Discussion topic 1
Based on the background in the text, lecture notes, websites and what you already know about this time period, discuss the nature and causes of the transition from the use of indentured servants to slaves in the New World and the implications.
Background for Discussion 1
read chapter 4
First read the following for background on indentured servitude and the transition to slavery in North America.
PBS – Indentured Servants in the U.S.
Transition from Indentured Servitude to Slavery
Intendured Servants in Colonial Virginia
OPTIONAL (for a more in-depth article) – The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude
Slavery in the Colonies
Slavery had virtually disappeared in western Europe by the 1500s and it appeared to be dying out in many parts of the world. Spain and Portugal still practiced slavery, and it was those two nations that took the lead in the exploration and colonization of the New World.
Slavery was a normal part of the African economy and had been present since the 900s.
Tribes took members of other tribes as slaves, often buying and selling their slaves
A person could become a slave in Africa because of debt, criminal activity, or because they had been defeated in battle
African slavery was different, though, from what would develop in the New World
Slavery in Africa was, in general, a temporary state
Slaves had legal rights. They could marry and own property
The children of slaves were free. You could not inherit the condition of servitude
The slave trade in Africa was very small. No more than about 1,000 Africans sold as slaves each year (until Europeans became involved)
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade with Africa, beginning in the mid 1400s. They quickly found that trading in slaves was profitable.
By 1492 they had taken about 25,000 slaves from Africa to their homeland to work on sugar plantations
The demand for the mining of gold and silver and planting in the New World opened up entirely new options for slave labor. The Portuguese and their neighbors, the Spanish, began to buy more Africans and began transporting these new slaves to the Americas.
The Spanish had first tried to enslave Native Americans but found that they simply could not endure the hard work and poor conditions. African slaves seemed better able to resist disease.
How did European traders acquire slaves?
The method of acquiring slaves was violent and often brutal. Initially, Africans captured other Africans because Europeans simply could not go into the interior of Africa without becoming sick. Many of the native African illnesses wiped out traveling Europeans. Once the slaves were captured, they were marched across the continent to the western coast where they were traded for iron or rum. Many of these humans were traded for guns, which the traders would then use to go out and catch more slaves.
Capturing slaves was possible in Africa because the country was deeply fragmented. There were more than 800 different tribes-most warring against each other.
The trading of slaves simply continued to increase, especially after the English and the Dutch became involved in the 1600s. Between 1750 and 1800, more than 75,000 slaves were captured each year.
Between the early 1500s and the 1800s, more than 10 million Africans reached the shores of the New World It is estimated that about 1.5 million died en route. Most were bound for South and Central America. Only about 400,000 were sent to the British possessions in North America.
How did the slaves get from Africa to the Americas?
Historians call the time period when the slaves were being shipped from Africa to America, the Middle Passage. This middle passage was very profitable for a shipper, and each of the voyages might last from nine to ten months and net a 30 percent profit. Many ship captains became so wealthy from this middle passage that they invested their money in mills, factories, and mines, thus fueling the industrial revolution.
An assortment of naked slaves would be acquired and brought aboard ship. The ships were usually anchored several hundred feet off shore.
The men were always shackled, two together, usually at their wrists and ankles and stowed below deck
Women were often allowed to roam the ship by day (they were often taken advantage of by lonely sailors) and were stored below deck at night.
All slaves slept uncovered on bare wooden floors and in rough weather, the ship would rock, rubbing the skin from their elbows and knees.
Every nation that traded in slaves claimed that they took better care of their human cargo than did the other nation traders. One Englishman who sailed to the Congo in 1700 for slaves complained that the Portuguese did baptize their slaves before taking them aboard but then crowded those poor wretches, six hundred and fifty or seven hundred in a ship. The men standing in the hold tied to stakes, the women between the decks, and those that are with child in the great cabin and then children in steerage, which in that hot climate occasions an intolerable stench.
Buying the slaves
A slave shipped anchored off the coast of Africa while its hold was filled
Sometimes that might take from 6 to 9 months
The months anchored off the coast were dangerous. Sicknesses ravaged the boats. Angry tribe members sometimes swam out and attacked the sailors. Sometimes pirates attached the ships and stole the human cargo.
