentally a white society.
In the decades before the Civil War, several thousand black
Americans
did emigrate to Liberia with the aid of the Colonization Society.
Some were
slaves emancipated by their owners on the condition that they
depart,
while others left voluntarily, motivated by a desire to spread
Christianity
Liberia
Beliefs of colonizationists
The rise of public education
349T H E C R U S A D E A G A I N S T S L A V E R Y
in Africa or to enjoy rights denied them in the United States.
Having expe-
rienced “the legal slavery of the South and the social slavery of
the North,”
wrote one emigrant on leaving for Liberia, he knew he could
“never be a
free man in this country.”

But most African-Americans adamantly opposed the idea of
coloniza-
tion. In fact, the formation of the American Colonization
Society galvanized
free blacks to claim their rights as Americans. Early in 1817,
some 3,000
free blacks assembled in Philadelphia for the first national black
conven-
tion. Their resolutions insisted that blacks were Americans,
entitled to the
same freedom and rights enjoyed by whites.
Militant Abolitionism
The abolitionist movement that arose in the 1830s differed
profoundly
from its genteel, conservative predecessor. Drawing on the
religious con-
viction that slavery was an unparalleled sin and the secular one
that it con-
tradicted the values enshrined in the Declaration of
Independence, a new
generation of reformers rejected the traditional approach of
gradual eman-
cipation and demanded immediate abolition. Also unlike their
predeces-
sors, they directed explosive language against slavery and
slaveholders
and insisted that blacks, once free, should be incorporated as
equal citizens
of the republic rather than being deported. Perfecting American
society,
they insisted, meant rooting out not just slavery, but racism in
all its forms.

The first indication of the new spirit of abolitionism came in
1829 with
the appearance of An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the
World by David
Walker, a free black who had been born in North Carolina and
now oper-
ated a used-clothing store in Boston. A passionate indictment of
slavery
and racial prejudice, the Appeal called on black Americans to
mobilize for
abolition—by force if necessary—and warned whites that the
nation faced
divine punishment if it did not mend its sinful ways. Walker
called on
blacks to take pride in the achievements of ancient African
civilizations
and to claim all their rights as Americans. “Tell us no more
about coloniza-
tion,” Walker wrote, addressing white readers, “for America is
as much
our country as it is yours.” Like other reformers, Walker used
both secular
and religious language. He warned that God would wreak
vengeance on
the United States for violating the principles of justice and
heaped scorn on
ministers who defended slavery for violating the golden rule
espoused by
Jesus Christ (“whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, do yet
even so unto them”).
Walker died in mysterious circumstances in 1830. Not until the
appearance in 1831 of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s
weekly

William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The
Liberator and probably the nation’s
most prominent abolitionist, in a
daguerreotype from around 1850.
What were the different varieties of abolitionism?
African-American responses
to colonization
Immediate abolition
journal published in Boston, did the new breed of abolitionism
find a
permanent voice. “I will be as harsh as truth,” Garrison
announced, “and
as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to
think,
or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I will not equivocate—
I will not
excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.”
And heard he was. Some of Garrison’s ideas, such as his
suggestion
that the North abrogate the Constitution and dissolve the Union
to end
its complicity in the evil of slavery, were rejected by many
abolitionists.
But his call for the immediate abolition of slavery echoed

throughout
antislavery circles. Garrison’s pamphlet, Thoughts on African
Colonization,
persuaded many foes of slavery that blacks must be recognized
as part of
American society, not viewed as aliens to be shipped overseas.
Spreading the Abolitionist Message
Beginning with a handful of activists, the abolitionist movement
expanded
rapidly throughout the North. Antislavery leaders took
advantage of
the rapid development of print technology and the expansion of
literacy
due to common-school education to spread their message. Like
radical
pamphleteers of the American Revolution and evangelical
ministers of
the Second Great Awakening, they recognized the democratic
potential
Pages from an abolitionist book
for children. Abolitionists sought to
convince young and old of the evils
of slavery.
Pamphlets, broadsides,
newspapers
Garrison's Thoughts on
African Colonization

351T H E C R U S A D E A G A I N S T S L A V E R Y
in the production of printed material. Abolitionists seized on the
recently
invented steam printing press to produce millions of copies of
pamphlets,
newspapers, petitions, novels, and broadsides. Between the
formation of
the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and the end of the
decade,
some 100,000 northerners joined local groups devoted to
abolition. Most
were ordinary citizens—farmers, shopkeepers, craftsmen,
laborers, along
with a few prominent businessmen like the merchants Arthur
and Lewis
Tappan of New York.
If Garrison was the movement’s most notable propagandist,
Theodore
Weld, a young minister who had been converted by the
evangelical
preacher Charles G. Finney, helped to create its mass
constituency. A bril-
liant orator, Weld trained a band of speakers who brought the
abolitionist
message into the heart of the rural and small-town North. Their
methods
were those of the revivalists—fervent preaching, lengthy
meetings, calls
for individuals to renounce their immoral ways—and their
message was a
simple one: slavery was a sin.

Slavery and Moral Suasion
Many southerners feared that the abolitionists intended to spark
a slave
insurrection, a belief strengthened by the outbreak of Nat
Turner’s
Rebellion a few months after The Liberator made its
appearance. Yet not only
was Garrison completely unknown to Turner, but nearly all
abolitionists,
despite their militant language, rejected violence as a means of
ending
Slave Market of America, an
engraving produced by the American
Anti-Slavery Society in 1836,
illustrates how abolitionists sought
to identify their cause with American
traditions, even as they mocked the
nation’s claim to be a “land of the
free.”
Theodore Weld
What were the different varieties of abolitionism?

slavery. Many were pacifists or “non-resistants,” who believed
that coer-
cion should be eliminated from all human relationships and
institutions.
Their strategy was “moral suasion” and their arena the public
sphere.
Slaveholders must be convinced of the sinfulness of their ways,
and the
North of its complicity in the peculiar institution.
Among the first to appreciate the key role of public opinion in a
mass democracy, abolitionists focused their efforts not on
infiltrating the
existing political parties, but on awakening the nation to the
moral evil of
slavery. Their language was deliberately provocative, calculated
to seize
public attention. “Slavery,” said Garrison, “will not be
overthrown without
excitement, without a most tremendous excitement.”
Abolitionists argued
that slavery was so deeply embedded in American life that its
destruction
would require fundamental changes in the North as well as the
South.
They insisted that the inherent, natural, and absolute right to
personal lib-
erty, regardless of race, took precedence over other forms of
freedom, such
as the right of citizens to accumulate and hold property or self-
government
by local political communities.
A New Vision of America

In a society in which the rights of citizenship had become more
and more
closely associated with whiteness, the antislavery movement
sought to rein-
vigorate the idea of freedom as a truly universal entitlement.
The origins of
the idea of an American people unbounded by race lies not with
the found-
ers, who by and large made their peace with slavery, but with
the abolition-
ists. The antislavery crusade viewed slaves and free blacks as
members of
the national community, a position summarized in the title of
Lydia Maria
Child’s popular treatise of 1833, An Appeal in Favor of That
Class of Americans
Called Africans. The idea that birthplace alone, not race, should
determine
who was an American, later enshrined in the Fourteenth
Amendment, rep-
resented a radical departure from the traditions of American
life.
The crusade against slavery, wrote Angelina Grimké, who
became
a leading abolitionist speaker, was the nation’s preeminent
“school
in which human rights are . . . investigated.” Abolitionists
debated the
Constitution’s relationship to slavery. William Lloyd Garrison
burned
the document, calling it a covenant with the devil; Frederick
Douglass
came to believe that it offered no national protection to slavery.
But
despite this difference of opinion, abolitionists developed an

alternative,
rights-oriented view of constitutional law, grounded in their
universal-
istic understanding of liberty. Seeking to define the core rights
to which
An American people
unbounded by race
Angelina Grimké
Awakening the nation
353B L A C K A N D W H I T E A B O L I T I O N I S M
all Americans were entitled—the meaning of freedom in
concrete legal
terms—abolitionists invented the concept of equality before the
law
regardless of race, one all but unknown in American life before
the Civil
War. Abolitionist literature also helped to expand the definition
of cruelty.
The graphic descriptions of the beatings, brandings, and other
physical
sufferings of the slaves helped to popularize the idea of bodily
integrity as
a basic right that slavery violated.
Despite being denounced by their opponents as enemies of
American
principles, abolitionists consciously identified their movement
with the
revolutionary heritage. The Declaration of Independence was

not as fun-
damental to public oratory in the early republic as it would later
become.
Abolitionists seized upon it, interpreting the document’s
preamble as a
condemnation of slavery. The Liberty Bell, later one of the
nation’s most
venerated emblems of freedom, did not achieve that status until
abolition-
ists adopted it as a symbol and gave it its name as part of an
effort to iden-
tify their principles with those of the founders. Of course,
Americans of all
regions and political beliefs claimed the Revolution’s legacy.
Abolitionists
never represented more than a small part of the North’s
population. But as
the slavery controversy intensified, the belief spread far beyond
abolition-
ist circles that slavery contradicted the nation’s heritage of
freedom.
B L A C K A N D W H I T E A B O L I T I O N I S M
Black Abolitionists
Blacks played a leading role in the antislavery movement.
Frederick
Douglass was only one among many former slaves who
published
accounts of their lives in bondage; these accounts convinced
thousands of
northerners of the evils of slavery. Indeed, the most effective
piece of anti-
slavery literature of the entire period, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
novel Uncle

Tom’s Cabin, was to some extent modeled on the autobiography
of the fugi-
tive slave Josiah Henson. Serialized in 1851 in a Washington
antislavery
newspaper and published as a book the following year, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin
sold more than 1 million copies by 1854, and it also inspired
numerous
stage versions. By portraying slaves as sympathetic men and
women, and
as Christians at the mercy of slaveholders who split up families
and set
bloodhounds on innocent mothers and children, Stowe’s
melodrama gave
the abolitionist message a powerful human appeal.
Abolitionism and the
revolutionary heritage
Abolitionism and the
Constitution
One of many popular lithographs
illustrating scenes from Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, the most widely read of all
antislavery writings. This depicts the
slave Eliza escaping with her child
across the ice floes of the Ohio River.

How did abolitionism challenge barriers to racial equality and
free speech?
By the 1840s, black abolitionists sought an independent role
within
the movement, regularly holding their own conventions. The
black aboli-
tionist Henry Highland Garnet, who as a child had escaped from
slavery
in Maryland with his father, proclaimed at one such gathering in
1843 that
slaves should rise in rebellion to throw off their shackles. His
position was
so at odds with the prevailing belief in moral suasion that the
published
proceedings entirely omitted the speech.
At every opportunity, black abolitionists rejected the nation’s
preten-
sions as a land of liberty. Free black communities in the North
devised an
alternative calendar of “freedom celebrations” centered on
January 1, the date
in 1808 on which the slave trade became illegal, and August 1,
the anniversary
of West Indian emancipation, rather than July 4. In doing so,
they offered a
stinging rebuke to white Americans’ claims to live in a land of
freedom.
Even more persistently than their white counterparts, black
abolition-

ists articulated the ideal of color-blind citizenship. “The real
battleground
between liberty and slavery,” wrote Samuel Cornish, “is
prejudice against
color.” (Cornish, a Presbyterian minister, had helped to
establish the
nation’s first black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in New York
City in 1827.
The first editor, John B. Russwurm, closed the paper after two
years and
moved to Liberia, explaining, “we consider it a waste of mere
words to talk
of ever enjoying citizenship in this country.”)
The greatest oration on American slavery and American
freedom was
delivered in Rochester in 1852 by Frederick Douglass. Speaking
just after
the annual Independence Day celebration, Douglass posed the
question,
“What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” He answered that
Fourth of July
festivities revealed the hypocrisy of a nation that proclaimed its
belief in lib-
erty yet daily committed “practices more shocking and bloody”
than did any
other country on earth. Like other abolitionists, however,
Douglass also laid
claim to the founders’ legacy. The Revolution had left a “rich
inheritance
of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence” from which
subsequent
generations had tragically strayed. Only by abolishing slavery
and freeing
the “great doctrines” of the Declaration of Independence from
the “narrow

bounds” of race could the United States recapture its original
mission.
Gentlemen of Property and Standing
At first, abolitionism aroused violent hostility from northerners
who feared
that the movement threatened to disrupt the Union, interfere
with profits
wrested from slave labor, and overturn white supremacy. Led by
“gentlemen
of property and standing” (often merchants with close
commercial ties to
the South), mobs disrupted abolitionist meetings in northern
cities.
Frederick Douglass’s Fourth
of July speech
Opposition to abolitionism
Color-blind citizenship
355B L A C K A N D W H I T E A B O L I T I O N I S M
In 1837, antislavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy became the move-
ment’s first martyr when he was killed by a mob in Alton,
Illinois, while
defending his press. In 1838, a mob in Philadelphia burned to
the ground
Pennsylvania Hall, which abolitionists had built to hold their
meetings.
Before starting the fire, however, the mob patriotically carried a
portrait of

George Washington to safety.
Elsewhere, crowds of southerners, with the unspoken approval
of
Andrew Jackson’s postmaster general, Amos Kendall, burned
abolitionist
literature that they had removed from the mails. In 1836, when
abolitionists
began to flood Washington with petitions calling for
emancipation in the
nation’s capital, the House of Representatives adopted the
notorious “gag
rule,” which prohibited their consideration. The rule was
repealed in 1844,
thanks largely to the tireless opposition of former president
John Quincy
Adams, who since 1831 had represented Massachusetts in the
House.
Far from stemming the movement’s growth, however, mob
attacks
and attempts to limit abolitionists’ freedom of speech convinced
many
northerners that slavery was incompatible with the democratic
liberties of
white Americans. “We commenced the present struggle,”
announced abo-
litionist William Jay, “to obtain the freedom of the slave; we
are compelled
to continue it to preserve our own. We are now contending . . .
for the lib-
erty of speech, of the press, and of conscience.”
The abolitionist movement now broadened its appeal so as to
win the
support of northerners who cared little about the rights of

blacks but could
be convinced that slavery endangered their own cherished
freedoms. The
gag rule aroused considerable resentment in the North. “If the
government
How did abolitionism challenge barriers to racial equality and
free speech?
Destruction by Fire of Pennsylvania
Hall, a lithograph depicting the
burning of the abolitionist meeting
hall by a Philadelphia mob in 1838.
Am I Not a Man and a Brother?
The most common abolitionist
depiction of a slave, this image not
only presents African-Americans as
unthreatening individuals seeking
white assistance but also calls
upon white Americans to recognize
blacks as fellow men unjustly held in
bondage.
Elijah P. Lovejoy

once begins to discriminate as to what is orthodox and what
heterodox in
opinion,” wrote the New York Evening Post, hardly a supporter
of abolition-
ism, “farewell, a long farewell to our freedom.”
T H E O R I G I N S O F F E M I N I S M
The Rise of the Public Woman
“When the true history of the antislavery cause shall be
written,” Frederick
Douglass later recalled, “women will occupy a large space in its
pages.”
Much of the movement’s grassroots strength derived from
northern women,
who joined by the thousands. Most were evangelical Protestants,
New
England Congregationalists, or Quakers convinced, as Martha
Higginson
of Vermont wrote, that slavery was “a disgrace in this land of
Christian
light and liberty.”
The public sphere was open to women in ways government and
party
politics were not. Women’s letters and diaries reveal a keen
interest in
political issues, from slavery to presidential campaigns. Long
before they
could vote, women circulated petitions, attended mass meetings,

marched
in political parades, delivered public lectures, and raised money
for politi-
cal causes. They became active in the temperance movement,
the building
of asylums, and other reform activities. Dorothea Dix, a
Massachusetts
schoolteacher, for example, was the leading advocate of more
humane
treatment of the insane, who at the time generally were placed
in jails
alongside debtors and hardened criminals. Thanks to her efforts,
twenty-
eight states constructed mental hospitals before the Civil War.
Women and Free Speech
All these activities enabled women to carve out a place in the
public
sphere. But it was participation in abolitionism that inspired the
early
movement for women’s rights. In working for the rights of the
slave, not
a few women developed a new understanding of their own
subordinate
social and legal status. The daughters of a prominent South
Carolina
slaveholder, Angelina and Sarah Grimké had been converted
first to
Quakerism and then abolitionism while visiting Philadelphia.
During
the 1830s, they began to deliver popular lectures that offered a
scathing
condemnation of slavery from the perspective of those who had
witnessed
its evils firsthand.

