Transcript American Colonies: Nation Building

Overall Interpretations
Germ theory: “germs” of American
society come from Europe (esp. England
and Germany)
 Frederick Jackson Turner: frontier thesis
American exceptionalism
 Richard White: middle ground /
borderlands
 Progressives: class conflict; Charles
Beard
 Consensus: ideological commonality;
Richard Hofstadter
 (New) Social History: demographics, nonelite
 Post-CRM: Black history, Feminism, neoMarxism, microhistory

Revolution
 Classical
Republicanism, ideology:
Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood
 Neo-Progressives: class conflict
w/focus lower orders (pre-elite
rebellion against authority); Gary
Nash, Howard Zinn
American Colonies:
Nation Building
Between 1607 and 1763, Americans gained
control of their political and economic
institutions. To what extent and in what
ways do you agree or disagree with this
statement? (71)
 Evaluate the relative importance of the
following as factors prompting Americans
to rebel in 1776:

– Parliamentary taxation; British military
measures; Restriction of civil liberties; The
legacy of colonial religious and political ideas
(92)

What evidence is there for the assertion
that the basic principles of the Constitution
were firmly grounded in the political and
religious experience of America’s colonial
and revolutionary periods. (84)
I. Types of Colonies

Royal
– VA: Boomtown

Proprietary
– Penn: Best Poor Man’s Country; “Charter of
Privileges”: religious tolerance, criminal rights
(trial + due process)

Charter
– Mass: City on a Hill

All: “freeborn Englishmen”
II. Patterns of Distrust
A. Tradition of Non-Participation
 “The People”: 50-80% free adult
males
 Common turnout colony-wide
elections
 Mass.: 20-30% (100% town
meetings)
 Middle: 20-45%
 VA: 40-50%
B. Massachusetts
 1)
Affective: small, close-knit
communities
 2) Intermediary: strong, respected
leader
 3) Humanistic: shared beliefs
– Brutal (social covenant tar + feather,
burn) but open: American = accept
beliefs
John Winthrop: Little Speech on
Liberty (1645)
Liberty:
Natural:“a liberty to evil as well as to good”; This
liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with
authority, and cannot endure the least restraint
of the most just authority. The exercise and
maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more
evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts…”
vs. Civil/federal/moral: “This liberty is the
proper end and object of authority, and cannot
subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only
which is good, just, and honest. ”
Source of power: choice of people
authority of God and must follow God’s
laws (divine right social contract)
Failures of leadership
 Skill: “when you call one to be a
magistrate, he doth not profess nor
undertake to have sufficient skill for that
office, nor can you furnish him with gifts,
etc., therefore you must run the hazard of
his skill and ability.”
 Faith: “But if he fail in faithfulness, which
by his oath he is bound unto, that he must
answer for.”

C. Virginia: Herrenvolk Democracy
 Master
race/blood based
membership
 Edmund Morgan: "the rise of liberty
and equality in America had been
accompanied by the rise of slavery.
That two such seemingly
contradictory developments were
taking place simultaneously ... is the
central paradox of American history.“
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)
Nathaniel Bacon, black + white
frontiersmen
 Gov. Berkeley has:
 1) “unjust taxes…for the advancement of
private favorites and other sinister ends”
 2) Separation of powers (friends as
judges)
 3) Protect Indians vs. subjects
 4) Outlawed army for protecting selves

"screen of racial contempt“ general
raising status of lower-class whites
 Morgan: "Partly because of slavery, they
[small landowning whites] were allowed
not only to prosper but also to acquire
social, psychological and political
advantages that turned the thrust of
exploitation away from them and aligned
them with their exploiters."
 Race trumps class: populist politics to
undermine class unity
 Unthinking decision expansion of slavery
+ extension of rights/power to all whites

D. Pennsylvanian Constitutionalism
 William
Penn’s Charter of Privileges
(1701)
 Guaranteed limited government,
private property protection, religious
tolerance (of monotheists) “best
poor man’s country”
III. Fusion
 Am.
Rev.:
 N: all men equal before God; social
covenant
 + S: aristocratic ideal (inherited,
individual rights) and Enlightenment
natural rights
 = “All men are created equal”
1787-91: guarantees codified in
Constitution and Bill of Rights