Bacon's Bloody Rebellion in Virginia

10. Describe Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia.

Links to Texts related to Bacon's Rebellion:

Bacon's Declaration in the Name of the People, 30 July 1676
Governor William Berkely on Bacon's Rebellion, 19 May 1676
Robert Beverley On Bacon's Rebellion, 1704
Bacon's Castle (1665). Headquarters of Bacon's Rebellion in Surry County
Columbia Encyclopedia Entry for Bacon's Rebellion

 

The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom (A) 

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The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom (B)  

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The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom (C) 

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The Glorious Revolution Spills into America

Creation of the English Empire in North America, I  

Creation of the English Empire, 1660-1700  

11. What were the causes of rebellions in Massachusetts, New York and Maryland in 1689?

In a chain reaction, three political uprisings had occurred in the American colonies in just four months. Although each had its own individual character, the common issue, besides the rumored Catholic conspiracy, was the question of how extensive colonial rights would be in the face of tightening imperial administration. 

 

New England's Witchcraft Hysteria

12. What were some of the causes of witchcraft accusations in Salem in 1692?

Witchcraft

Settling Anglo-American Differences

13. What were some of the reasons that the colonists were willing to give up their loose freedom of earlier times and accept the royal model of government after 1691? 

An Era of Salutary Neglect

An Exploding Population Base

Between 1700 and 1760 the colonial population mushroomed from 250,000 to 1.6 million persons—and to 2.5 million by 1775. Natural population increase—predicated upon abundant land, early marriages, and high fertility rates—was only one source of the population explosion. Equally significant was the introduction of non-English peoples. Between 1700 and 1775 the British North American slave trade reached its peak, resulting in the involuntary entry of an estimated 250,000 Africans into the colonies. The black population grew from 28,000 in 1700 to over 500,000 in 1775, with most living as chattel slaves in the South. At least 40 to 50 percent of the African population increase in the colonies was attributable to the booming slave trade.

16. How was it that Olaudah Equiano came to live in England and work as an active abolitionist?

 

Olaudah Equiano on His Ship Passage as a Slave to America          Slavery

18. From the map of Western European Migration on page 83, what were the religious affiliation of the European immigrants?

Among European groups, Scots-Irish and Germans predominated, although a smattering of French Huguenot, Swiss, Scottish, Irish, and Jewish migrants joined the westward stream. The Scots-Irish had endured many privations. Originally Presbyterian lowlanders from Scotland, they had migrated to Ulster (northern Ireland) in the seventeenth century at the invitation of the Crown. Once there, they harassed the Catholic Irish with a vengeance, only to face discrimination themselves when a new Parliamentary law, the Test Act of 1704, stripped non-Anglicans of political rights. During the next several years they also endured crop failures and huge rent increases from their English landlords.

15. Where did the Scots-Irish tend to settle when they arrived in the Colonies between 1725 and 1775? 

In a series of waves between 1725 and 1775 over 100,000 Scots-Irish descended on North America, lured by reports of "a rich, fine soil before them, laying as loose . . . as the best bed in the garden." Philadelphia was their main port of entry. They then moved out into the backcountry where they squatted on open land and earned reputations as bloodthirsty Indian fighters. In time, the Scots-Irish took the Great Wagon Road through the Shenandoah Valley and started filling in the southern backcountry.

Even before the first Scots-Irish wave, Germans from the area of the upper Rhine River began streaming into the Middle Colonies. Some, like Amish, Moravian, and Mennonite sectarians, fled religious persecution; others escaped from crushing economic circumstances caused by overpopulation, crop failures, and heavy local taxes. So many Germans came through Philadelphia that Benjamin Franklin questioned whether "Pennsylvania . . . [will] become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them." Franklin's worries could not stop the German migrants, whose numbers exceeded 100,000 by 1775.