And sometimes, the slaves mutinied. Slave mutinies were frequent. The people of Africa did not become slaves without putting up a fight. Some were successful, but most failed, mainly because the sailors had weapons and the slaves did not.
There are detailed accounts of at least 55 slave mutinies between 1699 and 1845. References to hundreds more.
After loaded
Captains faced the usual perils of sea, but don’t worry, they could take out insurance on their ships and the human cargo.
Voyage usually lasted less than three months. Most captains would not bring food or water on board to last more than three months.
How did the slaves live on board ship?
If the weather was good, they were brought on deck at 8 a.m. Men were attached by their leg irons to a great chain that ran along the bulwarks on both sides of the ship.
Women and children allowed to wander freely.
Served a meal around 9 a.m. Usually ate boiled rice millet, or corn meal and stewed yams or plantains. Each person received a half pint of water.
Then the slaves were forced to exercise. Called the dancing of the slaves The slaves were made to stand up and jump around. Ship captains believed this would ward off suicide and scurvy. Men made to jump until their legs bled from the chains. Some had to play music on drum, sticks, and kettles. The others were told to sing. The slaves sang of sickness, fear of being beaten, hunger, and the memory of their country.
Sometimes the sailors would clean below the decks. Some captains were very clean, others were not.
Around 3:30 another meal served, the last of the day, either the slaves ate the same thing they had eaten earlier or they ate horse beans, a cheap European product.
Slaves immediately sent below after the meal. Usually there was only room to lie on their sides. Hatchways closed and barred. Sailors listened to their cries all night. Sometimes great fights would break out between the slaves, usually because someone wasn’t able to reach the latrines.
If the weather was bad, the slaves were not brought on deck at all, and they spent all day and all night in the holding area below deck.
Deaths
The slaves had to be watched constantly while on deck for fear of suicide. Drowning possible but also starvation. Many slaves believed that when they died, they would return to Africa. One captain tried to end suicide on his ship by cutting the heads off everyone who died and telling the other slaves that they wouldn’t want to return home headless.
Deaths also from small pox, measles, gonorrhea, syphilis, yellow fever, malaria, scurvy, dysentery, and fixed melancholy (depression).
The average mortality rate for the middle passage?
12 ½ percent during the passage
4 ½ percent while at harbor
33 percent during the seasoning process
That adds up to roughly 50 percent. What does that mean? Well, for every two slaves purchased in Africa, only one made it to the Americas.
What is the seasoning process?
The seasoning process was the time period when the slaves were being prepared for sale in the Americas.
How were they sold?
Public slave auctions
Sold individually at private wharves
“Scramble” sales with a fixed price (like a calf scramble, you put your money down and then a slave was let loose in a confined area. The person who grabbed and held the slave owned it.)
“Refuse” slaves sold at half price
Those too useless to even sell were left to die at the wharves
Selling slaves was a cruel process. Many slaves terrified, believing that they were about to be eaten by these white men
The first slaves in the Americas
The first slaves came to Jamestown in 1619. A shipment of twenty slaves was sold downtown (remember that Jamestown had only been established in 1607 and had only started to prosper after 1612).
Initially there were no laws that defined slavery. Early census records show that there were some slaves without masters? Were they free?
It was not until 1660 that Virginia began to clarify its slave laws and place slaves in a state of permanent bondage that passed on to their children. Soon after, laws were placed that banned inter-racial marriage, slaves could hold no property, and had no legal rights. Soon slaves were recognized as property, not human.
Slavery grew quickly in the Southern Colonies. Virginia and North Carolina found slave labor useful on the tobacco plantations. South Carolina began to harvest rice, a large-scale crop that required a large work force. South Carolina quickly became the principal point of entry for slaves and the colony actually had a black majority population.
Slavery never popular in the northern colonies. Part of the reason was simply that due to the nature of its economy, northerners had little use for a large scale labor force in the North. Northern farms were small and family owned. They grew only subsistent crops and no large labor force was needed for planting or harvesting. It’s worthy to note that in later years, the abolition movement would take root and flourish in the North.
Life as a slave
Although masters held virtual power over a slaves life or death, slaves tried to wrestle some degree of control over their own lives.