Women and politics
Northern women in
abolitionism
Abolitionism and women’s
rights
357T H E O R I G I N S O F F E M I N I S M
Outraged by the sight of females sacrificing all “modesty and
delicacy”
by appearing on the public lecture platform, a group of
Massachusetts
clergymen denounced the sisters. In reply, they forthrightly
defended
not only the right of women to take part in political debate but
also their
right to share the social and educational privileges enjoyed by
men. “Since
I engaged in the investigation of the rights of the slave,”
declared Angelina
Grimké, “I have necessarily been led to a better understanding
of my
own.” Her sister Sarah proceeded to publish Letters on the
Equality of the
Sexes (1838), a powerful call for equal rights for women and a
critique of
the notion of separate spheres. The book raised numerous issues
familiar
even today, including what later generations would call “equal
pay for
equal work.” Why, Sarah Grimké wondered, did male teachers

invariably
receive higher wages than women, and a male tailor earn “two
or three
times as much” as a female counterpart “although the work done
by each
may be equally good?”
Women’s Rights
The Grimké sisters were the first to apply the abolitionist
doctrine of uni-
versal freedom and equality to the status of women. Although
they soon
retired from the fray, unwilling to endure the intense criticism
to which
they were subjected, their writings helped to spark the
movement for
women’s rights, which arose in the 1840s.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the key organizers of
the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, were veterans of the
antislavery
crusade. In 1840, they had traveled to London as delegates to
the World
Anti-Slavery Convention, only to be barred from participating
because of
their sex. The Seneca Falls Convention, a gathering on behalf of
women’s
rights held in the upstate New York town where Stanton lived,
raised the
issue of woman suffrage for the first time. Stanton, the principal
author,
modeled the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments on the
Declaration of
Independence (see the Appendix for the full text). But the
document added

“women” to Jefferson’s axiom “all men are created equal,” and
in place of a
list of injustices committed by George III, it condemned the
“injuries and
usurpations on the part of man toward woman.” The first to be
listed was
denying her the right to vote. As Stanton told the convention,
only the vote
would make woman “free as man is free,” since in a democratic
society,
freedom was impossible without access to the ballot. The
argument was
simple and irrefutable: in the words of Lydia Maria Child,
“either the
theory of our government [the democratic principle that
government rests
on the will of the people] is false, or women have a right to
vote.”
The Grimké sisters
The Seneca Falls Convention
The Declaration of Sentiments
What were the diverse sources of the antebellum women’s rights
movement and its significance?
Seneca Falls marked the beginning of the seventy-year struggle
for
woman suffrage. The vote, however, was hardly the only issue
raised at the

convention. The Declaration of Sentiments condemned the
entire structure
of inequality that denied women access to education and
employment,
gave husbands control over the property and wages of their
wives and cus-
tody of children in the event of divorce, deprived women of
independent
legal status after they married, and restricted them to the home
as their
“sphere of action.” Equal rights became the rallying cry of the
early move-
ment for women’s rights, and equal rights meant claiming
access to all the
prevailing definitions of freedom.
Feminism and Freedom
Like abolitionism, temperance, and other reforms, women’s
rights was an
international movement. Lacking broad backing at home, early
feminists
found allies abroad. “Women alone will say what freedom they
want,”
declared an article in The Free Woman, a journal established in
Paris in 1832.
Women, wrote Margaret Fuller, had the same right as men to
develop
their talents, to “grow . . . to live freely and unimpeded.” The
daughter of
a Jeffersonian congressman, Fuller was educated at home, at
first under
her father’s supervision (she learned Latin before the age of six)
and later
on her own. She became part of New England’s

transcendentalist circle
(discussed in Chapter 9) and from 1840 to 1842 edited The Dial,
a magazine
that reflected the group’s views. In 1844, Fuller became literary
editor of
the New York Tribune, the first woman to achieve so important
a position in
American journalism.
In Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, Fuller
sought
to apply to women the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant
a quest
for personal development. “Every path” to self-fulfillment, she
insisted,
should be “open to woman as freely as to man.” Fuller traveled
to Europe
as a correspondent for the Tribune, and there she married an
Italian patriot.
Along with her husband and baby, she died in a shipwreck in
1850 while
returning to the United States.
Women and Work
Women also demanded the right to participate in the market
revolution.
At an 1851 women’s rights convention, the black abolitionist
Sojourner
Truth insisted that the movement devote attention to the plight
of poor and
working-class women and repudiate the idea that women were
too delicate
Portrait of feminist Margaret Fuller

(1810–1850) from an undated
daguerreotype.
Start of the struggle for suffrage
Margaret Fuller
to engage in work outside the home. Born a
slave in New York State around 1799, Truth
did not obtain her freedom until the state’s
emancipation law of 1827. A listener at her
1851 speech (which was not recorded at the
time) later recalled that Truth had spoken
of her years of hard physical labor, had
flexed her arm to show her strength, and
exclaimed, “and aren’t I a woman?”
Although those who convened at
Seneca Falls were predominantly from the
middle class—no representatives of the
growing number of “factory girls” and domestic servants took
part—
the participants rejected the identification of the home as the
women’s
“sphere.” During the 1850s, some feminists tried to popularize a
new style
of dress, devised by Amelia Bloomer, consisting of a loose-
fitting tunic and
trousers. The target of innumerable male jokes, the “bloomer”
costume
attempted to make a serious point—that the long dresses, tight

corsets, and
numerous petticoats considered to be appropriate female attire
were so
confining that they made it almost impossible for women to
claim a place
in the public sphere or to work outside the home.
The Slavery of Sex
The dichotomy between freedom and slavery powerfully shaped
early fem-
inists’ political language. Just as the idea of “wage slavery”
enabled north-
ern workers to challenge the inequalities inherent in market
definitions
of freedom, the concept of the “slavery of sex” empowered the
women’s
movement to develop an all-encompassing critique of male
authority and
their own subordination. Feminists of the 1840s and 1850s
pointed out
that the law of marriage made nonsense of the description of the
family
as a “private” institution independent of public authority. When
the abo-
litionists and women’s rights activists Lucy Stone and Henry
Blackwell
married, they felt obliged to repudiate New York’s laws that
clothed the
husband “with legal powers which . . . no man should possess.”
The anal-
ogy between free women and slaves gained prominence as it
was swept up
in the accelerating debate over slavery. For their part, southern
defenders
of slavery frequently linked slavery and marriage as natural and

just forms
of inequality. Eliminating the former institution, they charged,
would
threaten the latter.
Woman’s Emancipation, a satirical
engraving from Harper’s Monthly,
August 1851, illustrating the much-
ridiculed “Bloomer” costume.
Feminists and marriage
360
From Angelina Grimké, Letter in
The Liberator (August 2, 1837)
The daughters of a prominent South Carolina slaveholder,
Angelina and Sarah Grimké became
abolitionists after being sent to Philadelphia for education. In
this article, Angelina Grimké
explains how participation in the movement against slavery led
her to a greater recognition of

women’s lack of basic freedoms.
Since I engaged in the investigation of the rights of the slave, I
have necessarily been led to a better
understanding of my own; for I have found the Anti-Slavery
cause to be . . . the school in which human
rights are more fully investigated, and better understood and
taught, than in any other [reform]
enterprise. . . . Here we are led to examine why human beings
have any rights. It is because they are
moral beings. . . . Now it naturally occurred to me, that if
rights were founded in moral being, then the
circumstance of sex could not give to man higher rights and
responsibilities, than to woman. . . .
When I look at human beings as moral beings, all distinction in
sex sinks to insignificance and
nothingness; for I believe it regulates rights and responsibilities
no more than the color of the skin or the
eyes. My doctrine, then is, that whatever it is morally right for
man to do, it is morally right for woman
to do. . . . This regulation of duty by the mere circumstance of
sex . . . has led to all that [numerous] train
of evils flowing out of the anti-christian doctrine of masculine
and feminine virtues. By this doctrine,
man has been converted into the warrior, and clothed in
sternness . . . whilst woman has been taught to
lean upon an arm of flesh, to . . . be admired for her personal
charms, and caressed and humored like a
spoiled child, or converted into a mere drudge to suit the
convenience of her lord and master. . . . It has
robbed woman of . . . the right to think and speak and act on all
great moral questions, just as men think
and speak and act. . . .

The discussion of the wrongs of slavery has opened the way for
the discussion of other rights, and
the ultimate result will most certainly be . . . the letting of the
oppressed of every grade and description
go free.
361
From Frederick Douglass, Speech on July 5, 1852,
Rochester, New York
One of the most prominent reform leaders of his era, Frederick
Douglass escaped from slavery
in 1838 and soon became an internationally known writer and
orator against slavery. His speech
of July 1852 condemned the hypocrisy of a nation that
proclaimed its devotion to freedom while
practicing slavery. It was reprinted in 1855 in his
autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called
upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or
those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are
the great principles of political freedom
and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of
Independence, extended to us? . . . Such is not
the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I

am not included within the pale of this
glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the
immeasurable distance between us. . . .
The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and
independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is
shared by you, not by me. . . .
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the
negro race. Is it not astonishing that,
while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of
mechanical tools, erecting houses,
constructing bridges, building ships, . . . acting as clerks,
merchants and secretaries . . . confessing and
worshiping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life
and immortality beyond the grave, we are
called upon to prove that we are men! . . .
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That
he is the rightful owner of his body?
You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of
slavery? . . . that men have a natural right
to freedom? . . . To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous,
and to offer an insult to your understanding.
There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven,
that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. . . .
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of
July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more
than all other days in the year, the gross injustice
and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted
liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness,
swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are
empty and heartless; your denunciations of
tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of
liberty and equality, hollow mockery—a thin veil

to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation
of savages. There is not a nation on the earth
guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody,
than are the people of these United States, at this
very hour.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. What consequences does Grimké
believe follow from the idea of rights
being founded in the individual’s
“moral being”?
2. How does Douglass turn the ideals
proclaimed by white Americans into
weapons against slavery?
3. What do these documents suggest
about the language and arguments
employed by abolitionists?
Marriage was not, literally speaking, equivalent to slavery. The
mar-

ried woman, however, did not enjoy the fruits of her own
labor—a central
element of freedom. Beginning with Mississippi in 1839,
numerous states
enacted married women’s property laws, shielding from a
husband’s
creditors property brought into a marriage by his wife. Such
laws initially
aimed not to expand women’s rights so much as to prevent
families from
losing their property during the depression that began in 1837.
But in 1860,
New York enacted a more far-reaching measure, allowing
married women
to sign contracts, buy and sell property, and keep their own
wages. In most
states, however, property accumulated after marriage, as well as
wages
earned by the wife, still belonged to the husband.
“Social Freedom”
Influenced by abolitionism, women’s rights advocates turned
another
popular understanding of freedom—self-ownership, or control
over one’s
own person—in an entirely new direction. The law of domestic
relations
presupposed the husband’s right of sexual access to his wife and
to inflict
corporal punishment on her. Courts proved reluctant to
intervene in
cases of physical abuse so long as it was not “extreme” or
“intolerable.”
“Women’s Rights,” declared a Boston meeting in 1859, included
“freedom

and equal rights in the family.” The demand that women should
enjoy
the rights to regulate their own sexual activity and procreation
and to be
protected by the state against violence at the hands of their
husbands chal-
lenged the notion that claims for justice, freedom, and
individual rights
should stop at the household’s door.
The issue of women’s private freedom revealed underlying
differ-
ences within the movement for women’s rights. Belief in
equality between
the sexes and in the sexes’ natural differences coexisted in
antebellum
feminist thought. Even as they entered the public sphere and
thereby chal-
lenged some aspects of the era’s “cult of domesticity”
(discussed in Chapter 9),
many early feminists accepted other elements. Allowing women
a greater
role in the public sphere, many female reformers argued, would
bring
their “inborn” maternal instincts to bear on public life, to the
benefit of the
entire society.
Even feminists critical of the existing institution of marriage
generally
refrained from raising in public the explosive issue of women’s
“private”
freedom. Not until the twentieth century would the demand that
freedom
be extended to intimate aspects of life inspire a mass movement.
But the

dramatic fall in the birthrate over the course of the nineteenth
century
Married women’s property
and the law
Rights within the family
Women’s private freedom
suggests that many women were quietly exercising “personal
freedom” in
their most intimate relationships.
The Abolitionist Schism
Even in reform circles, the demand for a greater public role for
women
remained extremely controversial. Massachusetts physician
Samuel
Gridley Howe pioneered humane treatment of the blind and
educational
reform, and he was an ardent abolitionist. But Howe did not
support his
wife’s participation in the movement for female suffrage,
which, he com-
plained, caused her to “neglect domestic relations.” When
organized abo-
litionism split into two wings in 1840, the immediate cause was
a dispute
over the proper role of women in antislavery work. Abby
Kelley’s appoint-

ment to the business committee of the American Anti-Slavery
Society
sparked the formation of a rival abolitionist organization, the
American
and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which believed it wrong for a
woman
to occupy so prominent a position. The antislavery poet John
Greenleaf
Whittier compared Kelley to Eve, Delilah, and Helen of Troy,
women who
had sown the seeds of male destruction.
Behind the split lay the fear among some abolitionists that
Garrison’s
radicalism on issues like women’s rights, as well as his refusal
to sup-
port the idea of abolitionists voting or running for public office,
impeded
This image appeared on the cover
of the sheet music for “Get Off
the Track!”, a song popularized
by the Hutchinson singers, who
performed antislavery songs. The
trains Immediate Emancipation (with
The Liberator as its front wheel)

and Liberty Party pull into a railroad
station. The Herald of Freedom and
American Standard were antislavery
newspapers. The song’s lyrics
praised William Lloyd Garrison and
criticized various politicians, among
them Henry Clay. The chorus went:
“Roll it along! Through the nation /
Freedom’s car, Emancipation.”
The role of women in
abolitionism
the movement’s growth. Determined to make abolitionism a
political
movement, the seceders formed the Liberty Party, which
nominated
James G. Birney as its candidate for president. He received only
7,000
votes (about one-third of 1 percent of the total). In 1840,
antislavery north-
erners saw little wisdom in “throwing away” their ballots on a
third-party
candidate.

Although the achievement of most of their demands lay far in
the
future, the women’s rights movement succeeded in making “the
woman
question” a permanent part of the transatlantic discussion of
social
reform. As for abolitionism, although it remained a significant
presence in
northern public life until emancipation was achieved, by 1840
the move-
ment had accomplished its most important work. More than
1,000 local
antislavery societies were now scattered throughout the North,
repre-
senting a broad constituency awakened to the moral issue of
slavery. The
“great duty of freedom,” Ralph Waldo Emerson had declared in
1837, was
“to open our halls to discussion of this question.” The
abolitionists’ great-
est achievement lay in shattering the conspiracy of silence that
had sought
to preserve national unity by suppressing public debate over
slavery.
Achievements of feminism
and abolitionism
Focus Question

1. How did the utopian communities challenge existing
ideas about property and marriage?
2. How did the supporters and opponents of temperance
understand the meaning of freedom differently?
3. What were the similarities and differences between
the common school and the institutions like asylums,
orphanages, and prisons that were created by reformers?
4. Why did so many prominent white Americans, from both the
North and South, support the colonization of freed slaves?
5. How was the abolition movement affected by other social
and economic changes such as the rise in literacy, new
print technology, and ideas associated with the market
revolution?
6. How was racism evident even in the abolitionist move-
ment? What steps did some abolitionists take to fight
racism in American society?
7. How could antebellum women participate in the public
sphere even though they were excluded from government
and politics?
8. How did white women’s participation in the abolitionist
movement push them to a new understanding of their
own rights and oppression?
9. How did advocates for women’s rights in these years
both accept and challenge existing gender beliefs and
social roles?
10. To what degree was antebellum reform international in

scope?
K E Y T E R M S
utopian communities (p. 342)
“perfectionism” (p. 345)
temperance (p. 345)
self-discipline (p. 346)
asylums (p. 347)
common schools (p. 347)
public education (p. 347)
American Colonization Society
(p. 348)
American Anti-Slavery Society
(p. 351)
“moral suasion” (p. 352)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (p. 353)
“gentlemen of property and
standing” (p. 354)
“Am I Not a Man and a
Brother?” (p. 355)
gag rule (p. 355)

Dorothea Dix (p. 356)
woman suffrage (p. 357)
Woman in the Nineteenth
Century (p. 358)
“slavery of sex” (p. 359)
Liberty Party (p. 364)
C E S
wwnorton.com
/studyspace
RESOURCES AND MORE
A chapter outline
Interactive maps
Map worksheets
Chapter Review and Online Resources 365
ook&p=399.0

1820 Moses Austin receives
Mexican land grant
1836 Texas independence from
Mexico
1845 Inauguration of James Polk
United States annexes
Texas
1846– Mexican War
1848
1846 Wilmot Proviso
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo
Gold discovered in
California
Free Soil Party organized
1849 Inauguration of Zachary
Taylor
1850 Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act
1853 Inauguration of Franklin
Pierce
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act

Know-Nothing Party
established
Ostend Manifesto
Republican Party organized
1856 “Bleeding Kansas”
Buchanan
Dred Scott decision
1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates
1859 John Brown’s raid on
Harpers Ferry
1860 South Carolina secedes
1861 Inauguration of Abraham
Lincoln
Fort Sumter fired on
Abraham Lincoln’s nickname, “The
Railsplitter,” recalled his humble origins.
An unknown artist created this larger-
than-life portrait. The White House is
visible in the distance. The painting

is said to have been displayed during
campaign rallies in 1860.
A H O U S E D I V I D E D
C H A P T E R 1 3
1 8 4 0 – 1 8 6 1
367
The original and final designs for
Thomas Crawford’s Statue of
Freedom for the dome of the Capitol
building. Secretary of War Jefferson
Davis of Mississippi insisted that
the liberty cap in the first design, a
symbol of the emancipated slave in
ancient Rome, be replaced.
A H O U S E D I V I D E D
I n 1855, Thomas Crawford, one of the era’s most prominent

Ameri-can sculptors, was asked to design a statue to adorn the
Capitol’s dome, still under construction in Washington, D.C. He
proposed a
statue of Freedom, a female figure wearing a liberty cap.
Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, one of the country’s largest
slaveholders,
objected to Crawford’s plan. Ancient Romans, he noted,
regarded the cap
as “the badge of the freed slave.” Its use, he feared, might
suggest that
there was a connection between the slaves’ longing for freedom
and the
liberty of freeborn Americans. Davis ordered the liberty cap
replaced
with a less controversial military symbol, a feathered helmet.
In 1863, the colossal Statue of Freedom was installed atop the
Capitol, where it can still be seen today. By the time it was put
in place,
the country was immersed in the Civil War and Jefferson Davis
had
become president of the Confederate States of America. The
dispute
over the Statue of Freedom offers a small illustration of how, by
the
mid-1850s, nearly every public question was being swept up
into the
gathering storm over slavery.
What were the major
factors contributing to
U.S. territorial expansion

in the 1840s?
Why did the expansion of
slavery become the most
divisive political issue in
the 1840s and 1850s?
What combination of
issues and events fueled
the creation of the Repub-
lican Party in the 1850s?
What enabled Lincoln to
emerge from the divisive
party politics of the
1850s?
What were the final steps
on the road to secession?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S

F R U I T S O F M A N I F E S T D E S T I N Y
Continental Expansion
In the 1840s, slavery moved to the center stage of American
politics. It did
so not in the moral language or with the immediatist program of
abolition-
ism, but as a result of the nation’s territorial expansion.
Between 1840 and
1860, nearly 300,000 men, women, and children had braved
disease, star-
vation, the natural barrier of the Rocky Mountains, and
occasional Indian
attacks to travel overland to Oregon and California.
During most of the 1840s, the United States and Great Britain
jointly
administered Oregon, and Utah was part of Mexico. This did not
stop
Americans from settling in either region. National boundaries
meant little
to those who moved west. The 1840s witnessed an
intensification of the old
belief that God intended the American nation to reach all the
way to the
Pacific Ocean. As noted in Chapter 9, the term that became a
shorthand for
this expansionist spirit was “manifest destiny.”
The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico
and California
Settlement of Oregon did not directly raise the issue of slavery.
But the

nation’s acquisition of part of Mexico did. When Mexico
achieved its
independence from Spain in 1821, it was nearly as large as the
United
A watercolor of a scene on a ranch
near Monterey, California, in 1849
depicts Californios supervising the
work of Native Americans.
"Manifest destiny"
369F R U I T S O F M A N I F E S T D E S T I N Y
States, and its population of 6.5 million was about two-thirds
that of its
northern neighbor. However, Mexico’s northern provinces—
California,
New Mexico, and Texas—were isolated and sparsely settled
outposts sur-
rounded by Indian country. California’s non-Indian population
in 1821,
some 3,200 missionaries, soldiers, and settlers, was vastly
outnumbered
by about 20,000 Indians living and working on land owned by
religious
missions and by 150,000 members of unsubdued tribes in the
interior. By
1840, California was already linked commercially with the
United States,
and New England ships were trading with the region. In 1846,

Alfred
Robinson, who had moved from Boston, published Life in
California. “In this
age of annexation,” he wondered, “why not extend the ‘area of
freedom’ by
the annexation of California?”
Salt Lake City
San Francisco
Monterey
San Diego
Santa Fe
Independence
Nauvoo
Portland
The Alamo
San Jacinto
IOWA
TERRITORY
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
INDIAN
TERRITORY
WISCONSIN

TERRITORY
MICHIGAN
ILLINOIS
INDIANA
OHIO
MISSOURI KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA
TEXAS
(Independent 1836–1845)
OREGON
COUNTRY
MEXICO
Gulf of Mexico
Paci f i c
Ocean
0
0

200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers
Battle
Mormon Trek
Oregon Trail
Boundaries disputed with United States
Mexico after independence from
Spain, 1821
T H E T R A N S - M I S S I S S I P P I W E S T , 1 8 3 0 s –
1 8 4 0 s
Westward migration in the early and
mid-1840s took American settlers
across Indian country into the Oregon
Territory, ownership of which was
disputed with Great Britain. The
Mormons migrated west to Salt Lake
City, then part of Mexico.
What were the major factors contributing to U.S. territorial
expansion in the 1840s?