Many destitute Germans crossed the Atlantic as redemptioners. (The redemptioner labor system was similar to that of indentured servitude in providing a way for persons without financial means to get to America. Normally, the family had to locate someone to pay for its passage in return for a set number of years of labor. If no buyer could be found, then ships captains could sell the family's labor, most likely on less desirable terms for the family, to recoup the costs of passage. Thousands of Germans migrated to America as redemptioners in the eighteenth century.) This system was similar to indentured servitude, except that families migrated together and shippers promised heads of households a few days' time, upon arrival in America, to locate some person or group to pay for the family's passage in return for a set number of years of labor (usually three to six years per family member). If they failed, then ship captains held auctions at market with the expectation of making tidy profits. The redemptioner system was full of abuses, such as packing passengers on vessels like cattle and serving them worm-infested food. Hundreds died before seeing America. For those who survived, the dream of prospering someday as free colonists remained viable.

One reason for such optimism was that more settlers were enjoying longer life spans, as reflected in higher birth and lower death rates. Estimates indicate that post-1700 Americans were dying at an average of 20 to 25 per 1000 annually, but births numbered 45 to 50 per 1000 settlers.

Longer lives reflected improved health and agricultural abundance. Colonists had plentiful supplies of food. Nutritious diets led to better overall health, making it easier for Americans to fight virulent diseases. Even the poorest people, claimed a New England doctor, had regular meals of "salt pork and beans, with bread of Indian corn meal," as well as ample quantities of home-brewed beer and distilled spirits. In the same period, food supplies in Europe were dangerously sparse. Thousands of western Europeans starved to death between 1740 and 1743 because of widespread crop failures.

Compared to Europe, America was a land of boundless prosperity. To be sure, however, the colonists accepted wide disparities in wealth, rank, and privilege as part of the natural order of life. They did so because of the pervasive influence of European values, such as the need for hierarchy and deference in social and political relations. The eighteenth century was still an era in which individuals believed in three distinct social orders—the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the "democracy" of common citizens. All persons had an identifiable place in society, fixed at birth; and to try to improve one's lot was to risk instability in the established rhythms of the universe.

These notions, dating back to Aristotle and other ancient thinkers, helped justify the highly stratified world of early modern Europe, featuring monarchical families such as the Tudors and Stuarts and bloodline aristocrats who passed hereditary titles from one generation to the next. Among those threatening Europe's established social order were ambitious commoners who had acquired great wealth through commerce. They too craved public recognition and high status, and they tried to earn a place for themselves at the top of the social pyramid by aping the manners and customs of those born into privileged social stations.

The same could be said for wealthy elite families that had emerged in America by the early eighteenth century. In Virginia names like Byrd, Carter, and Lee were of the first rank; the Pinckneys and Rutledges dominated South Carolina; in New York the Livingstons and Schuylers were among the favored few with great estates along the Hudson River; and in Massachusetts those of major consequence included merchant families like the Hutchinsons and Olivers.

Elite families set themselves apart from the rest of colonial society by imitating English aristocratic lifestyles. Wealthy southern gentlemen used gangs of slaves to produce the staple crops that generated the income to construct lavish manor houses with elaborate formal gardens. Northern merchants built large residences of Georgian design and filled them with fashionable Hepplewhite or Chippendale furniture. Together, they thought of themselves as the "better sort," and they expected the "lower sort" (also described as the "common herd" or "rabble") to defer to their judgment in social and political decision making.

One characteristic, then, of the "Europeanizing" of colonial society was growing economic stratification, with extremes of wealth and poverty becoming more visible. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, where commercial farming was predominant, the wealthiest 10 percent of the people owned 24 percent of the taxable property in the 1690s, which jumped to 34 percent by 1760. Their gain came at the expense of the bottom 30 percent, who held 17 percent in the 1690s but only 6 percent in 1760. The pattern was even more striking in urban areas like Boston and Philadelphia. By 1760 the top 10 percent controlled over 60 percent of the available wealth; the bottom 30 percent owned less than 2 percent.

Nevertheless, the colonies featured a large middle class, and it was still possible to get ahead in provincial America. Over 90 percent of the people lived in the countryside and engaged in some form of agricultural production. By European standards, property ownership was widespread, yet poverty was also common. Some of the worst instances were among urban dwellers, many of whom eked out the barest of livelihoods as unskilled day laborers or merchant seamen. These individuals at least enjoyed some personal freedom, which placed them above those persons trapped in slavery, who formed 20 percent of the populace but enjoyed none of its prosperity or political rights.

