Timeline: US History Unit 2 1607 - 1754
Theme - The coming of the English + The 13 Colonies
In Class Notes 9/7/23
The Coming of the English
- King Henry the 8th and Catherine of Aragon were married as a political alliance
- English colonization came later than that of the Spanish and Portuguese due to a
number of factors that stem from the unique rule and decisions of King Henry VIII
Henry VIII forms the Anglican Church and broke with Rome for three reasons
1) He desired land owned by the Catholic church (some ¼ of England) that could augment
his annual income
2) He was consolidation power, and wanted to diminish the influence of Rome over the
bishops and priests of his country
3) He wished to divorce Catherine of Aragon because she was unable to give him a male
heir that lived
Effects of the break with Rome
1) Henry’s subsequent marriage to Ann Bolyn produced Elizabeth, who would reign as
England's greatest monarch from 1558-1602. It was she that built an English empire in
America.
2) Over a hundred years of war with Spain resulted from the divorce of Henry to Catherine
and the shunning of the Catholic church. English captains (“sea dogs”) raided Spanish
treasure fleets returning from the Caribbean. England would eventually challenge Spain
for predominance in the New World.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 marked the beginning of the decline of the Spanish
Empire - and the ascent of the British as the greatest naval power in the world
→ Failed horribly for the Spanish
→ Britain is now number one
3) The protestant movement in England accelerated. By breaking with Rome, Henry VIII
unintentionally caused major reform movements throughout his country the teachings
of Luther and Calvin became very popular over the next century, and extremen
Calvinists - the Puritans, ultimately left England to practice their faith in America
4) The confiscation and sale of lands caused economi instability - high prices fuelled by
gold from Spanish America cause even more; two results: (1) an increase in English poor
willing to take their chances on a new start in America and (2) an increasingly rich
merchant class capable of financing the early join-stock efforts.
In Class Notes 9/8/23
Primogeniture : Practice of passing down to the first down son
→ Designed to keep family wealth intact
Entail : Payment to the government for giving land to someone outside the family
Enclosure System: A system which allowed the sale of public land which was most of the times
used by the poor
What are the purposes of early attempts of colonization?
The Cathay Company (1576) → came across in the search of the Northwest Passage, found
“fools golds” and goes back to England
Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Colonial Adventure (1583) → Ship disappeared in storm, ends up
drowning, complete failure
Roanoke (1585) → Asked people to build a civilization, 6 months later Sir Francis Drake checks
on the people and sees that they are dying and struggling
Roanoke AGAIN (1587) → Spanish Armada attacked in 1588 → No resupplying of materials and
labor because of war and everyone dies
Jamestown Colony
- First permanent English Settlement in the New World located in Virginia
- Avg life expectancy in Jamestown initially was 2 years
- John Smith creates a military dictatorship which saved Jamestown
- Planting of tobacco made Jamestown a success
- John Rolfe plants tobacco
2-7 England Plants the Jamestown Seedling
→ 1606, two years after peace with Spain, English attention turned toward Virginia
- A joint-stock company known as the Virginia Company of London, received a charter
from King James I of England for a settlement in the New World
→ Was only intended to last a few years
→ Put severe pressure on the luckless colonists, who were threatened by
abandonment in the wilderness if they did not quickly strike it rich on the
company’s behalf
- No one suspected the the seeds of a might nation were being planted
- The charter of the Virginia Company guaranteed to the overseas settlers the same rights
of Englishmen that they would have enjoyed if they had stayed at home
→ Extended to subsequent English colonies, helping to reinforce the colonists
sense that even on far shores they remained comfortably within the embrace of
traditional English institutions
- Setting sail in late 1606, the Virginia Company’s three ships landed near the mouth of
Chesapeake Bay, where Indians attacked them pushing up on the bay
- Colonists eventually chose a location on the wooded and malarial banks of the James
River, named in honor of King James I
→ Site was easy to defend, a priority due to the possibility of Spanish attack
→ Mosquito-infested and devastatingly unhealthy
- On May 24, 1607, about a 100 English settlers, all of them men, disembarked
Jamestwon
- The early years of Jamestown were a nightmare for all concerned except the buzzards
- 40 colonists perished during the initial voyage in 1606-1607
- Another expedition in 1609 lost its leader and many of its supplies in a shipwreck off
Bermuda
- Once ashore in Virginia the settlers died by the dozens from disease, malnutrition, and
starvation
- Men were unaccustomed to fending for themselves
→ Wasted time looking for nonexistent gold when they should have been
gathering provisions
How was Virginia saved?
