THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1500-1750)

After a period of exploration sponsored by major European nations, the first successful English settlement was established in 1607. Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize, turkeys, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and squash. Many explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in the Americas. The effects of new Eurasian diseases carried by the colonists, especially smallpox and measles, were much worse for the Native Americans, as they had no immunity to them. They suffered epidemics and died in very large numbers, usually before large-scale European settlement began. Their societies were disrupted and hollowed out by the scale of deaths.

1. Spanish, Dutch, and French colonization

The first Europeans to arrive in North America — at least the first for whom there is solid evidence — were Norse, traveling west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is thought to have explored the north­east coast of what is now Canada and spent at least one winter there. 

While Norse sagas suggest that Viking sailors explored the Atlan­tic coast of North America down as far as the Bahamas, such claims remain unproven. In 1963, however, the ruins of some Norse houses dat­ing from that era were discovered at L’Anse-aux-Meadows in northern Newfoundland, thus supporting at least some of the saga claims. 

In 1497, just five years after Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean looking for a west­ern route to Asia, a Venetian sail­or named John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland on a mission for the British king. Although quickly forgotten, Cabot’s journey was later to provide the basis for British claims to North America. It also opened the way to the rich fishing grounds off George’s Banks, to which Eu­ropean fishermen, particularly the Portuguese, were soon making reg­ular visits.

A. Spanish colonization 

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, to reach Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493; others reached Florida in 1513. Columbus never saw the main­land of the future United States, but the first explorations of it were launched from the Spanish posses­sions that he helped establish. The first of these took place in 1513 when a group of men under Juan Ponce de León landed on the Florida coast near the present city of St. Augustine. 

Columbus landed in Puerto Rico 1492

With the conquest of Mexico in 1522, the Spanish further solidi­fied their position in the Western Hemisphere. The ensuing discov­eries added to Europe’s knowledge of what was now named America — after the Italian Amerigo Ves­pucci, who wrote a widely popular account of his voyages to a “New World.” By 1529 reliable maps of the Atlantic coastline from Labrador to Tierra del Fuego had been drawn up, although it would take more than another century before hope of dis­covering a “Northwest Passage” to Asia would be completely abandoned. 

Spaniards settled in Florida

Among the most significant ear­ly Spanish explorations was that of Hernando De Soto, a veteran con­quistador who had accompanied Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. Leaving Havana in 1539, De Soto’s expedition landed in Florida and ranged through the southeast­ern United States as far as the Missis­sippi River in search of riches. 

Another Spaniard, Francis­co Vázquez de Coronado, set out from Mexico in 1540 in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibo­la. Coronado’s travels took him to the Grand Canyon and Kansas, but failed to reveal the gold or treasure his men sought. However, his par­ty did leave the peoples of the re­gion a remarkable, if unintended, gift: Enough of his horses escaped to transform life on the Great Plains. Within a few generations, the Plains Indians had become masters of horsemanship, greatly expanding the range of their activities. 

Small Spanish settlements eventually grew to become important cities, such as San Antonio, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and San Francisco, California.

 The Spanish conquistador Coronado 1540 

B. Dutch colonization - New Netherland was a 17th-century Dutch colony centered on present-day New York City and the Hudson River Valley; the Dutch traded furs with the Native Americans to the north. The colony served as a barrier to expansion from New England. Despite being Calvinists and building the Reformed Church in America, the Dutch were tolerant of other religions and cultures.

New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Seven United Netherlands that was located on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod, while the more limited settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

The colony was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. During its first decades, New Netherland was settled rather slowly, partially as a result of policy mismanagement by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and partially as a result of conflicts with Native Americans. The settlement of New Sweden encroached on its southern flank, while its northern border was re-drawn to accommodate an expanding New England. During the 1650s, the colony experienced dramatic growth and became a major port for trade in the North Atlantic. The surrender of Fort Amsterdam to England in 1664 was formalized in 1667, contributing to the Second Anglo–Dutch War. In 1673, the Dutch re-took the area but relinquished it under the Second Treaty of Westminster ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War the next year. 

The inhabitants of New Netherland were Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans, the last chiefly imported as enslaved laborers. Descendants of the original settlers played a prominent role in colonial America. For two centuries, New Netherland Dutch culture characterized the region (today's Capital District around Albany, the Hudson Valley, western Long Island, northeastern New Jersey, and New York City). 

The colony, which was taken over by Britain in 1664, left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life. This includes secular broad-mindedness and mercantile pragmatism in the city as well as rural traditionalism in the countryside (typified by the story of Rip Van Winkle). Notable Americans of Dutch descent include Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Frelinghuysens.

C. French colonization - while the Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern por­tion of the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through the journeys of men such as Giovan­ni da Verrazano. A Florentine who sailed for the French, Verrazano made landfall in North Carolina in 1524, then sailed north along the At­lantic Coast past what is now New York harbor. 

A decade later, the Frenchman Jacques Cartier set sail with the hope — like the other Europeans before him — of finding a sea passage to Asia. Cartier’s expeditions along the St.Lawrence River laid the founda­tion for the French claims to North America, which were to last until 1763.

Following the collapse of their first Quebec colony in the 1540s, French Huguenots attempted to set­tle the northern coast of Florida two decades later. The Spanish, viewing the French as a threat to their trade route along the Gulf Stream, de­stroyed the colony in 1565. Ironical­ly, the leader of the Spanish forces, Pedro Menéndez, would soon estab­lish a town not far away — St. Au­gustine. It was the first permanent European settlement in what would become the United States.

New France was the area colonized by France from 1534 to 1763. There were few permanent settlers outside Quebec and Acadia, but the French had far-reaching trading relationships with Native Americans throughout the Great Lakes and Midwest. French villages along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers were based in farming communities that served as a granary for Gulf Coast settlements. The French established plantations in Louisiana along with settling New Orleans, Mobile and Biloxi.

The Wabanaki Confederacy were military allies of New France through the four French and Indian Wars while the British colonies were allied with the Iroquois Confederacy. During the French and Indian War – the North American theater of the Seven Years' War – New England fought successfully against French Acadia. The British removed Acadians from Acadia (Nova Scotia) and replaced them with New England Planters. Eventually, some Acadians resettled in Louisiana, where they developed a distinctive rural Cajun culture that still exists. They became American citizens in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. Other French villages along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers were absorbed when the Americans started arriving after 1770, or settlers moved west to escape them. French influence and language in New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast was more enduring; New Orleans was notable for its large population of free people of color before the Civil War.

2. British colonization

The great wealth that poured into Spain from the colonies in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Peru provoked great interest on the part of the other European powers. Emerging mari­time nations such as England, drawn in part by Francis Drake’s success­ful raids on Spanish treasure ships, began to take an interest in the New World.

