HIST A301: Colonial America

A blog about the history and public memory of colonial America.

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Public Memory of the Revolution and its Participants

In order to accurately write about public memory and its role in our remembering of the American Revolution, we must first define public memory. Public memory is the study of how the public remembers the events that happened in years past. Where history is a collection of knowledge about the past, public memory analyzes the public’s thoughts about these past people, actions, and events.

History exists to remind us of our past. Public memory exists to remind us of our history. Who will we remember? Why will we remember them? Who really chooses the ones we remember?  Are there any patterns to be found in the ones that are chosen to exist forever in our public memory? How do we honor those that are chosen? It is with these questions in mind that I will delve into the study of public memory. Using the likes of Nathan Hale, the Oneida tribe, George Robert Twelves Hewes, Crispus Attucks, and Haym Salomon I will attempt to extract and explain the factors that helped catapult them into our memory of the American Revolution.

                It is this author’s opinion that there are three major factors which apply to each of our subjects which helped them make the leap into our thoughts whenever it is that we discuss the American Revolution. These factors are as follows: the person or group must have participated in an event or occupation relevant to the Revolution, the person or group must have something which helps define themselves as different from the rest of the participants of said event, and the person or group’s status in public memory changes over time. It is with this basic foundation of factors that we can truly examine the way and reason that some people enter our historical lore while others simply fade away without so much as a page and a gravestone to remember them by.

                 We can begin by dissecting what it means to have participated in a Revolutionary event. In the case of Nathan Hale and the Oneida tribe, we see active participants of the Revolutionary War, and in Haym Salomon’s case, a participant from afar. In the case of Crispus Attacks, we see a man who met his end during the firing of the first shots in the Boston Massacre. As for George Robert Twelves Hewes, we find a Boston Tea Party participant. Although these are certainly very important events in our history as Americans, we do not go out of our way to remember each and every Revolutionary veteran, Boston Massacre victim, or Boston Tea Partier. What is it that sets a certain person apart from the crowd of souls involved in these events?

                Unlike most others in the Revolutionary War, Nathan Hale was a spy for the American forces. A job that was, at the time, looked down upon was enough to make him different. He was a young, patriotic man who would do anything, even participate in the lowly sport of spying, to provide for his country. The Oneida, a tribe aligned with American and French forces during the Revolutionary War, made a name for themselves by providing active duty as a Native American nation. When they could have easily chosen not to align with any side, or to join other Indian tribes in attacking American and French forces, the Oneida chose to create a bond with the forces against the British. Haym Salomon, while not directly involved with the fighting of the American Revolution, was a financier for the cause. A Polish-Jew immigrant, Haym Salomon made a name for himself among the minds of the Revolution as a man brilliant enough with finances to manage the States’ checkbook. Crispus Attucks, who may have been named in books anyway if not quite “remembered” just for being slain in the streets of Boston, was a half-black, half-Indian man. Perhaps the luckiest of those remembered is George Robert Twelves Hewes who, plainly, was remembered for living longer than any of the others who participated in the Tea Party that day. A man who went from the life of a lowly shoemaker would later in life be thrust into a sort of local fame, simply for being an old man with a story. However, we do not make a habit of erecting statues to the living or celebrating holidays in the name of people still alive, it takes time and a spark for an individual or group to truly shine in the annals of our memory.

