APUSH AMSCO Chapter 3 Study NotesAPUSH AMSCO Chapter 3 Study Notes

A P U S H I S T O R Y · C O L O N I A L S O C I E T Y

Colonial Society in the 18th Century

AMSCO Chapter 3 (older edition; overlaps Topic 2.7)

Learning Objective: Describe what the mature colonies of the 1760s were like and the forces that shaped the "new people" described by Crevecoeur (1782): population, social structure, economy, religion, culture, ideas, and politics. Study notes built from the AMSCO text only. No outside sources are added.

Big Picture

Between 1701 and 1775 the English colonies grew from about 250,000 to about 2,500,000 people. A culture distinct from Europe's developed, shaped by immigration, an economy of land and trade, the Great Awakening, the Enlightenment, and unusual self-government. This chapter covers the same ground as Topic 2.7 in the older edition, with some extra detail.

Population Growth and Immigrants

1701: barely 250,000 Europeans and Africans. 1775: 2,500,000. African Americans: about 28,000 to 500,000. Causes: immigration of almost a million people and a high birthrate. Abundant fertile land and dependable food drew settlers and supported large families.

Immigrants mostly settled in the middle colonies and on the southern frontier, rarely in New England (limited land, Puritan control).

Germans (6%): west of Philadelphia, kept language and religion, little interest in English politics. Scotch-Irish (7%): northern Ireland by way of Scotland, western frontier, little respect for the British. Other (Huguenots, Dutch, Swedes): 5%.

Africans: the largest non-English group, not by choice; about 20% of the population in 1775, about 90% of them in the South in lifelong bondage; a majority in South Carolina and Georgia; every colony discriminated against them.

Structure of Colonial Society

Self-government: each colony had an elected representative assembly (eligible voters were White male property owners). Only Rhode Island and Connecticut elected governors; others were appointed by the crown (such as New York and Virginia) or a proprietor (Pennsylvania and Maryland).

Religious toleration: all colonies allowed several religions; Massachusetts was the most conservative, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania the most liberal.

No hereditary aristocracy, a narrower economic class system, and social mobility for all except African Americans.

Family: center of economic and social life; people married younger and had more children; over 90% lived on farms. Husbands held almost unlimited power at home; the average wife bore eight children and did a wide range of work, but divorce was legal though rare.

The Economy

By the 1760s almost half of Britain's world trade was with its colonies. Britain permitted limited manufacturing (flour, rum) but restricted competition with English industries such as textiles. The quickest route to wealth was land.

New England: subsistence farms under 100 acres; logging, shipbuilding, fishing, trading, rum-distilling. Middle colonies: wheat and corn for export; farms up to 200 acres; iron-making; trade grew Philadelphia and New York.

South: mostly small subsistence farms without slaves; a few plantations of over 2,000 acres. Tobacco (Chesapeake, North Carolina); timber and naval stores (Carolinas); rice and indigo (South Carolina, Georgia). Plantations sat on rivers.

Money: Britain limited use of money; colonies issued paper money, often causing inflation; Britain vetoed laws that harmed its merchants.

Transportation: water was easier than land; trading cities grew on harbors and rivers. Taverns were social centers; a postal system ran by mid-century.

Religion and the Great Awakening

Mostly Protestant: Congregationalists and Presbyterians in New England; Dutch Reformed and Anglicans in New York; Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers in Pennsylvania; Anglicans dominant in Virginia and parts of the South.

Challenges: Jews, Catholics, and Quakers faced serious discrimination. There was no Church of England bishop in America, which hampered that church. Established churches were taxed in the 1600s and support declined as diversity grew (Virginia ended Anglican tax support shortly after the Revolution; some New England support lasted until the 1830s).

Great Awakening (1730s-1740s): Jonathan Edwards ("Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," 1741, Northampton, Massachusetts) and George Whitefield (from 1739; crowds up to 10,000). Effects: emotionalism, loss of ministers' authority, splits between New Lights and Old Lights, growth of Baptists and Methodists, calls for separation of church and state, and a democratizing effect that later challenged royal authority. Cultural Life and Education

Arts: Georgian architecture; itinerant painters; West and Copley went to England. Literature: Cotton Mather, Edwards; political writers John Adams, James Otis, John Dickinson, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson; Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack (1732-1757); poet Phillis Wheatley. Science: John Bartram, Franklin (electricity, bifocals, stove).

Schools: New England led with tax-supported schools; a Massachusetts law of 1647 required primary schools in towns with more than fifty families and grammar schools in towns with more than a hundred. Colleges: Harvard (1636), William and Mary (1694), Yale (1701). The Great Awakening prompted five more between 1746 and 1769: Princeton (College of New Jersey, 1746, Presbyterian), King's College (Columbia, 1754, Anglican), Rhode Island College (Brown, 1764, Baptist), Queens College (Rutgers, 1766, Reformed), Dartmouth (1769, Congregationalist). The only nonsectarian college was the College of Philadelphia. Professions: ministers were respected; physicians trained by apprenticeship and often bled the sick (first medical college, 1765); lawyers (Adams, Otis, Patrick Henry) gained respect arguing colonial rights. Press: only 5 newspapers in 1725, more than 40 by 1776. Zenger Case (1735): acquittal of John Peter Zenger, defended by Andrew Hamilton, encouraged criticism of colonial government.