In 1578 Humphrey Gilbert, the author of a treatise on the search for the Northwest Passage, received a patent from Queen Elizabeth to colonize the “heathen and barba­rous landes” in the New World that other European nations had not yet claimed. It would be five years before his efforts could begin. When he was lost at sea, his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, took up the mission.

In 1585 Raleigh established the first British colony in North Amer­ica, on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. It was later aban­doned, and a second effort two years later also proved a failure. It would be 20 years before the British would try again. This time — at Jamestown in 1607 — the colony would succeed, and North America would enter a new era.

A. Early settlements - the early 1600s saw the beginning of a great tide of emigration from Europe to North America. Spanning more than three centuries, this movement grew from a trickle of a few hundred English colonists to a flood of millions of newcomers. Impelled by powerful and diverse motivations, they built a new civi­lization on the northern part of the continent.

The first English immigrants to what is now the United States crossed the Atlantic long after thriv­ing Spanish colonies had been estab­lished in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. Like all early travelers to the New World, they came in small, overcrowded ships. During their six- to 12-week voy­ages, they lived on meager rations. Many died of disease, ships were often battered by storms, and some were lost at sea.

Most European emigrants left their homelands to escape political oppression, to seek the freedom to practice their religion, or to find op­portunities denied them at home. Between 1620 and 1635, economic difficulties swept England. Many people could not find work. Even skilled artisans could earn little more than a bare living. Poor crop yields added to the distress. In ad­dition, the Commercial Revolution had created a burgeoning textile industry, which demanded an ever-increasing supply of wool to keep the looms running. Landlords en­closed farmlands and evicted the peasants in favor of sheep cultiva­tion. Colonial expansion became an outlet for this displaced peasant population.

The colonists’ first glimpse of the new land was a vista of dense woods. The settlers might not have survived had it not been for the help of friendly Indians, who taught them how to grow native plants — pumpkin, squash, beans, and corn. In addition, the vast, virgin forests, extending nearly 2,100 kilometers along the Eastern seaboard, proved a rich source of game and firewood. They also provided abundant raw materials used to build houses, fur­niture, ships, and profitable items for export.

Although the new continent was remarkably endowed by nature, trade with Europe was vital for ar­ticles the settlers could not produce. The coast served the immigrants well. The whole length of shore pro­vided many inlets and harbors. Only two areas — North Carolina and southern New Jersey — lacked har­bors for ocean-going vessels.

Majestic rivers — the Kennebec, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and numerous others — linked lands between the coast and the Appalachian Mountains with the sea. Only one river, however, the St.Lawrence — dominated by the French in Canada — offered a water passage to the Great Lakes and the heart of the continent. Dense forests, the resistance of some Indian tribes, and the formidable barrier of the Appalachian Mountains discour­aged settlement beyond the coastal plain. Only trappers and traders ventured into the wilderness. For the first hundred years the colonists built their settlements compactly along the coast. Political considerations influ­enced many people to move to America. In the 1630s, arbitrary rule by England’s Charles I gave impetus to the migration. The subsequent re­volt and triumph of Charles’ oppo­nents under Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s led many cavaliers — “king’s men” — to cast their lot in Virginia. In the German-speaking regions of Europe, the oppressive policies of various petty princes — particularly with regard to religion — and the devastation caused by a long series of wars helped swell the movement to America in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

The journey entailed careful planning and management, as well as considerable expense and risk. Settlers had to be transported nearly 5,000 kilometers across the sea. They needed utensils, clothing, seed, tools, building materials, livestock, arms, and ammunition. In contrast to the colonization policies of other coun­tries and other periods, the emigra­tion from England was not directly sponsored by the government but by private groups of individuals whose chief motive was profit.

B. Major colonies - the strip of land along the eastern seacoast was settled primarily by English colonists in the 17th century along with much smaller numbers of Dutch and Swedes. Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that employed forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude and by a British policy of benign neglect (salutary neglect). Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants. Salutary neglect permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its European founders.

JAMESTOWN - the first of the British colonies to take hold in North America was Jamestown. On the basis of a char­ter which King James I granted to the Virginia (or London) Company, a group of about 100 men set out for the Chesapeake Bay in 1607. Seeking to avoid conflict with the Spanish, they chose a site about 60 kilometers up the James River from the bay.

Made up of townsmen and ad­venturers more interested in finding gold than farming, the group was unequipped by temperament or abil­ity to embark upon a completely new life in the wilderness. Among them, Captain John Smith emerged as the dominant figure. Despite quarrels, starvation, and Native-American attacks, his ability to enforce disci­pline held the little colony together through its first year.

In 1609 Smith returned to Eng­land, and in his absence, the colony descended into anarchy. During the winter of 1609-1610, the majority of the colonists succumbed to disease. Only 60 of the original 300 settlers were still alive by May 1610. That same year, the town of Henrico (now Richmond) was established farther up the James River.

It was not long, however, before a development occurred that revo­lutionized Virginia’s economy. In 1612 John Rolfe began cross-breed­ing imported tobacco seed from the West Indies with native plants and produced a new variety that was pleasing to European taste. The first shipment of this tobacco reached London in 1614. Within a decade it had become Virginia’s chief source of revenue.

Prosperity did not come quickly, however, and the death rate from disease and Indian attacks remained extraordinarily high. Between 1607 and 1624 approximately 14,000 peo­ple migrated to the colony, yet only 1,132 were living there in 1624. On recommendation of a royal commis­sion, the king dissolved the Virginia Company, and made it a royal colony that year.

Jamestown, Virginia

Jamestown languished for decades until a new wave of settlers arrived in the late 17th century and established commercial agriculture based on tobacco. Between the late 1610s and the Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to their American colonies. 

A severe instance of conflict was the 1622 Powhatan uprising in Virginia in which Native Americans killed hundreds of English settlers. The largest conflicts between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century were King Philip's War in New England and the Yamasee War in South Carolina.

The Indian massacre of Jamestown settlers in 1622. Soon the colonists in the South feared all natives as enemies.

New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans. The Pilgrims established a settlement in 1620 at Plymouth Colony, which was followed by the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity. The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina, with Georgia Colony – the last of the Thirteen Colonies – established in 1733.

MASSACHUSETTS - during the religious upheavals of the 16th century, a body of men and women called Puritans sought to reform the Established Church of England from within. Essentially, they demanded that the rituals and structures associated with Roman Catholicism be replaced by simpler Calvinist Protestant forms of faith and worship. Their reformist ideas, by destroying the unity of the state church, threatened to divide the people and to undermine royal authority.

In 1607 a small group of Sepa­ratists — a radical sect of Puritans who did not believe the Established Church could ever be reformed — departed for Leyden, Holland, where the Dutch granted them asylum. However, the Calvinist Dutch re­stricted them mainly to low-paid la­boring jobs. Some members of the congregation grew dissatisfied with this discrimination and resolved to emigrate to the New World.

