Chapter 3

1. Chapter 3 Colonial America

2. Section 1: Early English Settlements • In 1588, King Phillip II of Spain did not consider Queen Elizabeth, a protestant, the rightful ruler of England. He wanted a Catholic leader in control of England so he sent an Armada, fleet of ships, to war against England. • The faster English ships defeated the Armada and took control of the seas from Spain.

3. Before the end of the war with Spain, England tried to establish a base on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean without success. • The most famous failure was the colony of Roanoke. In 1858 Sir Walter Raleigh sent 100 men to Roanoke Island of the coast of present-day North Carolina.

4. This first attempt was an utter failure. The survivors of the winter returned to England. But in 1587, Raleigh tried again by sending men, women and children. • The leader of the group saw his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. • In need of supplies the leader, John White, went back to England. Here he was delayed because the war with Spain.

5. When he returned there was no one left in the colony. The only clue to their whereabouts was the word Croatoan carved in a tree trunk. • Unable to investigate due to approaching bad weather, the Roanoke colonists were never seen again. And has gone down as one of history’s unsolved mysteries.

6. Jamestown • The failure of the Roanoke put off other plans for colonization for about 30 years. • Then in 1606, a group of merchants sought charters from King James I. • The Virginia Company of London acted quickly. In December of 1606, they sent a ships of 144 settlers to Virginia. They arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in April 1607.

7. The colonists named their colony Jamestown in honor of King James I. The site they chose on a peninsula was a good defensible site, but is was swampland with disease carrying mosquitoes. It also lacked good farm land for growing of food. • Most of the settles were also privileged and were not accustomed to hard labor. So instead of building shelters and growing food, they were off searching for gold and silver.

8. Disease and hunger took a toll on the colonists. When the ships arrived in the spring of 1608, with supplies and settlers, only 38 of the original 144 colonists were still alive. • The colony only survived its first two years because of Captain John Smith.

9. Smith forced the settlers to work, explored the area, and negotiated with the local Native Americans, led by Chief Powhatan, for corn. • In the fall of 1609, 400 new settlers arrived and Smith returned to England. During his absence the settlers experienced “the starving time”—the winter between 1609-1610.

10. When the ships returned in the spring they found only 60 colonists of around 500 still alive. • While the colonists did not find any gold or silver, they stuck it out and discovered tobacco. The first crop sold in England in 1614. Soon planters along the James river in Virginia were growing the crop and the colony began to prosper.

11. Relations with the Native Americans improved when colonial leader John Rolfe married Chief Pohawatan’s daughter Pochontas.

12. In 1614, colonists were allowed to rent plots of land to work. This encouraged the colonists to work harder and grow crops to sell locally. This competitive system led colonists to greater efforts to succeed. • Private land ownership was expanded in 1618 for all colonists who paid their own way to America received 100 acres of land. They also received 50 acres for each family member and servant they brought to Virigina.

13. As the colony began to grow, settlers complained about taking orders from the Virginia Company in London. In 1619, the Company agreed to let the colonists have home say in their government. Ten towns in the colony sent two burgesses, representatives, to an assembly to make local laws for the colony. They meet for the first time in Jamestown on July 30, 1619.

14. Since the majority of the early settlers to Jamestown were men, in 1619 the Virginia Company sent 90 women to Jamestown. Colonists who wanted to marry had to pay 120 pounds of tobacco. • Men still outnumbered women, but marriage and children became part of life in Virginia.

15. In 1619 a Dutch ship brought the first African labors to Jamestown and sold them to Virginia planters. • African laborers in Jamestown were free and even owned property until 1640. • William Tucker, the first African American born in the American colonies, was a free man.

16. In the years to follow, more shiploads of Africans would come to North America and those unwilling passengers would be sold as slaves. • Slavery was first recognized in Virginia law in the 1660s.

17. In the early 1620s, the Virginia Company faced financial problems. It had poured all of it’s profits into Jamestown without much return. • The colony also suffered an attack by Native Americans. • In 1624, King James revoked the charter and made Jamestown the first royal colony for England in America.

