American History: Week 2

Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence

(This is Professor Julian Boyd's reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence before it was revised by the other members of the Committee of Five and by Congress. From: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 1, 1760-1776. Ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp 243-247) (Italics ours.) A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change. We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles & organising it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness. prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government & to provide new guards for their future security. such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood. he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good: he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate & pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to them. he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation, a right inestimable to them, formidable to tyrants alone: he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly & continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people: he has refused for a long space of time to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, & convulsions within: he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands: he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers: he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and amount of their salaries: he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people & eat out their substance: he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies & ships of war: he has affected to render the military, independant of & superior to the civil power: he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences: for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever: he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, & declaring us out of his allegiance & protection: he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns & destroyed the lives of our people: he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign merce naries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation: he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence: he has incited treasonable insurrections in our fellow-subjects, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property: he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12 years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered & fixed in principles of liberty. Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. we have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and we appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our correspondence & connection. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, & when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election re-established them in power. at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & deluge us in blood. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free & great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it: the road to glory & happiness is open to us too; we will climb it in a separate state, and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our everlasting Adieu! We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled do, in the name & by authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce a11 allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve & break off a11 political connection which may have heretofore subsisted between us & the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare these a colonies to be free and independant states, and that as free & independant states they shall hereafter have power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honour.

Primary Source: 'La Destruction de la Statue Royale a Nouvelle Yorck' by Andre Bassett via the Library of Congress

A contemporaneous print representing the destruction of the statue of King George III in New York City following the reading of the Declaration of Independence to the American army, July 9, 1776 The destruction of the statue of King George III at the foot of Broadway on the Bowling Green occurred on the night of July 9 after the American army had heard the reading of the Declaration of Independence. (The tail of the horse is in the New York Historical Museum.)

Mary Katherine Goddard

Born June 16, 1738 Groton, Connecticut Died August 12, 1816 Baltimore, Maryland Publisher, postmaster, printer of the "authentic copy" of the Declaration of Independence "An expert and correct compositor of types [typesetter]," according to her brother William. Mary Katherine Goddard was a successful businessperson of the eighteenth century who turned enterprises begun by her undependable brother into financial successes. She was the most acclaimed female publisher during the American Revolution. Her reputation for quality work spread far beyond the cities where her newspapers were produced. In the end, she was forced to live in near-poverty when she lost her government job because of limitations set on women of her day. Mary Katherine Goddard was the daughter of Dr. Giles Goddard and printer Sarah Updike Goddard (see box). She was born in Groton, Connecticut. She and her brother William were the only two of the couple's four children who lived to maturity. Goddard received her schooling from her educated mother. Few facts are known about her early life, except that the family moved from Groton to nearby New London, Connecticut, where her father practiced medicine and served as postmaster. In 1762, after the death of her father, Goddard joined her mother in the printing business in Providence, Rhode Island (owned by her brother). It was during this period that Goddard learned the printing business. When William moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to open a new printing business, Goddard and her mother stayed behind to manage the Providence shop and print the weekly newspaper, the Providence Gazette. Faced with money problems, William had to sell the Providence business in 1768; the two women then joined him in Philadelphia. Becomes publisher in Baltimore, Maryland After her mother died, Goddard became the office manager, helping her brother produce the Pennsylvania Chronicle newspaper. In 1773 the ever-restless William moved once again, this time to Baltimore, Maryland, to launch a new business venture. Goddard stayed in Philadelphia, running the printing shop until it was sold in early 1774. She then went on to Baltimore to join William. In 1775, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress (the legislative body of the American colonies) began work on establishing a national postal service. William was asked to help, and he put his sister in charge of the Baltimore business. She became publisher of Baltimore's first newspaper, the Maryland Journal, and she performed the task so well that her reputation as a newspaperwoman was made. Goddard continued printing the Journal during the years of the American Revolution. When standard size paper was difficult to find because of wartime shortages, she sometimes had to produce the Journal on small sheets of paper, the only paper available to her. Throughout the war years other newspapers had similar problems, but only Goddard consistently managed to publish a newspaper. She kept American patriots informed about the latest war news, and she made a major contribution to the cause of independence by publishing facts, not rumors. When she retired as its editor in 1784, the Journal had become one of the most widely read publications in the United States. Prints Declaration, gains reputation for excellence Goddard's most famous contribution to the war effort occurred on January 18, 