In 1620, a group of Leyden Puri­tans secured a land patent from the Virginia Company. Numbering 101, they set out for Virginia on the May­flower. A storm sent them far north and they landed in New England on Cape Cod. Believing themselves outside the jurisdiction of any orga­nized government, the men drafted a formal agreement to abide by “just and equal laws” drafted by leaders of their own choosing. This was the Mayflower Compact.

In December the Mayflower reached Plymouth harbor; the Pil­grims began to build their settle­ment during the winter. Nearly half the colonists died of exposure and disease, but neighboring Wampa­noag Indians provided the informa­tion that would sustain them: how to grow maize. By the next fall, the Pilgrims had a plentiful crop of corn, and a growing trade based on furs and lumber. 

A new wave of immigrants ar­rived on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in 1630 bearing a grant from King Charles I to establish a colony. Many of them were Puritans whose religious practices were increasingly prohibited in England. Their leader, John Winthrop, urged them to cre­ate a “city upon a hill” in the New World — a place where they would live in strict accordance with their religious beliefs and set an example for all of Christendom.

The Mayflower, which transported Pilgrims to the New World. During the first winter at Plymouth, about half of the Pilgrims died.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was to play a significant role in the development of the entire New Eng­land region, in part because Win­throp and his Puritan colleagues were able to bring their charter with them. Thus the authority for the col­ony’s government resided in Massa­chusetts, not in England.

Under the charter’s provisions, power rested with the General Court, which was made up of “free­ men” required to be members of the Puritan, or Congregational, Church. This guaranteed that the Puritans would be the dominant political as well as religious force in the colony. The General Court elected the gov­ernor, who for most of the next gen­eration would be John Winthrop.

The rigid orthodoxy of the Pu­ritan rule was not to everyone’s lik­ing. One of the first to challenge the General Court openly was a young clergyman named Roger Williams, who objected to the colony’s seizure of Indian lands and advocated sepa­ration of church and state. Another dissenter, Anne Hutchinson, chal­lenged key doctrines of Puritan theology. Both they and their followers were banished.

Williams purchased land from the Narragansett Indians in what is now Providence, Rhode Island, in 1636. In 1644, a sympathetic Puri­tan-controlled English Parliament gave him the charter that established Rhode Island as a distinct colony where complete separation of church and state as well as freedom of reli­gion was practiced.

So-called heretics like Williams were not the only ones who left Mas­sachusetts. Orthodox Puritans, seek­ing better lands and opportunities, soon began leaving Massachusetts Bay Colony. News of the fertility of the Connecticut River Valley, for in­stance, attracted the interest of farm­ers having a difficult time with poor land. By the early 1630s, many were ready to brave the danger of Indian attack to obtain level ground and deep, rich soil.These new commu­nities often eliminated church mem­bership as a prerequisite for voting, thereby extending the franchise to ever larger numbers of men.

At the same time, other settle­ments began cropping up along the New Hampshire and Maine coasts, as more and more immigrants sought the land and liberty the New World seemed to offer.

NEW NETHERLAND AND MARYLAND - hired by the Dutch East India Company, Henry Hudson in 1609 explored the area around what is now New York City and the river that bears his name, to a point prob­ably north of present-day Albany, New York. Subsequent Dutch voy­ages laid the basis for their claims and early settlements in the area.

As with the French to the north, the first interest of the Dutch was the fur trade. To this end, they cultivated close relations with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were the key to the heartland from which the furs came. In 1617 Dutch settlers built a fort at the junction of the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers, where Al­bany now stands.

Settlement on the island of Man­hattan began in the early 1620s. In 1624, the island was purchased from local Native Americans for the re­ported price of $24. It was promptly renamed New Amsterdam.

In order to attract settlers to the Hudson River region, the Dutch en­couraged a type of feudal aristocra­cy, known as the “patroon” system. The first of these huge estates were established in 1630 along the Hud­son River. Under the patroon sys­tem, any stockholder, or patroon, who could bring 50 adults to his es­tate over a four-year period was giv­en a 25-kilometer river-front plot, exclusive fishing and hunting privi­leges, and civil and criminal juris­diction over his lands. In turn, he provided livestock, tools, and build­ings. The tenants paid the patroon rent and gave him first option on surplus crops.

Further to the south, a Swedish trading company with ties to the Dutch attempted to set up its first settlement along the Delaware Riv­er three years later. Without the re­sources to consolidate its position, New Sweden was gradually absorbed into New Netherland, and later, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

In 1632 the Catholic Calvert fam­ily obtained a charter for land north of the Potomac River from King Charles I in what became known as Maryland. As the charter did not ex­pressly prohibit the establishment of non-Protestant churches, the colony became a haven for Catholics. Mary­land’s first town, St.Mary’s, was established in 1634 near where the Potomac River flows into the Chesa­peake Bay.

While establishing a refuge for Catholics, who faced increasing per­secution in Anglican England, the Calverts were also interested in cre­ating profitable estates. To this end, and to avoid trouble with the British government, they also encouraged Protestant immigration.

Maryland’s royal charter had a mixture of feudal and modern elements. On the one hand the Calvert family had the power to create manorial estates. On the oth­er, they could only make laws with the consent of freemen (property holders). They found that in order to attract settlers — and make a profit from their holdings — they had to offer people farms, not just tenancy on manorial estates. The number of independent farms grew in consequence. Their owners de­manded a voice in the affairs of the colony. Maryland’s first legislature met in 1635.

C. Colonial-indian relations - by 1640 the British had solid colonies established along the New England coast and the Chesapeake Bay. In between were the Dutch and the tiny Swedish community. To the west were the original Americans, then called Indians.

Sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, the Eastern tribes were no longer strangers to the Europeans. Although Native Americans ben­efited from access to new technol­ogy and trade, the disease and thirst for land that the early settlers also brought posed a serious challenge to their long-established way of life.

At first, trade with the European settlers brought advantages: knives, axes, weapons, cooking utensils, fishhooks, and a host of other goods. Those Indians who traded initial­ly had significant advantage over rivals who did not. In response to European demand, tribes such as the Iroquois began to devote more at­tention to fur trapping during the 17th century. Furs and pelts pro­vided tribes the means to purchase colonial goods until late into the 18th century.

Early colonial-Native-American relations were an uneasy mix of co­operation and conflict. On the one hand, there were the exemplary rela­tions that prevailed during the first half century of Pennsylvania’s exis­tence. On the other were a long series of setbacks, skirmishes, and wars, which almost invariably resulted in an Indian defeat and further loss of land. The first of the important Native- American uprisings occurred in Vir­ginia in 1622, when some 347 whites were killed, including a number of missionaries who had just recently come to Jamestown.

