Last night I discovered a gold mine! Larry Schweikart's website! There is an entire curriculum for all grade levels complete with maps, quizzes, timelines based on his book! So check out http://www.patriotshistoryusa.com/ . It is awesome. Duh... you didn't already know that, Miss History teacher? I told my class today that they don't need me anymore... after only one week! Not really... Shirley made awesome cinnamon rolls today, so they're stuck with me. It is a great resourse. The best thing to do is get your own book and follow this incredibly insightful blog and use his website. Think how brilliant you'll be in no time! Or is that more brillianter? (Don't tell Mrs. Clayton I said that!)
Anyway... get rid of that cell phone that you're trying to hide from me and let's get to work on chapter two.
The early colonists at this point, were kind of like little teenage punks. They didn't really know who they were, what they were about, or what they wanted. They just tried to look tough. Why can't I take the car? I've had my license for 4 days! Why am I the only one who has a curfew in the ENTIRE high school? Why don't you trust me? Ahhhh, youth....
This is kind of how the colonists felt about the authoritarian English government. They weren't really "Americans" yet: they thought of themselves as Virginians, Georgians, South Carolinans, etc. Yet when they needed government intervention, they still turned to the crown. When England, Wales and Scotland formed the United Kingdom between 1707 and 1763, they tended to treat the colonists as subjects, not citizens. The colonial kids were starting to whine, and the king was getting a little irritated with these twits thousands of miles away.
So - early Amerian life: American universities began to pop up. The biggies like Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, William and Mary, etc. Though their curriculum was mainly religion-based, there were marked differences from the mother country. Many graduates chose a different field than religion while attending school. Many schools broke tradition and became more secular and introduced French and German while dumping the Latin and Greek languages. (horrors!) The big change was, however, that the leadership was not clergy. John Adams, who had graduated from Harvard, appointed a board of trustees. This kept a state religion from dominating higher education.
These people were in survival mode. They had to build their shelter, kill or plant their food, weave their own cloth. Life was extremely simple. Their literature consisted of the bible, short "how to" books on farming and planting. Reading was pragmatic not fluffy or frivolous. They certainly weren't purchasing any of the books hot of the press in England. They had little time for philosophy, the arts, Greek plays. Instead they made gospel music, folk ballads and read poetry by Anne Bradstreet about divine intervention and self-improvment. Very useful, down to earth stuff.
Very popular were the writings of Benjamin Franklin. The guy was a machine! He could do anything! He invented bifocals, the Franklin Stove, discovered electricity and still had time to write! He produced Poor Richard's Almanac which gave crop advice, weather forecasts, folksy advice, witticisms, etc. He also wrote the 13 Virtues http://www.flamebright.com/PTPages/Benjamin.asp which he tried to live by everyday of his life. I'm sure all of today's politicians live by these same virtues... or something...
Professions: How did someone become a doctor or lawyer? Some had an apprenticeship, but some just decided that's what they wanted to be. In many small towns, a person may have had two or three professions. It was on the job training. So you just got a sign and hung it out on the door like... "Doctor Kavorkian... Surgery, Croissants, and Fill Dirt." Hmmm.... I guess that was before they required 13 years of school. But guess what? Hey, wait a minute... I think we're going back to that soon! Won't that be great?
The First Great Awakening: This is cool. Because of those free market principles and man's yearning to be self-reliant and make his own decisions, (don't remember how that works without government?) preachers who were disillusioned with the establishment religions decided they wanted to start a church or churches based on what they believed. Itinerant preachers traveled to camp meetings and preached away. Some felt that they were "called" to this position and others engaged in a "fast track" sort of theological training. (maybe hung out a really cool sign?) The colonists loved it! They latched on to this idea because they could! They didn't have the thumb of the Church of England telling them how to worship. Two great evangelists came on the scene during this time. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. They were the "hellfire and damnation" kind of preachers. Whitefield was a courageous and wonderful preacher who did much to promote freedom of religion. He was a great actor too, apparently, because he would act out bible stories and play all the different characters. His depiction of Satan would frighten the little colonists right out of their skins.. and sins! Teary eyed and shaking, they would crawl to the front and promise to change their wicked lives.