Many took lifelong mates and had children, though they could not legally marry
After 1720 most slaves in America were born in the country. Fewer slaves were being imported from Africa so that a slave culture began to grow.
Many combined African ideas of religion and foods with Anglo religion and food, creating a unique culture all their own
slaves developed forms of resistance, like acting stupid and playing sic
Discussion topic 2
Is it possible that the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening led to the Revolution? Did these two prior events make a Revolution possible? Be sure to cite evidence from the class readings and materials.
Background information needed
read chapter 5
Intellectual Climate during the Colonial Period
Cities grew quickly during the colonial period, although each one remained rather isolated from the other. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston were the largest cities and each of them had more to do with London, more contact with London, than they did with each other.Cities existed because they were centers for commerce, and they exerted the greatest influence on commerce, politics, and civilization, meaning it was the people who lived in the cities that set the fashions, trends, and ideas, then these ideas radiated out into the country side.Social and political order:Society was stratified during the period.
Merchants: bartered the products of American farms and forests for the molasses and rum of the West Indies, wines of Madera, manufactured goods of Europe, and slaves of Africa.
Craftsmen, retailers, innkeepers, small jobbers: met a variety of needs
Sailors, unskilled workers, small artisans
And class stratification became more pronounced over time. Eventually so that only a very few colonials held a majority of the wealth. Wealth became concentrated, but despite the fact that so few colonials held most of the wealth, almost all of the colonials had become consumers. They all wanted luxury items–more than just the items they needed to survive.Imports began to equal exports as colonials wanted mirrors, silver plate, spices, bed and table linens, clocks, tea services, wigs, books, decorations for their parlors, kitchens, and bedrooms. Colonials wanted these items enough to go into debt to have them. The luxuries made life easier, more pleasant, and it tied them culturally with their homeland. Felt like they were British again.During this period two major cultural movements occured, that would have a significant impact on the revolutionary period that would follow: The Enlightenment and the First Great Awakening.More and more they turned away from the strict piety of their lives and looked to expand on their lives. A new and fashionable idea was abound at the time that emphasized this move toward secularism, it was call the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment
While the first generation of colonists were busy establishing the new world, their contemporaries in Europe were undergoing a scientific revolution where they overthrew the old Ptolemaic view of an earth-centered universe in favor of a heliocentric system or world view (Copernicus)..Coupling this new revelation with Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation, an idea that stated that the universe was mechanistic and moved in accordance with natural laws, which could be grasped by human reason and explained by mathematics. These new ways of looking at the world led to the belief that natural laws governed all things. The orbits of the planets, and also the orbits of human relations: politics, economics, and society.Reason became the highest pinnacle of knowledge and rationality ruled. These types of laws led to the assertion that humans were able to understand the universe without supernatural revelation and without the guidance of earthly superiors, this type of thought displaces God and church leaders.At best, as French philosopher Voltaire put it, God was a master clockmaker who planned the universe and then set it in motion. This is DEISM: a religious aptitude that stressed that God could only exist as proved by mathematics, logic, and scientific observation and experiment.Humans no longer needed a God to explain the universe. Man could grasp it through his own reason. So, evil not because of original sin, as the Puritans presumed, but because man had an imperfect understanding of the laws of nature. According to some of the Enlightnement thinkers, predestination and total depravity were religious fictions invented by priests to reinforce their control over the people.On the other hand, many significant political ideas were generated by several Enlightenment thinkers.John Locke: arguing in “Essay on Human Understanding,” claimed that man was just a product of his environment. The human mind was a blank tablet on which experience was written. Evils of a corrupt society therefore might corrupt the mind. To improve society and human nature, improve upon and apply reason, which meant improving the environment through science and education.Now that man knew that life, and by extension, society, politics, and economics did not rest on supernatural revelation, it meant that life (everyday living) could be rationalized and understood through reason.Locke then philosophized that humans could reasonably create their own society and government, and he called this the Theory of Contract Government under natural law. In this he emphasized that the basis for government is that it should rule by the consent of the people. As humans, Locke reasoned, had certain natural rights to life, liberty, property, and private property, and that a state could not deprive that individual of those rights. If the state did violate those rights, men had to revolt. It was their duty. The state was set up to protect those rights. In fact, there was no other reason for a government to exist.Other thinkers contributed to these political ideas as well. Baron de Montesquieu wrote about the separation of powers in government, the ending of slavery, and the improtance of individual freedom. Jean-Jaques Rousseau emphasized the idea of personal freedom, and that through an agreement called a social contract people could establish a republican government and preserve their freedoms.What does all this that’s going on Europe have to do with the Americas?Well, many of these philosophers looking around for a manifestation of these findings believed that they were perfectly represented in the American experience.