White settlement of the Con­necticut River region touched off the Pequot War in 1637. 
In 1675 King Philip, the son of the native chief who had made the original peace with the Pilgrims in 1621, attempted to unite the tribes of southern New England against further Europe­an encroachment of their lands. In the struggle, however, Philip lost his life and many Indians were sold into servitude. The steady influx of settlers into the backwoods regions of the Eastern colonies disrupted Native-American life. As more and more game was killed off, tribes were faced with the difficult choice of going hungry, go­ing to war, or moving and coming into conflict with other tribes to the west.

The Iroquois, who inhabited the area below lakes Ontario and Erie in northern New York and Pennsyl­vania, were more successful in re­sisting European advances. In 1570 five tribes joined to form the most complex Native-American nation of its time, the “Ho-De-No-Sau- Nee,” or League of the Iroquois. The league was run by a council made up of 50 representatives from each of the five member tribes. The council dealt with matters common to all the tribes, but it had no say in how the free and equal tribes ran their day-to-day affairs. No tribe was allowed to make war by itself. The council passed laws to deal with crimes such as murder.

The Iroquois League was a strong power in the 1600s and 1700s. It traded furs with the British and sided with them against the French in the war for the dominance of America between 1754 and 1763. The British might not have won that war otherwise.

The Iroquois League stayed strong until the American Revolu­tion. Then, for the first time, the council could not reach a unani­mous decision on whom to support. Member tribes made their own de­cisions, some fighting with the Brit­ish, some with the colonists, some remaining neutral. As a result, ev­eryone fought against the Iroquois. Their losses were great and the league never recovered.

D. Second generation of British colonies - the religious and civil conflict in England in the mid-17th century limited immigration, as well as the attention the mother country paid the fledgling American colonies.

In part to provide for the defense measures England was neglect­ing, the Massachusetts Bay, Plym­outh, Connecticut, and New Haven colonies formed the New England Confederation in 1643. It was the European colonists’ first attempt at regional unity.

The early history of the British settlers reveals a good deal of con­tention — religious and political — as groups vied for power and posi­tion among themselves and their neighbors. Maryland, in particular, suffered from the bitter religious ri­valries that afflicted England during the era of Oliver Cromwell. One of the casualties was the state’s Tolera­tion Act, which was revoked in the 1650s. It was soon reinstated, howev­er, along with the religious freedom it guaranteed.

With the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, the British once again turned their attention to North America. Within a brief span, the first European settlements were established in the Carolinas and the Dutch driven out of New Nether­land. New proprietary colonies were established in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

The Dutch settlements had been ruled by autocratic governors ap­pointed in Europe. Over the years, the local population had become estranged from them. As a result, when the British colonists began en­croaching on Dutch claims in Long Island and Manhattan, the unpopu­lar governor was unable to rally the population to their defense. New Netherland fell in 1664. The terms of the capitulation, however, were mild: The Dutch settlers were able to retain their property and worship as they pleased.

As early as the 1650s, the Albe­marle Sound region off the coast of what is now northern North Caroli­na was inhabited by settlers trickling down from Virginia. The first pro­prietary governor arrived in 1664. The first town in Albemarle, a re­mote area even today, was not estab­lished until the arrival of a group of French Huguenots in 1704.

In 1670 the first settlers, drawn from New England and the Carib­bean island of Barbados, arrived in what is now Charleston, South Carolina. An elaborate system of government, to which the British philosopher John Locke contribut­ed, was prepared for the new colony. One of its prominent features was a failed attempt to create a hereditary nobility. One of the colony’s least ap­pealing aspects was the early trade in Indian slaves. With time, however, timber, rice, and indigo gave the col­ony a worthier economic base.

In 1681 William Penn, a wealthy Quaker and friend of Charles II, re­ceived a large tract of land west of the Delaware River, which became known as Pennsylvania. To help populate it, Penn actively recruited a host of religious dissenters from England and the continent — Quak­ers, Mennonites, Amish, Moravians, and Baptists.

When Penn arrived the follow­ing year, there were already Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers liv­ing along the Delaware River. It was there he founded Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love.”

In keeping with his faith, Penn was motivated by a sense of equal­ity not often found in other Amer­ican colonies at the time. Thus, women in Pennsylvania had rights long before they did in other parts of America. Penn and his deputies also paid considerable attention to the colony’s relations with the Del­aware Indians, ensuring that they were paid for land on which the Eu­ropeans settled.

Georgia was settled in 1732, the last of the 13 colonies to be established. Lying close to, if not actually inside the boundaries of Spanish Florida, the region was viewed as a buffer against Spanish incursion. But it had another unique quality: The man charged with Georgia’s fortifications, General James Oglethorpe, was a reformer who deliberately set out to create a refuge where the poor and former prisoners would be given new opportunities.

The colonies were characterized by religious diversity, with many Congregationalists in New England, German and Dutch Reformed in the Middle Colonies, Catholics in Maryland, and Scots-Irish Presbyterians on the frontier. Sephardic Jews were among early settlers in cities of New England and the South. Many immigrants arrived as religious refugees: French Huguenots settled in New York, Virginia and the Carolinas. Many royal officials and merchants were Anglicans.

SETTLERS, SLAVES, AND SERVANTS - men and women with little active interest in a new life in America were often induced to make the move to the New World by the skillful per­suasion of promoters. William Penn, for example, publicized the oppor­tunities awaiting newcomers to the Pennsylvania colony. Judges and prison authorities offered convicts a chance to migrate to colonies like Georgia instead of serving prison sentences.

But few colonists could finance the cost of passage for themselves and their families to make a start in the new land. In some cases, ships’ cap­tains received large rewards from the sale of service contracts for poor mi­grants, called indentured servants, and every method from extravagant promises to actual kidnapping was used to take on as many passengers as their vessels could hold.

In other cases, the expenses of transportation and maintenance were paid by colonizing agencies like the Virginia or Massachusetts Bay Companies. In return, indentured servants agreed to work for the agen­cies as contract laborers, usually for four to seven years. Free at the end of this term, they would be given “free­dom dues,” sometimes including a small tract of land. Perhaps half the settlers living in the colonies south of New England came to America under this system. Although most of them fulfilled their obligations faithfully, some ran away from their employers. Never­theless, many of them were eventu­ally able to secure land and set up homesteads, either in the colonies in which they had originally settled or in neighboring ones. No social stig­ma was attached to a family that had its beginning in America under this semi-bondage. Every colony had its share of leaders who were former in­dentured servants. There was one very important exception to this pattern: African slaves. The first black Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619, just 12 years after the founding of James­town. Initially, many were regarded as indentured servants who could earn their freedom. By the 1660s, however, as the demand for planta­tion labor in the Southern colonies grew, the institution of slavery be­gan to harden around them, and Af­ricans were brought to America in shackles for a lifetime of involuntary servitude.

Religiosity expanded greatly after the First Great Awakening, a religious revival in the 1740s led by preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. American Evangelicals affected by the Awakening added a new emphasis on divine outpourings of the Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted within new believers an intense love for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and carried the newly created evangelicalism into the early republic, setting the stage for the Second Great Awakening beginning in the late 1790s. In the early stages, evangelicals in the South such as Methodists and Baptists preached for religious freedom and abolition of slavery; they converted many slaves and recognized some as preachers.