Mexican California
The Texas Revolt
The first part of Mexico to be settled by significant numbers of
Americans
was Texas, whose non-Indian population of Spanish origin
(called Tejanos)
numbered only about 2,000 when Mexico became independent.
In order
to develop the region, the Spanish government had accepted an
offer by
Moses Austin, a Connecticut-born farmer, to colonize it with
Americans.
In 1820, Austin received a large land grant. He died soon
afterward, and
his son Stephen continued the plan, now in independent Mexico,
reselling
land in smaller plots to American settlers at twelve cents per
acre.
Alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, the Mexican
government in 1830 annulled existing land contracts and barred
future
emigration from the United States. Led by Stephen Austin,
American set-
tlers demanded greater autonomy within Mexico. Part of the
area’s tiny
Tejano elite joined them. Mostly ranchers and large farmers,
they had wel-
comed the economic boom that accompanied the settlers and had
formed

economic alliances with American traders. The issue of slavery
further
exacerbated matters. Mexico had abolished slavery, but local
authori-
ties allowed American settlers to bring slaves with them.
Mexico’s ruler,
General Antonio López de Santa Anna, sent an army in 1835 to
impose
central authority.
The appearance of Santa Anna’s army sparked a chaotic revolt
in
Texas. The rebels formed a provisional government that soon
called for
Texan independence. On March 6, 1836, Santa Anna’s army
stormed the
Alamo, a mission compound in San Antonio, killing its 187
American and
Tejano defenders. “Remember the Alamo” became the Texans’
rallying
cry. In April, forces under Sam Houston, a former governor of
Tennessee,
routed Santa Anna’s army at the Battle of San Jacinto and
forced him to
recognize Texan independence. In 1837, the Texas Congress
called for
union with the United States. But fearing the political disputes
certain to
result from an attempt to add another slave state to the Union,
Presidents
Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren shelved the question.
Settlers
from the United States nonetheless poured into the region, many
of them
slaveowners taking up fertile cotton land. By 1845, the
population of Texas

had reached nearly 150,000.
Texas annexation remained on the political back burner until
President
John Tyler revived it in the hope of rescuing his failed
administration
and securing southern support for renomination in 1844. In
April 1844,
Moses and Stephen Austin
Reasons for the Texas revolt
Battle of San Jacinto
The Tyler administration
and Texas
a letter by John C. Calhoun, whom Tyler had appointed
secretary of state,
was leaked to the press. It linked the idea of absorbing Texas
directly to the
goal of strengthening slavery in the United States. Some
southern leaders,
indeed, hoped that Texas could be divided into several states,
thus further
enhancing the South’s power in Congress. Late that month,
Henry Clay
and former president Van Buren, the prospective Whig and
Democratic

candidates for president and two of the party system’s most
venerable
leaders, met at Clay’s Kentucky plantation. They agreed to issue
letters
rejecting immediate annexation on the grounds that it might
provoke war
with Mexico.
Clay went on to receive the Whig nomination, but for Van
Buren the
letters proved to be a disaster. At the Democratic convention,
southerners
bent on annexation deserted Van Buren’s cause, and he failed to
receive the
two-thirds majority necessary for nomination. The delegates
then turned
to the little-known James K. Polk, a former governor of
Tennessee whose
main assets were his support for annexation and his close
association with
Andrew Jackson, still the party’s most popular figure. To soothe
injured
feelings among northern Democrats over the rejection of Van
Buren, the
party platform called not only for the “reannexation” of Texas
(implying
that Texas had been part of the Louisiana Purchase and
therefore had
once belonged to the United States) but also the “reoccupation”
of all of
Oregon. “Fifty-four forty or fight”—American control of
Oregon all the
way to its northern boundary at north latitude 54°40'—became a
popular
campaign slogan.

Polk was the first “dark horse” candidate for president—that is,
one
whose nomination was completely unexpected. In the fall, he
defeated
The plaza in San Antonio not long
after the United States annexed
Texas in 1845.
Slavery and expansion
Emergence of Polk
Clay in an extremely close election. Polk’s margin in the
popular vote was
less than 2 percent. Had not James G. Birney, running again as
the Liberty
Party candidate, received 16,000 votes in New York, mostly
from anti-
slavery Whigs, Clay would have been elected. In March 1845,
only days
before Polk’s inauguration, Congress declared Texas part of the
United
States.
The Road to War

James K. Polk may have been virtually unknown, but he
assumed the
presidency with a clearly defined set of goals: to reduce the
tariff, reestab-
lish the independent Treasury system, settle the dispute over
ownership
of Oregon, and bring California into the Union. Congress soon
enacted the
first two goals, and the third was accomplished in an agreement
with Great
Britain dividing Oregon at the forty-ninth parallel.
Acquiring California proved more difficult. Polk dispatched an
emissary to Mexico offering to purchase the region, but the
Mexican gov-
ernment refused to negotiate. By the spring of 1846, Polk was
planning
for military action. In April, American soldiers under Zachary
Taylor
moved into the region between the Nueces River and the Rio
Grande, land
claimed by both countries on the disputed border between Texas
and
Mexico. This action made conflict with Mexican forces
inevitable. When
fighting broke out, Polk claimed that the Mexicans had
“shed blood upon American soil” and called for a decla-
ration of war.
The War and Its Critics
The Mexican War was the first American conflict to be
fought primarily on foreign soil and the first in which
American troops occupied a foreign capital. Inspired
by the expansionist fervor of manifest destiny, a major-

ity of Americans supported the war. But a significant
minority in the North dissented, fearing that far from
expanding the “great empire of liberty,” the admin-
istration’s real aim was to acquire new land for the
expansion of slavery. Henry David Thoreau was jailed
in Massachusetts in 1846 for refusing to pay taxes as a
protest against the war. Defending his action, Thoreau
wrote an important essay, “On Civil Disobedience,”
War News from Mexico, an 1848
painting by Richard C. Woodville,
shows how Americans received war
news through the popular press.
Polk’s election
Polk’s goals
which inspired such later advocates of nonviolent resistance to
unjust
laws as Martin Luther King Jr.
Among the war’s critics was Abraham Lincoln, who had been
elected
to Congress in 1846 from Illinois. Like many Whigs, Lincoln
questioned
whether the Mexicans had actually inflicted casualties on
American soil,
as Polk claimed. But Lincoln was also disturbed by Polk’s

claiming the
right to initiate an invasion of Mexico. Lincoln’s stance proved
unpopular
in Illinois. He had already agreed to serve only one term in
Congress, but
when Democrats captured his seat in 1848, many blamed the
result on
Lincoln’s criticism of the war. Nonetheless, the concerns he
raised regard-
ing the president’s power to “make war at pleasure” would
continue to
echo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Combat in Mexico
More than 60,000 volunteers enlisted and did most of the
fighting.
Combat took place on three fronts. In June 1846, a band of
American insur-
rectionists proclaimed California freed from Mexican control
and named
Captain John C. Frémont, head of a small scientific expedition
in the West,
its ruler. Their aim was California’s incorporation into the
United States,
but for the moment they adopted a flag depicting a large bear as
the sym-
bol of the area’s independence. A month later, the U.S. Navy
sailed into
Monterey and San Francisco harbors, raised the American flag,
and put an
end to the “bear flag republic.” At almost the same time, 1,600
American
troops under General Stephen W. Kearney occupied Sante Fe
without
resistance and then set out for southern California, where they

helped to
put down a Mexican uprising against American rule.
The bulk of the fighting occurred in central Mexico. In February
1847,
Taylor defeated Santa Anna’s army at the Battle of Buena Vista.
When the
Mexican government still refused to negotiate, Polk ordered
American
forces under Winfield Scott to march inland from the port of
Veracruz
toward Mexico City. Scott’s forces routed Mexican defenders
and in
September occupied the country’s capital. In February 1848, the
two gov-
ernments agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which
confirmed the
annexation of Texas and ceded California and present-day New
Mexico,
Arizona, Nevada, and Utah to the United States.
The Mexican War is only a footnote in most Americans’
historical
memory. Unlike for other wars, few public monuments celebrate
the
conflict. Mexicans, however, regard the war (or “the
dismemberment,”
as it is called in that country) as a central event of their national
history
Lincoln as war critic
The war’s three fronts

The defeat of Mexico and its
consequences
and a source of continued resentment over a century and a half
after it
was fought.
Race and Manifest Destiny
With the end of the Mexican War, the United States absorbed
half a mil-
lion square miles of Mexico’s territory, one-third of that
nation’s total
area. A region that for centuries had been united was suddenly
split in
two, dividing families and severing trade routes. An estimated
75,000
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Santa Barbara
San Diego
Mazatlán
San Luis Potosí Tampico
Veracruz
Pueblo

Corpus Christi
San Antonio
New Orleans
Santa Fe
Albuquerque
Las Vegas
El Paso
Chihuahua
La Paz
San Lucas San Jose
Monterey
Sonoma
Bent's Fort
Fort Leavenworth
San Pasqual
Cerro
Gordo
Palo Alto
Mexico City

Buena Vista
Frémont
Frémo
nt
Kearny
Ke
ar
ny
Kearny
Scot
t
Scott
Santa Anna
Taylo
r
Taylor
Santa Anna
Santa Anna
Scott

U.S. Navy
U.S. Navy
U.S. Navy
Fré
mont
MISSOURI
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
MISSISSIPPI
ILLINOIS
TEXAS
INDIAN TERRITORY
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
DISPUTED BY
TEXAS AND MEXICO
CEDED BY
MEXICO UNITED STATES
MEXICO
Co

lor
ad
o R
.
Rio Grande
Nueces R.
Sabine R.
Red R.
Arkansas R.
M
iss
iss
ip
pi
R
.
Missouri R.
Platte R.
Pecos R.
Gila R.

Gulf of Mexico
Paci f ic Ocean
0
0
150
150
300 miles
300 kilometers
American victory
Mexican victory
American forces
American naval blockade
Mexican forces
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Lands disputed by United States and Mexico
Lands ceded by Mexico
T H E M E X I C A N W A R , 1 8 4 6 – 1 8 4 8
The Mexican War was the first in
which an American army invaded
another country and occupied its
capital. As a result of the war, the
United States acquired a vast new

area in the modern-day Southwest.
to 100,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans and more than 150,000
Indians
inhabited the land annexed from Mexico, known as the Mexican
Cession.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed to “male citizens”
of the area
“the free enjoyment of their liberty and property” and “all the
rights” of
Americans—a provision designed to protect the property of
large Mexican
landowners in California. Thus, in the first half of the
nineteenth century,
some residents of the area went from being Spaniards to
Mexicans to
Americans. Although not newcomers, they had to adjust to a
new identity
as if they were immigrants. As for Indians whose homelands
and hunting
grounds suddenly became part of the United States, the treaty
referred to
them only as “savage tribes” whom the United States must
prevent from
launching incursions into Mexico across the new border.
During the 1840s, territorial expansion came to be seen as proof
of the
innate superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon race” (a mythical
construct defined
largely by its opposites: blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and
Catholics). “Race,”

1853 (1889)
1848 (1859)
1863 (1890)
1861 (1864)
(1850)
1850 (1896)
1863 (1912)
1850 (1912)
(1845)
1864 (1889)
1868 (1890)
1861 (1889)
1861 (1889)
1859 (1867)
1861 (1876)
1854 (1861)
1890 (1907)
1804 (1812)
1819 (1836)

1798
(1817)
1804
(1819)
1805 (1821)
1838 (1846)
1809
(1818)
1849 (1858)
1836 (1848)
1805 (1837)
1800
(1816)
(1803)
(1792)
(1796)
1822
(1845)
OR
CA
ID

WY
MT
NV
UT
AZ
NM
OK
CO
AR
MO
IA
MN
WI
IL OH
MS AL GA
SC
NC
FL
LA

MI
IN
PA
ME
NH
VT
MA
RI
CT
DE
MD
WA
TX
KS
NE
SD
ND
WV
(1863) VA
TN

KY
NJ
NY
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Original 13 states 1783
Great Britain Cession 1783
Louisiana Purchase 1803
Acquired from Great Britain 1818
Florida Purchase 1819
Date of organization as territory
Acquired from Great Britain 1842
Texas Annexation 1845
Oregon Country 1846
Mexican Cession 1848
Gadsden Purchase 1853
Date of statehood(1912)1912
Borders represent present-day state borders
C O N T I N E N T A L E X P A N S I O N T H R O U G H 1
8 5 3

By 1853, with the Gadsden Purchase,
the present boundaries of the United
States in North America, with the
exception of Alaska, had been
created.
The Mexican Cession
Status of Mexicans and Indians
declared John L. O’Sullivan’s Democratic Review, was the
“key” to the “his-
tory of nations” and the rise and fall of empires. Newspapers,
magazines,
and scholarly works popularized the link between American
freedom and
the supposedly innate liberty-loving qualities of Anglo-Saxon
Protestants.
Indeed, calls by some expansionists for the United States to
annex all of
Mexico failed in part because of fear that the nation could not
assimilate
its large non-white Catholic population, supposedly unfit for
citizenship

in a republic.
Local circumstances affected racial definitions in the former
Mexican
territories. Although Mexico had abolished slavery and
considered all
persons equal before the law, the Texas constitution adopted
after inde-
pendence protected slavery and denied civil rights to Indians
and persons
of African origin. Texas defined “Spanish” Mexicans, however,
especially
those who occupied important social positions, as white. The
residents of
New Mexico of both Mexican and Indian origin, on the other
hand, were
long deemed “too Mexican” for democratic self-government.
With white
migration lagging, Congress did not allow New Mexico to
become a state
until 1912.
Gold-Rush California
California had a non-Indian population of less than 15,000 when
the
Mexican War ended. For most of the 1840s, ten times as many
Americans
emigrated to Oregon as to California. But this changed
dramatically after
January 1848, when gold was discovered in the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada
Mountains at a sawmill owned by the Swiss immigrant Johann
A. Sutter. By
ship and land, newcomers poured into California. The non-
Indian popula-

tion rose to 200,000 by 1852 and more than 360,000 eight years
later.
California’s gold-rush population was incredibly diverse.
Experienced
miners flooded in from Mexico and South America. Tens of
thousands
of Americans who had never seen a mine arrived from the East,
and
from overseas came Irish, Germans, Italians, and Australians.
Nearly
25,000 Chinese landed between 1849 and 1852. Unlike the
families who
settled farming frontiers, most of the gold-rush migrants were
young
men. Women played many roles in western mining communities,
running
restaurants and boardinghouses and working as laundresses,
cooks, and
prostitutes. But as late as 1860, California’s male population
outnumbered
females by nearly three to one.
As early surface mines quickly became exhausted, they gave
way
to underground mining that required a large investment of
capital. This
economic development worsened conflicts among California’s
many racial
The Texas constitution
Sutter’s mill
Diversity of the gold-rush
population

and ethnic groups engaged in fierce competition for gold. White
miners
organized extralegal groups that expelled “foreign miners”—
Mexicans,
Chileans, Chinese, French, and American Indians—from areas
with gold.
The state legislature imposed a tax of twenty dollars per month
on foreign
miners, driving many of them from the state.
For California’s Indians, the gold rush and absorption into the
United
States proved to be disastrous. Gold seekers overran Indian
communi-
ties. Miners, ranchers, and vigilantes murdered thousands of
Indians.
Determined to reduce the native population, state officials paid
millions
in bounties to private militias that launched attacks on the
state’s Indians.
Although California was a free state, thousands of Indian
children,
declared orphans or vagrants by local courts, were bought and
sold as
slaves. By 1860, California’s Indian population, nearly 150,000
when the
Mexican War ended, had been reduced to around 30,000.
In a remarkable coincidence, the California gold rush took place
almost simultaneously with another located halfway around the
world. In