                Time plays an interesting part in the way we view individuals and groups. It is time that can build a legend and time that can destroy one. It is probably Crispus Attucks and the Oneida tribe that best exemplify this quality. Crispus Attucks was born outside of Boston to mixed race parentage in 1723. Being of mixed race (and being referred to primarily as a “mulatto”), his life before the Massacre is somewhat shrouded in mystery. Some historians argue that he was a man of wild behavior, which may have led to his decision to allegedly grab the bayonet of a British soldier and, while equipping a leather tanning instrument in hand as a weapon, attack said soldier. His falling first in what would be called the Boston Massacre was, at the time, little more than a casualty. For years, historians would leave Crispus Attucks out of their books or mention his name in passing; it was not until the dawn of antebellum America, around 75 years later, that Crispus Attucks would be referred to and revered as a black patriot and the first to bleed for his country, which we will discuss further later in this post. On the flip side of the coin we have the Oneida tribe. The Oneida tribe sent active fighters to aid the French and American forces against the British during the Revolutionary War. During the war, the tribe formed bonds with the American and French allies, but especially with French officer Marquis de Lafayette. It was Lafayette who noticed, on his trip back to the States after the war, that the Oneida had been left out of any war remembrance speeches or events. Those tribesmen who had fought with and shed blood alongside French and American men years before were nowhere to be found in neither the physical space surrounding Lafayette nor the mental space of the Americans involved in the celebrations. It was Philip Schuyler who, after the war, said to the Oneida, “sooner should a fond mother forget her only Son than we shall forget you.” However, unlike Philip Schuyler and Marquis de Lafayette, forgetting the Oneida and their contributions is exactly what Americans did. The Oneida had made a major contribution to a war effort that brought the United States of America to fruition and they were effectively slighted a spot in the history books and our public memory. Why did Crispus Attucks go from a relatively unknown biracial man from the outskirts of Boston to a renowned patriot while the Oneida were left to a future of legal battles over land and money? It would seem that a spark is needed to truly propel a figure into our public memory.

                Something pushes people to promote a figure’s everlasting memory. In the case of Nathan Hale and George Robert Twelves Hewes, it was the desire to recognize the struggles of becoming a nation and to recognize the ones who were involved in those struggles at a level that allowed the average American to relate. Georges Robert Twelves Hewes received his recognition while still alive; having outlived the rest of the Tea Party’s participants (and somehow holding on to his mental acuity well into his 80’s and 90’s) he was celebrated for standing up against British tyranny. Hewes would make annual appearances in Bostonian celebrations for the day that would induct him into the halls of our memory. While Hewes worked humble laboring jobs like shoemaking and fishing and never really accrued any fortune, big or small, his age and willingness to share his story with a few historians made him a name to remember when speaking about the American Revolution. When we dissect the reason behind our remembrance of Nathan Hale, a few things become apparent. Unlike Hewes, Hale had much more opportunity in the relatively short amount of years he lived. Hale was an eloquent, intelligent, athletic, artistic man who attended Yale; after attending, he joined the Seventh Connecticut Regiment as a Lieutenant. During his time with the regiment, he volunteered to become a spy, knowing that the position was considered less than honorable, because he believed that it was a necessary evil. It was during his stint as a spy that he was caught by British forces and sentenced to hang. Hale, with his last words bravely stated, “I only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country”. It is for that bravery and dedication to his country (not to mention that quote) that we remember him today. When staring into the face of death he did not falter, he continued to stick up for his belief in what would eventually be the United States of America. It was Hale’s unwavering patriotism, his wisdom far beyond his years, and probably his last words which led the American public to back the building of his monument. Not every person in our public memory was put there simply to memorialize the Revolutionary War, some were hand selected by people trying to promote their own ideas and agenda as well as the American spirit.

                Crispus Attucks and Haym Salomon are two examples of individuals whose remembrance is not completely based on their involvement in the Revolution and its origins. Crispus Attucks, who was mentioned earlier is this post, was not mentioned much in history books until about a decade before the Civil War. The reason for this is simple enough: until then, historians and writers would almost never find importance in a half-Indian, half-black ma. It was not until black activists found out that Crispus Attucks was, in fact, a black man that he began to become a symbol for the freedom of blacks throughout America. A common argument for freedom by many black activists was “if the first person to shed blood for the freedom and independence of this country was a black man, should we not have true freedom?” Black leaders would begin to use Attucks for years to come, whenever race was a factor. The memory of Haym Salomon presents us with a similar story. Salomon was a Polish Jew that immigrated to America before the Revolution and during it became a financier for the American cause. It would be Barnet Hodes (another Jewish-Pole descendent) that would, 150 years after the Revolution, propose that a statue be built in honor of Salomon. By requesting that the statue also feature Robert Morris and George Washington, Hodes virtually guaranteed that the statue would be built. Hodes used Salomon’s image to convey a message of minority support in the American Revolution, rather than just a monument to Jewish people, Polish people, or immigrants. By appealing to the entirety of the American public, Hodes was able to get enough donations for a statue of Salomon during the Great Depression. It is this factor which truly decides how we will remember an individual or group. In order to remember somebody there must be a drive and reason to remember them, and being an American that we can aspire to be is reason enough.