Each of the 13 American colonies had a slightly different governmental structure. Typically, a colony was ruled by a governor appointed from London who controlled the executive administration and relied upon a locally elected legislature to vote taxes and make laws. By the 18th century, the American colonies were growing very rapidly as a result of low death rates along with ample supplies of land and food. The colonies were richer than most parts of Britain, and attracted a steady flow of immigrants, especially teenagers who arrived as indentured servants.

The tobacco and rice plantations imported African slaves for labor from the British colonies in the West Indies, and by the 1770s African slaves comprised a fifth of the American population. The question of independence from Britain did not arise as long as the colonies needed British military support against the French and Spanish powers. Those threats were gone by 1765. London regarded the American colonies as existing for the benefit of the mother country. This policy is known as mercantilism.

3. 18-th century

NEW PEOPLES - most settlers who came to Amer­ica in the 17th century were English, but there were also Dutch, Swedes, and Germans in the middle region, a few French Huguenots in South Carolina and elsewhere, slaves from Africa, primarily in the South, and a scattering of Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese throughout the colonies. 

After 1680 England ceased to be the chief source of immigration, sup­planted by Scots and “Scots-Irish” (Protestants from Northern Ire­land). In addition, tens of thousands of refugees fled northwestern Eu­rope to escape war, oppression, and absentee-landlordism. 
By 1690 the American population had risen to a quarter of a million. From then on, it doubled every 25 years until, in 1775, it numbered more than 2.5 million. Although families occa­sionally moved from one colony to another, distinctions between indi­vidual colonies were marked. They were even more so among the three regional groupings of colonies.

NEW ENGLAND - the northeastern New England colonies had generally thin, stony soil, relatively little level land, and long winters, making it difficult to make a living from farming. Turn­ing to other pursuits, the New Eng­landers harnessed waterpower and established grain mills and saw­mills. Good stands of timber en­couraged shipbuilding. Excellent harbors promoted trade, and the sea became a source of great wealth. In Massachusetts, the cod industry alone quickly furnished a basis for prosperity.

With the bulk of the early settlers living in villages and towns around the harbors, many New England­ers carried on some kind of trade or business. Common pastureland and woodlots served the needs of towns­people, who worked small farms nearby. Compactness made possible the village school, the village church, and the village or town hall, where citizens met to discuss matters of common interest.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony continued to expand its commerce. From the middle of the 17th century onward it grew prosperous, so that Boston became one of America’s greatest ports.

Oak timber for ships’ hulls, tall pines for spars and masts, and pitch for the seams of ships came from the Northeastern forests. Building their own vessels and sailing them to ports all over the world, the shipmasters of Massachusetts Bay laid the foun­dation for a trade that was to grow steadily in importance. By the end of the colonial period, one-third of all vessels under the British flag were built in New England. Fish, ship’s stores, and woodenware swelled the exports. New England merchants and shippers soon discovered that rum and slaves were profitable com­modities. One of their most enter­prising — if unsavory — trading practices of the time was the “trian­gular trade.” Traders would purchase slaves off the coast of Africa for New England rum, then sell the slaves in the West Indies where they would buy molasses to bring home for sale to the local rum producers.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES - society in the middle colonies was far more varied, cosmopolitan, and tolerant than in New England. Under William Penn, Pennsylvania functioned smoothly and grew rap­idly. By 1685, its population was al­most 9,000. The heart of the colony was Philadelphia, a city of broad, tree-shaded streets, substantial brick and stone houses, and busy docks. By the end of the colonial period, nearly a century later, 30,000 people lived there, representing many lan­guages, creeds, and trades. Their tal­ent for successful business enterprise made the city one of the thriving centers of the British Empire.

Though the Quakers dominated in Philadelphia, elsewhere in Penn­sylvania others were well represent­ed. Germans became the colony’s most skillful farmers. Important, too, were cottage industries such as weaving, shoemaking, cabinetmak­ing, and other crafts. Pennsylvania was also the principal gateway into the New World for the Scots-Irish, who moved into the colony in the early 18th century. “Bold and indi­gent strangers,” as one Pennsylvania official called them, they hated the English and were suspicious of all government. The Scots-Irish tended to settle in the backcountry, where they cleared land and lived by hunt­ing and subsistence farming.

New York best illustrated the polyglot nature of America. By 1646 the population along the Hudson River included Dutch, French, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Portuguese, and Italians. The Dutch continued to exercise an important social and economic influence on the New York region long after the fall of New Netherland and their in­tegration into the British colonial system. Their sharp-stepped gable roofs became a permanent part of the city’s architecture, and their merchants gave Manhattan much of its original bustling, commercial atmosphere.

THE SOUTHERN COLONIES - in contrast to New England and the middle colonies, the Southern colonies were predominantly rural settlements.

By the late 17th century, Virgin­ia’s and Maryland’s economic and social structure rested on the great planters and the yeoman farmers. The planters of the Tidewater re­gion, supported by slave labor, held most of the political power and the best land. They built great houses, adopted an aristocratic way of life, and kept in touch as best they could with the world of culture overseas.

The yeoman farmers, who worked smaller tracts, sat in popular assem­blies and found their way into political office. Their outspoken independence was a constant warning to the oligar­chy of planters not to encroach too far upon the rights of free men.

The settlers of the Carolinas quickly learned to combine agricul­ture and commerce, and the mar­ketplace became a major source of prosperity. Dense forests brought revenue: Lumber, tar, and resin from the longleaf pine provided some of the best shipbuilding materials in the world. Not bound to a single crop as was Virginia, North and South Carolina also produced and exported rice and indigo, a blue dye obtained from native plants that was used in coloring fabric. By 1750 more than 100,000 people lived in the two colonies of North and South Caroli­na. Charleston, South Carolina, was the region’s leading port and trading center.

In the southern most colonies, as everywhere else, population growth in the backcountry had special sig­nificance. German immigrants and Scots-Irish, unwilling to live in the original Tidewater settlements where English influence was strong, pushed inland. Those who could not secure fertile land along the coast, or who had exhausted the lands they held, found the hills farther west a bountiful refuge. Although their hardships were enormous, restless settlers kept coming; by the 1730s they were pouring into the Shenan­doah Valley of Virginia. Soon the in­terior was dotted with farms.

Living on the edge of Native American country, frontier families built cabins, cleared the wilderness, and cultivated maize and wheat. The men wore leather made from the skin of deer or sheep, known as buckskin; the women wore gar­ments of cloth they spun at home. Their food consisted of venison, wild turkey, and fish. They had their own amusements: great barbecues, dances, housewarmings for newly married couples, shooting matches, and contests for making quilted making remains an American tradition today.