1851, gold was discovered in Australia, then a collection of
British colonies.
During the 1850s, California and Australia together produced 80
percent
of the world’s gold. Like California, Australia attracted
gold-seekers from across the globe. As in California,
the gold rush was a disaster for the aboriginal peoples
(as native Australians are called), whose population,
already declining, fell precipitously.
Opening Japan
The Mexican War ended with the United States in pos-
session of the magnificent harbors of San Diego and San
Francisco, long seen as jumping-off points for trade with
the Far East. In the 1850s, the United States took the
lead in opening Japan, a country that had closed itself to
nearly all foreign contact for more than two centuries. In
1853 and 1854, American warships under the command
of Commodore Matthew Perry (the younger brother of
Oliver Perry, a hero of the War of 1812) sailed into Tokyo
Harbor. Perry, who had been sent by President Millard
Fillmore to negotiate a trade treaty, demanded that the
Japanese deal with him. Alarmed by European intru-
sions into China and impressed by Perry’s armaments
as well as a musical pageant he presented that included
a blackface minstrel show, Japanese leaders agreed to
Transportation of Cargo by
Westerners at the Port of Yokohama,
1861, by the Japanese artist Utagawa
Sadahide, depicts ships in port,

including an American one on the left,
eight years after Commodore Perry’s
first voyage to Japan.
The gold rush and California’s
Indians
Conflicts over gold
do so. In 1854, they opened two ports to American shipping. As
a result,
the United States acquired refueling places on the route to
China—seen as
Asia’s most important trading partner. And Japan soon launched
a pro-
cess of modernization that transformed it into the region’s
major military
power.
A D O S E O F A R S E N I C
Victory over Mexico added more than 1 million square miles to
the United
States—an area larger than the Louisiana Purchase. But the
acquisi-
tion of this vast territory raised the fatal issue that would
disrupt the

political system and plunge the nation into civil war—whether
slavery
should be allowed to expand into the West. Events soon
confirmed Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s prediction that if the United States gobbled
up part
of Mexico, “it will be as the man who swallows arsenic. . . .
Mexico will
poison us.”
Already, the bonds of Union were fraying. In 1844 and 1845,
the
Methodists and Baptists, the two largest evangelical churches,
divided
into northern and southern branches. Once the churches were
divided by
section, it was easier for the southern branch to move toward a
stronger
biblical defense of slavery, and the northern toward antislavery,
if not nec-
essarily abolitionism. But it was the entrance of the slavery
issue into the
heart of American politics as the result of the Mexican War that
eventually
dissolved perhaps the strongest force for national unity—the
two-party
system.
The Wilmot Proviso
Before 1846, the status of slavery in all parts of the United
States had
been settled, either by state law or by the Missouri
Compromise, which
determined slavery’s status in the Louisiana Purchase. The
acquisition

of new land reopened the question of slavery’s expansion. The
divisive
potential of this issue became clear in 1846, when Congressman
David
Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed a resolution prohibiting
slavery from
all territory acquired from Mexico. Party lines crumbled as
every north-
erner, Democrat and Whig alike, supported what came to be
known as the
Wilmot Proviso, while nearly all southerners opposed it. The
measure
passed the House, where the more populous North possessed a
majority,
but failed in the Senate, with its even balance of free and slave
states.
Party vs. section
Slavery in the West
379A D O S E O F A R S E N I C
In 1848, opponents of slavery’s expansion organized the Free
Soil
Party and nominated Martin Van Buren for president and
Charles Francis
Adams, the son of John Quincy Adams, as his running mate.
Democrats
nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan, who proposed that the
decision on
whether to allow slavery should be left to settlers in the new
territories (an
idea later given the name “popular sovereignty”). Van Buren

was moti-
vated in part by revenge against the South for jettisoning him in
1844. But
his campaign struck a chord among northerners opposed to the
expansion
of slavery, and he polled some 300,000 votes, 14 percent of the
northern
total. Victory in 1848 went to the Whig candidate, Zachary
Taylor, a hero
of the Mexican War and a Louisiana sugar planter. But the fact
that a
former president and the son of another abandoned their parties
to run
on a Free Soil platform showed that antislavery sentiment had
spread far
beyond abolitionist ranks.
The Free Soil Appeal
The Free Soil position had a popular appeal in the North that far
exceeded
the abolitionists’ demand for immediate emancipation and equal
rights
for blacks. Many northerners had long resented what they
considered
southern domination of the federal government. The idea of
preventing the
creation of new slave states appealed to those who favored
policies, such as
the protective tariff and government aid to internal
improvements, that the
majority of southern political leaders opposed.
For thousands of northerners, moreover, the ability to move to
the
new western territories held out the promise of economic

betterment.
“Freedom of the soil,” declared George Henry Evans, the editor
of a pro-
labor newspaper, offered the only alternative to permanent
economic
dependence for American workers.
Such views merged easily with opposition to the expansion of
slavery.
If slave plantations were to occupy the fertile lands of the West,
northern
migration would be effectively blocked. The term “free soil”
had a double
meaning. The Free Soil platform of 1848 called both for barring
slavery
from western territories and for the federal government to
provide free
homesteads to settlers in the new territories. Unlike
abolitionism, the “free
soil” idea also appealed to the racism so widespread in northern
society.
Wilmot himself insisted that his controversial proviso was
motivated to
advance “the cause and rights of the free white man,” in part by
preventing
him from having to compete with “black labor.”
To white southerners, the idea of barring slavery from territory
acquired from Mexico seemed a violation of their equal rights
as members
Why did the expansion of slavery become the most divisive
political issue in the 1840s and 1850s?
Zachary Taylor

Economic betterment
The Free Soil platform of 1848
of the Union. Just as northerners believed westward expansion
essential
to their economic well-being, southern leaders became
convinced that
slavery must expand or die. Moreover, the admission of new
free states
would overturn the delicate political balance between the
sections and
make the South a permanent minority. Southern interests would
not be
secure in a Union dominated by non-slaveholding states.
Crisis and Compromise
In world history, the year 1848 is remembered as the
“springtime of
nations,” a time of democratic uprisings against the monarchies
of Europe
and demands by ethnic minorities for national independence.
American
principles of liberty and self-government appeared to be
triumphing
in the Old World. The Chartist movement in Great Britain
organized
massive demonstrations in support of a proposed Charter that
demanded
democratic reforms. The French replaced their monarchy with a
republic.

Hungarians proclaimed their independence from Austrian rule.
Patriots
in Italy and Germany, both divided into numerous states,
demanded
national unification. But the revolutionary tide receded.
Chartism faded
away, Emperor Napoleon III soon restored the French
monarchy, and
revolts in Budapest, Rome, and other cities were crushed.
Would their
own experiment in self-government, some Americans wondered,
suffer
the same fate as the failed revolutions of Europe?
With the slavery issue appearing more and more ominous, estab-
lished party leaders moved to resolve differences between the
sections. In
1850, California asked to be admitted to the Union as a free
state. Many
southerners opposed the measure, fearing that it would upset the
sectional
balance in Congress. Senator Henry Clay offered a plan with
four main
provisions that came to be known as the Compromise of 1850.
California
would enter the Union as a free state. The slave trade, but not
slavery itself,
would be abolished in the nation’s capital. A stringent new law
would
allow southerners to reclaim runaway slaves. And the status of
slavery in
the remaining territories acquired from Mexico would be left to
the deci-
sion of the local white inhabitants. The United States would
also agree to
pay off the massive debt Texas had accumulated while

independent.
The Great Debate
In the Senate debate on the Compromise, the divergent sectional
positions
received eloquent expression. Powerful leaders spoke for and
against com-
promise. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts announced his
willingness to
Attempts to resolve sectional
differences
Developments in Europe
The view of Southern leaders
381A D O S E O F A R S E N I C
abandon the Wilmot Proviso and accept a new fugitive slave law
if this
were the price of sectional peace. John C. Calhoun, again
representing South
Carolina, was too ill to speak. A colleague read his remarks
rejecting the very
idea of compromise. The North must yield, Calhoun insisted, or
the Union
could not survive. William H. Seward of New York also
opposed compromise.
To southerners’ talk of their constitutional rights, Seward
responded that a
“higher law” than the Constitution condemned slavery—the law
of moral ity.

Here was the voice of abolitionism, now represented in the U.S.
Senate.
President Zachary Taylor, like Andrew Jackson a southerner but
a strong nationalist, insisted that all Congress needed to do was
admit
California to the Union. But Taylor died suddenly of an
intestinal infec-
tion on July 9, 1850. His successor, Millard Fillmore of New
York, threw
his support to Clay’s proposals. Fillmore helped to break the
impasse in
Congress and secure adoption of the Compromise of 1850.
The Fugitive Slave Issue
For one last time, political leaders had removed the dangerous
slavery
question from congressional debate. The new Fugitive Slave
Act, how-
ever, made further controversy inevitable. The law allowed
special federal
commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without
benefit of
a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual. It
prohibited local
authorities from interfering with the capture of fugitives and
required
individual citizens to assist in such capture when called upon by
federal
agents. Thus, southern leaders, usually strong defenders of
states’ rights
and local autonomy, supported a measure that brought federal
agents
into communities throughout the North, armed with the power to
over-

ride local law enforcement and judicial procedures to secure the
return of
runaway slaves. The security of slavery was more important to
them than
states’-rights consistency.
During the 1850s, federal tribunals heard more than 300 cases
throughout the free states and ordered 157 fugitives returned to
the South,
many at the government’s expense. But the law further widened
sectional
divisions. In a series of dramatic confrontations, fugitives,
aided by abo-
litionist allies, violently resisted recapture. A large crowd in
1851 rescued
the escaped slave Jerry from jail in Syracuse, New York, and
spirited him
off to Canada. In the same year, an owner who attempted to
recapture a
fugitive was killed in Christiana, Pennsylvania.
In the North, several thousand fugitives and freeborn blacks,
worried
that they might be swept up in the stringent provisions of the
Fugitive
Slave Act, fled to safety in Canada. The sight of so many
refugees seeking
Senator Daniel Webster of
Massachusetts in a daguerreotype
from 1850, the year his speech in
support of the Compromise of 1850

contributed to its passage.
An 1855 broadside depicting the life
of Anthony Burns, a runaway slave
captured in Boston and returned to
the South in 1854 by federal officials
enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.
Why did the expansion of slavery become the most divisive
political issue in the 1840s and 1850s?
liberty in a foreign land challenged the familiar image of the
United States
as an asylum for freedom.
Douglas and Popular Sovereignty
At least temporarily, the Compromise of 1850 seemed to have
restored
sectional peace and party unity. In the 1852 presidential
election, Democrat
Franklin Pierce won a sweeping victory over the Whig Winfield
Scott on
a platform that recognized the Compromise as a final settlement
of the
slavery controversy.
In 1854, however, the old political order finally succumbed to

the dis-
ruptive pressures of sectionalism. Early in that year, Illinois
senator Stephen
A. Douglas introduced a bill to provide territorial governments
for Kansas
and Nebraska, located within the Louisiana Purchase. A strong
believer in
western development, he hoped that a transcontinental railroad
could be
constructed through Kansas or Nebraska. Southerners in
Congress, how-
ever, seemed adamant against allowing the organization of new
free territo-
ries that might further upset the sectional balance. Douglas
hoped to satisfy
them by applying the principle of popular sovereignty, whereby
the status
of slavery would be determined by the votes of local settlers,
not Congress.
To Douglas, popular sovereignty embodied the idea of local
self-government
and offered a middle ground between the extremes of North and
South.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Unlike the lands taken from Mexico, Kansas and Nebraska lay
in the
nation’s heartland, directly in the path of westward migration.
Slavery,
moreover, was prohibited there under the terms of the Missouri
Compromise, which Douglas’s bill repealed. In response to
Douglas’s
proposal, a group of antislavery congressmen issued the Appeal
of the
Independent Democrats. It arraigned Douglas’s bill as a “gross

violation of a
sacred pledge,” part and parcel of “an atrocious plot” to convert
free terri-
tory into a “dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters
and slaves.”
It helped to convince millions of northerners that southern
leaders aimed
at nothing less than extending their peculiar institution
throughout the
West.
Thanks to Douglas’s energetic leadership, the Kansas-Nebraska
Act
became law in 1854. But it shattered the Democratic Party’s
unity and
sparked a profound reorganization of American politics. During
the next
two years, the Whig Party, unable to develop a unified response
to the
political crisis, collapsed. From a region divided between the
two parties,
Political transformation
The Appeal of the
Independent Democrats
Kansas, Nebraska, and slavery
383T H E R I S E O F T H E R E P U B L I C A N P A R T
Y
the South became solidly Democratic. Most northern Whigs,
augmented

by thousands of disgruntled Democrats, joined a new
organization, the
Republican Party, dedicated to preventing the further expansion
of slavery.
T H E R I S E O F T H E R E P U B L I C A N P A R T Y
The Northern Economy
The disruptive impact of slavery on the traditional parties was
the imme-
diate cause of political transformation in the mid-1850s. But the
rise of the
Republican Party also reflected underlying economic and social
changes,
notably the completion of the market revolution and the
beginning of mass
immigration from Europe.
Missouri Compromise Line 36°30'N
Mason-D
ixon Line
see inset
WI
MI
INIL
OH
PA
NY

VA
KY
TN NC
SC
MS AL GA
FL
LATX
AR
MO
IA
MINNESOTA
TERRITORY
NJ
VT
NH
ME
MA
RI
CT
DE
MDCA

OREGON
TERRITORY
WASHINGTON
TERRITORY
NEBRASKA
TERRITORY
KANSAS
TERRITORY
INDIAN
TERRITORY
UTAH
TERRITORY
NEW MEXICO
TERRITORY
MEXICO
BRITISH CANADA
Atchison
Leavenworth
Lecompton
Lawrence
Pottawatomie
Massacre
Osawatomie

MISSOURIKANSAS
TERRITORY
Missou
ri R
.
BLEEDING KANSAS
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
Free states and territories
Slave states
Indian territory (unorganized)
Open to slavery by popular sovereignty
under the Compromise of 1850
Open to slavery by popular sovereignty
under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act opened
a vast area in the nation’s heartland
to the possible spread of slavery by
repealing the Missouri Compromise

and providing that settlers would
determine the status of slavery in
these territories.
T H E K A N S A S - N E B R A S K A A C T , 1 8 5 4
What combination of issues and events fueled the creation of
the Republican Party in the 1850s?
Boston
Portland
Montreal
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Washington, D.C.
Wilmington
Richmond
Savannah

Charleston
Chattanooga
Atlanta
Nashville
Mobile
New Orleans
Vicksburg
Memphis
St. Louis
St. Joseph
Alton
Chicago
Cincinnati
Toledo
Detroit
Toronto
Buffalo
Pittsburgh

Houston
Lake Superior
La
ke
M
ic
hi
ga
n
Lake H
uron
Lak
e Er
ie
Lake O
ntario
Gulf of Mexico
Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
100

100
200 miles
200 kilometers
Trunk lines
Railroads
T H E R A I L R O A D N E T W O R K , 1 8 5 0 s
The rapid expansion of the railroad network in the 1850s linked
the Northeast and Old Northwest in a web of commerce. The
South’s
rail network was considerably less developed, accounting for
only 30 percent of the nation’s track mileage.
Y
The period from 1843 to 1857 witnessed explosive economic
growth,
especially in the North. The catalyst was the completion of the
railroad
network. From 5,000 miles in 1848, railroad track mileage grew
to
30,000 by 1860, with most of the construction occurring in
Ohio, Illinois,
and other states of the Old Northwest. Four great trunk railroads
now
linked eastern cities with western farming and commercial
centers. The

railroads completed the reorientation of the Northwest’s trade
from the
South to the East. As late as 1850, most western farmers still
shipped their
produce down the Mississippi River. Ten years later, however,
railroads
transported nearly all their crops to the East, at a fraction of the
previous
cost. Eastern industrialists marketed manufactured goods to the
com-
mercial farmers of the West, while residents of the region’s
growing cities
consumed the food westerners produced. The economic
integration of the
Northwest and Northeast created the groundwork for their
political unifi-
cation in the Republican Party.
Although most northerners still lived in small towns and rural
areas,
the majority of the workforce no longer labored in agriculture.
Two great
areas of industrial production had arisen. One, along the
Atlantic coast,
stretched from Boston to Philadelphia and Baltimore. A second
was cen-
tered on or near the Great Lakes, in inland cities like Buffalo,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh, and Chicago. Driven by railroad expansion, coal
mining and
iron manufacturing were growing rapidly. Chicago, the Old
Northwest’s
major rail center and the jumping-off place for settlers heading
for the
Great Plains, had become a complex manufacturing center.
Although the

southern economy was also growing and the continuing
expansion of cot-
ton production brought wealth to slaveholders, the South did not
share in
these broad economic changes.
The Rise and Fall of the
Know-Nothings
Nativism—hostility to immigrants, espe-
cially Catholics—became a national politi-
cal movement with the sudden appearance
in 1854 of the American, or Know-
Nothing, Party (so called because it began
as a secret organization whose members,
when asked about its existence, were sup-
posed to respond, “I know nothing”). The
party trumpeted its dedication to reserving
A lithograph from around 1860
depicts the town of Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, home of a major
iron works. A railroad speeds along
in the foreground, while factory
smokestacks dot the horizon. The tidy
buildings in the center suggest that
industrialization has not upset social
harmony. Industrial development in

the north widened the gap between
the sections.
The railroad network in
the North
Integration of Northwest
and Northeast
political office for native-born Americans and to resisting the
“aggres-
sions” of the Catholic Church, such as its supposed efforts to
undermine
public school systems. The Know-Nothings swept the 1854 state
elections
in Massachusetts, electing the governor, all of the state’s
congressmen,
and nearly every member of the state legislature. In many
states, nativists
emerged as a major component of victorious “anti-Nebraska”
coalitions
of voters opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the North, the
Know-
Nothings’ appeal combined anti-Catholic and antislavery
sentiment, with
opposition to the sale of liquor often added to the equation.