Sources:

Alfred Young's George Robert Twelves Hewes (1742-1840): A Boston Shoemaker and the Memory of the American Revolution

Joseph Glatthaar's Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution

Mitch Kachun's From Forgotten Founder to Indispensable Icon: Crispus Attucks, Black Citizenship, and Collective Memory, 1770–1865

Christopher J. Young's Barnet Hodes’s Quest to Remember Haym Salomon, the Almost-Forgotten Jewish Patriot of the American Revolution

Robert E. Cray Jr.'s The Revolutionary Spy as Hero: Nathan Hale in the Public Memory, 1776-1846

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The Individual in Revolutionary America

While America in the 17th century was best dissected by showcasing groups of people, one could very easily assert that America in the Revolutionary period should be described by the experiences of individuals. While the settlers of the 17th century established a society, the individual colonist of the 18th developed it. Each individual, whether Whig or Tory, Yankee or Loyalist, had an important part to play in what would eventually become the American Revolution. The following post will first set the stage for the Revolution and continue to detail the lives and ideas of some of the people who played a part in the struggle that would blossom into a war between a mother country and her children.

                As we often forget, the development of America as a sovereign nation the notion of being American did not happen instantaneously. In the beginning of the 18th century, identifying yourself as an American simply did not exist. People that were born in a specific state may have referred to themselves using the state’s name (Virginian, Pennsylvanian, etc.) but the states, while certainly working in a sort of tandem, were not unified and therefore offered no reason to refer to oneself as American. It would eventually be British pressures that led to a unified country and the American name that we use today. It is this researcher’s opinion that if the British had not been so aggressive and careless with their colonies, we would likely still be a British territory.

                As early as 1763, 13 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we begin to see the stage set for the Revolution. King George III signed into law the Royal Proclamation. This Proclamation, being issued after the British victory at the end of the French and Indian War, prevented settlers from settling past an arbitrary line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. The line was to be guarded by British posts, partly to keep Indians out and partly to keep colonists in. Many colonists believed that the British were overstepping their boundaries and using the line as an excuse to keep a military presence in America.

                The next year, 1764, Britain attempted to both regulate trade and create revenue by enacting the Sugar Act. Perhaps it was Britain’s belief in mercantilism or an attempt to abolish the practice of salutary neglect that made them believe a tax on sugar and molasses was a good idea. The colonists, on the other hand were less than pleased. It was an unfair law in their eyes, but the last straw for many colonists would come next year.

                The Stamp Act, enacted in 1765, posed a direct tax on virtually all paper products. Colonists harshly opposed this new tax; Benjamin Franklin, while being interviewed by the House of Commons in England said about the Stamp Act, “The authority of Parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes. It was never disputed in laying duties to regulate commerce.” By internal tax, he meant a tax which was meant only to raise revenue instead of regulating trade. Franklin would go on to argue that the colonists had no problem whatsoever abiding by taxes that were used to regulate trade, only those which were used to raise revenue. Most colonists shared these sentiments and believed that if a tax were to be imposed, it should be only by an authority in which they have legal representation and a legal voice. These ideas would blossom into the age-old saying “No Taxation without Representation”. While the tax was certainly used to raise revenue in Britain, John Adams argued that the true meaning behind the tax was to make paper pamphlets, and therefore information, more difficult to circulate amongst the colonists. Keeping the colonists from circulating information would prove to be an incredibly difficult task for the British all the way up to and through the Revolution.

                With the amount of backlash from colonists and the boycott on British goods that was followed by a high percentage of colonists, the British could not possibly sustain a business relationship with America without trying to save face. This face-saving device came in the form of the Declaratory Act in 1766. The Declaratory Act completely repealed the Stamp Act and lessened the Sugar Act, which Britain believed would be better for business. Although the Declaratory Act seemed like a step back for the aggressive British policy, included within it was a far more nefarious clause; a line that allowed the British Parliament to make any decision whatsoever about the colonies. The British believed that the colonists had “virtual representation” or that they essentially were accurately represented by Parliament just by being a part of the British Empire; however, the colonists had different ideas.