SOCIETY, SCHOOLS, AND CULTURE - a significant factor deterring the emergence of a powerful aristocratic or gentry class in the colonies was the ability of anyone in an estab­lished colony to find a new home on the frontier. Time after time, domi­nant Tidewater figures were obliged to liberalize political policies, land-grant requirements, and religious practices by the threat of a mass exo­dus to the frontier.

Of equal significance for the future were the foundations of American education and culture es­tablished during the colonial period. Harvard College was founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Near the end of the century, the College of William and Mary was established in Virginia. A few years later, the Collegiate School of Connecticut, later to become Yale University, was chartered.

Even more noteworthy was the growth of a school system main­tained by governmental authority. The Puritan emphasis on reading directly from the Scriptures under­scored the importance of literacy. In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the “Satan” Act, requiring every town having more than 50 families to establish a grammar school (a Latin school to prepare students for college). Shortly thereafter, all the other New Eng­land colonies, except for Rhode Is­land, followed its example.

The Pilgrims and Puritans had brought their own little librar­ies and continued to import books from London. And as early as the 1680s, Boston booksellers were do­ing a thriving business in works of classical literature, history, politics, philosophy, science, theology, and belles-lettres. In 1638 the first print­ing press in the English colonies and the second in North America was in­stalled at Harvard College.

The first school in Pennsylvania was begun in 1683. It taught reading, writing, and keeping of accounts. Thereafter, in some fashion, every Quaker community provided for the elementary teaching of its children. More advanced training — in classi­cal languages, history, and literature — was offered at the Friends Public School, which still operates in Phila­delphia as the William Penn Charter School. The school was free to the poor, but parents were required to pay tuition if they were able.

In Philadelphia, numerous private schools with no religious affiliation taught languages, mathematics, and natural science; there were also night schools for adults. Women were not entirely overlooked, but their edu­cational opportunities were limited to training in activities that could be conducted in the home. Private teachers instructed the daughters of prosperous Philadelphians in French, music, dancing, painting, singing, grammar, and sometimes bookkeeping. 

In the 18th century, the intel­lectual and cultural development of Pennsylvania reflected, in large measure, the vigorous personalities of two men: James Logan and Benja­min Franklin. Logan was secretary of the colony, and it was in his fine li­brary that young Franklin found the latest scientific works. In 1745 Logan erected a building for his collection and bequeathed both building and books to the city.

Franklin contributed even more to the intellectual activity of Phila­delphia. He formed a debating club that became the embryo of the American Philosophical Society. His endeavors also led to the founding of a public academy that later devel­oped into the University of Penn­sylvania. He was a prime mover in the establishment of a subscription library, which he called “the mother of all North American subscription libraries.”

In the Southern colonies, wealthy planters and merchants imported pri­vate tutors from Ireland or Scotland to teach their children. Some sent their children to school in England. Having these other opportunities, the upper classes in the Tidewater were not interested in supporting pub­lic education. In addition, the diffu­sion of farms and plantations made the formation of community schools difficult. There were only a few free schools in Virginia.

The desire for learning did not stop at the borders of established communities, however. On the fron­tier, the Scots-Irish, though living in primitive cabins, were firm devotees of scholarship, and they made great efforts to attract learned ministers to their settlements.

Literary production in the colo­nies was largely confined to New England. Here attention concen­trated on religious subjects. Ser­mons were the most common products of the press. A famous Pu­ritan minister, the Reverend Cot­ton Mather, wrote some 400 works. His masterpiece, Magnalia Chris­ti Americana, presented the pag­eant of New England’s history. The most popular single work of the day was the Reverend Michael Wiggles­worth’s long poem, “The Day of Doom,” which described the Last Judgment in terrifying terms.

In 1704 Cambridge, Massachu­setts, launched the colonies’ first successful newspaper. By 1745 there were 22 newspapers being published in British North America.

In New York, an important step in establishing the principle of free­dom of the press took place with the case of John Peter Zenger, whose New York Weekly Journal, begun in 1733, represented the opposition to the government. After two years of publication, the colonial governor could no longer tolerate Zenger’s sa­tirical barbs, and had him thrown into prison on a charge of seditious libel. Zenger continued to edit his paper from jail during his nine-month trial, which excited intense interest throughout the colonies. Andrew Hamilton, the prominent lawyer who defended Zenger, argued that the charges printed by Zenger were true and hence not libelous.The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Zenger went free.

The increasing prosperity of the towns prompted fears that the dev­il was luring society into pursuit of worldly gain and may have contrib­uted to the religious reaction of the 1730s, known as the Great Awaken­ing. Its two immediate sources were George Whitefield, a Wesleyan re­vivalist who arrived from England in 1739, and Jonathan Edwards, who served the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Whitefield began a religious re­vival in Philadelphia and then moved on to New England. He enthralled audiences of up to 20,000 people at a time with histrionic displays, ges­tures, and emotional oratory. Reli­gious turmoil swept throughout New England and the middle colonies as ministers left established churches to preach the revival.

Edwards was the most prominent of those influenced by Whitefield and the Great Awakening. His most memorable contribution was his 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Rejecting theat­rics, he delivered his message in a quiet, thoughtful manner, arguing that the established churches sought to deprive Christianity of its func­tion of redemption from sin. His magnum opus, Of Freedom of Will (1754), attempted to reconcile Cal­vinism with the Enlightenment.

The Great Awakening gave rise to evangelical denominations (those churches that believe in personal conversion and the iner­rancy of the Bible) and the spirit of revivalism, which continue to play significant roles in American reli­gious and cultural life. It weakened the status of the established clergy and provoked believers to rely on their own conscience. Perhaps most important, it led to the proliferation of sects and denominations, which in turn encouraged general accep­tance of the principle of religious toleration.

EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT - in the early phases of colonial de­velopment, a striking feature was the lack of controlling influence by the English government. All colonies ex­cept Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders, or as feudal propri­etorships stemming from charters granted by the Crown. The fact that the king had transferred his immedi­ate sovereignty over the New World settlements to stock companies and proprietors did not, of course, mean that the colonists in America were necessarily free of outside control. Under the terms of the Virginia Company charter, for example, full governmental authority was vested in the company itself. Nevertheless, the crown expected that the com­pany would be resident in England. Inhabitants of Virginia, then, would have no more voice in their govern­ment than if the king himself had retained absolute rule. Still, the colonies considered themselves chiefly as common­wealths or states, much like England itself, having only a loose association with the authorities in London. In one way or another, exclusive rule from the outside withered away. The colonists — inheritors of the long English tradition of the struggle for political liberty — incorporated concepts of freedom into Virginia’s first charter. It provided that Eng­lish colonists were to exercise all liberties, franchises, and immuni­ties “as if they had been abiding and born within this our Realm of Eng­land.” They were, then, to enjoy the benefits of the Magna Carta — the charter of English political and civ­il liberties granted by King John in 1215 — and the common law — the English system of law based on legal precedents or tradition, not statutory law. In 1618 the Virginia Company issued instructions to its appointed governor providing that free inhab­itants of the plantations should elect representatives to join with the gov­ernor and an appointive council in passing ordinances for the welfare of the colony.