1777. She was chosen by the Continental Congress to print the first copies of the Declaration of Independence that included all the names of the document's signers. The first printing of the document, on July 4, 1776, had contained only the names of John Hancock and Charles Thomson; the names of the other signers were kept secret for a time because of fear that the British would take revenge on them. By its order of January 18, 1777, Congress required that "an authentic copy of the Declaration of Independence, with the names of the members of Congress subscribing to the same [supporting the document], be sent to each of the United States." The complete copy was then printed, with all the signers' names, by Mary Katherine Goddard in Baltimore. The importance of this event did not escape Goddard; she signed the piece with her full name, rather than her customary initials. Each of the thirteen states in the union received a copy. Unfortunately for historians, none of Goddard's personal letters have survived. Goddard's Baltimore printing business prospered during the ten years she was in charge of it. William helped only occasionally, as he pursued his other business interests. Mary Katherine Goddard remained a respected member of the Baltimore community, even though her brother was twice threatened by local mobs because of newspaper articles he had written that were thought to be unpatriotic. Begins new career as postmaster Near the end of Goddard's time as publisher, the two Goddard siblings often disagreed. Mary Katherine finally became completely alienated from William after a bitter battle between the two. William had decided to take over the paper from his sister and paid her a pitiful sum for her share of it. Forever after, she would have nothing to do with her brother, and she even refused to attend his wedding. The falling out marked the end of Mary Katherine Goddard's career as a printer. Fortunately, Goddard had other interests she could fall back on. For years, she had been binding books (attaching the covers and backing on books), and she proceeded to further develop this business. In 1775 Goddard had accepted a position as postmaster of Baltimore, the first woman to hold such a position in the United States, and one of the few to be granted any type of public appointment in the 1700s. In 1781, as a patriotic service, she published An Almanac and Ephemeris (a calendar), which featured the schedule of court sessions in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Goddard kept the postmaster's job for fourteen years, until it began to require widespread travel—respectable women of the time did not travel alone. In a remarkable development, more than two hundred businessmen signed a petition that she be allowed to keep the position. But their protests fell on deaf ears within the federal government. Against her will, she was retired from her post in October 1789. Runs bookstore, dies Following the loss of her job, Goddard continued to live in Baltimore, where she ran a book shop on the city's Market Square from 1784 until about 1810. Mary Katherine Goddard, who never married, died in Baltimore on August 12, 1816, at the age of seventy-eight. She was buried in the cemetery of Baltimore's St. Paul's Church. Goddard's will freed the female slave who had been her assistant during her later years. The woman, Belinda Starling, also inherited Goddard's meager estate. Some years later, Goddard's memory was honored when the Omaha, Nebraska, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a group of women who can trace their ancestry back to the earliest days of America, named its chapter for her.

Primary Source: 'Declaration of Independence' Miller, Laura M. "Declaration of Independence (1776)." Dictionary of American History. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3rd ed. Vol. 9. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 139-141. U.S. History in Context. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1776) Originally designed to influence the sometimes reluctant and uncertain public opinion, both in the colonies and abroad (particularly in France, a potential military ally), the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and ratified shortly after by the Second Continental Congress on 4 July 1776, two days after that body had officially severed its ties to Great Britain. In composing this greatest, most famous of legal documents, Jefferson, already well regarded as an essayist, drew heavily not only on the ideas of his fellow patriots, but also on the natural-rights theories of John Locke and the Swiss legal philosophy of Emerich de Vattel. Although Jefferson's bitter attack on the institution of slavery was rejected by the convention in deference to South Carolina and Georgia, the principles set forth in the Declaration, among them the revolutionary notion that human beings had rights which even governments and kings could not take from them, would nevertheless become a rallying cry not only for Jefferson and his New World contemporaries, but also for many people at all times in the United States and around the world. Laura M. Miller, Vanderbilt University See also Continental Congress ; Declaration of Independence ; Revolution, American: Political History. WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World. HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good. HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only. HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures. HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People. HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative F, incapable of the Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and the Convulsions within. HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries. HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance. HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures. HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us; FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World: FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury: FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences: FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rules into these Colonies: FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever. HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People. HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation. HE has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions. IN every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People. NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends. WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. John Hancock. GEORGIA, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton. NORTH-CAROLINA, Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn. SOUTH-CAROLINA, Edward Rutledge, Thos Heyward, junr., Thomas Lynch, junr., Arthur Middleton. MARYLAND, Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. VIRGINIA, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Ths. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Thos. Nelson, jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton. PENNSYLVANIA, Robt. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross. DELAWARE, Caesar Rodney, Geo. Read. NEW-YORK, Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frank Lewis, Lewis Morris. NEW-JERSEY, Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Fras. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark. NEW-HAMPSHIRE, Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton. MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry. RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE, C. Step. Hopkins, William Ellery. CONNECTICUT, Roger Sherman, Saml. Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott. IN CONGRESS, JANUARY 18, 1777.