Old barriers of birth were not applicable in the new world. Tradition meant less–ability and experience were what mattered. It was this first hand knowledge that mattered most, and people of all births could succeed through knowledge and reason.
Some used these ideas to justify mercantilism and no longer needed the revealed word, you could just pursue commerce for the sake of commerce.
This new emphasis on reason and natural law enabled man to control his environment and mold his own destiny.
The ideas of representative government, individual freedom, and the separation of powers would have tremendous influence during the revolutionary period and on the formation of the Constitution.
One American came to perfectly represent the ideas of the Enlightenment.Benjamin FranklinBorn to ordinary family…
Son of a candle and soap maker
Apprenticed to his older brother who was a printer
Ran away at seventeen
By twenty-four he owned a print shop publishing his own paper and Poor Richard’s Almanac.
Retired from business at 42
Had already founded a library, invented a stove, set up a fire company, started an Academy that eventually became U of Penn, started a debating club which grew into the American Philosophical Society.
Thought he’d devote himself to science and public service
Wrote Experiments and Observations on Electricity (printed many editions in many different languages.)
Recognized as a leading thinker and experimenter.
His speculations covered medicine, meteorology, geology, astronomy, and physics
He invented the Franklin stove, lighting rod, and glass harmonica
He became the Colonial agent to London
And then the Ambassador to France
His successes perfectly illustrated and confirmed the Enlightenment trust in the powers of nature.Colonial Society was drifting toward modernity and away from its more Puritanical and strictly pious roots. This drift worried some colonials, especially the church leaders who found their congregations disinterested and not attending as well.
The Great Awakening
Countering this move away from church and strict piety, the Great Awakening proved a period of religious enthusiasm that burned up and down the colonies. During the 1730s and 1740s, a revival swept the colonies that attempted to reassert the earlier piety and rally against the rationalism and optimism of the Enlightenment. This “awakening” appealed to the emotions and ended by unconsciously accommodating Christianity to the modern sprit.Jonathan Edwards is often associated with the Great Awakening, and he is one of the preachers most remembered for the period. Edwards’s spellbinding sermons burned with a personal sense of God’s majesty and power. He seemed to understand the intellectual implications of the Newtonian-Lockean thought and he hoped to turn the Enlightenment upside down on itself. Edwards hoped to reconstruct the old Puritan vision of an omnipotent and inscrutable God.In some ways, Edwards was a transitional figure, a bridge between two ages. He sought to recast and modernize Puritanism in the light of eighteenth century rationalism. His preaching style was subdued and monotone, but the effects of his ministry were tremendous.Few in his generation understood what he was trying to do. Most of his fellow revivalists adopted his highly charged rhetoric and delivered extremely emotional sermons, but most Americans had become too materialistic to share, even in a fit of religious zeal, Edwards’s vision of the beauty and goodness of God’s awful sovereignty and the sinner’s helpless dependence on the miracle of divine grace. George Whitfiled was an English evangelist that also a prominent figure in the Great Awakening. He brough his background in theater to his minisrty, and with flambouant style and booming voice, preached to hundreds at a time, fueling the fires of revival.
Political Consequences of the Enlightenment and Great Awakening
The powerful religious zeal of the awakening spread like an epidemic, transcending political boundaries and strengthening ties between the colonies. The movement is considered by some historians to be the first distinctly American event, and some argue that the Great Awakening was a necessary precursor to the Revolution. The emphasis on the personal aspect of salvation had the effect of dislocating traditional religious denominations, in some ways may have contributed the the idea of the separation of church and state. Coupled with the new political ideals of the Enlightenment–individual rights, freedom, and representative government–these two movements in many ways led the colonists toward revolution.