These measures proved to be some of the most far-reaching in the entire colonial period. From then on, it was generally accepted that the colonists had a right to participate in their own government. In most in­stances, the king, in making future grants, provided in the charter that the free men of the colony should have a voice in legislation affecting them. Thus, charters awarded to the Calverts in Maryland, William Penn in Pennsylvania, the proprietors in North and South Carolina, and the proprietors in New Jersey specified that legislation should be enacted with “the consent of the freemen.”

In New England, for many years, there was even more complete self-government than in the other col­onies. Aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims adopted an instrument for government called the “Mayflower Compact,” to “combine ourselves to­gether into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation ...and by virtue hereof [to] enact, con­stitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices ...as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony....”

Although there was no legal basis for the Pilgrims to establish a system of self-government, the action was not contested, and, under the com­pact, the Plymouth settlers were able for many years to conduct their own affairs without outside interference.

A similar situation developed in the Massachusetts Bay Company, which had been given the right to govern itself. Thus, full authority rested in the hands of persons re­siding in the colony. At first, the dozen or so original members of the company who had come to America attempted to rule autocratically. But the other colonists soon demanded a voice in public affairs and indi­cated that refusal would lead to a mass migration.

The company members yield­ ed, and control of the government passed to elected representatives. Subsequently, other New England colonies — such as Connecticut and Rhode Island — also succeeded in becoming self-governing simply by asserting that they were beyond any governmental authority, and then setting up their own political sys­tem modeled after that of the Pil­grims at Plymouth.

In only two cases was the self-government provision omitted. These were New York, which was granted to Charles II’s brother, the Duke of York (later to become King James II), and Georgia, which was granted to a group of “trustees.” In both instances the provisions for governance were short-lived, for the colonists demanded legislative rep­resentation so insistently that the au­thorities soon yielded.

In the mid-17th century, the English were too distracted by their Civil War (1642-49) and Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Com­monwealth to pursue an effective colonial policy. After the restora­tion of Charles II and the Stuart dynasty in 1660, England had more opportunity to attend to colonial administration. Even then, how­ever, it was inefficient and lacked a coherent plan. The colonies were left largely to their own devices.

The remoteness afforded by a vast ocean also made control of the colo­nies difficult. Added to this was the character of life itself in early Amer­ica. From countries limited in space and dotted with populous towns, the settlers had come to a land of seemingly unending reach. On such a continent, natural conditions pro­moted a tough individualism, as people became used to making their own decisions. Government pene­trated the backcountry only slowly, and conditions of anarchy often pre­vailed on the frontier.

Yet the assumption of self-gov­ernment in the colonies did not go entirely unchallenged. In the 1670s, the Lords of Trade and Plantations, a royal committee established to en­force the mercantile system in the colonies, moved to annul the Massa­chusetts Bay charter because the col­ony was resisting the government’s economic policy. James II in 1685 approved a proposal to create a Do­minion of New England and place colonies south through New Jersey under its jurisdiction, thereby tight­ening the Crown’s control over the whole region. A royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, levied taxes by ex­ecutive order, implemented a num­ber of other harsh measures, and jailed those who resisted.

When news of the Glorious Rev­olution (1688-89), which deposed James II in England, reached Boston, the population rebelled and impris­oned Andros. Under a new charter, Massachusetts and Plymouth were united for the first time in 1691 as the royal colony of Massachusetts Bay. The other New England colo­nies quickly reinstalled their previ­ous governments.

The English Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act of 1689 affirmed freedom of worship for Christians in the colonies as well as in England and enforced limits on the Crown. Equally important, John Locke’s Sec­ond Treatise on Government (1690), the Glorious Revolution’s major theoretical justification, set forth a theory of government based not on divine right but on contract. It contended that the people, endowed with natural rights of life, liberty, and property, had the right to reb­el when governments violated their rights.

By the early 18th century, almost all the colonies had been brought under the direct jurisdiction of the British Crown, but under the rules established by the Glorious Revolu­tion. Colonial governors sought to exercise powers that the king had lost in England, but the colonial as­semblies, aware of events there, at­tempted to assert their “rights” and “liberties.” Their leverage rested on two significant powers similar to those held by the English Parlia­ment: the right to vote on taxes and expenditures, and the right to ini­tiate legislation rather than merely react to proposals of the governor.

The legislatures used these rights to check the power of royal gover­nors and to pass other measures to expand their power and influence. The recurring clashes between gov­ernor and assembly made colonial politics tumultuous and worked in­creasingly to awaken the colonists to the divergence between American and English interests. In many cases, the royal authorities did not under­stand importance of what the colonial assemblies were doing and simply neglected them. Nonetheless, the precedents and principles estab­lished in the conflicts between as­semblies and governors eventually became part of the unwritten “con­stitution” of the colonies. In this way, the colonial legislatures asserted the right of self-government.

4. The french and indian war 

France and Britain engaged in a succession of wars in Europe and the Caribbean throughout the 18th century. Though Britain secured certain advantages — primarily in the sugar-rich islands of the Carib­bean — the struggles were generally indecisive, and France remained in a powerful position in North Ameri­ca. By 1754, France still had a strong relationship with a number of Na­tive American tribes in Canada and along the Great Lakes. It controlled the Mississippi River and, by estab­lishing a line of forts and trading posts, had marked out a great cres­cent-shaped empire stretching from Quebec to New Orleans. The British remained confined to the narrow belt east of the Appalachian Moun­tains. Thus the French threatened not only the British Empire but also the American colonists themselves, for in holding the Mississippi Valley, France could limit their westward expansion.

An armed clash took place in 1754 at Fort Duquesne, the site where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is now lo­cated, between a band of French reg­ulars and Virginia militiamen under the command of 22-year-old George Washington, a Virginia planter and surveyor. The British government attempted to deal with the conflict by calling a meeting of representa­tives from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the New England colonies. From June 19 to July 10, 1754, the Albany Congress, as it came to be known, met with the Iro­quois in Albany, New York, in order to improve relations with them and secure their loyalty to the British.

But the delegates also declared a union of the American colonies “ab­solutely necessary for their preserva­tion” and adopted a proposal drafted by Benjamin Franklin. The Albany Plan of Union provided for a pres­ident appointed by the king and a grand council of delegates chosen by the assemblies, with each colony to be represented in proportion to its financial contributions to the gen­eral treasury. This body would have charge of defense, Native American relations, and trade and settlement of the west. Most importantly, it would have independent authority to levy taxes. But none of the colonies accepted the plan, since they were not prepared to surrender either the power of taxation or control over the development of the western lands to a central authority.