Slave Codes

First passed in the American colonies in the mid-1600s, slave codes were laws that defined slaves as property and enumerated the rights their owners had over them. The laws legalized the system of bondage that deprived slaves of their civil rights and protected the property rights of slave masters. After the American colonies fought for and won independence from Britain in the American Revolution (1775-83), the Northern states abolished slavery because of the hypocrisy of owning other human beings in a nation founded on principles of liberty and equality and the minimal economic benefit of slave labor in an economy characterized by family farms and commercial, financial, and industrial enterprises. However, in the Southern states, which depended on large-scale agricultural production, slavery became a fixture and was widely understood to be an indispensable component of the regional economy. As harsh and desperate attempts to preserve the South's agricultural economy and planters' power, the slave codes had the unintended consequence of fueling the abolitionist movement to end slavery and were ultimately abolished with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery, in 1865. Although slave codes varied to some degree from colony to colony, the scope of the restrictions on slaves' freedom was similar in most areas. Slaves were prohibited from owning weapons, receiving an education, meeting among themselves, moving about without their master's permission, and testifying against white people in court. Slaves were also treated differently than whites within the justice system. If a black man broke the law, he was punished more severely than a white man who broke the same law. In addition white men who committed crimes against blacks received less severe punishments than black men who had committed the same crimes. Slaves frequently resisted the conditions placed on them by the slave codes, which prompted state governments to make the codes even more stringent. There is documentation of well over 200 slave uprisings on the North American mainland dating back to the early eighteenth century. One of the earliest rebellions on record occurred in 1712 in Manhattan when a group of 23 slaves set fire to a building and attacked free citizens who were attempting to extinguish the fire. Almost 30 years later, in the early spring of 1741, slaves in New York set fire to 13 buildings in Lower Manhattan, including the governor's mansion. States in the South responded to the threat of slave uprisings by enacting legislation to further tighten the slave codes. Any action by a black or a white person that threatened the system of bondage was made into a serious crime. In spite of the severity of the codes, violent rebellions continued. The most commonly referenced uprisings in the South are the 1831 rebellion led by Nat Turner (1800-31), a Virginia slave, and the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, a federal military arsenal in Virginia, led by white abolitionist John Brown (1800-59). Turner's rebellion, which resulted in the death of over 60 white people, prompted the persecution of hundreds of innocent slaves in retaliation. Brown's raid, intended to provoke a slave rebellion throughout the South, ended in defeat when a contingent of U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee (1807-70) was dispatched to quell the insurrection. In addition to fighting, slaves attempted to flee captivity and leave the South in massive numbers. The existence of Northern "free" states gave rise to the underground railroad, a network of people who harbored and help transport fugitive slaves until they reached freedom in a free state or in Canada. Escaped slaves threatened the economic well-being of slaveholders, who controlled Southern governments and at times the national government. As the number of escapees mounted, Southerners complained the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which had been passed by Congress to help slave owners recover escaped slaves, did not go far enough to protect their interests. In response Congress passed a more stringent Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which required Northerners to return runaway slaves to their owners immediately upon capture. The law also prohibited a jury trial for escaped slaves and denied slaves the right to testify in their own defense. The act was part the Compromise of 1850, a series of bills that settled a dispute between Northern and Southern states over the admission of Texas to the Union and the status of territories in the Southwest that were newly annexed from Mexico in the Mexican War (1846-48). The American Civil War (1861-65) spelled the end of slavery and the slave codes, but it would be another 100 years before the civil rights of the nation's African American citizens were adequately protected by the legal and justice systems. Within five years of the end of the war, the federal government nominally guaranteed blacks the civil rights they had been denied for two centuries with three amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, ended slavery and all forms of forced servitude except as punishment for a crime. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) guaranteed blacks equal protection under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) gave black men the right to vote. Taken together, these amendments set the legal basis for Reconstruction (1865-77), a 12-year period during which the federal government readmitted the 11 states that had seceded from the Union and oversaw the social and economic rebuilding of the South. During this time blacks made significant gains in education but limited gains elsewhere. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, Southern states initiated a series of laws, commonly known as Jim Crow legislation, that continued some of the policies set out in the slave codes, legalizing racial separation and systematically denying blacks the rights protected by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. Blacks began to recover the rights taken from them during the Jim Crow era with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race and other factors, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited voter discrimination.

