Chapter 4 – Growth and Crisis in the Colonial Society
I.
Freehold Society in
A.
Farm Families: Women’s Place
1.
Men claimed power in the state and authority in the family; women were
subordinates.
2.
Women in the colonies were raised to be dutiful “helpmates” to their husbands.
3.
The labor of the Puritan women was crucial to rural household economy.
4.
More women than men joined the churches so that their children could be
baptized.
5.
A gradual reduction in farm size prompted couples to have fewer children.
6.
With fewer children, women had more time to enhance their families’ standard of
living.
7.
Still, most
B.
Farm Property: Inheritance
1.
Men who migrated to the colonies escaped many traditional constraints,
including lack of land.
2.
When indentures ended for servants, some climbed from laborer to tenant to
freeholder.
3.
Children in successful farm families received a “marriage portion.”
4.
Parents chose their children’s partners because the family’s prosperity
depended on it.
5.
Brides relinquished ownership of their land and property to their husbands.
6.
Fathers had a cultural duty to provide inheritances for their children.
7.
Farmers created whole communities composed of independent property owners.
C.
The Crisis of Freehold Society
1.
With each generation the population of
2.
Parents had less land to give their children, so they had less control over
their children’s lives.
3.
By using primitive methods of birth control, many families were able to have
fewer children.
4.
Families petitioned the government for land grants and hacked new farms out of
the forest.
5.
Land was used more productively; crops of wheat and barley were replaced with
high yielding potatoes and corn.
6.
A system of community exchange helped preserve the freeholder ideal.
II.
The Middle
A.
Economic Growth and Social Inequality
1.
Fertile lands and long growing seasons attracted migrants to the Middle
Atlantic.
2.
As freehold land became scarce in
3.
Inefficient farm implements kept most tenants from saving enough to acquire
freehold farmsteads.
4.
Rural
5.
With the rise of the wheat trade and an influx of poor settlers, a class of
wealthy agricultural capitalists gradually emerged.
6.
Merchants and artisans took advantage of the supply of labor and organized an
“outwork” manufacturing system.
7.
As colonies became crowded and socially divided, farm families feared a return
to peasant status.
B.
Cultural Diversity
1.
The middle colonies were a patchwork of ethnically and religiously diverse
communities.
2.
Quakers, the dominant social group in
3.
The Quaker vision attracted many Germans fleeing war, religious persecution,
and poverty.
4.
Germans guarded their language and cultural heritage, encouraging their
children to marry within the community.
5.
Emigrants from
6.
Some of these were Irish Catholic, but most were Presbyterian Scots-Irish who
had faced discrimination and economic regulation in
7.
The Scots-Irish held onto their culture and promoted marriage within the
Presbyterian Church.
C.
Religious Identity and Political Conflict
1.
German ministers criticized the separation of church and state in
2.
Religious sects in
3.
Communal sanctions sustained a self-contained and prosperous Quaker community.
4.
In the 1750s the Scots-Irish Presbyterians challenged the Quakers’ pacifism and
demanded a more aggressive Indian policy.
5.
Many German migrants opposed the Quakers and wanted laws that respected their
inheritance customs and provided proportional representation in the provincial
assembly.
6.
The Scots-Irish and the Germans found it difficult to unite against the Quakers
due to their own conflicts.
III.
The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening, 1740–1765
A.
The Enlightenment in
1.
Most Christians believed that God intervened directly in human affairs to
punish sin and reward virtue and that, therefore,
events such as diseases and natural disasters were divine punishment for human
sin. Many also believed that a person’s
lot in life was the unalterable will of God.
2.
Enlightenment thinkers believed that people could observe, analyze, understand,
and improve their world.
3.
John Locke proposed that lives were not fixed by God’s will and could be
changed through education and purposeful action.
4.
Locke advanced the theory that political authority was not divinely ordained
but rather sprang
from social
compacts people made to preserve their natural rights to life, liberty, and
property.
5.
European Enlightenment ideas affected influential colonists’ beliefs about
science, religion, and politics.
6.
Some influential colonists, including inventor and printer Benjamin Franklin,
turned to deism, the belief that God had created the world to run according to
natural law without His interference.
7.
The Enlightenment added a secular dimension to colonial intellectual life.