- Saved by Captain John Smith → 1608
- Implemented “He who shall not work shall not eat”
- Kidnapped in December 1607 and subjected to a mock execution by the Indian chieftain
Powhatan → “saved” by Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas
- Pochahontas became an intermediary between the Indians and the settlers → helped
preserve shaky peace and to provide needed foodstuffs
2.6 Pocahontas (1595-1617)
Ambassador, hostage, convert to Christianity—Pocahontas played many roles in the saga of
Jamestown, ultimately entering into a “political marriage” with an Englishman, John Rolfe.
Taken to England by her husband, she was received as a princess. She died when preparing to
return, but her infant son ultimately reached Virginia.
- Still the colonists died in droves and living skeletons were driven to desperate acts
→ Forced to eat dogs, cats, rats, and mice and digged up corpses for food
- Of the 400 settlers who managed to make it to Virginia by 1609, only 62 survived the
starving time winter of 1609-1610
- Remaining colonists dragged themselves aboard homeward-bound ships in the Spring of
1610, only to be met at the mouth of the James River by a long-awaited relief party
headed by a new governor
→ Lord De La Warr
- Ordered settlers back to Jamestown
- Imposed a harsh military regime on the colony
- Took aggressive military action against the Indians
- Disease continued to reap a gruesome harvest among the Virginians
- By 1625 Virginia contained only 1200 hard bitten survivors of the nearly 80000
adventurers who had tried to start a new life in the colony
2-8 Cultural Clashes in the Chesapeake
3-1 Virginia: Child of Tobacco
- John Rolfe → Husband of Pocahontas → became the father of the tobacco industry
- Economic savior of the Virginia Colony
- Perfected methods of raising and curing the pungent weed and eliminated much of the
bitter tang by 1612
- Tobacco rush swept over Virginia
- Land was more valuable than food
- There were drawbacks → ruinous to soil when planted in successive years → enchained
fortunes of Virginia to fluctuating price of one crop
- Plantation system → increased demand for labor
- In 1619 twenty african slaves were bought
- In 1650 Virginia had 300 African people → most were enslaved → 14% of the colonies
population
- Representative self-government was also emerged in Virginia, in the same year as
slavery → 1619
- House of Burgesses : Representative parliamentary assembly created to govern Virginia,
establishing a precedent for government in the English colonies.
- King James I distrusted this system → revoked the charter of the Virginia Company in
1624 → made Virginia a royal colony under directly under his control
3-2 Maryland: Catholic Haven
- Maryland → 2nd plantation colony but the 4th English colony to be planted
→ Founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore of a prominent English Catholic Family
- Protestant England → persecuting Roman Catholics → wedlock could not be sought out
- St Mary’s on Chesapeake Bay, would be the vanguard of a vast new feudal domain
In Class Notes 9/12/2023
- Jamestown becomes Virginia
- Georgia was a buffer colony
→ Seperated Carolinas and Spanish Florida
- Southern Colonies
1. Virginia
2. North Carolina
3. South Carolina
4. Maryland
5. Georgia → Just a “swampland” → asked people to move to GA to slowdown
Spanish Invasion
- People moved to Georgia once they allowed slavery
Why did African slavery replace indentured servitude as the predominant labor force in the
American South?