Despite severe anti-Irish discrimination in jobs, housing, and
educa-
tion, however, it is remarkable how little came of demands that
immi-
grants be barred from the political nation. All European
immigrants
benefited from being white. The newcomers had the good
fortune to arrive
after white male suffrage had become the norm and
automatically received
the right to vote.
The Free Labor Ideology
By 1856, it was clear that the Republican Party—a coalition of
antislavery
Democrats, northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know-Nothings
opposed to
the further expansion of slavery—would become the major
alternative to
the Democratic Party in the North. The party’s appeal rested on
the idea of
“free labor.” In Republican hands, the antithesis between “free
society” and
The Propagation Society—More
Free than Welcome, an anti-Catholic
cartoon from the 1850s, illustrates the
nativist fear that the Catholic Church
poses a threat to American society.
Pope Pius IX, cross in hand, steps

ashore from a boat that also holds
five bishops. Addressing “Young
America,” who holds a Bible, he says
that he has come to “take charge of
your spiritual welfare.” A bishop adds,
“I cannot bear to see that boy, with
that horrible book.”
Nativism and antislavery
Suffrage for European
immigrants
The Republican Party and
free labor
Y
“slave society” coalesced into a comprehensive worldview that
glorified
the North as the home of progress, opportunity, and freedom.
The defining quality of northern society, Republicans declared,
was
the opportunity it offered each laborer to move up to the status
of land-

owning farmer or independent craftsman, thus achieving the
economic
independence essential to freedom. Slavery, by contrast,
spawned a social
order consisting of degraded slaves, poor whites with no hope
of advance-
ment, and idle aristocrats. If slavery were to spread into the
West, northern
free laborers would be barred, and their chances for social
advancement
severely diminished. Slavery, Republicans insisted, must be
kept out of
the territories so that free labor could flourish. The Republican
platform
of 1856 condemned slavery as one of the “twin relics of
barbarism” in the
United States (the other being Mormon polygamy).
Republicans were not abolitionists—they focused on preventing
the
spread of slavery, not attacking it where it existed. Nonetheless,
many
party leaders viewed the nation’s division into free and slave
societies as
an “irrepressible conflict,” as Senator William H. Seward of
New York put
it in 1858, that eventually would have to be resolved.
“Bleeding Kansas” and the Election of 1856
Their free labor outlook, which resonated so effectively with
deeply held
northern values, helps to explain the Republicans’ rapid rise to
prominence.
But dramatic events in 1855 and 1856 also fueled the party’s
growth. When

George Catlin’s 1827 painting Five
Points depicts a working-class
immigrant neighborhood in New
York City that gained a reputation for
crime, drinking, and overcrowding.
Free labor versus slavery
Spread of slavery
Kansas held elections in 1854 and 1855, hun-
dreds of proslavery Misso urians crossed the
border to cast fraudulent ballots. President
Franklin Pierce recognized the legitimacy of
the resulting proslavery legislature, but set-
tlers from free states soon established a rival
government. A sporadic civil war broke out
in Kansas in which some 200 persons even-
tually lost their lives. In one incident, in May
1856, a proslavery mob attacked the free-
soil stronghold of Lawrence, burning public
buildings and pillaging private homes.
“Bleeding Kansas” seemed to discredit

Douglas’s policy of leaving the decision on
slavery up to the local population, thus aiding the Republicans.
The party
also drew strength from an unprecedented incident in the halls
of Congress.
South Carolina representative Preston Brooks, wielding a gold-
tipped cane,
beat the antislavery senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
unconscious.
In the election of 1856, the Republican Party chose as its
candidate John
C. Frémont and drafted a platform that strongly opposed the
further expan-
sion of slavery. Stung by the northern reaction to the Kansas-
Nebraska
Act, the Democrats nominated James Buchanan, who had been
minister to
Great Britain in 1854 and thus had no direct connection with
that divisive
measure. The Democratic platform endorsed the principle of
popular sover-
eignty as the only viable solution to the slavery controversy.
Meanwhile, the
Know-Nothings presented ex- president Millard Fillmore as
their candidate.
Frémont outpolled Buchanan in the North, carrying eleven of
sixteen free
states—a remarkable achievement for an organization that had
existed for
only two years. But Buchanan won the entire South and the key
northern
states of Illi nois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, enough to ensure
his victory.
Fillmore carried only Maryland. The 1856 election returns made

starkly
clear that political parties had re oriented themselves along
sectional lines.
One major party had been destroyed, another seriously
weakened, and a
new one had arisen, devoted entirely to the interests of the
North.
T H E E M E R G E N C E O F L I N C O L N
The final collapse of the party system took place during the
administration
of a president who epitomized the old political order. Born
during George
Washington’s presidency, James Buchanan had served in
Pennsylvania’s
A contemporary print denounces
South Carolina congressman
Preston S. Brooks’s assault on
Massachusetts senator Charles
Sumner in May 1856. The attack
on the floor of the Senate was in
retaliation for Sumner’s speech
accusing Senator Andrew P. Butler
(Brooks’s distant cousin) of having
taken “the harlot slavery” as his

mistress.
Parties along sectional lines
389T H E E M E R G E N C E O F L I N C O L N
legislature, in both houses of Congress, and
as secretary of state under James K. Polk. A
staunch believer in the Union, he commit-
ted himself to pacifying inflamed sectional
emotions. Few presidents have failed more
disastrously in what they set out to accom-
plish.
The Dred Scott Decision
Even before his inauguration, Buchanan
became aware of an impending Supreme
Court decision that held out the hope of
settling the slavery controversy once and
for all. This was the case of Dred Scott.
During the 1830s, Scott had accompanied
his owner, Dr. John Emerson of Missouri,
to Illinois, where slavery had been pro-
hibited by the Northwest Ordinance of
1787 and by state law, and to Wisconsin
Territory, where it was barred by the
Missouri Compromise. After returning to Missouri, Scott sued
for his
freedom, claiming that residence on free soil had made him
free.
The Dred Scott decision, one of the most famous—or

infamous—
rulings in the long history of the Supreme Court, was announced
in March
1857, two days after Buchanan’s inauguration. Speaking for the
majority,
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared that only white persons
could be citi-
zens of the United States. The nation’s founders, Taney
insisted, believed
that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to
respect.”
As for Scott’s residence in Wisconsin, the ruling stated that
Congress
possessed no power under the Constitution to bar slavery from a
territory.
The Missouri Compromise, recently repealed by the Kansas-
Nebraska
Act, had been unconstitutional, and so was any measure
interfering
with southerners’ right to bring slaves into the western
territories. The
decision in effect declared unconstitutional the Republican
platform of
restricting slavery’s expansion. It also seemed to undermine
Douglas’s
doctrine of popular sovereignty. For if Congress lacked the
power to pro-
hibit slavery in a territory, how could a territorial legislature
created by
Congress do so?
Slavery, announced President Buchanan, henceforth existed in
all
the territories, “by virtue of the Constitution.” In 1858, his
administra-

tion attempted to admit Kansas as a slave state under the
Lecompton
6
4
4
4
9
4
7 9 10
3
8
1012
12
15
13 23
6
5
27
35
5 5 8
13

4
67
3
8
11
Democrat Buchanan
Republican Frémont
American Fillmore
Party Candidate
Electoral Vote
(Share)
Popular Vote
(Share)
174 (59%)
114 (39%)
1,838,169 (45%)
1,341,264 (33%)
874,534 (22%)8 (3%)
O F 1 8 5 6
What enabled Lincoln to emerge from the divisive party politics
of the 1850s?
The Lecompton battle

Chief Justice Taney
Constitution, which had been drafted by a pro-southern
convention and
never submitted to a popular vote. Outraged by this violation of
popular
sovereignty, Douglas formed an unlikely alliance with
congressional
Republicans to block the attempt. The Lecompton battle
convinced southern
Democrats that they could not trust their party’s most popular
northern
leader.
Lincoln and Slavery
The depth of Americans’ divisions over slavery was brought
into sharp
focus in 1858 in one of the most storied election campaigns in
the nation’s
history. Seeking reelection to the Senate as both a champion of
popular
sovereignty and the man who had prevented the administration
from forc-
ing slavery on the people of Kansas, Douglas faced an
unexpectedly strong
challenge from Abraham Lincoln, then little known outside of
Illinois.
Born into a modest farm family in Kentucky in 1809, Lincoln
had moved
as a youth to frontier Indiana and then Illinois. He had served

four terms
as a Whig in the state legislature and one in Congress from
1847 to 1849.
Lincoln developed a critique of slavery and its expansion that
gave
voice to the central values of the emerging Republican Party
and the mil-
lions of northerners whose loyalty it commanded. His speeches
combined
the moral fervor of the abolitionists with the respect for order
and the
Constitution of more conservative northerners. If slavery were
allowed to
expand, he warned, the “love of liberty” would be extinguished
and with
it America’s special mission to be a symbol of democracy for
the entire
world.
Lincoln was fascinated and disturbed by the writings of
proslavery
ideologues like George Fitzhugh (discussed in Chapter 11), and
he rose to
the defense of northern society. “I want every man to have the
chance,” said
Lincoln, “and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he
can better
his condition.” Blacks might not be the equal of whites in all
respects, but
in their “natural right” to the fruits of their labor, they were
“my equal and
the equal of all others.”
The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign

The campaign against Douglas, the North’s preeminent political
leader,
created Lincoln’s national reputation. Accepting his party’s
nomination for
the Senate in June 1858, Lincoln announced, “A house divided
against itself
cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure,
permanently half
Dred Scott as painted in 1857, the
year the Supreme Court ruled that he
and his family must remain in slavery.
(Collection of the New York Historical
Society)
“A house divided”
slave and half free.” Lincoln’s point was not that civil war was
imminent, but
that Americans must choose between favoring and opposing
slavery.
The Lincoln-Douglas debates, held in seven Illinois towns and
attended by tens of thousands of listeners, remain classics of
American polit-
ical oratory. Clashing definitions of freedom lay at their heart.
To Lincoln,
freedom meant opposition to slavery. Douglas argued, on the

other hand,
that the essence of freedom lay in local self-government and
individual self-
determination. A large and diverse nation could only survive by
respecting
the right of each locality to determine its own institutions. In
response to
a question posed by Lincoln during the Freeport debate,
Douglas insisted
that popular sovereignty was not incompatible with the Dred
Scott decision.
Although territorial legislatures could no longer exclude slavery
directly,
he argued, if the people wished to keep slaveholders out all they
needed to
do was refrain from giving the institution legal protection.
Lincoln shared many of the racial prejudices of his day. He
opposed
giving Illinois blacks the right to vote or serve on juries and
spoke fre-
quently of colonizing blacks overseas as the best solution to the
problems
of slavery and race. Yet, unlike Douglas, Lincoln did not use
appeals to
racism to garner votes. And he refused to exclude blacks from
the human
family. No less than whites, they were entitled to the
inalienable rights of
the Declaration of Independence, which applied to “all men, in
all lands,
everywhere,” not merely to Europeans and their descendants.
The 1858 Illinois election returns revealed a state sharply
divided, like
the nation itself. Southern Illinois, settled from the South, voted

strongly
Democratic, while the rapidly growing northern part of the state
was
firmly in the Republican column. Until the adoption of the
Seventeenth
Amendment in the early twentieth century, each state’s
legislature chose
its U.S. senators. The Democrats emerged with a narrow margin
in the leg-
islature, and Douglas was reelected. His victory was remarkable
because
elsewhere in the North Republicans swept to victory in 1858.
John Brown at Harpers Ferry
An armed assault by the abolitionist John Brown on the federal
arsenal at
Harpers Ferry, Virginia, further heightened sectional tensions.
During
the civil war in Kansas, Brown traveled to the territory. In May
1856, after
the attack on Lawrence, he and a few followers murdered five
proslavery
settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. For the next two years, he
traveled through
the North and Canada, raising funds and enlisting followers for
a war
against slavery.
Abraham Lincoln in 1858, the year of
the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Stephen A. Douglas, in a
daguerreotype from around 1853.

of the 1850s?
392
The most famous political campaign in American history, the
1858 race for the U.S. Senate
between Senator Stephen A. Douglas (a former Illinois judge)
and Abraham Lincoln was
highlighted by seven debates in which they discussed the
politics of slavery and contrasting
understandings of freedom.
DOUGLAS: Mr. Lincoln says that this government cannot
endure permanently in the same condition in
which it was made by its framers—divided into free and slave
states. He says that it has existed for about
seventy years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot
endure permanently on the same principles
and in the same relative conditions in which our fathers made it.
. . . One of the reserved rights of the
states, was the right to regulate the relations between master
and servant, on the slavery question.
Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously upon this
great principle of popular sovereignty
which guarantees to each state and territory the right to do as it
pleases on all things local and domestic
instead of Congress interfering, we will continue to be at peace
one with another.

LINCOLN: Judge Douglas says, “Why can’t this Union endure
permanently, half slave and half free?”
“Why can’t we let it stand as our fathers placed it?” That is the
exact difficulty between us. . . . I say
when this government was first established it was the policy of
its founders to prohibit the spread of
slavery into the new territories of the United States, where it
had not existed. But Judge Douglas and his
friends have broken up that policy and placed it upon a new
basis by which it is to become national and
perpetual. All I have asked or desired anywhere is that it should
be placed back again upon the basis that
the founders of our government originally placed it—restricting
it from the new territories. . . .
Judge Douglas assumes that we have no interest in them—that
we have no right to interfere. . . . Do
we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so
express myself? Do we not feel an interest
in getting to that outlet with such institutions as we would like
to have prevail there? Now irrespective
of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there is a
right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still
in favor of our new territories being in such a condition that
white men may find a home. I am in favor
of this not merely for our own people, but as an outlet for free
white people everywhere, the world over—in
which Hans and Baptiste and Patrick, and all other men from all
the world, may find new homes and
better their conditions in life.
From the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)

393
DOUGLAS: For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any
and every form. I believe this government
was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white
men, for the benefit of white men and their
posterity forever . . . I do not believe that the Almighty made
the negro capable of self-government. I
say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers of
the Declaration of Independence had no
reference to the negro whatever when they declared all men to
be created equal. They desired to express
by that phrase, white men, men of European birth and European
descent . . . when they spoke of the
equality of men.
LINCOLN: I have no purpose to introduce political and social
equality between the white and the black
races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in
my judgment will probably forever forbid
their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and
inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that
there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in
favor of the race to which I belong, having
the superior position. . . . But I hold that notwithstanding all
this, there is no reason in the world why the
negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the
Declaration of Independence, the right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as
much entitled to these as the white man.
I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many
respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in

moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the
bread, without leave of anybody else, which
his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge
Douglas, and the equal of every living man.
DOUGLAS: He tells you that I will not argue the question
whether slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why
I will not do it. . . . I hold that the people of the slaveholding
states are civilized men as well as ourselves,
that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are
accountable to God and their posterity and not
to us. It is for them to decide therefore the moral and religious
right of the slavery question for themselves
within their own limits. . . . He says that he looks
forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished
everywhere. I look forward to a time when each
state shall be allowed to do as it pleases.
LINCOLN: I suppose that the real difference
between Judge Douglas and his friends, and the
Republicans, is that the Judge is not in favor
of making any difference between slavery and
liberty . . . and consequently every sentiment he
utters discards the idea that there is any wrong
in slavery. . . . That is the real issue. That is the
issue that will continue in this country when these
poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall
be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these
two principles—right and wrong—throughout the
world.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. How do Lincoln and Douglas differ

on what rights black Americans are
entitled to enjoy?
2. Why does Lincoln believe the nation
cannot exist forever half slave and half
free, whereas Douglas believes it can?
3. How does each of the speakers balance
the right of each state to manage its
own affairs against the right of every
person to be free?
On October 16, 1859, with twenty-one men, five of them black,
Brown
seized Harpers Ferry. The plan made little military sense.
Brown’s band
was soon surrounded and killed or captured by a detachment of
federal
soldiers headed by Colonel Robert E. Lee. Placed on trial for
treason
against the state of Virginia, Brown conducted himself with
dignity and
courage. When Virginia’s governor, Henry A. Wise, spurned
pleas for

clemency and ordered Brown executed, he turned Brown into a
martyr to
much of the North.
To the South, the failure of Brown’s assault seemed less
significant
than the adulation he seemed to arouse from much of the
northern public.
His raid and execution further widened the breach between the
sections.
Brown’s last letter was a brief, prophetic statement: “I, John
Brown, am
quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be
purged away
but with blood.”
The Rise of Southern Nationalism
With the Republicans continuing to gain strength in the North,
Democrats
might have been expected to put a premium on party unity as
the
election of 1860 approached. By this time, however, a sizable
group of
southerners now viewed their region’s prospects as more
favorable
outside the Union than within it. To remain in the Union,
secession-
ists argued, meant to accept “bondage” to the North. But an
indepen-
dent South could become the foundation of a slave empire
ringing the
Caribbean and embracing Cuba, other West Indian islands,
Mexico, and
parts of Central America.

More and more southerners were speaking openly of southward
expansion. In 1854, Pierre Soulé of Louisiana, the American
ambassador
to Spain, had persuaded the ministers to Britain and France to
join him in
signing the Ostend Manifesto, which called on the United States
to pur-
chase or seize Cuba, where slavery was still legal, from Spain.
Meanwhile,
the military adventurer William Walker led a series of
“filibustering”
expeditions (the term derived from the Spanish word for pirate,
filibustero)
in Central America.
By the late 1850s, southern leaders were bending every effort to
strengthen the bonds of slavery. “Slavery is our king,” declared
a South
Carolina politician in 1860. “Slavery is our truth, slavery is our
divine
right.” By early 1860, seven states of the Deep South had gone
on record
demanding that the Democratic platform pledge to protect
slavery in
all the territories that had not yet been admitted to the Union as
states.
John Brown in an 1856 photograph.
Secessionists
Ostend Manifesto

Virtually no northern politician could accept this position. For
southern
leaders to insist on it would guarantee the destruction of the
Democratic
Party as a national institution. But southern nationalists, known
as
“fire-eaters,” hoped to split the party and the country and form
an inde-
pendent Southern Confederacy.
When the Democratic convention met in April 1860, Douglas’s
supporters
commanded a majority but not the two-thirds required for a
presidential
nomination. When the convention adopted a platform
reaffirming the
doctrine of popular sovereignty, delegates from the seven slave
states
of the Lower South walked out, and the gathering recessed in
confusion.
Six weeks later, it reconvened, replaced the bolters with
Douglas support-
ers, and nominated him for president. In response, southern
Democrats
placed their own ticket in the field, headed by John C.
Breckinridge of
Kentucky. Breckinridge insisted that slavery must be protected
in the
western territories.
The Democratic Party, the last great bond of national unity, had
been
shattered. National conventions had traditionally been places

where party
managers, mindful of the need for unity in the fall campaign,
reconciled
their differences. But in 1860, neither northern nor southern
Democrats
were interested in conciliation. Southern Democrats no longer
trusted
An 1835 painting of the federal
arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
(now West Virginia). John Brown’s
raid on Harpers Ferry in October
1859 helped to bring on the Civil War.
of the 1850s?
Democratic Party shattered
their northern counterparts. Douglas’s
backers, for their part, would not accept
a platform that doomed their party to
certain defeat in the North.
Meanwhile, Republicans gathered
in Chicago and chose Lincoln as their
standard-bearer. The party platform denied
the validity of the Dred Scott decision, reaf-

firmed Republicans’ opposition to slavery’s
expansion, and added economic planks
designed to appeal to a broad array of north-
ern voters—free homesteads in the West,
a protective tariff, and government aid in
building a transcontinental railroad.
In effect, two presidential campaigns
took place in 1860. In the North, Lincoln
and Douglas were the combatants. In
the South, the Republicans had no pres-
ence, and three candidates contested the
election—Douglas, Breckinridge, and John
Bell of Tennessee, the candidate of the hast-
ily organized Constitutional Union Party.
A haven for Unionist former Whigs, this new party adopted a
platform
consisting of a single pledge—to preserve “the Constitution as
it is [that is,
with slavery] and the Union as it was [without sectional
discord].”
The most striking thing about the election returns was their sec-
tional character. Lincoln carried all of the North except New
Jersey,
receiving 1.8 million popular votes (54 percent of the regional
total and
40 percent of the national) and 180 electoral votes (a clear
majority).
Breckinridge captured most of the slave states, although Bell
carried
three Upper South states and about 40 percent of the southern
vote
as a whole. Douglas placed first only in Missouri, but he was
the only

candidate with significant support in all parts of the country.
His failure
to carry either section, however, suggested that a traditional
political
career based on devotion to the Union was no longer possible.
Without
a single vote in ten southern states, Lincoln was elected the
nation’s
sixteenth president. But because of the North’s superiority in
popula-
tion, Lincoln would still have carried the electoral college and
thus been
elected president even if the votes of his three opponents had all
been
cast for a single candidate.
6
4
4
4
3
9
4
4
7 9 10
3

8
1012
12
15
13 23
6
5
27
35
5 5 8
13
4
6
3
4
3
8
11
Republican Lincoln
Southern Democrat Breckinridge
Constitutional Union Bell
Northern Democrat Douglas
States that Republicans lost in 1856, won in 1860
Party Candidate

Electoral Vote
(Share)
Popular Vote
(Share)
180 (59%)
72 (24%)
39 (13%)
12 (4%)
1,866,452 (40%)
847,953 (18%)
590,831 (13%)
1,371,157 (29%)
O F 1 8 6 0
The election of Lincoln
397T H E I M P E N D I N G C R I S I S
T H E I M P E N D I N G C R I S I S
The Secession Movement
In the eyes of many white southerners, Lincoln’s victory placed
their

future at the mercy of a party avowedly hostile to their region’s
values and
interests. Those advocating secession did not believe Lincoln’s
adminis-
tration would take immediate steps against slavery in the states.
But if,
as seemed quite possible, the election of 1860 marked a
fundamental shift
in power, the beginning of a long period of Republican rule,
who could
say what the North’s antislavery sentiment would demand in
five years,
or ten? Slaveowners, moreover, feared Republican efforts to
extend their
party into the South by appealing to non-slaveholders. Rather
than accept
permanent minority status, Deep South political leaders boldly
struck for
their region’s independence.
In the months that followed Lincoln’s election, seven states
stretch-
ing from South Carolina to Texas seceded from the Union.
These were
the states of the Cotton Kingdom, where slaves represented a
larger part
of the total population than in the Upper South. First to secede
was South
Carolina, the state with the highest percentage of slaves in its
population
and a long history of political radicalism. On December 20,
1860, the legis-
lature unanimously voted to leave the Union. Its Declaration of
the Immediate
An 1860 engraving of a mass meeting

in Savannah, Georgia, shortly after
Lincoln’s election as president,
which called for the state to secede
from the Union. The banner on the
obelisk at the center reads, “Our
Motto Southern Rights, Equality of
the States, Don’t Tread on Me”—the
last a slogan from the American
Revolution.
Southern response to Lincoln’s
victory
What were the final steps on the road to secession?
South Carolina
Causes of Secession placed the issue of slavery squarely at the
center of the
crisis. Experience had proved “that slaveholding states cannot
be safe in
subjection to nonslaveholding states.”