                Armed with the Declaratory Act as tool that allows them to pass any act or law they desire, the British Parliament enacted the Townshend Acts in 1767 at the request of Charles Townshend. The Townshend Acts were a collection of four separate acts: the Suspending Act, which suspended the New York Assembly’s right to convene until enough money was collected by colonists to pay for the housing of British troops in New York; the Townshend duties, which put a direct tax on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea for purely revenue-gaining reasons; the third act placed restrictions and a system of collections on customs in the colonies; the fourth act lifted duties levied on any tea coming from Britain to the colonies. The first three acts exerted British authority on the colonies, which colonists like Samuel Adams despised. Adams wrote his famous “Circular Letter” in protest to the acts and to enlighten the American public on the issues at hand. As colonists became more educated on the matters, they began to become more vocal in their protests and more strongly boycott British goods. Tensions would continue to rise for the next three years.

                In 1770, British soldiers had been living in and around Boston for years. These soldiers whom stayed in Boston year in and year out would be come to known as “Regulars” by the locals. At their peak, there may have been about 1 British Regular per every 3 Bostonians. Some of these British Regulars felt that they could use some extra income and began to compete for general labor jobs around the city; this caused a strong hatred for the British in Boston (well, a stronger hatred than they already had). Then, on March 5th, 1770, tensions finally boiled over when a group of British soldiers fired into an angry mob of Bostonians. Details are somewhat hazy concerning the event, and historians still find themselves pondering such questions as: “were there nine, ten, or eleven soldiers?”, “were the colonists verbally and/or physically abusing the soldiers first?”, “did the British commanding officer actually order his troops to fire?”, among many others. One fact was certain though: five Bostonians were killed either immediately or from their wounds and another six were injured. This act of violence fueled what could be considered the first real push towards independence by the average colonist and the immediate pull of most British troops for Boston. Anti-British tempers would continue to flare for the next three years, when an act was passed that pushed the Sons of Liberty to make their first real strike against the British.

                It was May of 1773 when the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. This act did not instate any new taxes, but perhaps did build on the taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts. According to the Tea Act, all tea being shipped to the colonies would have to be imported directly from Great Britain. Colonists were angered over this act because it undercut merchants and was to the benefit of only the British. When the Sons of Liberty found out that the British planned to ship all of the East India Company’s extra tea to Boston Harbor and keep it there until it was sold, they knew they had to act. Without hesitation, the Sons devised a plan to board the ships (some while being dressed as Mohawk Indians) and dump the tea into the Harbor. The plan went uninterrupted on December 16, 1773, leaving an astounding 342 chests worth of tea into the water. This act, later known as the Boston Tea Party, would be answered by the British with the harshest set of laws they could muster, The Coercive Acts.

                The Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts (as the colonists so aptly referred to them), were a group of 4 laws all designed with one idea in mind: to make the colonists pay for what they had done.  The first part of the Acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed the Boston Port until the debt for the dumped tea had been repaid or the king saw it fit to reopen it. The colonists rejected this act because it was detrimental not only to those who participated in the Boston Tea Party, but to all people in the Northeastern colonies who relied on shipping of goods in any way. The second part of the Acts was the Massachusetts Government Act, which effectively replaced all positions of power in America with royally-appointed subjects. Colonists were quick to realize that self-governance under such a law would be nearly impossible.  The third part of the Acts was the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed royal governors to order that accused British officials receive a trial in Britain, rather than the States. George Washington would go on file calling this the “Murder Act” because he believed it gave British officials a way to get away with any crime, including murder. The fourth part of the Acts, the Quartering Act, officially allowed British troops to be quartered in any abandoned building at the expense of the colonies. As a whole, the Coercive Acts were an attempt by the British government to usurp power from the thinkers and the doers in the colonies. The British surely expected the colonists to finally submit but instead they found, and perhaps even helped develop, a people that could finally find it in themselves to separate, to fight, and to call themselves Americans.

                The injustices committed by the crown and his parliament for the last 13 years could no longer go excused.  By early 1774, the people of Lexington, Massachusetts knew that war was inevitable. They began to prepare by taxing themselves 40 pounds for military equipment, even going as far as to prepare for burying of the dead by supplying a heavy carriage for transport. This would prove to be a wise idea when, on April 19th 1775, the British army set off on a mission from Boston to Concord in an attempt to capture ammunitions and military supplies from a storage in the town (and perhaps find and capture the elusive Whig leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams!). Between Boston and Concord lay the city of Lexington. Before we get into the detail of battle, we should first discuss some of the background of the situation at hand and of the colonists that would fight that day or during the Revolutionary War.