THE AMERICAN IDENTITY

New England TRANSCRIPT: When we study the foundation of the 13 colonies, it is important to realize that each geographic region was different than the other, and the people that came there brought with them their own unique personalities, identities, and family backgrounds. I want to start by taking a look at New England. New England is in the upper right hand corner when looking at a map, the northeast of the 13 colonies, and it included Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and a little bit of Maine later on. New England was really a study in contrasts. In some ways, it was the most democratic in spirit, and we'll take a look at why that happens there. Yet on the other hand, it was probably the most religiously intolerant. Likewise, it was a very successful economic region with probably the worst soil in all of the 13 colonies. Let's take a look at who's coming to New England and what the roles of religion, politics, and economics play in defining the area. Well, a common misunderstanding is a sense that Massachusetts was founded by Pilgrims, and that's pretty much all that came there and that somehow everybody was descended by them. There were pilgrims. That was the first group that arrived. Although over a hundred arrived in about 1620, there were only half of those left the next year. As a good sendoff to the colonization of the era, they created this thing called the Mayflower Compact, which is like a shipboard agreement by all adult males that they would have shared decision making in their colony. Oh, there's the story too of Squanto helping out the pilgrims in the first Thanksgiving, and that really did happen, so it's nice. In many ways, it's the Puritans that are the ones that we should be taking a look at when we look at most of New England. The Puritans came in the tens of thousands throughout the 1600s. They were officially members of the Church of England, though they were certainly not in good standing with the various Stuart monarchs who were ruling England throughout the 17th century. Although they didn't split from the Church, they simply said, as their name might imply, that they wanted to purify it. They felt the best way to do that was to leave and create, as Jonathan Winthrop calls it, "a city on a hill," which would serve as this ideal community of Christian faith married to government that the whole world could look upon and be amazed. Now, the Puritans were not tolerant of other religions. Having left England arguably because they suffered a little bit of intolerance, they really didn't want to have anybody else come by. They were very clear on that. Quakers were severely treated—physically whipped. Catholics were removed. We even have stories of free thinkers. A good example is Anne Hutchinson. She believed in this concept of antinomianism, which was, in many ways, arguable in terms of Calvinism. It said that if it's already decided who's going to Heaven, then there's really no purpose in necessarily following all the proper laws. Well, in the spirit of intolerance, they kicked her out. It does bring up the fourth colony, the idea of Rhode Island—this little tiny colony, tucked in the middle of New England, which was headed up by a real free thinker named Roger Williams. He was a "freedom of religion" man. For awhile, he was a Baptist but ultimately said that he was a life seeker. He got along very well with the Native Americans. We can see that already at the beginning, New England is playing host to a variety of religions but really only accepting the strict Puritan party line. In terms of the politics and laws of the region, we see developing these very egalitarian communities because the Puritans believed in Calvinism. Calvinism called worldwide for a very democratic feel within the church; all church members had equal say, provided they were male of course. Essentially, they developed one town after another based on this ideology where all male church members could discuss, take part, and make suggestions at an equal level. From the start, we don't see this autocratic, top-down, British-style aristocracy in the common man, but rather group decision making. Likewise, the area had seen the Mayflower Compact come out of the Pilgrims. Just shifting over the border into Connecticut, like in Massachusetts, the Puritans in Connecticut created the Fundamental Orders, which was essentially this written document explaining the rights and privileges of all members of it. Likewise, towns began to make their own what were called blue laws, these moral codes of behavior that said, "No kissing in public or holding hands" and things like that. Stepping aside from what the law said, the fact was that groups of citizens were in small villages and towns, making laws that governed themselves rather than having received them from some local lord back in England. Interestingly enough too, New England really plays host to a lot of families rather than large swaths of indentured servants or in the South, lots of slavery and aristocracy. This is essentially the place where upwardly mobile, wealthier, and pretty well-educated families came, stayed together, and built towns on that social unit. Economically, New England will prosper. There's this economist named Max Weber who essentially says that there is this Protestant work ethic at hand, meaning that because of predestination and because of the sense that God will reward the faithful and let them know through business reasons that they are going to Heaven, the people of New England developed a very strong banking, shipping, and merchant approach to running their colonies. The soil was terrible, so they simply turned to timber, to fishing and ultimately later on, even to light manufacturing, but not until the 1800s. Ultimately, you can see why New England is the archetypal form of