Battle of Quebec, 13 September 1759

England’s superior strategic posi­tion and her competent leadership ultimately brought victory in the conflict with France, known as the French and Indian War in Ameri­ca and the Seven Years’ War in Eu­rope. Only a modest portion of it was fought in the Western Hemisphere.

In the Peace of Paris (1763), France relinquished all of Canada, the Great Lakes, and the territory east of the Mississippi to the Brit­ish. The dream of a French empire in North America was over.

Having triumphed over France, Britain was now compelled to face a problem that it had hitherto ne­glected, the governance of its em­pire. London thought it essential to organize its now vast possessions to facilitate defense, reconcile the diver­gent interests of different areas and peoples, and distribute more evenly the cost of imperial administration.

In North America alone, British territories had more than doubled. A population that had been predom­inantly Protestant and English now included French-speaking Catholics from Quebec, and large numbers of partly Christianized Native Ameri­cans. Defense and administration of the new territories, as well as of the old, would require huge sums of money and increased personnel. The old colonial system was obviously inadequate to these tasks. Measures to establish a new one, however, would rouse the latent suspicions of colonials who increasingly would see Britain as no longer a protector of their rights, but rather a danger to them.

An upper-class, with wealth based on large plantations operated by slave labor, and holding significant political power and even control over the churches, emerged in South Carolina and Virginia. A unique class system operated in upstate New York, where Dutch tenant farmers rented land from very wealthy Dutch proprietors, such as the Rensselaer family. The other colonies were more equalitarian, with Pennsylvania being representative. By the mid-18th century Pennsylvania was basically a middle-class colony with limited deference to its small upper-class. A writer in the Pennsylvania Journal in 1756 summed it up:

The People of this Province are generally of the middling Sort, and at present pretty much upon a Level. They are chiefly industrious Farmers, Artificers or Men in Trade; they enjoy in are fond of Freedom, and the meanest among them thinks he has a right to Civility from the greatest.

5. Political integration and autonomy

The French and Indian War (1754–63) was a watershed event in the political development of the colonies. It was also part of the larger Seven Years' War. The influence of the main rivals of the British Crown in the colonies and Canada, the French and North American Indians, was significantly reduced with the territory of the Thirteen Colonies expanding into New France both in Canada and the Louisiana Territory. Moreover, the war effort resulted in greater political integration of the colonies, as reflected in the Albany Congress and symbolized by Benjamin Franklin's call for the colonies to "Join or Die". Franklin was a man of many inventions – one of which was the concept of a United States of America, which emerged after 1765 and was realized in July 1776.

Join, or Die: This 1756 political cartoon  by Benjamin Franklin urged 
the colonies to join together during the French and Indian War.

Following Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 with the goal of organizing the new North American empire and protecting the native Indians from colonial expansion into western lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. 

In ensuing years, strains developed in the relations between the colonists and the Crown. The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765, imposing a tax on the colonies without going through the colonial legislatures. The issue was drawn: did Parliament have this right to tax Americans who were not represented in it? Crying "No taxation without representation", the colonists refused to pay the taxes as tensions escalated in the late 1760s and early 1770s.

An 1846 painting of the 1773 Boston Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a direct action by activists in the town of Boston to protest against the new tax on tea. Parliament quickly responded the next year with the Coercive Acts, stripping Massachusetts of its historic right of self-government and putting it under army rule, which sparked outrage and resistance in all thirteen colonies. Patriot leaders from all 13 colonies convened the First Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance to the Coercive Acts. The Congress called for a boycott of British trade, published a list of rights and grievances, and petitioned the king for redress of those grievances. The appeal to the Crown had no effect, and so the Second Continental Congress was convened in 1775 to organize the defense of the colonies against the British Army.

Ordinary folk became insurgents against the British even though they were unfamiliar with the ideological rationales being offered. They held very strongly a sense of "rights" that they felt the British were deliberately violating – rights that stressed local autonomy, fair dealing, and government by consent. They were highly sensitive to the issue of tyranny, which they saw manifested in the arrival in Boston of the British Army to punish the Bostonians. This heightened their sense of violated rights, leading to rage and demands for revenge. They had faith that God was on their side.

The American Revolutionary War began at Concord and Lexington in April 1775 when the British tried to seize ammunition supplies and arrest the Patriot leaders.

The population density in the American Colonies in 1775.

In terms of political values, the Americans were largely united on a concept called Republicanism, that rejected aristocracy and emphasized civic duty and a fear of corruption. For the Founding Fathers, according to one team of historians, "republicanism represented more than a particular form of government. It was a way of life, a core ideology, an uncompromising commitment to liberty, and a total rejection of aristocracy."

SIDEBAR: THE WITCHES OF SALEM

In 1692 a group of adolescent girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, became subject to strange fits after hearing tales told by a West Indian slave. When they were questioned, they accused several women of being witches who were tormenting them. The towns people were appalled but not surprised: belief in witchcraft was widespread throughout 17th-century America and Europe.

What happened next - although an isolated event in American history - provides a vivid window into the social and psychological world of Puritan New England. Town officials convened a court to hear the charges of witchcraft, and swiftly convicted and executed a tavern keeper, Bridget Bishop. Within a month, five other women had been convicted and hanged.

Nevertheless, the hysteria grew, in large measure because the court permitted witnesses to testify that they had seen the accused as spirits or in visions. By its very nature, such "spectral evidence" was especially dangerous, because it could be neither verified nor subject to objective examination. By the fall of 1692, more than 20 victims, including several men, had been executed, and more than 100 others were in jail -- among them some of the town's most prominent citizens. But now the hysteria threatened to spread beyond Salem, and ministers throughout the colony called for an end to the trials. The governor of the colony agreed and dismissed the court. Those still in jail were later acquitted or given reprieves.

Examination of a Witch 

The Salem witch trials have long fascinated Americans. On a psychological level, most historians agree that Salem Village in 1692 was seized by a kind of public hysteria, fueled by a genuine belief in the existence of witchcraft. They point out that, while some of the girls may have been acting, many responsible adults became caught up in the frenzy as well.

But even more revealing is a closer analysis of the identities of the accused and the accusers. Salem Village, like much of colonial New England at that time, was undergoing an economic and political transition from a largely agrarian, Puritan-dominated community to a more commercial, secular society. Many of the accusers were representatives of a traditional way of life tied to farming and the church, whereas a number of the accused witches were members of the rising commercial class of small shopkeepers and tradesmen. Salem's obscure struggle for social and political power between older traditional groups and a newer commercial class was one repeated in communities throughout American history . But it took a bizarre and deadly detour when its citizens were swept up by the conviction that the devil was loose in their homes. 

The Salem witch trials also serve as a dramatic parable of the deadly consequences of making sensational, but false, charges. Indeed, a frequent term in political debate for making false accusations against a large number of people is "witch hunt."