The Secession Crisis
As the Union unraveled, President Buchanan seemed paralyzed.
He
denied that a state could secede, but he also insisted that the
federal
government had no right to use force against it. Other political
lead-
ers struggled to find a formula to resolve the crisis. Senator
John J.
Crittenden of Kentucky, a slave state on the border between
North
and South, offered the most widely supported compromise plan
of the
secession winter. Embodied in a series of unamendable
constitutional
amendments, Crittenden’s proposal would have guaranteed the
future
of slavery in the states where it existed and extended the
Missouri
Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, dividing between slavery
and
free soil all territories “now held, or hereafter acquired.” The
seceding
states rejected the compromise as too little, too late. But many
in the
Upper South and North saw it as a way to settle sectional
differences
and prevent civil war.
Crittenden’s plan, however, foundered on the opposition of
Abraham
Lincoln. Willing to conciliate the South on issues like the return
of fugi-
tive slaves, Lincoln took an unyielding stand against the
expansion of

slavery. “We have just carried an election,” he wrote, “on
principles fairly
stated to the people. Now we are told in advance that the
government
shall be broken up unless we surrender to those we have beaten,
before
we take the offices. . . . If we surrender, it is the end of us and
the end of the
government.”
Before Lincoln assumed office on March 4, 1861, the seven
seceding
states formed the Confederate States of America, adopted a
constitution,
and chose as their president Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
With a few
alterations—the president served a single six-year term; cabinet
members,
as in Britain, could sit in Congress—the Confederate
constitution was
modeled closely on that of the United States. It departed from
the federal
Constitution, however, in explicitly guaranteeing slave property
both in
the states and in any territories the new nation acquired. The
“corner-
stone” of the Confederacy, announced Davis’s vice president,
Alexander H.
Stephens of Georgia, was “the great truth that the negro is not
equal to the
white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is
his natural
and normal condition.”
Crittenden compromise

Lincoln’s opposition to the
Crittenden plan
The Confederate States of
America
399T H E I M P E N D I N G C R I S I S
And the War Came
In his inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, Lincoln
tried to be
conciliatory. He rejected the right of secession but denied any
intention
of interfering with slavery in the states. He said nothing of
retaking
the forts, arsenals, and customs houses the Confederacy had
seized,
although he did promise to “hold” remaining federal property in
the
seceding states. But Lincoln also issued a veiled warning: “In
your hands,
my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous
issue of civil war.”
In his first month as president, Lincoln walked a tightrope. He
avoided any action that might drive more states from the Union,
encour-
aged southern Unionists to assert themselves within the
Confederacy, and
sought to quiet a growing clamor in the North for forceful
action against
secession. Knowing that the risk of war existed, Lincoln strove

to ensure
that if hostilities did break out, the South, not the Union, would
fire the
first shot. And that is precisely what happened on April 12,
1861, at Fort
Sumter, an enclave of Union control in the harbor of
Charleston, South
Carolina.
A few days earlier, Lincoln had notified South Carolina’s
governor
that he intended to replenish the garrison’s dwindling food
supplies.
Viewing Fort Sumter’s presence as an affront to southern
nationhood
and perhaps hoping to force the wavering Upper South to join
the
Lincoln’s response to secession
Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, a
photograph taken on March 4, 1861.
The unfinished dome of the Capitol
building symbolizes the precarious
state of the Union at the time Lincoln
assumed office.
What were the final steps on the road to secession?
Fort Sumter

Confederacy, Jefferson Davis ordered batteries to fire on the
fort. On April
14, its commander surrendered. The following day, Lincoln
proclaimed
that an insurrection existed in the South and called for 75,000
troops to
suppress it. Civil war had begun. Within weeks, Virginia, North
Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. “Both sides
deprecated
war,” Lincoln later said, “but one of them would make war
rather than let
the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than
let it perish.
And the war came.”
The Union created by the founders lay in ruins. The struggle to
rebuild it would bring about a new birth of American freedom.
Bombardment of Fort Sumter,
a lithograph by Nathaniel Currier and
James Ives depicting the beginning
of the Civil War.
401

1. Explain the justifications for the doctrine of manifest
destiny, including material and idealistic motivations.
2. Why did many Americans criticize the Mexican War? How
did they see expansion as a threat to American liberties?
3. How did the concept of “race” develop by the mid-
nineteenth century? How did it enter into the manifest
destiny debate?
4. How did western expansion affect the sectional tensions
between the North and South?
5. How did the market revolution contribute to the rise of
the Republican Party? How did those economic and
political factors serve to unite groups in the Northeast
and in the Northwest, and why was that unity significant?
6. Based on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, how did the two
differ on the expansion of slavery, equal rights, and the
role of the national government? Use examples of their
words to illustrate your points.
7. Why did Stephen Douglas, among others, believe that
“popular sovereignty” could resolve sectional divisions
of the 1850s? Why did the idea not work out?
8. Explain how sectional voting patterns in the 1860 presi-
dential election allowed southern “fire-eaters” to justify
secession.
9. What do the California gold rush and the opening of
Japan reveal about the United States involvement in a
global economic system?

K E Y T E R M S
Tejanos (p. 370)
Texas revolt (p. 370)
Santa Anna (p. 370)
“reannexation” of Texas and
“reoccupation” of Oregon (p. 371)
gold rush (p. 376)
Commodore Matthew Perry (p. 377)
Wilmot Proviso (p. 378)
Free Soil Party (p. 379)
Compromise of 1850 (p. 380)
Fugitive Slave Act (p. 381)
popular sovereignty (p. 382)
Kansas-Nebraska Act (p. 382)
Know-Nothing Party (p. 385)
“Bleeding Kansas” (p. 388)
Dred Scott decision (p. 389)
Lincoln-Douglas debates (p. 391)
Harpers Ferry (p. 391)

“filibustering” expeditions (p. 394)
“fire-eaters” (p. 395)
C E S
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A N E W B I R T H

O F F R E E D O M
C H A P T E R 1 4
T H E C I V I L W A R , 1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6 5
1861 Civil War begins at Fort
Sumter
First Battle of Bull Run
1862 Forts Henry and Donelson
captured
Monitor v. Merrimac sea
battle
Battle of Shiloh
Confederacy institutes the
draft Homestead Act
Seven Days’ Campaign
Second Battle of Bull Run
Union Pacific and Central
Pacific chartered
Morrill Act of 1862
Battle at Antietam
1863 Emancipation Proclamation
Siege of Vicksburg

Battle at Gettysburg
New York draft riots
Lincoln introduces his
Ten-Percent Plan
1864 General Grant begins a war
of attrition
Wade-Davis Bill
General Sherman marches
to the sea
1865 Thirteenth Amendment
Union capture of Richmond
General Lee surrenders to
General Grant at
Appomattox Courthouse
Lincoln assassinated
1866 Ex parte Milligan ruling
Departure of the 7th Regiment, a
lithograph from 1861 illustrating the
departure of a unit of the New York
State militia for service in the Civil

War. A contemporary writer captured
the exuberant spirit of the early days
of the war: “New York was certainly
raving mad with excitement. The ladies
laughed, smiled, sighed, sobbed, and
wept. The men cheered and shouted as
never men cheered and shouted before.”
403T H E F I R S T M O D E R N W A R
Why is the Civil War
considered the first
modern war?
How did a war to preserve
the Union become a war to
end slavery?
How did the Civil War
transform the national
economy and create a

stronger nation-state?
How did the war effort
affect the society and econ-
omy of the Confederacy?
What were the military
and political turning
points of the war?
What were the most impor-
tant wartime “rehearsals
for Reconstruction”?
F O C U S
Q U E S T I O N S
L ike hundreds of thousands of other Americans, Marcus M.
Spiegel volunteered in 1861 to fight in the Civil War. Born into
a Jewish family in Germany in 1829, Spiegel emigrated to Ohio,
where he
married the daughter of a local farmer. When the Civil War
broke out,
the nation’s 150,000 Jews represented less than 1 percent of the
total
population. But Spiegel shared wholeheartedly in American
patriotism.
He went to war, he wrote to his brother-in-law, to defend “the
flag that
was ever ready to protect you and me and every one who sought

its
protection from oppression.” He never wavered in his
commitment to
the “glorious cause” of preserving the Union and its heritage of
freedom.
What one Pennsylvania recruit called “the magic word
Freedom”
shaped how many Union soldiers understood the conflict. But as
the
war progressed, prewar understandings of liberty gave way to
some-
thing new. Millions of northerners who had not been
abolitionists
became convinced that preserving the Union required the
destruction of
slavery. Marcus Spiegel’s changing views mirrored this
transformation.
Spiegel was an ardent Democrat. He shared the era’s racist
attitudes
and thought Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a serious
mistake.
Yet as the Union army penetrated the heart of the Deep South,
Spiegel
became increasingly opposed to slavery. “Since I am here,” he
wrote to
his wife from Louisiana in January 1864, “I have learned and
seen . . .
the horrors of slavery. . . . Never hereafter will I either speak
or vote in
favor of slavery.”
Marcus Spiegel was killed in a minor engagement in Louisiana
in
May 1864, one of hundreds of thousands of Americans to perish
in the

Civil War.
T H E F I R S T M O D E R N W A R
The American Civil War is often called the first modern war.
Never before
had mass armies confronted each other on the battlefield with
the deadly
weapons created by the industrial revolution. The resulting
casualties
dwarfed anything in the American experience. Beginning as a
battle of
army versus army, the war became a conflict of society against
society, in
which the distinction between military and civilian targets often
disap-
peared. In a war of this kind, the effectiveness of political
leadership, the
ability to mobilize economic resources, and a society’s
willingness to keep
up the fight despite setbacks are as crucial to the outcome as
success or
failure on individual battlefields.
Why is the Civil War considered the first modern war?
The Two Combatants
Almost any comparison between Union and Confederacy seemed
to favor
the Union. The population of the North and the loyal border
slave states

numbered 22 million in 1860, whereas only 9 million persons
lived in the
Confederacy, 3.5 million of them slaves. In manufacturing,
railroad mile-
age, and financial resources, the Union far outstripped its
opponent. On
the other hand, the Union confronted by far the greater task. To
restore the
shattered nation, it had to invade and conquer an area larger
than western
Europe. Moreover, Confederate soldiers were highly motivated
fighters,
defending their homes and families.
On both sides, the outbreak of war stirred powerful feelings of
patriot ism. Recruits rushed to enlist, expecting a short, glorious
war.
Later, as enthusiasm waned, both sides resorted to a draft. By
1865, more
Advantages of the North and
South
(May 6, 1861)
(Jan. 26, 1861)
(Feb. 1, 1861)
(Jan. 9, 1861)
(Jan. 11, 1861)
(Jan. 10, 1861)
(Jan. 19, 1861)

(Dec. 20, 1860)
(May 20, 1861)
(May 7, 1861)
(Apr. 17, 1861)
TEXAS
INDIAN
TERRITORY
KANSAS
NEBRASKA
TERRITORY
IOWA
MISSOURI
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA
GEORGIA
FLORIDA
SOUTH
CAROLINA

KENTUCKY
ILLINOIS
WISCONSIN
INDIANA
OHIO
MICHIGAN
PENNSYLVANIA
WEST
VIRGINIA*
VIRGINIA
NEW
JERSEY
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
NEW YORK
UTAH
TERRITORY
Gulf of Mexico
Atlantic
Ocean

0
0
100
100
200 miles
200 kilometers
Border states (slave states that did not secede)
States that seceded before the fall of Fort Sumter
States that seceded after the fall of Fort Sumter
*The western counties of Virginia remained loyal to the Union
and were admitted as the state of West Virginia in 1863.
T H E S E C E S S I O N O F S O U T H E R N S T A T E S ,
1 8 6 0 – 1 8 6 1
By the time secession ran its course,
eleven slave states had left the Union.
than 2 million men had served in the Union army and 900,000
in the
Confederate army. Each was a cross section of its society: the
North’s was

composed largely of farm boys, shopkeepers, artisans, and
urban workers,
while the South’s consisted mostly of non-slaveholding small
farmers,
with slave owners dominating the officer corps.
The Technology of War
Neither the soldiers nor their officers were prepared for the way
technol-
ogy had transformed warfare. The Civil War was the first major
conflict
in which the railroad transported troops and supplies and the
first to see
railroad junctions such as Atlanta and Petersburg become major
military
objectives. The famous sea battle between the Union vessel
Monitor and
the Confederate Merrimac in 1862 was the first demonstration
of the supe-
riority of ironclads over wooden ships, revolutionizing naval
warfare. The
war saw the use of the telegraph for military communication,
the introduc-
tion of observation balloons to view enemy lines, and even
primitive hand
grenades and submarines.
Perhaps most important, a revolution in arms manufacturing had
replaced the traditional musket, accurate at only a short range,
with the
more modern rifle, deadly at 600 yards or more because of its
grooved (or
“rifled”) barrel. This development changed the nature of
combat, empha-
sizing the importance of heavy fortifications and elaborate

trenches and
giving those on the defensive—usually southern armies—a
significant
advantage over attacking forces. The war of rifle and trench
produced the
appalling casualty statistics of Civil War battles. The most
recent estimate
Ironclad ships
The rifle
Sergeant James W. Travis, Thirty-
eighth Illinois Infantry, Union army,
and Private Edwin Francis Jemison,
Second Louisiana Regiment,
Confederate army, two of the nearly
3 million Americans who fought in
the Civil War. Before going off to war,
many soldiers sat for photographs
like these, reproduced on small
cards called cartes de visite, which
they distributed to friends and loved
ones. Jemison was killed in the

Battle of Malvern Hill in July 1862.
Soldiers North and South
of those who perished in the war—around 750,000
men—represents the equivalent, in terms of today’s
population, of more than 7 million men. The death
toll in the Civil War nearly equals the total number of
Americans who died in all the nation’s other wars, from
the Revolution to the war in Iraq.
Nor was either side ready for other aspects of mod-
ern warfare. Medical care remained primitive. Diseases
such as measles, dysentery, malaria, and typhus swept
through army camps, killing more men than did combat.
The Civil War was the first war in which large numbers
of Americans were captured by the enemy and held in
dire conditions in military prisons. Some 50,000 men died in
these pris-
ons, victims of starvation and disease, including 13,000 Union
soldiers at
Andersonville, Georgia.
The Public and the War
Another modern feature of the Civil War was that both sides
were assisted
by a vast propaganda effort to mobilize public opinion. In the
Union, an
outpouring of lithographs, souvenirs, sheet music, and
pamphlets issued

Propaganda
An eight-inch cannon, one of the
weapons forged in the industrial
revolution and deployed in the Civil
War.
War Spirit at Home, an 1866 painting
by the New Jersey artist Lilly M.
Spencer, depicts a family reading
the news of the Union capture of
Vicksburg in 1863. The household
is now composed of women and
children; the husband may be off
in the army. While the children play
as soldiers, the cross in the folds
of the newspaper suggests a less
celebratory reflection on the conflict.
Newspapers brought news of the war
into American homes.

by patriotic organizations and the War Department
reaffirmed northern values, tarred the Democratic Party
with the brush of treason, and accused the South of
numerous crimes against Union soldiers and loyal civil-
ians. Comparable items appeared in the Confederacy.
At the same time, the war’s brutal realities were
brought home with unprecedented immediacy to the
public at large. War correspondents accompanied the
armies, and newspapers reported the results of battles
on the following day and quickly published long lists of
casualties. The infant art of photography carried images
of war into millions of American living rooms.
Mobilizing Resources
The outbreak of the war found both sides unprepared.
In 1861, there was no national railroad gauge (the
distance separating the two tracks), so trains built
for one line could not run on another. There was no
national banking system, no tax system capable of
raising the enormous funds needed to finance the war,
and not even accurate maps of the southern states.
Soon after the firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln pro-
claimed a naval blockade of the South, part of the
so-called Anaconda Plan, which aimed to strangle
the South economically. But the navy charged with
patrolling the 3,500-mile coastline consisted of only
ninety vessels, fewer than half of them steam pow-

ered. Not until late in the war did the blockade become
effective.
Then there was the problem of purchasing and distributing the
food,
weapons, and other supplies required by the soldiers. The Union
army
eventually became the best-fed and best-supplied military force
in history.
By the war’s third year, on the other hand, southern armies were
suffering
from acute shortages of food, uniforms, and shoes.
Military Strategies
Each side tried to find ways to maximize its advantages.
Essentially, the
Confederacy adopted a defensive strategy, with occasional
thrusts into
the North. General Robert E. Lee, the leading southern
commander, was
a brilliant battlefield tactician who felt confident of his ability
to fend off
In nearly every resource for warfare,
the Union enjoyed a distinct
advantage. But this did not make
Union victory inevitable; as in the
War of Independence, the stronger
side sometimes loses.