1. Indentured Servitude → Contract between lower class, generally a contract of 7 years →
exchanged labor for a trip across the atlantic and a place to live
2. Life expectancy goes up in the colonies → slavery emerges → cheaper in the long run
3. Conditions in England improve → indentured servants cost more
4. Indetured Servants become competition
5. Class Issues (Nat Bacon’s Rebellion)
6. Headnight System - a grant of land, usually fifty acres per immigrant sponsored, given to
landowners throughout the thirteen colonies.
7. Color Factor ex indentured servants and land owners have the same color, slavaes and
indentured servents were 2 different classes
Triangular Trade:
1. Outward Passage
a. Europe ports to Africa
2. Middle passage
a. African slave to New World
3. The Return Passage
a. Raw Materials/ New World wealth brough back to Europe
“England has 42 religions and only two sauces”
- Voltaire
“If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut other’s throatsl but if you have thirty
religions, they will dwell in peace.”
- Voltaire
Protestand Reformation and Puritanism: Terms to Know
Calvinism -
Anglicanism -
Separatists -
Predestination -
Recusant - Somebody that goes against the establishment
Visible Saints - an individuals in the Mediterranean culture area who lead lives of heroic,
exemplary and public suffering
Puritans -
Congregationalists - Protestant churches → no uniformity → every Church is different based on
the community (predominant in USA)
Great Migration -
Conversion -
Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution 1700 - 1775
- The “common term” thirteen colonies is misleading because Britain actually ruled 32
colonies in North America by 1775, including Canada, the Floridas, and various
Caribbean island → Only 13 rebelled though
- Whyd did the British colonies eventually strike?
5-1 A Continent in Flux
British → Claimed most of the Eastern Seabord
Spanish → Florida, Texas, and most of the Western part of the continent
French → Purported to control the area North of the Great Lakes and Most of the Mississippis
Disease from Europe Killed → Powhatan and Wampanoag
- European goods changed Indian Politics and culture
→ Horses and muskets enabled Indian groups to rival European power
1718 - Spanish have less guns than Natives
- The Iroquis in 1700 agreed to peace both the English and the French
5-1 Conquest by the Cradle
- Natives struggled with population pre-British colonization
→ British colonies enjoyed large amounts of population growth in the eighteenth century
- 2.5 million inhabited the thirteen colonies by 1775 → 500k were black
- Average age in 1775 was 16
- Most popular colonies were PA, Massachusetts, NC, and Maryland (in order)
- 4 main cities, Philly, NY, Boston, and Charleston → 90 percent lived in rural areas
5-3 Mingling of Culture
- British colonial Americas was a “melting pot”
- The population constantly had many foreign groups
- Germans accounted for about 6% or 150k by 1775 → came in early 1700s to PA
→ Fled from religious persecution, economic oppression, and the war
- Not English → No loyalty to the British crown → Held on tight to their language and
traditions
- Scotts-Irish → 175k or 7% of the population (1775)
- Came to Pennsylvania due to regulation by the English government over
businesses
- Squatted on unoccupied land
- Great Wagon Road : Hugged the eastern Appalachian foothills from PA to GA
- Hated the British government and any government
- Led the armed march of the Paxton Boys on the Philadelphia in 1764 protesting
the Quaker oligarchys lenient policies towards Native Americans
- Few years later spearheaded the Regulator movement in North Carolina
(insurrection against eastern domination of the colony’s affairs)
- Jews, Hugenots, Swedes, Dutch, Irish, and French groups were only about 5% of the
population
5-4 Africans in America
- Slavery exploded in North American colonies during the 18th century
- Life for slaves was not the same in all the regions
- In the South slavery was severe
- Hostile climate and life draining labor
- South Carolina rice and indigo plantations were hell where mostly African
American males perished
- African American in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake region had an easier life
(somewhat) → Tobacco was less physically demanding than those of the deep
south
- Allowed slaves more frequent contact with friends and relatives
- By about 1720 the proportion of females in the Chesapeake slave population had
