Give Me Liberty:Chapter 4 Slavery, Freedom, And The Struggle For Empire, To 1763
An Empire of Freedom: The British Constitution
1.Central to this sense of British identity was the concept of liberty. 2.Britons believed that no man was above the law, not even the king. 3.The idea of liberty became increasingly identified with a general right to resist arbitrary government.
The Public Sphere: Political Cultures
1.Considerable power was held by those with appointive, not elective, offices. 2.Property qualifications for officeholding were far higher than for voting. 3.Deference—the notion among ordinary people that wealth, education, and social prominence carried a right to public office—limited choices in elections.
An Empire of Freedom: British Patriotism
1.Despite the centrality of slavery to its empire, eighteenth-century Great Britain prided itself on being the world's most advanced and freest nation. 2.Most Britons shared a common law, a common language, a common devotion to Protestantism, and a common enemy in France. 3.Britons believed that wealth, religion, and freedom went together.
The Public Sphere: The Rise of the Assemblies
1.Elected assemblies became more assertive in colonial politics during the eighteenth century. 2.The colonial elected assemblies exercised great influence over governors and other appointed officials. 3.Leaders of the assemblies drew on the writings of the English Country Party.
The Public Sphere: Freedom of Expression and Its Limits
1.Freedom of speech was a relatively new idea. 2.Freedom of the press was generally viewed as dangerous. 3.After 1695, the government could not censor print material, and colonial newspapers defended freedom of the press as a central component of liberty.
Slavery and Empire: The Georgia Experiment
1.Georgia was established by a group of philanthropists led by James Oglethorpe in 1733. 2.Oglethorpe had banned liquor and slaves, but the settlers demanded their right of self-government and repealed the bans by the early 1750s.
The Public Sphere: The Right to Vote
1.In Britain, ownership of property was a common qualifier for voting. 1.1.The qualification excluded many groups from voting, including slaves, servants, tenants, adult sons living in the homes of their parents, the poor, and women. 2.Nonetheless, suffrage was much more common in the colonies than in Britain.
Slave Cultures and Slave Resistance: African-American Cultures
1.In the Chesapeake, slaves learned English, participated in the Great Awakening, and were exposed to white culture. 2.In South Carolina and Georgia, two very different black societies emerged: 2.1.Communities on rice plantations retained significant African cultural elements (e.g., housing styles, child naming practices, language). 2.2.Slaves in the cities of Charleston and Savannah assimilated more quickly into Euro-American culture. 3.In the northern colonies, a distinctive African-American culture developed more slowly, and African-Americans enjoyed more access to the mainstream of life.
Battle for the Continent: The Middle Ground
1.Indians were constantly being pushed from their homes into a "middle ground" between European empires and Indian sovereignty. 2.The government of Virginia gave an immense land grant in 1749 to the Ohio Company.
An Empire of Freedom: Liberal Freedom
1.Liberalism was strongly influenced by the philosopher John Locke. 2.Lockean ideas included individual rights, the consent of the governed, and the right of rebellion against unjust or oppressive government. 3.Locke's ideas excluded many from freedom's full benefits in the eighteenth century, but they opened the door for many to challenge the limitations on their own freedom later. 4.Republicanism and liberalism eventually reinforced each other.
Slave Cultures and Slave Resistance: African Religion in Colonial America
1.No experience was more wrenching for African slaves in the colonies than the transition from traditional religions to Christianity. 2.African religions varied, but there were broad commonalities: 2.1.belief in presence of spiritual forces in nature 2.2.close relationship between the sacred and secular worlds 3.Some slaves came to the colonies familiar with Christianity or Islam, but most slaves practiced traditional African religions well into the eighteenth century.
An Empire of Freedom: Republican Liberty
1.Republicanism celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens. 2.Republicanism held virtue—meaning a willingness to subordinate self-interest to the public good—to be crucial in public life. 3.Republicanism in Britain was associated with the Country Party, which criticized Britain's loss of virtue.
Slavery and Empire: Slavery in the North
1.Since the economics of New England and the Middle Colonies were based on small farms, slavery was far less important. 2.Given that slaves were few and posed no threat to the white majority, laws were less harsh than in the South. 3.Slaves did represent a sizable percentage of urban laborers, particularly in New York and in Philadelphia.
The Rice Kingdom
1.South Carolinian and Georgian slavery was based on rice. 2.Rice and indigo required large-scale cultivation (which was done by slaves). 3.Under the task system, individual slaves did daily jobs, the completion of which allowed time for leisure or cultivation of their own crops. 4.By 1770, the number of South Carolina slaves had reached 100,000—well over half the colony's population.
Imperial Rivalries: The Spanish in California
1.Spain ordered the colonization of California in response to a perceived Russian threat. 1.1.Father Junípero Serra founded the first mission in San Diego in 1769. 2.California was a mission frontier.
Imperial Rivalries: The French Empire
1.The French empire in the eighteenth century expanded in Canada. 2.The French tended to view North America as a place of cruel exile for criminals and social outcasts.