With colonial wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, a second "Europeanizing" trend was toward the hardening of class lines. Elite families increasingly intermarried, and they spoke openly of an assumed right to serve as political stewards for the people. As one Virginia gentleman proclaimed in the 1760s, "men of birth and fortune, in every government that is free, should be invested with power, and enjoy higher honors than the people. If it were otherwise, their privileges would be less, and they would not enjoy an equal degree of liberty with the people."

Here was a classic statement of "deferential" thinking. Although widespread property holding allowed substantial numbers of free white males to vote, they most often chose among members of the elite to represent them in elective offices, particularly in colonial assemblies. Once elected, these stewards regularly contested with Crown-appointed governors and councilors in upper houses over the prerogatives of decision making. In colony after colony during the eighteenth century, elite leaders chipped away at royal authority, arguing that the assemblies were "little parliaments" with the same legislative rights in their respective territorial spheres as Parliament had over all British subjects.

More often than not, governors had only feeble backing from the home government and lost these disputes. Consequently, the assemblies gained many prerogatives, including the right to initiate all provincial money and taxation bills. Because governors depended on the assemblies for their salaries, they often approved local legislation not in the best interests of the Crown in exchange for bills appropriating their annual salaries. By the 1760s the colonial assemblies had thus emerged as powerful agencies of government.

As self-conscious, assertive elite leaders, colonial gentlemen also read widely and kept themselves informed about European political activities. They were particularly attracted to the writings of a band of "radical" Whig pamphleteers in England who repeatedly warned of ministerial officials who would use every corrupting device to grab all power and authority as potential tyrants at home. The radical Whigs spoke of the delicate fabric of liberty; and provincial leaders, viewing themselves as the protectors of American rights, were increasingly on guard, in case the Crown became too oppressive, as it had been during the 1680s in demanding conformity to the imperial will.

These colonial leaders took challenges to their local autonomy seriously. At least some in their number were ready to mobilize and lead the populace in resisting any new wave of perceived imperial tyranny, should a time ever come when the parent nation attempted to return to arbitrary government.

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19. What was the Enlightenment?

Besides politics, colonial leaders paid close attention to Europe's dawning Age of Reason, also called the Enlightenment. The new approach to learning was secular, based on scientific inquiry and the systematic collection of information. A major goal was to unlock the physical laws of nature, as the great English physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), often considered the father of the Enlightenment, had done in explaining how the force of gravity held the universe together (Principia Mathematica, 1687).

A broadly influential philosophical and intellectual movement that began in Europe during the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment unleashed a tidal wave of new learning, especially in the sciences and mathematics, that helped promote the notion that human beings, through the use of their reason, could solve society's problems. The Enlightenment era, as such, has also been called the "Age of Reason." Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were leading proponents of Enlightenment thinking in America

A main tenet of the Enlightenment era, meaning a firm trust in the ability of the human mind to solve earthly problems, thereby lessening the role of—and reliance on—God as an active force in the ordering of human affairs.

20. What is rationalism?

Europe's intellectuals, heavily influenced by the English political thinker John Locke (1632-1704), tried to identify laws governing human behavior. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke described the human mind as a blank sheet (tabula rasa) at birth waiting to be influenced by the experiences of life. If people followed the insights of reason, social and political ills could be reduced or eliminated from society, and each person, as well as humanity as a whole, could advance toward greater harmony and perfection. As such, the key watchword of the Enlightenment was rationalism, meaning a firm trust in the ability of the human mind to solve earthly problems—with much less faith in the centrality of God as an active, judgmental force in the universe.

Like their counterparts in Europe, educated colonists pursued all forms of knowledge. Naturalists John Bartram of Pennsylvania and Dr. Alexander Garden of Charleston, South Carolina, were among those who systematically collected and classified American plants. The wealthy merchant James Logan of Philadelphia was a skilled mathematician who also conducted experiments in botany that revealed how pollen functioned as a fertilizing agent in corn.

