In the 1620's due to England's religious and political environment, the Puritans felt threatened and the economy worsened, thus they became interested in colonizing New England. Separatist Puritans became the Pilgrims. They established Plymouth in 1620.

1628 several Puritans organized the Massachusetts Bay Company. It would be self-governed rather than controlled by England by proprietors, or the crown.

1629: 400 Puritans arrived in Salem.

Gov. John Winthrop: "A Model of Christian Charity": "we shall be as a city upon the hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." Wanted to make their place a Utopia, in doing so tried to achieve reform in England.

Massachusetts Puritans were Non-Separatist.

Massachusetts Indians sold most of their lands to the English.

1640: English passed laws to make Indians convert to Christianity.

"Praying Towns": Puritan missionaries hoped to teach the Native Americans Christianity and English ways.

Congregationalism: System that Mass. Puritans created for self-governing congregations, which completely ignored the authority of the Anglican Bishops. Except for Separatists of Plymouth and Rhode Island, most New England Puritans were Non-Separatist.

Rev. John Cotton: Shaped American Congregationalism.

Cotton's plan for governance placed Church under the hands of Male Saints only.

1647: Old Deluder Act: Ordering every town of fifty or more households to appoint one teacher to whom all children could come for instruction, and every town of at least one hundred households to maintain a grammar school. First steps toward Public Educations.

Massachusetts founded Harvard College in 1636. Curriculum emphasized Classical knowledge. Able to make New England have a College-Educated Elite.

Roger Williams: Questioned legal basis of congregationalism, called for separation of church and state. He was banished in 1635. He went to a place called Providence, in 1647 he established the colony of Rhode Island, the only place in New England to offer religious toleration, the population of Rhode Island went from 4 settlers to 800 by 1650.

Anne Hutchinson: Her ideas derived from the Rev. Cotton. She attacked clerical authority. Her followers were called "Antinomians" (meaning those opposed to the rule of law). By 1636 Hutchinson's supporters included Boston merchants who disliked the government's economic restrictions on their business; young men questioning the rigid control by church elders, and most women. In that year, their candidate was elected Governor, but in 1637, Winthrop returned to office.

The general courts banished Antinomians and Hutchinson, and they went to Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and some back to England, yet the majority - led by Hutchinson - went to Rhode Island.

Williams and Hutchinson posed a threat to Winthrop's city-upon-the-hill-utopian-idea, yet the most fundamental threat to it was that the people would abandon the close-knit community and look out for self-interest. Another threat was $$$. Profit was at main interest of the merchants, and they often clashed with the clerical authorities of the day.

Massachusetts did not require voters or officeholders to own property but full citizenship was only achieved on every adult male who was a saint. In 1641 55% of Massachusetts male population could vote, in England in that same year the figure was less than 30%.

1644: Bicameral legislature was created.

Founders usually granted each family a 1-acre house lot, within ½ mile from meetinghouse.

"Little Commonwealth": Nuclear family. Puritans permitted divorce, but in the course of 53 years (1639-1692) only 27 divorces were granted. Women could not own property, yet women did have legal protection against spousal abuse. The husband was the ultimate authority in all household matters. 

New Englanders lived long and raised large families. Life expectation for both genders was around 65 years. 

Immigration also fueled the population growth in New England.

In England: Lord High Protector Oliver Cromwell - a puritan militant - seized control of the state after a coup ousted King Charles I. In 1660 Restoration occurred in the monarchy as Charles II once again seized the throne. Stuart restoration doomed Puritanism in England. Restoration also left American Puritans without a mission, since now they had no hope in reforming the Church of England.

Half-Way Covenant: permitted children of all baptized members, including non-saints, to receive baptism. That would allow church membership, yet they could not take communion or vote in church affairs. Half-Way Covenant in 1662, signaled the end of the New England Way.

Native Americans: they declined. The fur trade, which had initially benefited them, became a burden after 1650. The English expanded throughout the land and came into closer proximity with native settlements, and the Indians' hunting, gathering, and fishing areas.

Jeremiads: sermons in which the clergy berated the people for failing to preserve the idealism of the region's founding generation.