Jonathan Edwards used the same soothing tactics. He described their relationship to God from his work Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God as "...God holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect." And then dad and mom would gather up the kiddies and skip home to eat ice cream. The preachers of the First Great Awakening were kind of like rock stars because by 1740, their popularity began to wane. Edwards even became a recluse, but one positive aspect was that a central controlling religion continued to be decentralized. Many new religions emerged like the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. The stage was now set for the Second Great Awakening which we will talk about in a few weeks.
Slavery's American Origins and Evolution: Colonists did not come over here with the intention of having slaves. This certainly didn't happen over night. Why did the Africans succomb to slavery whereas the Indians and indentured servants wouldn't have anything to do with it? The Africans were certainly more vulnerable because the Gold Coast had already been exploited in a thriving slave trade led by the Muslims.
Another factor promoting slavery was indentured servants who had their passage to America paid for and in return, worked for 7 years to pay it off. With crops so lush and productive, and plantations popping up everywhere, the labor force was sorely lacking. What to do? Well... owners either tacked on a couple of years to the indentured servant, but more often, they bought slaves from the Dutch and other traders who dealt in human trafficking. It was a horrible situation; one where these deeply religious colonists somehow got to the place in their heads that this was ok or at best, "a necessary evil". I'm not going to delve into the demoralization of slaves and the inhumane way they were chained and shackled on their journey because, frankly, it makes me sick. Schweikart and Allen describe this dark period in America's past tastefully and you can do a plethora of other research on your own. It was almost a horrid case of "everybody's doing it" until it escalated into a nightmare. Even many of the forefathers that had slaves realized how awful it was and just hoped it would "go away". It didn't. Some were in such denile, they had to make themselves sound benevolent. They believed that many slaves were so incompetent that slaves owners were actually doing them a favor by enslaving them. Really??
At this point, the big money making crops were indigo and tobacco. Cotton was plentiful but tedious to work with - separating the fibers from the seeds. Eli Whitney' Cotton Gin helped to expedite the work. The tedious work was cut in half. They could produce so much more so much faster that the demand for slave labor increased instead of decreased.
Immigrants were brought by General James Oglethorpe who had some ideas that looked good on paper but... didn't work out too well. He had a bunch of deviants from prison immigrate to a settlement that would be a buffer against the Spanish in case of an attack. Duh... that should have been a red flag! Oglethorpe discovered that they wanted to limit his power. "Former convicts actively opposed his ban of rum (sobriety, they believed, would not expedite their rehabilitation. What did you expect?? They're convicts for crying out loud!) They also overturned his ban on slavery and imported nearly ten thousand slaves. Soon, Ogelthorpe surrendered, and Georgia became the last of the thirteen colonies.
Wars, wars, wars... many countries vying over the great land in America outside the thirteen colonies. King Williams' War, http://www.usahistory.info/colonial-wars/King-Williams-War.htmlQueen Anne's War, http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h846.html The War of Jenkins's Ear, http://www.history1700s.com/articles/article1070.shtmlKing George's War http://www.usahistory.info/colonial-wars/King-Georges-War.html
The end result was England darn near controlling the whole enchilada! Remember how just a few decades back, they were way behind Spain and everyone else? Not any more. King George III is on the throne now - literally - and he's a little ticked at the $137 million tab that the war costs. Remember the good old days when $137 million was a lot of money? He was also ticked that he had to pay interest of $5 million. Memories are great, huh? So - how to do it? He wanted to tax the Americans that caused the whole darn thing. BUT... the Americans had no say or representation in the matter. They basically said, "No way... taxation without representation is evil and we're not doing it." Well... Georgie didn't like these little twits getting in his face.
Things are heatin' up guys... things are heatin' up....
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