American Life in the 17 th Century

1. American Life in the 17th Century Chapter 4

2. The Tobacco Economy • Profit-hungry settlers often planted tobacco to sell before they planted corn to eat. • Because tobacco used up the soil’s nutrients so quickly, the search for new land was constantly underway, which provoked more and more Indian attacks. • Ships hauled 1.5 million lbs. of tobacco out of Chesapeake Bay by 1630 and almost 40 million lbs. by 1700.

3. The Tobacco Economy • Because families couldn’t procreate fast enough, Indians died to quick, and Africans cost too much money, tobacco growers used indentured servants from port cities like Bristol and London. • These laborers usually worked for 4-7 years in exchange for transatlantic passage, an ax and hoe, a few barrels of corn, a suit of clothes, and a small parcel of land.

4. The Tobacco Economy • The headright system was installed to encourage masters to bring servants into the colonies. • If the master paid the passage to America, they received the right to 50 acres of land.

5. Frustrated Freemen and Bacon’s Rebellion • Because most of the freed workers ended up penniless, they wandered around Chesapeake Bay looking for land and someone to marry. • In 1676 about 1,000 former servants broke out of control in VA led by 29 year old Nathaniel Bacon. • The rebels fiercely resented VA Gov. William Berkeley’s monopoly over the fur trade with the Natives.

6. Frustrated Freemen and Bacon’s Rebellion • When Berkeley refused to do anything about a series of brutal Indian attacks, the rebels murdered Indians, chased Berkeley from Jamestown and torched the capital. • Bacon died of disease and 20 of his men were hanged by Berkeley, but his uprising ignited resentment of landless former servants against the rich gentry in VA.

7. Colonial Slavery • More than 7 million African slaves were brought to the New World between 1492 and 1860, but only about 400,000 were brought to America (and most of those arrived after 1700). • Changes came in the 1680s when rising wages decreased the number of discontented English who were willing to gamble on a new life in the New World. • The trouble with indentured servants (who were cheaper than slaves) were often mutinous and landowners feared uprisings.

8. Colonial Slavery • By the mid 1680s, black slaves outnumbered white servants for the first time. • After the Royal African Company lost its monopoly on carrying slaves, Rhode Island rushed to cash in on the lucrative slave trade. • Most slaves came from the west coast of Africa in present day Senegal or Angola. • The slaves were sold to Europeans or English traders and put on ships for the gruesome middle passage.

9. Colonial Slavery • The death rates on the middle passage ran as high as 20%. • They were sold on auction blocks in Newport, RI or Charleston, SC.

10. Colonial Slavery • The laws regarding slaves vs. servants were now becoming clear. • Beginning in VA in 1662 “slave codes” made blacks and their children the property (“chattels”) for the life of their white masters. • Some colonies made it a crime to teach a slave to read and write. • It was clear that slavery was not only in place for economic reasons, buy by the end of the 17th century, racial discrimination powerfully molded the American slave system.

11. Africans in America • Native-born African Americans contributed to the growth of a stable and distinctive slave culture; a mixture of African and American elements of speech, religion, and folkways. • In SC’s coast, blacks evolved a unique language, Gullah (blending English w/ African languages) • Goober (peanut), gumbo (okra), and voodoo (witchcraft) • The banjo and bongo drum also came from African culture.

12. Africans in America • The New York slave revolt erupted in 1712 and claimed the lives of 9 whites and 21 blacks were executed over a slow burning fire. • An SC slave revolt erupted in 1739 when more than 50 resentful blacks along the Stono River tried to march to Spanish Florida, but were stopped by the local militia. • The enslaved Africans proved to be a more tightly controlled labor force than the white indentured servants they replaced.

13. The Half-Way Covenant • Growing population gradually pushed Puritans onto outlying farms, far from the control of the church and neighbors. • Although Puritan belief burned brightly, the passage of time dampened religious zeal. • During the mid 1600s, a new sermon was flowing from Puritan pulpits called the ‘Jeremiad”, which was taken from the doom-saying Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.

14. The Half-Way Covenant • In 1662, the Half-Way Covenant was introduced, which modified the ‘covenant’, or the agreement between the church and its adherents. • Basically, it made the church easier to become a part of by taking out some of the steps to becoming a member.

15. The Half-Way Covenant • By conferring partial membership rights in the once-exclusive Puritan congregations, the Half-Way Covenant weakened the distinction between the “elect” and others, further diluting the spiritual purity of the original settlers’ godly community. • The widening of church membership eventually allowed for women to become members.

16. The Salem Witch Trials • A group of adolescent girls in Salem, MA claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women. • A hysterical ‘witch hunt” ensued, which led to the legal lynching of 20 individuals in 1692. • 19 were hanged, 1 was pressed to death, and 2 dogs were hanged. • Most of the accused came from families associated with the Salem market economy; their accusers came largely from subsistence farming families in Salem’s rural areas.

17. The Salem Witch Trials • The Salem Witch Trials reflected the widening social stratification of New England, as well as the fear of many religious traditionalists that the Puritan heritage was being eclipsed by Yankee commercialism. • The hysteria eventually ended when the governor prohibited any further trials and pardoned those already convicted. • “Witch-hunting” passed into the American vocabulary as a metaphor for the often dangerously irrational urge to find a scapegoat for social resentment.

18. The Early Settler’s Days and Ways • The cycle of the season and the sun set the schedules of all the earliest American colonists. • The overwhelming majority of colonists were farmers. • Planted in spring, tended crops in summer, harvested in fall, prepared in the winter. • They usually rose at dawn and went to bed at dusk.

19. The Early Settler’s Days and Ways • Women (free or slave): wove, cooked, cleaned, and cared for children. • Men: cleared land, fenced, planted, and cropped; cut firewood; and butchered livestock. • Children: helped with all tasks, while picking up as much schooling as they could.