Trade made Salem prosperous, and it became New England's second largest port. There was a widening gap between rich and poor in Salem. In 1692 Salem Witch Trials began, and it soon developed into people accusing other, mainly over their loyalties to two families: the Putnam and Porters.

The witchcraft hysteria reflected profound anxieties over social change in New England.

Granted to Lord Baltimore in 1632. He secured freedom from Royal Taxation, the power to appoint all sheriffs and judges, and the privilege of creating a local nobility. He intended to create an overseas refuge for English Catholics, since they could not worship in public, had to pay tithes to the Anglican Church, and could not hold political office. For Maryland, anyone who transported 5 adults (20 by 1640) would receive 2000 acres.

Protestant majority dominated the colonial assembly's elective lower house, but many Catholics became large landowners, held high public office in the colony, and dominated the upper house.

1642: Catholics and Protestants argue over usage of the city's chapel.

1649: Act of Religious Toleration: Baltimore hoped that act would reinforce Catholic minority's legal rights, but also showed consistent support for freedom of conscience. It did not protect non-Christians, nor issue separation of Church and State.

1654: Protestant majority barred Catholics from voting and repealed Toleration Act.

Death ravaged 17th Century Chesapeake society.

Chesapeake women who lost their husbands tended to enjoy greater property rights than widows elsewhere.

Predominant Male migration.

Nathaniel Bacon was a wealthy, well-educated young Englishman who migrated to Virginia in 1674 and established a plantation.

Since the wealthy entered the fur-trade business, many in the lower classes were mad.

Settler's resentment against the government included resentment against Indians since the Indians helped them in the fur-trade.

April 1676: Berkeley allowed Bacon to lead a retaliatory campaign against Doeg Indians. Bacon's expedition encountered only peaceful Indians, but Bacon and his group killed them anyway. By Popular Demand, the assembly defined as enemies any Indian who left their village w/o English permission, and declared their lands forfeit. Bacon's troops were free to plunder from the "enemies" their furs, guns, wampum, and Corn harvest, also kept the Indians as slaves. 

Berkeley soon had second thoughts, but he fled. The rebels burned Jamestown, yet Bacon suddenly died out of dysentery, thus Rebellion Endeth.

Bacon's Rebellion revealed a society under deep internal stress.

It was an outburst of long pent-up frustrations by marginal taxpayers and ex-servants, driven to desperation by the tobacco depression, as well as by wealthier planters excluded from Berkeley's circle of favorites.

Slaves for life

Harsh Conditions

No Chance to move up in life

Regulated behaviors.

Treatment justified by racial discrimination.

In the Caribbean the main cash crop was Sugar.

Sugar planters preferred black slaves to white servants because slaves could be driven harder and maintained less expensively. Africans were accustomed to tropical conditions.

Sought staple crop, they found it: rice.

New Amsterdam: Charles II made his brother James, Duke of York, proprietor of the new province and renamed it New York. New York was a royal colony. Extremely Multi-cultural from the very beginning.

Quakers: William Penn founded Pennsylvania after having the land granted from the crown. 

Pennsylvanian migration resulted in the most successful initial transplantation of Europeans in any North American colony. Included: Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, Catholics, and Lutherans.

Pennsylvania: religious toleration; many immigrants came in family groups; high birthrate; thus rapid population expansion. No initial "starving time"

Jean - Baptiste Colbert: proponent of mercantilism, thus Colbert and Louis XIV hoped that New France could increase its output of furs, ship agriculture surpluses to France's new sugar producing colonies in the West Indies timber for those colonies and for the French navy.

"Beaver Wars": Iroquois and Mohawks battled for who will be the "beaver providers"

Coureurs de Bois: independent traders unconstrained by government authority or dubious past.

Southern Colonies: Emulated English West Indies; concentrated primarily on the specialized production of plantation crops using slave labor.

New England: Puritanism had grown less utopian and more worldly, as religious views clashed with commercial economy.

Middle Colonies: Embraced Market Economy with less hesitation.

Rapidly expanding colonial regions would integrate and become the first empire in history whose roots lay in commercial capitalism.