Whig leaders had been collecting and dispersing British military intelligence using a band of organized spies and messengers. Included among these messengers was the almost mystical Paul Revere. Paul Revere was somewhat of an enigma in his day; Revere was a thinker and a doer, a fighter and an artisan. Many people remember him as the man that yelled “the British are coming!” and hung lanterns in the steeple as a signal of British invasion. However, like many things in history, our memory has been deceived, for Revere actually said on that night “the Regulars are coming out!” and while he had a part in the lantern hanging, he was not the hanger of lanterns that night, but the messenger sent to orchestrate the hanging. While we keep this vision in our head of the lone Paul Revere riding through the night to warn American citizens of the forthcoming invasion, the true story is of a network of messengers that helped America rise on that day. Surely the vision of his ride is an important one and one that does help us understand the general happenings of the day, but as David Hackett Fisher stated in his book, Paul Revere’s Ride, “although it was the individual that shaped the early Revolution, it was political institutions that amplified each individual action.” In this case, it was the Whig leaders’ ability to organize and deploy the complex network of messengers that night that kept America in the fight for self-governance.

While Paul Revere was an enigmatic figure in his time, there were many others who more readily fit into two basic categories: thinkers and doers. For instance, John Adams could be considered a thinker, a man whose use came mostly in the courtroom and after great deliberation. John Adams was the quintessential thinking man who once said, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” At the other end of the street sit men like Samuel Thompson and Long Bill Scott, who are doers. Samuel Thompson was a doer with a reason to do, he knew that he disliked the British and their laws and fought to end their hold over the colonies. Long Bill Scott, on the other hand, while still a doer, may have fought the British for a completely different reason. It was not tyranny or injustice that Long Bill Scott had in mind whenever he entered the battlefield during the American Revolution; it was the possibility of gaining respect within his community. As important as freedom was to most thinkers, respect may have been an even more important driving force for many of the common men who made up America’s militia during the War. Other men like Robert Patterson, an intellectual who worked in academia, and Nathaniel Ames, who worked in medicine, were classic examples of men who served in the American militia because it was what the community asked of them, not because of their great political alliances.

However, there are accounts that resemble Samuel Thompson’s. For instance, many of the teenage militiamen understood what they were fighting for, as evidenced by the inscription on their powder horn. They shared the thinkers’ lust for liberty, perhaps because they had grown up in a country that was constantly bombarded with new British laws. These militiamen understood that fighting was not just a way to gain respect; it was something that had to be done to truly achieve a state of liberty. David Hackett Fisher said it best when he stated “many New Englanders viewed fighting as necessary to survive in an evil world rather than a noble profession. In fact, Whigs believed themselves the stewards of John Winthrop’s City on a Hill; that is to say, the moral example of their forefathers both haunted and inspired them.”

It may have been those feelings that the militiamen brought with them on the night of April 19th 1775. Hundreds of militiamen had been mustered by the network of messengers from towns all around Boston and Concord. The small portion of the militia that had already arrived in Lexington began to gather in Lexington Green and stand their ground as the British military approached. When a British officer rode towards the colonists and told them to diffuse, Captain Parker of the militia ordered his troops to leave, but perhaps because of his tuberculosis or because of confusion, many troops did not hear the order and continued to stand their ground. It was in this confusion that the first shot of war rang out, “the shot heard ‘round the world”. The skirmish was short lived, and left eight colonists dead and ten wounded. The British considered this a small victory and continued to march towards Concord.