Discussion topic 3
TOPIC 1
Explain how the Seven Years’ War created conditions for a growing conflict between American colonists and the British. What factors, attitudes or events developed or occurred during this conflict that contributed to these tensions.
TOPIC 2
The chapter “Road to Revolution” covers the roots of the revolutionary movement. List and describe three (3) of the British policies and/or acts that the colonists found unfavorable, and explain why they protested each of them.
TOPIC 3
Evaluate the military strengths and weaknesses of both the British and the American minutemen at the outset of the Revolutionary War. What were the advantages and challenges of each side?
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Guidelines for responding to these as follows:
Evidence: You should use your textbook readings plus readings and documents provided in Course Material. Make sure you cite sources and use quotation marks for word-for-word quotations.
You will need to write a brief original essay for one of the topic questions.
Backgrounds for Discussion 3
Read chapter 6
The Roots of Revolution, part 1
By the 1760s, a distinct society was emerging in the colonies, united by intellectual currents like the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening, that made the colonies distinctly different than England. Although the thirteen colonies had developed different religious, social, and demographic characters, they had a primitive sense of unity that would grow stronger through the oncoming economic and political upheaval.
During this period, the British controlled economic trading in and out of the colonies strictly, but left most internal matters and governing to the colonials themselves.
So, by the 1760s, these colonial governments felt self-sufficient and saw themselves and distinct entities that could rule their colony quite effectively. England was surprised by this attitude and had not anticipated it.
By the time that England would try and exert greater internal control over the colonials, it was too late.
Mercantilist system
England saw the colonies in a sort of parent-child relationship. England recognized that each colony had its own government and dealt with matters of local concern, but that because they were all citizens of England, their actions were to always be in the best interest of the mother country.
This relationship is expressed in economic terms as the mercantile system.
What is mercantilism? It was, at the time, the operative economic system of all European countries.
This is how it went: in a world of national rivalries, power and wealth went hand and hand.
To be wealthy required amounts of gold and silver.
To get and keep that gold and silver, the country needed to limit foreign imports and preserve a favorable balance of trade.
How do you do that? Encourage manufacturers, through subsidies and monopolies if need be, to produce consumer goods.
Develop and protect its own shipping.
Make use of colonies as sources of raw materials.
Make use of colonies’ purchasing power as consumers; see colonies as markets, too.
Believed that there was a fixed amount of wealth (gold and silver), and the only thing that changed was a country’s holdings of the wealth.
English in the mercantilist system:
Colonies were extremely important because they produced goods for the mother country that it had previously imported (grain, sugar, tobacco).
Gave Britain an outlet for exports, which created jobs and industrial development at home.
But none of this would develop if the colonies traded with other countries, so Britain took legal steps to force the colonists to buy only British goods.
British began to regulate colonial trade:
Really began as soon as tobacco was successfully grown at Jamestown.
King forbade direct exportations to rival markets. Tobacco had to be shipped to England first, where taxes were paid.
In return, no tobacco would be grown in England.
This was enforced very strictly at first.
Navigation Act of 1660
Marked the first real attempts at enforcing this law and England’s new interest in regulating all colonial trade.
All goods exported from the colonies had to be carried in English ships; that is, ships had to be built, owned, and manned by Englishmen/colonists.
Listed “enumerated goods” that could only be shipped to England or another colony, things that England would otherwise have had to buy from the Spanish or the Dutch, their main rivals.
Included sugar, cotton, tobacco, naval stores (wood, pitch, tar).
Followed by a second navigation Act in 1663, which required that shipments from the colonies be unloaded and taxes paid on the cargoes- quick and easy money for England.
This was soon followed by the Restraining Acts of 1699, protective efforts to ensure that colonial manufacturers would not get a leg up on businesses based in England.
Colonial industry was underdeveloped at this time.
Wool and iron industries were more developed, and England heavily regulated them to keep them small and noncompetitive.
In 1699, parliament banned the export of wool from the colonies- even banning the export of it from one colony to the next.
In 1732, England forbade the export of hats (beaver hats were fashionable).
In 1750, England forbade the colonists from building mills that could process iron. They could smelt it, but not process it. It had to be sent to England for processing.
How did the colonists respond?
Most complied with the system.
It was an efficient system in the short term.