B.
American Pietism and the Great Awakening
1.
Less wealthy colonists turned to Pietism, which came to
2.
Pietism emphasized pious behavior, religious emotion, and the striving for a
mystical union with God.
3.
Beginning in 1739, the compelling George Whitefield, a follower of John
Wesley’s preaching style, transformed local revivals into a “Great Awakening.”
4.
Hundreds of colonists felt the “New Light” of God’s grace and were prepared to
follow
Whitefield.
C.
Religious Upheaval in the North
1.
Conservative, or “Old Light,” ministers condemned the emotional preaching of
traveling
“New
Light” ministers for their emotionalism and their allowing women to speak in
public.
2.
In
3.
Some farmers, women, and artisans condemned the Old Lights as “unconverted”
sinners.
4.
The Awakening undermined support of traditional churches and challenged the
authority of ministers.
5.
The Awakening gave a new sense of religious authority to many colonists in the
North and reaffirmed communal ethics as it questioned the pursuit of wealth.
6.
One tangible and lasting product of the Awakening was the founding of colleges
— such as Princeton, Rutgers,
7.
The true intellectual legacy of the Awakening was not education for the few but
a new sense of religious—and ultimately political—authority among the many.
D.
Social and Religious Conflict in the South
1.
The social authority of the
2.
Religious pluralism threatened the government’s ability to impose taxes to
support the established church.
3.
Anglicans closed down Presbyterian meeting houses and forcibly broke up Baptist
services to prevent the spread of the New Light doctrine.
4.
During the 1760s, many poorer Virginians were drawn to enthusiastic Baptist
revivals, where even slaves were welcome.
5.
The gentry reacted violently to the Baptist threat to their social authority
and way of life.
6.
Revivals helped to shrink the gulf between blacks and whites and gave blacks a
new sense of spiritual identity.
IV.
The Mid-century Challenge: War, Trade, and Social
Conflict,
1750–1765
A.
The French and Indian War
1.
Indians, who in 1750 still controlled the interior of
2.
European governments began to refuse to bargain, and Indian alliances crumbled.
3.
The escalating Anglo-American demand for Indian lands met with strong Indian
resistance.
4.
The Ohio Company obtained a royal grant of 200,000 acres along the upper
5.
To counter
6.
The French seized George Washington and his men as they tried to support the
Ohio Company’s claim to the land.
7.
8.
In June 1755, British troops and Puritan militiamen captured
9.
In July, General Edward Braddock and his British troops were soundly defeated
by a small group of French and Indians at Fort
Duquesne.
B.
The Great War for Empire
1.
In 1756,
2.
3.
William Pitt, a committed expansionist, planned to cripple
4.
The fall of
5.
The British in
6.
The Treaty of
7.
In 1763 the
8.
The Indian alliance gradually weakened, and they accepted the British as their
new political “fathers.”
9.
In return, the British established the Proclamation Line of 1763 barring
settlers from going west of the
10.
The war for empire gained land for the crown but did not provide the
expansionist-minded Americans with the new land they wanted.
C.
British Economic Growth and the Consumer Revolution
1.
2.
The new machines and business practices of the Industrial Revolution allowed
sell goods
at lower prices, particularly in the mainland colonies.
3.
The first “consumer revolution” raised the living standard of many Americans.
4.
Americans paid for British imports by increasing their exports of wheat, rice,
and tobacco.
5.
The first American spending binge landed many colonists in debt.
6.
The loss of military contracts and subsidies made it difficult for Americans to
purchase British goods.
7.
Americans had become dependent on overseas creditors and international economic
conditions.
D.
Land Conflicts
1.
The growth of the colonial population caused conflicts over land, particularly
in
2.
In the Hudson River Valley, Massachusetts settlers tried to claim manor lands,
Indians
reasserted ownership to lands they had once owned, and tenants asserted
ownership over land they leased.
3.
British general Thomas Gage and his men joined local sheriffs to suppress these
uprisings.
4.
English aristocrats in
5.
Proprietary power increased the resemblance between rural societies in Europe
and
6.
Tenants and freeholders had to search for cheap freehold land in the West.
E.
Western Uprisings
1.
Movement to the western frontier created new disputes over Indian policy,
political representation, and debts.
2.
In