begun to rise, making family possible
- African American culture began to flourish throughout the colonies, that was a mixture
of African and American elements of speech, religion, and folkways
- Banjo/Bongo Drum
- Enslaved Africans became skilled artisans, carpenters, bricklayers, and tanners
- New York slave revolt : Erupted in 1712, killed nine whites, and led to the execution of
21 African Americans
- South Carolina Slave Revolt : Broke out in 1739 when more then fifty African Americans
along the Stono River seized weapons from a local shop and tried to march to Spanish
Florida → Stopped by militia
APUSH Unit Two Moderation Day 1
Population Distribution
- Massachusetts Bay Colony
- Pennsylvania
- 2.5 Million lived in the Americas in 1775
- 500k enslaved
Geographic Barriers
- Appalachian Mountains → Restricted the geographic spread of Southern Colonies
Climate
- New England → It was cold
- Middle → It was cold and warm
- Southern → It was hot
Conflicts w/Expansion
- Proclamation Line of 1763: French prohibited American Colonists from settling French
Land
- Spanish also had lot of Land
- Major western colony
New England
- Furs & Skin
- Fish
- Whaling
Middle Colonies
- Furs & Skins
- Arent typically known for their exports
- “Bread Colonies”
Southern
- Tobacco (Cash Crops)
- Rice & Indigo
- Slavery = Money
Culture
- African-American slaves were almost always depicted as “the other” All 13 colonies
were slave states by 1750
- The belief of White Superiority was established established long before Colonial America
Religion
- Rhode Island & Pennsylvania were the kindest to religious freedom out of the 13
colonies
- Salem Witch Trials & Least religious tolerance → New England
The Great Awakening
Catholic → Angligan → Puritan → Arminianism
Conservative to Liberal pendulum
- Jeremiad : Believed in predestination (mid 1600s)
- ½ way covenant → Congregational Churches lose people → relax rules
- Great Awakening → major conservative religious movement
- 1720s - 1760s
- New Lights vs Old Lights (Battle of Conservative Preachers vs Liberal Preachers)
- Liberals have established Churches in America, Conservatives arent allowed into
Chuches
- Conservatives → Outdoors, diverse, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards
- George Whitefield : Preaches throughout the colonies (1739) STYLE (taught
ordinary people)
- Outside : Barns, Tents, Fields
- Believes God would only save openly professing people
1. Religious Diversity (old lights, new lights, others)
2. Education (literacy important to Bible study)
3. Ministers challenged
4. Fresh wave of missionary work among slaves and Native Americans
5. New schools set up
6. First spontaneous truly American movement - broke down sectional boundarias as well
as denominatnional lines and contributed to an AMerican identity
7. View on class/social mobility - Anyone can be saved
The American Englightenment
- Part of the larger intellectual movement known as the Age of Enlightenment
- Influenced by the scientific revolution of the 17th century
- The Enlightenment took scientific reasoning and applied it to human nature, society and
religion. Politicially the age is distinguished and emphasis upon liberty, democracy,
republicanism and religious tolerance
Key Components
- State of Nature
- Tabula Rasa
- Social Contract Theory
Major Contributors
- Jean Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract)
- John Locke (Two treatises of Government)
- Montesquieu (Separation of Powers)
- Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)
- Checks and balances
Effects of the Enlightenment
- Reason encouraged questioning of all institutions, absolutims condemned
- Natural law and social contract theory leads to a concept of a government that cna be
replaced if it is ineffective/corrupt
- New Universities in the colonies more open to teach new theory - such as Locke
- Newness of life in the colonies forced the application of reason to daily decision-making
- Awakening and Enlightenent views on social mobility (no official nobility - everyone can
be “saved)
Unit 2: Major Themes
Coming of the English (Why did they become interested to America? What did they want to
accomplish?)
Enlightenment - Why colonies but not Europe?
LEQ Advice
- Describe the context that is relevant to the prompt
- 2 pieces of evidence
Jeapordy Questions
- This British political event in 1630 caused the massive Great Migration of Puritans to
occur → Ascension of Charles 1
- The first constitution → Conneticut constitution