FIGURE 14.1 Resources for War:
Union versus Confederacy
Railroad
tracks
(% of total
U.S. mileage)
Factories
Value of
goods
produced
Firearms
Pig iron
Textiles
(including
cotton cloth
and woolen
goods)
Population
22 million
9 million (including 3.5
million slaves)
110,000

18,000
1.5 billion
155 million
70%
30%
Ratio 17:1
Ratio 32:1
Ratio 20:1
Union
Confederacy
A defensive strategy
attacks by larger Union forces. He hoped that a series of defeats
would
weaken the North’s resolve and lead it eventually to abandon
the conflict
and recognize southern independence.
Lincoln’s early generals initially concentrated on occupying
southern
territory and attempting to capture Richmond, the Confederate
capital.

They attacked sporadically and withdrew after a battle, thus
sacrificing
the North’s manpower superiority and allowing the South to
concentrate
its smaller forces when an engagement impended. Well before
his generals
did, Lincoln realized that simply capturing and occupying
territory would
not win the war, and that defeating the South’s armies, not
capturing its
capital, had to be the North’s battlefield objective. And when he
came to
adopt the policy of emancipation, Lincoln acknowledged what
Confederate
vice president Alexander H. Stephens had already affirmed:
slavery was
the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy. To win the war,
therefore, the Union
must make the institution that lay at the economic and social
foundation of
southern life a military target.
The War Begins
In the East, most of the war’s fighting took place in a narrow
corridor
between Washington and Richmond—a distance of only 100
miles—as
a succession of Union generals led the Army of the Potomac (as
the main
northern force in the East was called) toward the Confederate
capital, only
to be turned back by southern forces. The first significant
engagement, the
first Battle of Bull Run, took place in northern Virginia on July
21, 1861. It

ended with the chaotic retreat of the Union soldiers, along with
the sight-
seers and politicians who had come to watch the battle.
In the wake of Bull Run, George B. McClellan, an army
engineer who
had recently won a minor engagement with Confederate troops
in west-
ern Virginia, assumed command of the Union’s Army of the
Potomac.
A brilliant organizer, McClellan succeeded in welding his men
into a
superb fighting force. He seemed reluctant, however, to commit
them to
Union army wagons crossing the
Rapidan River in Virginia in May 1864.
Supplying Civil War armies required
an immense mobilization of economic
resources.
Changing northern strategy
First Bull Run
McClellan

battle, since he tended to overestimate the size of enemy forces.
And as a
Democrat, he hoped that compromise might end the war without
large-
scale loss of life or a weakening of slavery. Months of military
inactivity
followed.
The War in the East, 1862
Not until the spring of 1862, after a growing clamor for action
by Republican
newspapers, members of Congress, and an increasingly
impatient Lincoln,
did McClellan lead his army of more than 100,000 men into
Virginia.
Here they confronted the smaller Army of Northern Virginia
under the
command of the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston, and
after he was
Annapolis
Baltimore
Norfolk
Richmond
Manassas
Washington, D.C.Battle of Bull Run
July 21, 1861 (First)
Aug. 30, 1862 (Second)

Fredericksburg
Dec. 13, 1862
Seven Days’ Campaign
June 25–July 1, 1862
Antietam
Sept. 17, 1862
McClellan
M
cClellan
Le
e
BurnsideLee
Lee
McClellan
Peninsula Campaign
NEW
JERSEY
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA
Pot
om

ac
R.
Sh
en
an
do
ah
R.
Potomac R.
Rappahannock R.
York R.
Jam
es R.
D
elaw
are Bay
Chesapeake B
ay
At lantic
O cean
Confederate victories
Confederate advances

Confederate retreats
Confederate states
Union victories
Union advances
Union retreats
Union states
T H E C I V I L W A R I N T H E E A S T , 1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6
2
During the first two years of the war,
most of the fighting took place in
Virginia and Maryland.
wounded, Robert E. Lee. In the Seven Days’ Campaign, a series
of engage-
ments in June 1862 on the peninsula south of Richmond, Lee
blunted
McClellan’s attacks and forced him to withdraw back to the
vicinity of
Washington, D.C. In August 1862, Lee again emerged
victorious at the
second Battle of Bull Run against Union forces under the
command of
General John Pope.
Successful on the defensive, Lee now launched an invasion of
the
North. At the Battle of Antietam, in Maryland, McClellan and
the Army

of the Potomac repelled Lee’s advance. In a single day of
fighting, nearly
4,000 men were killed and 18,000 wounded (2,000 of whom
later died
of their injuries). More Americans died on September 17, 1862,
when the
Battle of Antietam was fought, than on any other day in the
nation’s his-
tory, including Pearl Harbor and D-Day in World War II and the
terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001.
The War in the West
While the Union accomplished little in the East in the first two
years of the
war, events in the West followed a different course. Here, the
architect of
early success was Ulysses S. Grant. A West Point graduate who
had resigned
from the army in 1854, Grant had been notably unsuccessful in
civilian
life. When the war broke out, he was working as a clerk in his
brother’s
leather store in Galena, Illinois. But after being commissioned
as a colonel
in an Illinois regiment, Grant quickly displayed the daring, the
logical
mind, and the grasp of strategy he would demonstrate
throughout the war.
In February 1862, Grant won the Union’s first significant
victory
when he captured Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. In
April, naval
forces under Admiral David G. Farragut steamed into New

Orleans, giving
the Union control of the South’s largest city and the rich sugar
plantation
parishes to its south and west. At the same time, Grant
withstood a sur-
prise Confederate attack at Shiloh, Tennessee. But Union
momentum in
the West then stalled.
T H E C O M I N G O F E M A N C I P A T I O N
Slavery and the War
War, it has been said, is the midwife of revolution. And the
Civil War pro-
duced far-reaching changes in American life. The most dramatic
of these
was the destruction of slavery, the central institution of
southern society.
The Seven Days’ Campaign
Emergence of Grant
411T H E C O M I N G O F E M A N C I P A T I O N
Vicksburg
Mobile
Nashville
Memphis

New Orleans captured
April 26, 1862
Fort Donelson
February 16, 1862
Fort Henry
February 6, 1862
Shiloh
April 6–7, 1862
Farragut
Be
au
reg
ar
d
Gr
an
t
ARKANSAS
MISSOURI
ILLINOIS
INDIANA
KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE
ALABAMA
MISSISSIPPI GEORGIA
FLORIDA
LOUISIANATEXAS
INDIAN
TERRITORY
KANSAS
M
iss
iss
ip
pi
R
.
Mississippi R.
Arkansas R.
Te
nn
es
se

e R
.
Ohio R.
Gulf of Mexico0
0
50
50
100 miles
100 kilometers
Union victory
Union advance
Confederate advance
Confederate retreat
Confederate states
Union states
T H E C I V I L W A R I N T H E W E S T , 1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6
2
Most of the Union’s victories in the first two years of the war
occurred in the West, especially at Shiloh and New Orleans.
How did a war to preserve the Union become a war to end
slavery?

edom412
In numbers, scale, and the economic power of the insti-
tution of slavery, American emancipation dwarfed that
of any other country (although far more people were
liberated in 1861 when Czar Alexander II abolished serf-
dom in the Russian empire).
Lincoln initially insisted that slavery was irrelevant
to the conflict. In the war’s first year, his paramount con-
cerns were to keep the border slave states—Delaware,
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—in the Union and
to build the broadest base of support in the North for the
war effort. Action against slavery, he feared, would drive
the border, with its white population of 2.6 million and
nearly 500,000 slaves, into the Confederacy and alien-
ate conservative northerners.
Thus, in the early days of the war, a nearly
unanimous Congress adopted a resolution proposed
by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, which
affirmed that the Union had no intention of interfer-
ing with slavery. Northern military commanders even returned
fugitive
slaves to their owners, a policy that raised an outcry in
antislavery circles.
Yet as the Confederacy set slaves to work as military laborers
and blacks
began to escape to Union lines, the policy of ignoring slavery
unraveled.
By the end of 1861, the military had adopted the plan, begun in
Virginia
by General Benjamin F. Butler, of treating escaped blacks as
contraband
of war—that is, property of military value subject to

confiscation. Butler’s
order added a word to the war’s vocabulary. Escaping slaves
(“contra-
bands”) were housed by the army in “contraband camps” and
educated in
new “contraband schools.”
Meanwhile, slaves themselves took actions that helped propel a
reluc-
tant white America down the road to emancipation. Well before
Lincoln
made emancipation a war aim, blacks, in the North and the
South, were
calling the conflict the “freedom war.” In 1861 and 1862, as the
federal
army occupied Confederate territory, slaves by the thousands
headed for
Union lines. Unlike fugitives before the war, these runaways
included
large numbers of women and children, as entire families
abandoned the
plantations. Not a few passed along military intelligence and
detailed
knowledge of the South’s terrain. In southern Louisiana, the
arrival of
the Union army in 1862 led slaves to sack plantation houses and
refuse to
work unless wages were paid. Slavery there, wrote a northern
reporter, “is
forever destroyed and worthless, no matter what Mr. Lincoln or
anyone
else may say on the subject.”
An 1863 advertisement for a runaway
domestic slave circulated by Louis

Manigault, a member of a prominent
Georgia and South Carolina planter
family. Manigault blamed an unknown
white man for enticing her away, but
she most likely escaped with a male
slave who had begun to court her.
Slaves fled to Union lines from the
first days of the Civil War.
The “freedom war”
slavery?
Steps toward Emancipation
The most uncompromising opponents of slavery before the war,
abolition-
ists and Radical Republicans, quickly concluded that the
institution must
become a target of the Union war effort. Outside of Congress,
few pressed
the case for emancipation more eloquently than Frederick
Douglass. From

the outset, he insisted that it was futile to “separate the freedom
of the slave
from the victory of the government.”
These appeals won increasing support in a Congress frustrated
by
lack of military success. In March 1862, Congress prohibited
the army
from returning fugitive slaves. Then came abolition in the
District of
Columbia (with monetary compensation for slaveholders) and
the ter-
ritories, followed in July by the Second Confiscation Act, which
liberated
slaves of disloyal owners in Union-occupied territory, as well as
slaves
who escaped to Union lines.
Throughout these months, Lincoln struggled to retain control of
the emancipation issue. In August 1861, John C. Frémont,
command-
ing Union forces in Missouri, a state racked by a bitter guerrilla
war
between pro-northern and pro-southern bands, decreed the
freedom of its
slaves. Fearful of the order’s impact on the border states,
Lincoln swiftly
rescinded it. In November, the president proposed that the
border states
embark on a program of gradual emancipation with the federal
govern-
ment paying owners for their loss of property. He also revived
the idea
of colonization. In August 1862, Lincoln met at the White
House with a
delegation of black leaders and urged them to promote

emigration from
the United States. “You and we are different races,” he
declared. “It is better
for us both to be separated.” As late as December, the president
signed an
agreement with a shady entrepreneur to settle former slaves on
an island
off the coast of Haiti.
Lincoln’s Decision
Sometime during the summer of 1862, Lincoln con-
cluded that emancipation had become a political and
military necessity. Many factors contributed to his
decision—lack of military success, hope that emanci-
pated slaves might help meet the army’s growing man-
power needs, changing northern public opinion, and the
calculation that making slavery a target of the war effort
would counteract sentiment in Britain for recognition of
the Confederacy. But on the advice of Secretary of State
Abe Lincoln’s Last Card, an
engraving from the British magazine
Punch, October 18, 1862, portrays
the Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation as the last move of
a desperate gambler.
Congressional policy against
slavery

Lincoln’s evolving policy
William H. Seward, Lincoln delayed his announcement until
after a Union
victory, lest it seem an act of desperation. On September 22,
1862, five days
after McClellan’s army forced Lee to retreat at Antietam,
Lincoln issued
the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It warned that
unless the
South laid down its arms by the end of 1862, he would decree
abolition.
The initial northern reaction was not encouraging. In the fall
elections
of 1862, Democrats made opposition to emancipation the
centerpiece of
their campaign. The Republicans suffered sharp reverses. In his
annual
message to Congress, early in December, Lincoln tried to calm
northern-
ers’ racial fears: “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure
freedom to the
free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.”
The Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, after greeting visitors at the annual White
House New
Year’s reception, Lincoln retired to his study to sign the
Emancipation
Proclamation. The document did not liberate all the slaves—

indeed, on the
day it was issued, it applied to very few. Because its legality
derived from
With the exception of a few areas,
the Emancipation Proclamation
applied only to slaves in parts of the
Confederacy not under Union control
on January 1, 1863. Lincoln did not
“free the slaves” with a stroke of his
pen, but the proclamation did change
the nature of the Civil War.
Effects of the Emancipation
Proclamation
TEXAS
NEW MEXICO
TERRITORY
INDIAN
TERRITORY
KANSAS
COLORADO
TERRITORY

MISSOURI
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
TENNESSEE
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA GEORGIA
FLORIDA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA
KENTUCKY
ILLINOIS INDIANA
OHIO
WEST
VIRGINIA
VIRGINIA
PENNSYLVANIA
MARYLAND
DELAWARE
NEW
JERSEY

0
0
150
150
300 miles
300 kilometers
Free state
Slave state in the Union, to which proclamation does not apply
Free territory
Confederate area occupied by Union, exempted from
proclamation
Areas to which Emancipation Proclamation applies
Confederate area occupied by Union, where slaves are freed
immediately
T H E E M A N C I P A T I O N P R O C L A M A T I O N
Freed Negroes Celebrating President
Lincoln’s Decree of Emancipation,
a fanciful engraving from the
French periodical Le Monde Illustré,
March 21, 1863.

slavery?
the president’s authority as military commander-in-chief to
combat the
South’s rebellion, the proclamation exempted areas firmly under
Union
control (where the war, in effect, had already ended). Thus, it
did not apply
to the loyal border slave states that had never seceded or to
areas of the
Confederacy occupied by Union soldiers, such as Tennessee and
parts of
Virginia and Louisiana. But the vast majority of the South’s
slaves—more
than 3 million men, women, and children—it declared
“henceforward shall
be free.” Since most of these slaves were still behind
Confederate lines,
however, their liberation would have to await Union victories.
Despite its limitations, the proclamation set off scenes of
jubilation
among free blacks and abolitionists in the North and
“contrabands” and
slaves in the South. “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark
sea,” intoned
a black preacher at a celebration in Boston. “Jehovah hath
triumphed, his
people are free.” By making the Union army an agent of
emancipation and
wedding the goals of Union and abolition, the proclamation
sounded the
eventual death knell of slavery.

Not only did the Emancipation Proclamation alter the nature of
the Civil War and the course of American history, but it also
marked a
turning point in Lincoln’s own thinking. For the first time, it
committed
the government to enlisting black soldiers in the Union army.
He would
later refuse suggestions that he rescind or modify the
proclamation in the
interest of peace. Were he to do so, he told one visitor, “I
should be damned
in time and eternity.”
Like the end of slavery in Haiti and mainland Latin America,
aboli-
tion in the United States came about as the result of war. But
emancipation
Responses to the proclamation
The proclamation’s legacy
A military proclamation
Chapter 14
in the United States differed from its counterparts elsewhere in
the
Western Hemisphere—it was immediate, not gradual, and
offered no com-
pensation to slaveholders for their loss of property (with the
exception
of those in Washington, D.C.). Not until 1888, when Brazil
abolished the

institution, did slavery come to an end in the entire Western
Hemisphere.
The evolution of Lincoln’s emancipation policy displayed the
hall-
marks of his wartime leadership—his capacity for growth and
his ability
to develop broad public support for his administration.
Enlisting Black Troops
Of the proclamation’s provisions, few were more radical in their
implica-
tions than the enrollment of blacks into military service. Since
sailor had
been one of the few occupations open to free blacks before the
war, Secretary
of the Navy Gideon Welles had already allowed African-
Americans to
serve on Union warships. But at the outset, the Union army
refused to
accept northern black volunteers. The administration feared that
whites
would not be willing to fight alongside blacks and that enlisting
black
soldiers would alienate the border slave states that remained in
the Union.
By the end of the war, however, more than 180,000 black men
had
served in the Union army and 24,000 in the navy. One-third
died in
battle, or of wounds or disease. Some black units won
considerable renown,
among them the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, a
company of free

blacks from throughout the North commanded by Robert Gould
Shaw, a
young reformer from a prominent Boston family. The bravery of
the Fifty-
fourth in the July 1863 attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina,
where nearly
half the unit, including Shaw, perished, helped to dispel
widespread doubts
about blacks’ ability to withstand the pressures of the Civil War
battlefield.
Most black soldiers were emancipated slaves who joined the
army in the
South. After Union forces in 1863 seized control of the rich
plantation lands
of the Mississippi Valley, General Lorenzo Thomas raised fifty
regiments
of black soldiers—some 76,000 men in all. Another large group
hailed
from the border states exempted from the Emancipation
Proclamation,
where enlistment was, for most of the war, the only route to
freedom. Here
black military service undermined slavery, for Congress
expanded the
Emancipation Proclamation to liberate black soldiers and their
families.
The Black Soldier
For black soldiers themselves, military service proved to be a
liberating
experience. Out of the army came many of the leaders of the
Reconstruction
era. At least 130 former soldiers served in political office after
the Civil