18. Section 2: New England Colonies • The next wave of English colonists arrived in America in search of religious freedom. • King Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic church and formed the Anglican church to divorce his wife. • Many dissented the beliefs of the Anglican Church. Some Protestants wanted to reform the Anglican Church and still others wanted to break away completely.

19. Those who wanted to reform the church were called Puritans. • Those who wanted to leave were called Separatists who viewed themselves as Pilgrims as they made their way to North America. • The Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower planning on settling in the Virginia colony. • Cape Cod was the first land they sighted.

20. It was well north of their target, but since winter was fast approaching they decided to drop anchor here. • They went ashore on a cold December day at a place called Plymouth.

21. Plymouth was outside the laws of the Virginia Company. • Before going ashore the Pilgrims drew up a formal document called the Mayflower Compact. It pledged their loyalty to England and signers promised to obey the laws passed for the ‘general good of the colony.’

22. During their first winter in America, almost half of the Pilgrims died from malnutrition, disease, and cold. • In the Spring, Native Americans Squanto and Samoset, befriended the colonists and showed them how to grow corn, beans and pumpkins, also how to hunt and fish.

23. In 1625, Charles I became king of England and began persecuting the Puritans because of their calls for reform of the church. • A group of Puritans formed the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629, they received a royal charter to establish a colony north of Plymouth. • Here the Puritans could create a new society based on the Bible.

24. The Puritans chose John Winthrop to be the colony’s governor. He led 900 men, women and children to Massachusetts Bay to settle in a place called Boston. • In the 1630s, over 15,000 Puritans journeyed to Massachusetts to escape religious persecution and economic hard times. • This movement was known as the Great Migration.

25. Initially, Winthrop and his assistants made colony laws in the General Court, made up of the colony’s stockholders. • By 1634, the settlers demanded a larger role in government and the General Court became an elected assembly. • Adult male church members were allowed to vote for the governor and their town’s representatives to the General Court.

26. The Puritans had come to America to put their beliefs into practice and they had little tolerance for the beliefs of others. This led to the creation of new colonies. • The Connecticut River valley had better land for farming and many settlers came to the area in the 1630s. • Thomas Hooker, a minister, disagreed with the way that Winthrop and the other Puritan leaders ran the colony.

27. In 1636, Hooker led his congregation through the wilderness of Connecticut to found the town of Hartford. • 1639 found Hartford joining with two other nearby towns to form a colony and adopt a plan of government called the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.

28. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut was the first written constitution in America and it described the organization of representative government in detail.

29. The colony of Rhode Island was settled by colonists who were forced out of Massachusetts. • The first of these was a minister, Roger Williams. • Williams had three beliefs that caused the Massachusetts leaders to banish him: • 1.people should not be persecuted for religious practices • 2.Government should not force a certain type of religious worship • 3.It was wrong to take land from the Native Americans.

30. He took refuse with a group of Native Americans who later sold him land where he founded the town of Providence. • Williams officially received a charter in 1644. • The policy of religious toleration made Rhode Island a safe place for dissenters and the first place in America where people of all faiths could worship freely.

31. Others followed Williams example and formed colonies where they could worship as they pleased. • In 1638 a group of dissidents from Massachusetts led by John Wheelwright founded the town of Exeter in New Hampshire. • They were followed by a group of Puritans settling in Hampton. • The colony of New Hampshire became fully independent in 1679.

32. Native Americans traded with the settlers exchanging furs for goods such as iron pots, blankets, and guns. • Conflicts arose between colonials and Native Americans as they competed for land.

33. The largest of these early conflicts was King Philips’ War. • King Philip also known as Metacomet, the Wampanaog chief, wanted to stop the settlers from moving onto Native American land. • The war started when colonists executed three Wompanoags for murder. Metacomet’s forces attacked towns across the region, killing hundreds of settlers.