Colonists achieved a very high standard of living in a short amount of time, which bought their happiness.
Restrictions on manufacturing affected few Americans. So little industrialization existed that it really wasn’t such a big deal for most Americans.
And there were a great many benefits to the system.
Although the Navigation Acts imposed taxes upon the colonists, they also protected goods from foreign competition, which kept prices high and a monopolistic stronghold.
British did pay subsidies for some goods-especially those for shipbuilding.
Also, tobacco and rice exporters received rebates to help offset the imposed duties.
Despite these benefits, the colonials began to complain about the system in the 1730s.
Most hard hit were those who wanted to trade in the West Indies where the real money could be made (triangle trade).
British enacted the Molasses Act of 1733, an attempt to cut down on trade to the Indies. They put a huge tax on sugar and molasses imported into the colonies and seriously disrupted colonial trade 2.
Act made legal, but was not enforced.
Colonists allowed to be smuggled in contraband, which made the shippers begin to believe that it was alright to break British laws.
Made colonists distrustful of British intentions.
It was this distrust that really began to grow. W why would the King enact a law and then not enforce it? Was he just ruling on whims and not on reason or logic?
By this point ( all the colonies were owned and held by the King directly) no holding companies existed anymore. The colonies had not been profitable enough at the outset to hold onto them.
Although the King held the colonies, he rarely interfered with their daily lives.
Colonies set up their own local governments to care for their own needs.
Each colony had a bicameral legislature except Pennsylvania, which was unicameral.
Three major forms of government existed within the colonies:
In 9 out of the 13 colonies, the King appointed the governor and the members of the upper house.
In the proprietary colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, a crown- appointed proprietor made the appointments.
In the self-governing colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, all posts were elected.
Although all these colonies modeled themselves along the English system, two major differences were seen:
Voting was much more widespread in the colonies than it had ever been in England.
Not necessarily more egalitarian (still a property requirement), but property much more easily obtained in the colonies.
The British concept of virtual representation was repudiated in the colonies.
In England, the elected supposedly represented all the constituents whether they had voted for him or not, or felt that he understood their needs. The colonies believed that the representatives in England’s parliament would represent them adequately.
Colonial representative bodies were local-oriented people who made decisions for their own areas.
These representative assemblies enjoyed a great deal of freedom and drafted legislations, which worked for them locally. They had been allowed this freedom as long as none of their laws conflicted with extant English laws.
Local assemblies proved themselves adept at taking care of themselves.
For example, Pennsylvania unicameral because they voted the upper house out in 1701.
The colonies had so much power, too, because the governors held very little. Most often, positions of patronage were held by incompetent men, some of whom never even left England.
When do you start to see the first cracks?
French and Indian War (Seven Year’s War) 1755-63.
Fighting began in Europe and would involve England and Spain (who were allies), and France.
Main action in North America between England and France.
French had established their presence in the New World in the 1670s.
France, too, followed the mercantilist system, and they hoped to create a massive empire that included Africa, the Indies, and North America.
They imagined North America as a market for exports and imports of furs and grains.
By 1682, the French sailed from Canada down the Mississippi. By 1743, they reached the Rocky Mountains and had claimed all the interior of the Americas for themselves.
To consolidate their claim, they established a string of forts running from Quebec to Detroit to New Orleans.
This upset the British, although most French settlers were consolidated in Quebec and Montreal.
Both the British and the French knew that if they were going to war for control of North America, would require the aid of the Native Americans.
The British had more to trade with the native Americans, but the French offered them tolerance.
The French were far more sensitive to native culture. Fur trappers had intermarried and adopted native customs. Jesuits had been nice in their conversion efforts.
Despite this, the British had the support of the Iroquois Confederacy, a group of five tribes, including the Mohawks, who were in it for the money.
War officially began in 1754 when a young militia colonel, George Washington, sent to the Ohio valley to challenge French expansion.
Washington built a fort and named it Necessity.
The French stormed the forts.
A year later, the British tried to take the fort back but were unsuccessful when the French ambushed them.
Over 900 British soldiers were killed. Washington was one of the five hundred who managed to escape and return to Virginia.
This let off a hoopla by local Indians. They saw the British in a much weakened position, and they raged up and down the frontier letting off
