Chapter 4: American Life in the 17th Century 1607-1692

Intro:

• Puritanism softened
• Regional differences: importance of slavery in the South

The Unhealthy Chesapeake:

• Disease - lowered life expectancy by 10 years.
• Many young men and few women
• Toward the end of the century, population of Virginia and Maryland began to grow (immunity to disease, more women)

The Tobacco Economy:

• Chesapeake: planted tobacco like crazy, exhausted the soil, needed new land, provoked Indian attacks
• Indentured servants labor - tobacco
• "Headright system" - get an indentured servant and get 50 more acres of land
• Indentured servants = hard lives

Frustrated Freemen and Bacon's Rebellion:

• Virginia governer: William Berkeley
• 1676: 1000 Virginians broke out of control led by Nathanial Bacon.
• Killed Indians, chased Berkeley out of Jamestown, and torched the city.
• Bacon died of disease, Berkeley hung many rebels.

Colonial Slavery:

• Africans began being imported to Jamestown, but very few
• 1680s: huge influx of black slaves
• "Royal African Company"
• "middle passage" Africa->America. Death rate: 20%
• "Slave codes" - made blacks property

Africans in America:

• Slave life worse in the South
• Chesapeake - tobacco - more family life
• African Americans: mixture of African and American culture and language
• 1712: NYC slave revolt
• 1739: S Carolina blacks revolted (neither were anything major)

Southern Society:

• Social structure - plantation owners on top - not like English aristocrats
• Small farmers (largest social group)
• Landless whites: former indentured servants
• Current indentured servants -> black slaves

From African to African-American:

• Brought rice-cropping techniques
• Early slave could buy their freedom
• Became Christians

The New England Family:

• Added 10 years of lifespan from Old England
• Family was center of life. Women had a baby every 2 years until menopause!
• Stable families, grandparents
• Women in the south - more independent, had property titles.
• Women couldn't vote
• Divorce rare, adultery punished harshly

Life in the New England Towns:

• "New England conscience" - Puritan roots
• Meetinghouse - town hall and place of worship
• Elementary education - most people could read and write. In Mass. Harvard was established.
• Voting! Church and politically.

The Half-Way Covenant and the Salem Witch Trials:

• New form of sermon: "jeremiad" - preached Old Testament about peoples' waning piety
• The Half-Way Covenant - agreement between church and adherents - baptism but not full communion to children of existing members
• Puritan congregations opened their doors
• Witch trials - 20 women were hanged because they were accused of being witches by teenage girls
• 1693: witch-hanging prohibited

The New England Way of Life:

• Connecticut: the nutmeg state
• "to get on, to get honor, to get honest"
• rocky soil, cold climate, tobacco couldn't grow, black slavery couldn't exist profitably
• Shipbuilding and commerce

The Early Settlers' Days and Ways:

• Most colonists were farmers
• Not aristocrats from England or poor slummin' it - middle class.
• Huge separation of classes could not exist as it did in England.