 

21. What sports did the Puritans condone?

They supported such activities as walking, archery, running, wrestling, fencing, hunting, fishing, and hawking—as long as they were engaged in at a proper time and in a proper manner. Moderate recreation devoid of gambling, drunkenness, idleness, and frivolousness could refresh the body and spirit and thus serve the greater glory of God. This last point was the most important for the Puritans. Recreations had to help men and women better serve God; they were never to be ends in themselves.

23. What were the central outcomes and hallmark legacies of the Great Awakening?

The Great Awakening in New England

1730s - 1750s

 In the realm of religion, the Great Awakening:

• Justified Attacks on Authority ("New Lights" against "Old Lights")

• Emphasized the Necessity of Individual Choice (e.g. the choice to repudiate authority of "Old Light" ministry)

• Associated Attacks on Authority and Individual Choice with Salvation of the Individual

Link to Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

1750-1776: From Religion to Politics:

• Lessons/Habits learned in the Great Awakening applied to political and imperial issues

Unlike Mather, many ministers viewed the Enlightenment with great suspicion. Rationalism seemed to undermine orthodox religious values by reducing God to a prime mover who had set the universe in motion only to leave humans to chart their own destiny. (This system of thought was known as Deism.) Others perceived a decline in religious faith, as the populace rushed to achieve material rather than spiritual abundance. For some clergymen, the time was at hand for a renewed emphasis on vital religion.

During the 1720s and 1730s in Europe and America, some ministers started holding revivals. They did so in the face of dwindling church attendance in many locales. The first colonial outpouring of rejuvenated faith occurred during the mid-1720s in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, where the determined Dutch Reformed minister, Theodorus Frelinghuysen, and his Presbyterian counterpart, Gilbert Tennent, attacked what the latter called the "presumptuous security" of his parishioners. Delivering impassioned sermons, these two ministers exhorted great numbers of people to seek after God's saving grace. Theirs was the first in a succession of revival "harvests" known collectively as the Great Awakening.

The next harvest came in New England. With each passing year fewer descendants of the Puritans showed interest in seeking God's grace and gaining full church membership. Attempting to reverse matters in the early eighteenth century, the longtime Congregational minister, Solomon Stoddard (c. 1643-1729) of Northampton, Massachusetts, threw open the doors of his church and encouraged everyone to join in communion services—the hallmark of full church membership. Stoddard's method worked, and he temporarily reversed the slide.

Then in 1734 Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), who had succeeded Stoddard, his grandfather, in the Northampton pulpit, initiated a series of revival meetings aimed at young persons. Edwards was a learned student of the Enlightenment who argued that experiencing God's grace was essential to the full appreciation of the universe and its laws. Like his grandfather before him, he joyously preached about seeking redemption and salvation, soon noting that Northampton's inhabitants, both young and old, were now "full of love."
In 1741 Edwards delivered his best known sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Preaching fervently, he reminded his listeners of the "manifold . . . abominations of your life," vividly picturing how each of them was "wallowing in sensual filthiness, as swine in mire." He also dangled his audience over "the abyss of hell" as a jarring reminder to place God at the center of human existence. Appealing to the senses more than to rational inquiry, Edwards felt, was the surest way to uplift individual lives, win souls for God, and improve society as a whole.

Such local revivals did not become broad and general until after the dynamic English preacher, George Whitefield (1714-1770), arrived in America. Whitefield was a disciple of John Wesley, the founder of the revival-oriented Methodist movement in England. Possessing a booming voice and charismatic presence, he preached with great simplicity, always stressing the essentials of God's "free gift" of grace for those seeking conversion. Even Benjamin Franklin, a confirmed skeptic, felt moved when Whitefield appeared in Philadelphia. He went to the meeting determined to give no money but relented in the end: Franklin confessed, "I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all."

Whitefield, known as the "grand itinerant," made seven preaching tours to the colonies, traveled thousands of miles, and delivered hundreds of sermons. Perhaps his most dramatic tour was to New England in the autumn of 1740. In Boston alone over 20,000 persons heard him preach in a three-day period. Concluding his tour in less than a month, Whitefield left behind churches full of congregants anxious to experience conversion and bask in the glow of their newfound fellowship with God.