American democracy. This idea of freedom of religion at one level, yet religious intolerance at another level and the idea of shared decision making and a gritty work ethic made New England standout as the kind of colony that may be a strong engine of revolution 100 years down the road. Middle Colonies TRANSCRIPT: Often a study of the 13 colonies can focus too closely on the Puritans of New England or the planters of Virginia, while simply categorizing the middle colonies as a utilitarian and not so interesting breadbasket. This is a shame because one can miss out on some of the more interesting elements of the region. When we speak of the middle colonies, we should picture New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. These four colonies represented a huge amount of land that extended from what would later become Canada all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay. It is true that they were the "bread colonies" and did produce tons of corn and wheat, but there's more to them than that. The people of the region were thriving in the cottage industries of weaving, shoemaking, cabinet making, and other crafts. They had these very large, fertile farm regions with big farms, though not quite the plantations we'll arise in the South. There were navigable rivers, so they could engage in inland trade and even some fur trading and get these products to the big ports. They were less aristocratic than the South, which was developing a slave culture, but they were far less egalitarian than New England. They still had this kind of wealthy leader class that had more than the guys next door. They had some rather major shipping ports: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Interestingly enough, by the 1600s, they had a lot of ethnic diversity. They had Dutch, French, Scandinavians, of course English, Scottish, Irish, Germans, Portuguese, and Italians. Probably the best way to quickly get to know the middle colonies is to maybe take a look at the dominant religions that flourished there, and then look at a couple of the unique histories of the two larger colonies, of Pennsylvania and New York. The first most important religion of the region to look at is probably Quakerism. Quakerism was started in Europe as a Christian faith, and people were called Quakers because they were said to quake with emotion when they were inspired up by the spirit of God. This was definitely a dissenter group. They refused to support the Church of England, and therefore going to the New World was probably a good idea. Everybody could speak freely in church when the spirit moved one, men and women, and there was no minister to run the ceremonies. Another thing that might get them into trouble is that they refused to swear these oaths of loyalty or oaths promising not to be Catholic and so on. The second dominant religion in the area is Anglican. Anglican is a Calvinist religion. It's the official religion of the King of England and so on. The Anglicans in the middle colonies tended to represent the wealthier people: the prosperous, the banker class and so on, some of the larger landowners. They'll lend probably the strongest, conservative ballast to the region. The final group is quite different than the first two. Whereas the Quakers and Anglicans tended to be upwardly mobile and prosperous and so on, there were the Presbyterians. These tended to be Scots-Irish, which meant Scottish people who'd been living for a time in Ireland who arrived at the coast and kept moving west, making their way up into Appalachia and into the mountains. Presbyterianism is a Calvinist religion, but the people behind it tended to be more wild frontier folk. Let's take a look at the two largest colonies. First of all, Pennsylvania was the Quaker colony and in many ways, the most progressive of all the 13 colonies. They extended full freedom of religious worship. There was no tax-supported church and no tax-supported military, even. Immigration was wide open. The Quakers tended to be very antislavery, even in the early years. Uniquely enough, they're very pro-Native American. Right next door were the New Yorkers. Their's is an interesting history because it was originally not English. The people that came there were at first the Dutch West India Company, which was essentially part of this global Dutch trading empire, a mercantilist powerhouse. They established New Netherlands, which is modern-day Manhattan in New York City. Their leader, near the end, was Peter Stuyvesant. After waging wars with the Swedish and moving up the Hudson River Valleys, the Dutch ended up creating a very prosperous and somewhat conservative colony. Their church was Dutch Reform, which was, once again, a Calvinist-style church. The English ended up taking it over in the 1660s. The Duke of York, who will later become the deposed James II Stuart, makes war on Peter Stuyvesant and transfers ownership of New York from the Dutch to the English, but the reality is the Dutch pretty much stayed on and didn't get kicked out. A number of American presidents are in fact descended from them. I point out New York because, whereas Pennsylvania tends to be very progressive and almost liberal colony, New York is that anchoring, conservative banker and land-owning colony. The two together really create the face of the middle colonies. As we close this exploration of the middle colonies, we see the sound beginnings of American pluralism. It's a region brimming with agricultural prosperity but absent of the slave aristocracies burgeoning down in the South. The colonies of New York and Pennsylvania alone boasted three major religions and more than twice that number of immigrant groups. It's here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that we see the America we become—progressive and tolerant of diversity, economically industrious, and