Militiamen had already gathered in Concord and had heard of the shots being fired in Lexington. Rather than stay and fight in Concord, militia colonel James Barrett decided to retreat across the North Bridge. While stationed at North Bridge, the British began to search Concord for the supplies they came for. Little did the British know, the militia’s force would continue to build north of the North Bridge as troops poured in from all around. British troops were ordered to guard the bridge from the militia and to stop them from crossing. However, when British officers realized how outnumbered they were, they commanded their men to fall back from the bridge and take a defensive position. The militia began to advance and a shot rang out from a British rifle. A militia major yelled for his forces to fire back immediately. When they did, their fire took out four of the eight British officers and some of the privates on the other side of the bridge. Without any kind of leadership, British troops began to retreat. The colonists would not make it so easy for them to escape, as militiamen had grouped around areas which the retreat route ran through. The British troops were fired on during their retreat, killing and injuring many and breaking their spirits completely. American forces had won a battle and by the next morning had effectively amassed a force of more than 15,000 militiamen around Boston. The Revolution had come to blows and America had shown it was ready to defend itself from injustice and to fight for liberty and freedom.

In June of 1775, almost a year after the fighting in Lexington and Concord, a group of extraordinary men (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson) met to create a document. This document, which would later be known as the Declaration of Independence, would create a sovereign nation, free from the reign of Britain. Versions of the document were drafted and re-drafted over the following month until, on the 2nd of July, a final version was put forth to the committee. On July 4th, the wording of the document was perfected and the document accepted. A new nation was born; one that was tired of tyranny and one that believed it had relied on self-governance for the last hundred years and should continue to do so. It was this dedication to self-governance that led a 90-year old Captain Levi Preston to state, “What we meant in going for those Redcoats was this; we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”

Whether fighting for freedom or for respect, the move from a group of British colonies to the United States of America was an arduous task, undertaken by many individuals from many different backgrounds. When looking directly into the face of tyranny, Americans did not falter. From the lowest class to the highest class, almost every able-bodied male had some part in what would become our American Revolution. It may have been the individual that helped set the stage for the Revolution, but it was a group effort that won it. 

Sources Include:

American National Biography

Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fisher

Primary Documents collected by Brown

UShistory.org

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                                 Complexities of Colonial America

The story of early colonial America is one of great complexity. It was an enigmatic time and place, filled to the brim with variety and contradiction. The public memory of such an era is often rooted in misconceptions. In the following post, I will detail the diversity of colonial America in the case of many different subjects. Throughout our journey through early America, I will chronicle the life of Thomas Brattle (1658 – 1713), astronomer and architect.

The ones who packed onto the great wooden ships that would carry them to a new life were not the weak, the sick, and the poor, as many believe, but a proud English middle and lower-middle class in search of opportunity. Perhaps it is the fault of the English crown that our memory of the first arrival is tainted; studies indicate that the mayors of many English towns would report that it was only the dregs of society that would have any reason to leave England. While it is certain that some criminals were exiled to America in these early times, it was an exception rather than a rule. Some came for wealth, which the London Company promised; others came due to England’s social, political, and religious pressures. Whatever the reason, the average person was most likely unprepared for what he would encounter after his arduous trip over the Atlantic.

Though American terrain brought great things (more wood than you could cut, huge plots of land, and numerous streams of running water) most settlers were not farmers by trade and were therefore left wholly unprepared to utilize the land that had, for many years before, been cultivated by Native Indians . In order to survive, many settlers were forced to learn the art of farming, either from Indians or their own kind. Of course, farming was not simple to learn anywhere, but it was especially difficult in the colonies of the Chesapeake.

Terrain and environment may have been the single most influential factor in the life of the average immigrant. In some cases, New England and the Chesapeake were similar; for instance, women were a hot commodity in both areas.  In most cases, the difference between colonies was similar to the difference between European countries. On one hand, the average New England settler could expect a standard of health better than that of most English counties, a somewhat tight-knit community, and a safe way of life. On another hand, Chesapeake colonies at first had an 80% mortality rate, a largely spread-out inhabitance, and a much more hazardous way of life.

The Chesapeake colonies were a ruthless test for any colonist. While the land was plentiful and good for logging, most of it was unfit for planting and the weather made all kinds of living arrangements difficult. Politics and religion were in some ways lost and corrupted; cruel and unusual punishments were not uncommon in the Chesapeake colonies, and because of proximity sermons and churches were rare, at best. It were these factors that might have later led to the growing of cash crops (like tobacco) in order to buy food, and therefore the rise of slavery in the South.