The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts
Volunteers
Lorenzo Thomas
Immediate, no compensation
417T H E S E C O N D A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O
N
War. In time, the memory of black military service would
fade from white America’s collective memory. Of the
hundreds of Civil War monuments that still dot the
northern landscape, fewer than a dozen contain
an image of a black soldier. But well into the
twentieth century, it remained a point of pride
in black families throughout the United States
that their fathers and grandfathers had fought
for freedom.
Within the army, however, black soldiers
received treatment that was anything but equal
to that of their white counterparts. Organized into
segregated units under sometimes abusive white offi-
cers, they initially received lower pay (ten dollars per month,
compared to sixteen dollars for white soldiers). They were
dispro-
portionately assigned to labor rather than combat, and they
could not
rise to the rank of commissioned officer until the very end of
the war. In a
notorious incident in 1864, 200 of 262 black soldiers died when
southern

troops under the command of Nathan B. Forrest overran Fort
Pillow in
Tennessee. Some of those who perished were killed after
surrendering.
Nonetheless, black soldiers played a crucial role not only in
winning
the Civil War but also in defining the war’s consequences.
Thanks in part
to black military service, many Republicans in the last two
years of the war
came to believe that emancipation must bring with it equal
protection of
the laws regardless of race. One of the first acts of the federal
government
to recognize this principle was the granting of retroactive equal
pay to
black soldiers early in 1865.
The service of black soldiers affected Lincoln’s own outlook. In
1864,
Lincoln, who before the war had never supported suffrage for
African-
Americans, urged the governor of Union-occupied Louisiana to
work for
the partial enfranchisement of blacks, singling out soldiers as
especially
deserving. At some future time, he observed, they might again
be called
upon to “keep the jewel of Liberty in the family of freedom.”
T H E S E C O N D A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
The changing status of black Americans was only one dramatic
example
of what some historians call the Second American Revolution—

the
transformation of American government and society brought
about by the
Civil War.
This is the only known photograph of
a black Union soldier with his family.
The illustration accompanying The
American Flag, a piece of patriotic
Civil War sheet music, exemplifies
how the war united the ideals of
liberty and nationhood.
How did the Civil War transform the national economy and
create a stronger nation-state?
Liberty, Union, and Nation
Never was freedom’s contested nature more evident than during
the Civil
War. “We all declare for liberty,” Lincoln observed in 1864,
“but in using
the same word we do not all mean the same thing.” To the
North, he contin-
ued, freedom meant for “each man” to enjoy “the product of his
labor.” To

southern whites, it conveyed mastership—the power to do “as
they please
with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” The
Union’s triumph
consolidated the northern understanding of freedom as the
national norm.
But it was Lincoln himself who linked the conflict with the
deepest
beliefs of northern society. It is sometimes said that the
American Civil
War was part of a broader nineteenth-century process of nation
build-
ing. Throughout the world, powerful, centralized nation-states
developed
in old countries, and new nations emerged where none had
previously
existed. The Civil War took place as modern states were
consolidating
their power and reducing local autonomy. The Meiji Restoration
in Japan
saw the emperor reclaim power from local lords, or shoguns.
Lincoln has
been called the American equivalent of Giuseppe Mazzini or
Otto von
Bismarck, who during this same era created nation-states in
Italy and
Germany from disunited collections of principalities. But
Lincoln’s nation
was different from those being constructed in Europe. They
were based on
the idea of unifying a particular people with a common ethnic,
cultural,
and linguistic heritage. To Lincoln, the American nation
embodied a set of
universal ideas, centered on political democracy and human

liberty.
Lincoln summarized his conception of the war’s meaning in
November
1863 in brief remarks at the dedication of a military cemetery at
the site of
the war’s greatest battle. The Gettysburg Address is considered
his finest
speech (see the Appendix for the full text). In less than three
minutes, he
identified the nation’s mission with the principle that “all men
are created
equal,” spoke of the war as bringing about a “new birth of
freedom,” and
defined the essence of democratic government. The sacrifices of
Union
soldiers, he declared, would ensure that “government of the
people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The mobilization of the Union’s resources for modern war
brought
into being a new American nation-state with greatly expanded
powers and
responsibilities. The United States remained a federal republic
with sover-
eignty divided between the state and national governments. But
the war
forged a new national self-consciousness, reflected in the
increasing use of
the word “nation”—a unified political entity—in place of the
older “Union”
of separate states. In his inaugural address in 1861, Lincoln
used the
word “Union” twenty times, while making no mention of the
“nation.” By

A songbook compiled and illustrated
by a Union soldier includes “John
Brown’s Body,” sung to the melody
of a Methodist hymn.
Expansion of the American
nation-state
The Gettysburg Address
N
1863, “Union” does not appear at all in the 269-word
Gettysburg Address,
while Lincoln referred five times to the “nation.”
The War and American Religion
The upsurge of patriotism, and of national power, was reflected
in many
aspects of American life. Even as the war produced
unprecedented casu-
alties, the northern Protestant clergy strove to provide it with a
religious
justification and to reassure their congregations that the dead
had not

died in vain. The religious press now devoted more space to
military and
political developments than to spiritual matters. In numerous
wartime
sermons, Christianity and patriotism were joined in a civic
religion that
saw the war as God’s mechanism for ridding the United States
of slavery
and enabling it to become what it had never really been—a land
of freedom.
Of course, the southern clergy was equally convinced that the
Confederate
cause represented God’s will.
Religious beliefs enabled Americans to cope with the
unprecedented
mass death the war involved. Coping with death, moreover,
required
unprecedented governmental action, from notifying next of kin
to account-
ing for the dead and missing. Both the Union and Confederacy
established
elaborate systems for gathering statistics and maintaining
records of dead
and wounded soldiers, an effort supplemented by private
philanthropic
organizations. After the war ended, the federal government
embarked on
Lincoln and the Female Slave, by the
free black artist David B. Bowser.
Working in Philadelphia, Bowser
painted flags for a number of black

Civil War regiments. Lincoln confers
freedom on a kneeling slave, an
image that downplays blacks’ role
in their own emancipation.
A priest conducts mass for the
Sixty-ninth New York State militia,
stationed in Washington, D.C., in
June 1861. The famed photographer
Mathew Brady took this photo, which
illustrates how the war mitigated the
anti-Catholic bias so prominent in the
1850s.
420
A South Carolina plantation owner and ardent supporter of
secession, Thomas F.
Drayton explained the Confederate cause in this letter to his
brother Percival, an

officer in the U.S. Navy, written from Charleston shortly after
the firing on Fort
Sumter. Drayton went on to serve as a brigadier general in the
Confederate army.
My dear Percy
And so Sumter is at last ours, and this too without the loss of a
single life upon either side. . . .
Before this dispute is over however, I look for abundance of
death & blood. . . .
You say I don’t yet understand the position you have taken. I do
fully, but certainly differ
from you when you say that to side with us, would be “battling
for slavery against freedom.”
On the contrary, by siding with us, you likewise defend
yourselves at the North against a
far greater danger than we are threatened with, which is the
enslavement of the whites; for
the tendency with you is towards consolidation & the abrogation
of State rights. . . . All these
evils & horrors will be laid to your doors, because you have
encouraged . . . in the form of
abolition lecturers, fanatical preachers, unscrupulous editors,
selfish politicians; . . . and
by voting for men . . . with the avowed object of abolishing
slavery throughout the Southern
States . . . who made a merit of John Brown’s murderous
invasion; set at defiance all fugitive
slave laws, . . . and whose clergy denounced us
indiscriminately as barbarians. . . .
We are fighting for home & liberty. Can the North say as much?

Good night. And don’t say
again, that in siding for us, you would be defending slavery and
fighting for what is abhorrent
to your feelings & convictions. On the contrary, in fighting on
our side, you will be battling for
law & order & against abstract fanatical ideas which will
certainly bring about vastly greater
evils upon our race, than could possibly result from the
perpetuation of slavery among us.
From Letter of Thomas F. Drayton
(April 17, 1861)
Chapter 1
421
Abraham Lincoln’s speech at a Sanitary Fair (a grand bazaar
that raised money for
the care of Union soldiers) offers a dramatic illustration of the
contested meaning of
freedom during the Civil War.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,
and the American people,
just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty;
but in using the same word we
do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may
mean for each man to do as
he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with
others the same word may

mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the
product of other men’s labor.
Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called
by the same name—liberty.
And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective
parties, called by two different and
incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which
the sheep thanks the
shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the
same act as the destroyer of
liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the
sheep and the wolf are not agreed
upon a definition of the word liberty; and
precisely the same difference prevails today
among us human creatures, even in the
North, and all professing to love liberty.
Hence we behold the process by which
thousands are daily passing from under
the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the
advance of liberty, and bewailed by others
as the destruction of all liberty. Recently,
as it seems, the people of Maryland have
been doing something to define liberty
[abolishing slavery in the state]; and thanks
to them that, in what they have done, the
wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated.
From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair,
Baltimore (April 18, 1864)
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why does Drayton deny that the

Confederacy is fighting to defend
slavery?
2. What does Lincoln identify as the
essential difference between northern
and southern definitions of freedom?
3. How do Drayton and Lincoln differ in
their definitions of liberty and whether
it applies to African-Americans?
a program to locate and re-bury hundreds of thousands of Union
soldiers
in national military cemeteries. Between 1865 and 1871, the
government
reinterred more than 300,000 Union (but not Confederate)
soldiers—
including black soldiers, who were buried, as they had fought,
in segre-
gated sections of military cemeteries.
Liberty in Wartime
This intense new nationalism made criticism of the war effort—

or of the
policies of the Lincoln administration—seem to Republicans
equivalent
to treason. During the conflict, declared the Republican New
York Times,
“the safety of the nation is the supreme law.” Arbitrary arrests
num-
bered in the thousands. They included opposition newspaper
editors,
Democratic politicians, individuals who discouraged enlistment
in the
army, and ordinary civilians like the Chicago man briefly
imprisoned
for calling the president a “damned fool.” With the Constitution
unclear
as to who possessed the power to suspend the writ of habeas
corpus (thus
allowing prisoners to be held without charge), Lincoln claimed
the right
under the presidential war powers and twice suspended the writ
through-
out the entire Union for those accused of “disloyal activities.”
Not until
1866, after the fighting had ended, did the Supreme Court, in
the case Ex
parte Milligan, declare it unconstitutional to bring accused
persons before
military tribunals where civil courts were operating. The
Constitution,
declared Justice David Davis, is not suspended in wartime—it
remains
“a law for rulers and people, equally in time of war and peace.”
Lincoln was not a despot. Most of those arrested were quickly
released,
the Democratic press continued to flourish, and contested

elections were
held throughout the war. But the policies of the Lincoln
administration
offered proof—to be repeated during later wars—of the fragility
of civil
liberties in the face of assertive patriotism and wartime
demands for
national unity.
The North’s Transformation
Even as he invoked traditional values, Lincoln presided over
far-reaching
changes in northern life. The effort to mobilize the resources of
the Union
greatly enhanced the power not only of the federal government
but also of
a rising class of capitalist entrepreneurs. Unlike the South,
which suffered
economic devastation, the North experienced the war as a time
of prosperity.
Nourished by wartime inflation and government contracts, the
profits
of industry boomed. New England mills worked day and night
to supply
A girl in mourning dress holds a
framed photograph of her father, a
cavalryman.
Arbitrary arrests and the
suspension of habeas corpus

Northern prosperity in
wartime
N
the army with blankets and uniforms, and Pennsylvania coal
mines and
ironworks rapidly expanded their production. Mechanization
proceeded
apace in many industries, especially those, such as boot and
shoe produc-
tion and meatpacking, that supplied the army’s ever-increasing
needs.
Agriculture also flourished, for even as farm boys by the
hundreds of
thousands joined the army, the frontier of cultivation pushed
westward,
with machinery and immigrants replacing lost labor.
Government and the Economy
The new American nation-state that emerged during the Civil
War was
committed to rapid economic development. Congress adopted
policies
that promoted economic growth and permanently altered the
nation’s
financial system. To spur agricultural development, the
Homestead Act
offered 160 acres of free public land to settlers in the West. It

took effect on
January 1, 1863, the same day as the Emancipation
Proclamation, and like
the proclamation, tried to implement a vision of freedom. By
the 1930s,
more than 400,000 families had acquired farms under its
provisions. In
addition, the Land Grant College Act assisted the states in
establishing
“agricultural and mechanic colleges.”
Congress also made huge grants of money and land for internal
improvements, including up to 100 million acres to the Union
Pacific and
Central Pacific, two companies chartered in 1862 and charged
with build-
ing a railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast.
(These were the
first corporate charters issued by the federal government since
the Second
Bank of the United States in 1816.) It required some 20,000
men to lay
the tracks across prairies and mountains, a substantial number
of them
immigrant Chinese contract laborers, called “coolies” by many
Americans.
Hundreds of Chinese workers died blasting tunnels and building
bridges
through this treacherous terrain. When it was completed in
1869, the
transcontinental railroad, which ran from Omaha, Nebraska, to
San
Francisco, expanded the national market, facilitated the spread
of settle-
ment and investment in the West, and heralded the doom of the
Plains

Indians.
The War and Native Americans
One of Lincoln’s first orders as president was to withdraw
federal troops
from the West so that they could protect Washington, D.C.
Recognizing
that this would make it impossible for the army to keep white
interlopers
from intruding on Indian land, as treaties required it to do,
Indian leaders
Sheet music for two of the best-
known patriotic songs written during
the Civil War.
Effects of the transcontinental
railroad
begged Lincoln to reverse this decision,
but to no avail. Inevitably, conflict flared
in the West between Native Americans
and white settlers, with disastrous results.
During the Civil War, the Sioux killed
hundreds of white farmers in Minnesota
before being subdued by the army. After
a military court sentenced more than 300
Indians to death, Lincoln commuted the
sentences of all but 38. But their hanging

in December 1862 remains the largest offi-
cial execution in American history.
The Union army also launched
a campaign against the Navajo in the
Southwest, destroying their orchards and
sheep and forcing 8,000 people to move
to a reservation set aside by the govern-
ment. The Navajo’s Long Walk became as
central to their historical experience as the Trail of Tears to the
Cherokee
(see Chapter 10). Unlike the eastern Indians, however, the
Navajo were
eventually allowed to return to a portion of their lands.
Some tribes that owned slaves, like the Cherokee, sided with the
Confederacy. After 1865, they were forced to cede much of
their land to the
federal government and to accept former slaves into the
Cherokee nation
and give them land (the only slaveowners required to do so).
Their status
remains a point of controversy to this day. The Cherokee
constitution was
recently amended to exclude descendants of slaves from
citizenship, lead-
ing to lawsuits that have yet to be resolved.
A Union soldier stands guard over a
group of Indians during the Navajo’s
Long Walk, in which the army
removed them from their New Mexico

homeland to a reservation hundreds
of miles away.
A lithograph depicts the hanging
of thirty-eight Sioux Indians in
December 1862, the largest mass
execution in American history.
N
A New Financial System
The need to pay for the war produced dramatic changes in
financial
policy. To raise money, the government increased the tariff to
unprec-
edented heights (thus promoting the further growth of northern
industry),
imposed new taxes on the production and consumption of goods,
and
enacted the nation’s first income tax. It also borrowed more
than $2 billion
by selling interest-bearing bonds, thus creating an immense
national debt.
And it printed more than $400 million worth of paper money,

called
“greenbacks,” declared to be legal tender—that is, money that
must be
accepted for nearly all public and private payments and debts.
To ratio-
nalize the banking system, Congress established a system of
nationally
chartered banks, which were required to purchase government
bonds and
were given the right to issue bank notes as currency.
Numerous Americans who would take the lead in reshaping the
nation’s postwar economy created or consolidated their fortunes
dur-
ing the Civil War, among them the iron and steel entrepreneur
Andrew
Carnegie, the oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, the financiers
Jay Gould
and J. P. Morgan, and Philip D. Armour, who earned millions
supplying
beef to the Union army. These and other “captains of industry”
managed
to escape military service, sometimes by purchasing exemptions
or hiring
substitutes, as allowed by the draft law.
Taken together, the Union’s economic policies vastly increased
the
power and size of the federal government. The federal budget
for 1865
exceeded $1 billion—nearly twenty times that of 1860. With its
new army
of clerks, tax collectors, and other officials, the government
became the
nation’s largest employer. And although much of this expansion
proved

temporary, the government would never return to its weak and
frag-
mented condition of the prewar period.
Women and the War
For many northern women, the conflict opened new doors of
opportunity.
Women took advantage of the wartime labor shortage to move
into jobs in
factories and into certain largely male professions, particularly
nursing.
The expansion of the activities of the national government
opened new
jobs for women as clerks in government offices. Many of these
wartime
gains were short lived, but in white-collar government jobs,
retail sales,
and nursing, women found a permanent place in the workforce.
Hundreds of thousands of northern women took part in
organiza-
tions that gathered money and medical supplies for soldiers and
sent
Filling Cartridges at the U.S. Arsenal
of Watertown, Massachusetts, an
engraving from Harper’s Weekly,
September 21, 1861. Both men and
women were drawn to work in the
booming war-related industries of

the North.
“Captains of industry”
Financing the war
books, clothing, and food to freedmen. The U.S. Sanitary
Commission
emerged as a centralized national relief agency to coordinate
donations on
the northern home front. Although control at the national level
remained
in male hands, patriotic women did most of the grassroots work.
Women
played the leading role in organizing Sanitary Fairs—grand
bazaars that
displayed military banners, uniforms, and other relics of the war
and sold
goods to raise money for soldiers’ aid.
Many men understood women’s war work as an extension of
their
“natural” capacity for self-sacrifice. But the very act of
volunteering for
the war effort brought many northern women into the public
sphere and
offered them a taste of independence. From the ranks of this
wartime mobi-
lization came many of the leaders of the postwar movement for
women’s
rights. Clara Barton, for example, organized supply lines and

nursed
wounded soldiers in northern Virginia. After the war, she
became not
only an advocate of woman suffrage but also, as president of the
American
National Red Cross, a strong proponent of the humane treatment
of battle-
field casualties.
The Divided North
Despite Lincoln’s political skills, the war and his
administration’s poli-
cies divided northern society. Republicans labeled those
opposed to the
war Copperheads, after a poisonous snake that strikes without
warn-
ing. Mounting casualties and rapid societal changes divided the
North.
Northern women volunteers
and the public sphere
Copperheads
Whimsical potholders expressing
hope for a better life for emancipated
slaves were sold at the Chicago
Sanitary Fair of 1865 to raise money
for soldiers’ aid.

N
Disaffection was strongest among the large southern-born
population of
states like Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and working-class
Catholic immi-
grants in eastern cities.
As the war progressed, it heightened existing social tensions
and
created new ones. The growing power of the federal government
chal-
lenged traditional notions of local autonomy. The Union’s draft
law,
which allowed individuals to provide a substitute or buy their
way
out of the army, caused widespread indignation. Workers
resented
manufacturers and financiers who reaped large profits while
their own
real incomes dwindled because of inflation. The prospect of a
sweep-
ing change in the status of blacks called forth a racist reaction
in many
parts of the North. Throughout the war, the Democratic Party
subjected
Lincoln’s policies to withering criticism, although it remained
divided
between “War Democrats,” who supported the military effort
while
criticizing emancipation and the draft, and those who favored
immedi-
ate peace.

On occasion, dissent degenerated into outright violence. In July
1863,
the introduction of the draft provoked four days of rioting in
New York
City. The mob, composed largely of Irish immigrants, assaulted
symbols
of the new order being created by the war—draft offices, the
mansions of
wealthy R

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