ever seeking that fine line between an egalitarian spirit and a cultural love for the business elite. Southern Colonies TRANSCRIPT: As much as the middle and New England colonies appeared more as a patchwork quilt of ethnicities, religions, and commercial prospects, the South, in equal though opposite measure, tended to project a unified cultural and economic vision. When we speak of Southern colonies, we're looking at the land that stretches from the warm Chesapeake Bay south to modern-day Georgia. The Southern colonies in the 1600s and early 1700s included Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Here were warmer climes with rich soils and deep, navigable rivers. With nature on their side, Southern colonists could not help but to invent a society based on agriculture, farming, and a life spent free from the more disagreeable traits of an urban community. Unlike New England and to some extent the middle colonies, the motivation of the colonists coming to the South were not idealistic or religious. The people that came there were really looking for economic ventures and success. Religiously, most of the South was Anglican, which is actually the official Church of England, so there's no reason to leave to get a better sense of worship. The people who came down there oftentimes were the second sons of aristocratic families. There's this notion in England of primogeniture, whereby if a wealthy man dies, all the property in the estate goes to the oldest son, leaving all other sons needing something to do. It was quite common in this day and age, in the 1600s, for young, ardent, and adventurous second sons of families to go to the New World in the South and attempt to recreate the culture they're leaving behind. Build a plantation house, bring in lots of poor white workers, let them live in a village, and you could be just like your brother back home. The South was absolutely based on an agricultural system. This was a slave-plantation culture, certainly by the end of the 1600s. The land was wet year round and warm year round. There was rich river bottom land and of course along with this, an extensive amount of mosquitoes and disease. The primary products in the colonial era from the South that were really exported onto the global mercantilist community and across the Atlantic were tobacco, rice, and indigo. Although cotton would take over later after 1800, it was not really dominant at the time. Most notable among all the Southern colonies is Virginia, which would be the future home of quite a few of the founding fathers. Virginia was founded by the Virginia Company, one of many of these joint stock companies—not royal colonies but rather groups of men that got permission to buy the land, send people over, stock ships with food, and so on. The early colonial land owners got together and formed what was called the House of Burgesses. This essentially, like many colonial legislatures, was able to exercise significant local control over the colony and was left alone due to its handiwork by the British government. A very notable event in the 1600s, specifically in 1676, was Bacon's Rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon was an aristocrat that came from England and essentially set up shop in Virginia. He was a member of the ruling class and could've got along that way, but he must've had different dreams. Now, alongside the barons and aristocrats of Virginia were legions of what are called freemen. Now, a great many of the men that came to Virginia and the South in general were indentured servants, which means that they had their room and board paid for, for seven years and their ship fees. Ultimately at the end of that seven years, they were free, and they were free to, of course, leave the land they were living on and free to go look for land. Well, Bacon rounded up loads of these men here for whatever reasons. They were incensed that although they were now freemen, they couldn't get to land. Bacon wanted to lead them into battle against the western Native Americans. Well, the governor in Jamestown, which was the capital town of Virginia at the time, had forbidden any attacks on the Native Americans, feeling like Virginia couldn't really afford a war at the time. And so, Bacon and his men burned Jamestown to the ground and drove William Berkeley, the governor, out. Now, Bacon would die and Berkeley would return, but the South in general saw this episode as somewhat frightening and disturbing. Very quickly, after 1676, the South deliberately created this slave culture. They decided that freemen would always come and work and then just create this landless class of poor whites, whereas slaves will be slaves forever. It's at this point that we see slavery and the slave plantation system taking over. A couple of side notes—two of the Southern colonies, one Maryland and the other the Carolinas, had some interesting notes. Maryland was founded as a Catholic-tolerant colony by Lord Baltimore. Then very quickly, Protestants would become the majority population. The Carolinas had their constitution written by John Locke who essentially established—unlike our idea of Locke and his idea of natural rights—this feudal aristocracy, giving eight barons title to half of all the land down there. When all was said and done, geography may have played the dominant role in shaping the culture of the South. Ample farmland, miles of coastline, and wide, navigable inland-heading rivers all conspired to create a world that thrived off agriculture in this beautiful setting. When taken as a whole, the South offered a very different view for America's future than did the middle or New England colonies. Highly aristocratic and plantation centered, Southern leadership took pride in the absence of free public education and bustling urban centers. Although 18th century Virginian