In contrast, New England was a place where land could be owned, plots could be farmed, businesses could be opened, and families could live. By modern standards, it was not the quintessential place to be, but it was a place where learning and farming could happen simultaneously and where religion and law could be practiced together. It was a place where one Thomas Brattle could grow and thrive.

Thomas Brattle, like most people who were important enough to have a biography written about them in this era, was a white male born to one of the wealthiest families in Boston, Massachusetts. Brattle would grow up fascinated by mathematics and the sciences and attend Harvard College. (As an aside, this opportunity was not exactly common in New England, but was vastly more likely to happen to somebody in New England than one in the Chesapeake, where learning to a back seat to hunting and farming in most cases.) When Brattle received his Bachelors, he began pursued higher education in London because, “no one was able to teach him much mathematics at Harvard” and he “relied on whatever books were available.” Before leaving for London, Brattle worked with scientifically inclined locals, resulting in his astronomical work being given mention in Isaac Newton’s Principia. In London, Brattle became of disciple of Robert Boyle, whom he would model the rest of his life after. After finishing his education and returning to Boston, Brattle did what most prominent men did in colonial society, take up civic duties. These duties would include architecture and teaching. In the end, Brattle had great success in importing scientific and architectural knowledge to a colonial America that was willing to learn, if not ready.

However, not every New England story was as successful as Brattle’s. The town of Salem, Massachusetts would provide for a far more grueling tale. In the 1690’s Salem was overcome with a witchcraft epidemic. Of course, this epidemic did not truly consist of witchcraft, but became a deadly game of false accusations. A group of young girls from prominent New England families began to point fingers and accuse middle and lower-middle class citizens of witchcraft.  Although their motives were unclear, it is possible that they began naming people they, plainly, did not like as witches and let everything spiral out from there. Because the girls had upper class roots, they were believed and, for the most part, immune from accusations themselves. In the end, over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned and up to 33 people were killed as a result of the Salem Witch Trials. The story goes to show that politics and recreation were needed in the colonies (even if only to provide a diversion from every -day life), for lack of these things could have very dangerous results, especially for those in the lower class.

Politics in the colonies were something to behold. The best example of politics in the colonies is probably provided by the House of Burgesses in Virginia. Voting there was as much a social activity as it was a political one. In a time and place where no vote was anonymous and was only provided by a man who held land, the main reason to vote for a candidate might have been the amount of liquor he provided for you or the debt you owed him. While it was still almost exclusively the rich and prominent that held office, it provided colonial America with a backbone that would one day evolve to involve all Americans in the political process.

However, not every inhabitant of American land was considered “American”. (In fact, even the people who lived there at the time did not, for the most part, identify as American, they would have described themselves as British, German, Dutch, etc.) There was a sect of society that did not quite have the privileges many people of the colonies enjoyed; this marginalized group consisted of Indians, blacks, and indentured servants. In the case of Indians, geographic area was the key. In some areas of the colonies, settlers had good intentions for Indians, trading with and working alongside them (in the case of farming, in the beginning), while in other areas they were viewed as war-mongering barbarians. Blacks, at this time being kept as slaves by well-to-do whites in both the North and South colonies, would be considered lowest on the totem pole of social status. In their case, environment was key. Each slave received a different level of treatment depending solely on what his or her master felt like providing. Indentured servants, in this sense, were similar to slaves. Although they had chosen to sign over a certain amount of years of service, most did not know what exactly they were getting themselves in to. When they arrived, they were relegated to the status of slave in everything but name. These marginal groups had little positive outlook in the 17th century.

In contrast to marginalization, the rise to the status of gentleman was something that could actually take place in the colonies. Because there was so much land and so many resources in America, and land meant status, a man could make his way up the societal ladder easier than he could in England, where land was scarce and protected by strong family lines.

In a new land filled with such hazardous opportunity, it is easy to see exactly why colonial America was so complex. In a time when 1000 miles could be the difference between 25 years of life expectancy and the difference between learning to spell and learning to plow, it is not impossible to understand why historians can divide colonies the same way we divide countries. Through these complexities, America would begin to develop a culture all its own; this culture of the “melting pot” is what colonists would carry into the 18th century.

    Sources Include:

Everyday Life in Early America by David Freeman Hawke

American National Biography – Thomas Brattle

Salem Witch Trials - ukmc.edu