The Awakening soon became a source of much contention, splitting America's religious community into new and old light camps. When in 1740 Gilbert Tennent preached his widely read sermon, "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," he expressed the feeling of many revivalists in advising their flocks of believers to shun clergymen who, although formally educated in theology, showed no visible signs of having gained God's saving grace. Thousands paid attention, and they started breaking away from congregations where ministers were suspect.

In response, Old Light clergymen, who at first rejoiced about having so many people return to the fold, began denouncing the Awakening as a fraudulent hoax being perpetrated by unlettered fools with no theological training. In New England ministers of the established Congregational church got their legislative assemblies to adopt anti-itinerancy laws, which barred traveling evangelists such as Whitefield and Tennent from preaching in their communities. The contention between Old Lights and New Lights became so heated in many New England towns that friends and neighbors, when not arguing, stopped speaking.

So much turmoil had significant long-term repercussions. Those feeling a new relationship with God were less willing to submit to established authority and more determined to speak out on behalf of basic liberties. Typical were colonists in New England who had started calling themselves Baptists. Under the resolute leadership of Isaac Backus, they demanded the right to separate completely from the established Congregational church, to which all citizens owed taxes, and the right to support their own ministers and churches. Theirs would be a long and hard-fought campaign to end state-supported religion.

The liberty to worship and support whatever church one pleased was a central outcome of the Awakening movement, as was a concern with the proper training of clergymen. Before the 1740s, the colonies had only three colleges: Harvard (1636), William and Mary (1693), and Yale (1701). In demanding toleration for diverse ideas, Presbyterian revivalists set up the College of New Jersey (1747, later Princeton), to train New Light clergymen; Baptists founded the College of Rhode Island (1764, later Brown); and the Dutch Reformed established Queen's College (1766, later Rutgers). In 1769 a New Light Congregational minister, Eleazar Wheelock, received a charter for Dartmouth College to carry the new-birth message to Native Americans. Only King's College (1757, later Columbia), founded by Anglicans, and the College of Philadelphia (1755, later the University of Pennsylvania) had no special interest in training New Light clergymen; but in recognizing growing religious pluralism, these two colleges regularly admitted students on a nonsectarian basis.

As the Great Awakening spread into the South, it had a variety of lasting effects. During the late 1740s and 1750s the Reverend Samuel Davies inspired the emergence of Presbyterian congregations in Virginia, thereby calling into question the authority of the established Anglican church. By the mid-1750s swelling numbers of Baptists were openly criticizing the mores of Virginia's planter elite. They started to demand, for example, the "entire banishment of dancing, gaming, and sabbath-day diversions."

Sometimes those in authority reacted viciously. A Virginia sheriff "violently jerked" a Baptist speaker off a platform and "beat his head against the ground" before administering "twenty lashes with his horse whip." The victim responded by returning to the stage and preaching even more vigorously "with a great deal of liberty." Persistence in the face of official hostility even led Awakening preachers to spread the gospel among the expanding slave population of the Chesapeake Bay region. This activity stimulated Protestant forms of worship among blacks, who did not forsake their African religious traditions but blended them with Christian faith in a savior who offered eternal life as well as hope for triumphing over oppression in their search for human freedom.

Throughout the British North American provinces, the Great Awakening caused its proponents to question established authority. It also provoked movement toward a clearer definition of fundamental human rights as well as a greater toleration of divergent ideas and the eventual acceptance of religious pluralism. These were hallmark legacies of the Awakening.

None of this came easily, and some of it—especially the emphasis on the search for personal liberty and freedom of conscience, along with the questioning of established authority—may have unwittingly helped prepare many colonists for the political rebellion against Great Britain that lay ahead. Historians have divided opinions on this subject, but most would agree that the Awakening demonstrated that American communities showed considerable strength and resiliency in weathering so much internal divisiveness—a sure sign that Britain's colonists had grown up and matured during the previous 100-year period.

 

 

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As the seventeenth century unfolded on the North American continent, Spain maintained its grip on Florida as well as on the Gulf coast. French Canadians, operating from bases in Montreal and Quebec, explored throughout the Great Lakes region and then down into the Mississippi Valley. In 1682 an expedition headed by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the mouth of the Mississippi River. La Salle, who dreamed of a mighty French empire west of the Appalachian Mountains, claimed the whole region for his monarch, Louis XIV.