Slave Cultures and Slave Resistance: Resistance to Slavery
1.A common thread among African-Americans was the desire for freedom. 1.1Many plantation slaves in South Carolina and Georgia ran away to Florida or to cities. 2.The first eighteenth-century slave uprising occurred in New York City in 1712. 3.The Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina led to the tightening of the slave code. 4.A panic in 1741 swept New York City after a series of fires broke out that were rumored to have been part of a slave conspiracy to attack whites.
Slavery and Empire: Atlantic Trade
1.A series of triangular trade routes crisscrossed the Atlantic. 2.Colonial merchants profited from the slave trade. 3.Slavery became connected with the color black, and liberty with the color white.
Imperial Rivalries: Spanish North America
1.A vast territorial empire on paper, Spanish North America actually consisted of a few small and isolated urban clusters. 2.Despite establishing religious missions and presidios, the Spanish population in Spain's North American empire remained relatively small and sparse.
The Public Sphere: The American Enlightenment
1.Americans sought to apply to political and social life the scientific method of careful investigation based on research and experiment. 2.Belief in Deism (the notion that because God set up natural laws to govern the universe, following the act of Creation, God did not intervene in the world) embodied the spirit of the American Enlightenment.
The Great Awakening The Awakening's Impact
1.The Great Awakening enlarged the boundaries of liberty as Old Lights (traditionalists) and New Lights (revivalists) defended their right to worship. 2.The Great Awakening inspired criticism of many aspects of colonial society. 3.A few preachers explicitly condemned slavery.
The Great Awakening Religious Revivals
1.The Great Awakening was a series of local events united by a commitment to a more emotional and personal Christianity than that offered by existing churches. 2.The Great Awakening was led by flamboyant preachers like Jonathan Edwards, whose Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God stressed the need for humans to seek divine grace.
Slavery and Empire: The Middle Passage
1.The Middle Passage was the voyage across the Atlantic for slaves. 2.Slaves were crammed aboard ships for maximum profit. 3.Slave traders took the vast majority of slaves to Brazil and to the West Indies, where death rates were high. 4.Less than 5 percent of African slaves went to what became the United States, but the slave population there increased steadily through natural reproduction.
Battle for the Continent: A World Transformed
1.The Peace of Paris in 1763 resulted in the expulsion of France from North America. 2.The Seven Years' War put future financial strains on all the participants.
Slave Cultures and Slave Resistance: Becoming African-American
1.The common link among Africans in America was not kinship, language, or even "race," but slavery itself. 2.For most of the eighteenth century, the majority of American slaves were African by birth.
Battle for the Continent: The Seven Years' War
1.The war began in 1754 as the British tried to dislodge the French from western Pennsylvania. 2.The war went against the British until 1757, when William Pitt became British prime minister and turned the tide of battle. 3.In 1759, a French army was defeated near Quebec.
Battle for the Continent: Pennsylvania and the Indians
1.The war deepened the hostility of western Pennsylvanian farmers toward Indians and witnessed numerous indiscriminate assaults on Indian communities. 2.After the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia, the governor ordered the expulsion of much of the Indian population from Pennsylvania.
Chesapeake Slavery
1.Three distinct slave systems were well entrenched in Britain's mainland colonies: 1.1.Tobacco-based plantation slavery in the Chesapeake 1.2.Rice-based plantation slavery in South Carolina and Georgia 1.3.Nonplantation societies of New England and the Middle Colonies 2.Slavery transformed Chesapeake society into an elaborate hierarchy of degrees of freedom: 2.1.Large planters 2.2.Yeomen farmers 2.3.Indentured servants and tenant farmers 2.4.Slaves 3.With the consolidation of a slave society, planters enacted laws to protect their power over the slaves.
Battle for the Continent: The Proclamation Line
1.To avoid further Indian conflicts, London issued the Proclamation of 1763, which banned white settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. 2.The Proclamation enraged settlers and land speculators hoping to take advantage of the expulsion of the French.
The Public Sphere: The Colonial Press
1.Widespread literacy and the proliferation of newspapers encouraged political discourse. 2.Circulating libraries contributed to the dissemination of information.
Slavery and Empire: Africa and the Slave Trade
1.With the exception of the king of Benin, most African rulers took part in the slave trade. 2.The slave trade was concentrated in western Africa, greatly disrupting its society and economy.
Battle for the Continent: Pontiac's Rebellion
1.With the removal of the French, the balance-of-power diplomacy that had enabled groups like the Iroquois to maintain a significant degree of autonomy was eliminated. 2.In 1763, Indians in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes launched a revolt against British rule. 3.Neolin championed a pan-Indian identity.
The Public Sphere: Politics in Public
The American gentry were very active in the discussion of politics and the expansion of the "public sphere" through letters, speeches, newspaper articles, and pamphlets.
The Great Awakening The Preaching of Whitefield
The English minister George Whitefield is often credited with sparking the Great Awakening.
Battle for the Continent: Colonial Identities
The colonists emerged from the Seven Years' War with a strengthened pride in being members of the British empire.
The Public Sphere: The Trial of Zenger
The newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger went on trial in 1735 for seditious libel, for criticizing New York's governor. 1.1.He was found not guilty. 1.2.The outcome promoted the idea that publishing the truth should always be permitted and demonstrated that free expression was becoming ingrained in the popular imagination.