34. Settlers and their Native American allies fought back. • The war ended in defeat for the Wampanoag and their allies. • It also destroyed the power of the Native Americans in New England, opening the territory for colonists to expand their settlement.

35. Section 3: Middle Colonies • By 1660, England had two clusters of colonies in what is today the United States: In the north—Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island and in the south—Maryland and Virginia. • Between the two groups of English controlled lands were Dutch controlled lands.

36. In 1621, a group of Dutch merchants had formed the Dutch West India Company to trade in the Americas. Their posts along the Hudson River grew into the colony of New Netherland. • The main settlement of the colony was New Amsterdam, located on Manhattan Island. • In 1626 the company bought Manhattan from the Manhates people for small quantities of beads and other goods .

37. Blessed with a good seaport, New Amersterdam became a center of shipping to and from the Americas. • To increase the number of permanent settlers in its colony the Dutch West India Company sent over families. • The Company gave large estates to any one who brought at least 50 settlers to work the land. • Wealthy landowners who acquired riverfront estates were called patroons.

38. Patroons ruled as kings, had their own courts and laws. • Settlers owed the patroon labor and share of their crops. • The Dutch colony was so valuable both in its location and trade. The English wanted it. In 1664, the English sent a fleet to attack New Amsterdam.

39. The governor, Peter Stuyvesant, was unprepared for battle so he surrendered. King Charles II gave the colony to his brother, the Duke of York, who renamed the colony New York.

40. New York was a proprietary colony, a colony in which the owner, or proprietor, owned all the land and controlled the government. • The Duke promised freedom of religion. This was good news to the diverse population of the colony which included the first Jews from Brazil, Germans, Swedes, Native Americans, Puritans and enslaved Africans. • New Amsterdam became New York City and was on of the fastest growing locations in the colony.

41. The Duke had appointed a governor and council to run the colony, but the people wanted representative government like the other English colonies. • The Duke resisted the idea but finally, in 1691, allowed New York to elect a legislature. • The southern part of the New York colony was given by the Duke to Lord Berkeley and Sir Carteret which they named New Jersey.

42. This was also a proprietary colony. To get settlers to the island Berkeley and Carteret offered large tracks of land, freedom of religion, trial by jury, and a representative assembly to make local laws and set tax rates.

43. New Jersey was a place of ethnic and religious diversity, but because it did not have natural harbors it did not develop in to a major port city. • The proprietors did not make the profits they had expected to make, so they sold their shares of the colony. • By 1702, it had become a royal colony. • The colonists kept they representative government to make local laws.

44. Pennsylvania • In 1680, in repayment of a debt, William Penn asked King Charles for a very large tract of land that he named Pennsylvania.

45. Penn was a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. • They believed: • Every individual had “inner light” to guide them to salvation and could experience religious truth directly. • Everyone was equal in God’s sight • They were pacifists and would not fight in wars

46. Quaker beliefs challenged established traditions in England and were considered threatening. • Quakers were fined, jailed, and even executed for their beliefs. • Penn saw Pennsylvania as a place to put the Quaker ideals of toleration and equality into place. • He planned and built Philadelphia and wrote the first constitution of Pennsylvania.

47. William Penn’s Plan

48. He also paid the Native Americans for the land. • To encourage settlement, he advertised the colony throughout Europe. • By 1683 several thousand English, Welsh, Irish, Dutch and German settlers had arrived. • In 1701, Penn granted the colonists the right to elect representatives to the legislative assembly with the Charter of Liberties.

49. Delaware • The representatives of the Lower Three Counties of Pennsylvania had a long way to travel for voting • So Penn in the Charter of Privileges allowed them to form their own legislature. • Thereafter they functioned as a separate colony known as Delaware supervised by Pennsylvania’s governor.

50. Section 4: The Southern Colonies • Establishing colonies in North America involved a great deal of work. The settlers had to clear the land, construct homes and churches, plant crops and tend the fields. • As the colonies expanded so did the demand for capable workers, especially in the south on the large plantations. • This demand led to an increase in the number of indentured servants and slaves.