planters would take the lead in promoting the theoretical ideas of the enlightenment, Southern culture would be late in hatching the more egalitarian ideals that were applicable to the masses. Indeed, on the contrary, it would take a civil war in the 1860s to begin the process of dismantling the edifice of aristocracy that was first constructed in the 1600s. Intercolonial Unity TRANSCRIPT: When we look at the myriads of types of people that come into the colonial region during the 1600s and 1700s, we see that very different types of cultures could easily have developed and that intercolonial unity was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. Throughout the early years, we start to see one episode after another, one trend after another that begins to slowly draw the various colonies together. There are originally these 13 that begin to find common cause. I want to take a look at four of them. The first one I want to look at is the creation of what's called the New England Confederation. New England is essentially the area where we see Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Although there had been different colonies with different leaders and settlers, fairly early on in the 1600s, a number of these groups decide to come together and pool their political resources. They're feeling like they are under attack from local Native American tribes and creating some sort of a joint military defense system would be helpful. We see the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony, New Haven, and Connecticut all coming together in this New England Confederation. They pool their money, and they even set up this common council where each of these colonial groups sends two representatives. In many ways, it's foreshadowing of what later on will become the First and Second Continental Congresses, different colonies sending representatives for joint defense. In the 1670s, they fight King Phillip's War together and are ultimately extremely successful at creating a Native American-free zone around New England. In the later 1600s, we see another episode that draws the colonies together. This is a revolution in many ways, about 100 years before the big revolution. The King of England at this time, Charles II Stuart, had decided to rein in the colonies quite a bit and put together a number of colonies, including New York, under the aegis, under the shield of this dominion of New England, so that he might better control the people there. Fortunately for the colonists, Charles II and his brother, James II, were both increasingly more unpopular in England. Ultimately, the family is driven out of England, and a new king and queen are brought in. What this does is it opens a door, a power vacuum, in the 13 colonies. As before, we see a group of different New England colonies coming together and finding common cause. They rise up and literally drive out and arrest the English governor in Massachusetts—again, a precursor to a revolution 100 years later. The next phase that really draws the colonies together is this concept of salutary neglect. Perhaps realizing that creating a tight control on the colonies was not the best idea, the English government, in the early 1700s, decides to give the colonies a lot of freedom—to not really impose the strong mercantilist connections, to allow them to develop their own trade, and maybe develop some other own local systems—thinking that healthy and independent 13 colonies might prove well for a global trading empire. It is through this idea of salutary neglect that the colonies begin to discover each other. They begin to set up trade routes between different regions. Ultimately, it's this shared economic background at this time period, when mixed together with these other political unions, that really starts to have the colonists begin to think of themselves as colonists of the New World, as American colonists, rather than independent colonists. The final, big push of colonial unity, at least before the 1750s, is this idea of the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was an enormous religious revival that took place in the 1730s and 1740s. Ultimately, it will be a strange mixture of extremely progressive and almost modern religious worship with a very conservative, traditional religious viewpoint. Some of the leaders of the Great Awakening are Jonathan Edwards, who was popular in New England and George Whitefield, a Methodist who traveled around. The Great Awakening was typified by these wild, fainting, and convulsing religious ceremonies—people crying out and essentially enjoying these robust, powerful, and passionate church episodes that also were filled with these jeremiads, speeches that were filled with condemning people to hell and describing all the horrors that await you in the afterlife. The young people across the colonies that were very much in favor of the Great Awakening took on the name of a "New Light." New Lights began to find each other outside of their colonial boundaries. They saw themselves as New Lights, not as Virginians and not as Pennsylvanians. Likewise, the older guard, more traditional, conservative ministers who couldn't stand it, also saw themselves as "Old Lights" and found common cause with other Old Lights across the colonies. Although this may have driven a wedge between the different age groups, the younger versus the older, it began to sew together either a modern or a conservative religious viewpoint as one would have it throughout the colonies. As we look back, we see that throughout the 1600s and early 1700s, there are a number of trends: political and military unions, common rebellion, economic union, and ultimately, the drawing together of common religious visionaries. All of this will create a stronger and more unified 13 colonies who will be ready for the task at hand in the 1770s.