The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776 1498565956, 9781498565950

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The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776

The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776 By William Nester

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-6595-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-6596-7 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii Introductionix PART I: ENDS AND ORIGINS1 1 Power3 2 Imperialism39 3 Jamestown53 4 Plymouth73 PART II: SEVENTEENTH CENTURY87 5 Developments89 6 Wars131 PART III: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY157 7 Developments159 8 Wars195 PART IV: TURNING POINTS

213

9 Conquests215 10 Resistance255

v

vi Contents

11 Liberty283 Bibliography301 Index333 About the Author

359

Acknowledgments

I have rarely experienced a publishing team as nice, swift, and efficient as that at Lexington books. It was my pleasure to have interacted with acquisitions editor Brian Hill, assistant editor Eric Kuntzman, project manager Vaishnavi Ganesh, and assistant production editor Paula Williamson, and I am especially grateful to Vaishvedhidha and the team at Deanta for finding the correct accents for the French and Spanish names.

vii

Introduction

“History is the memory of time.” (Captain John Smith)1

Aristotle famously said that we are all political animals. To that must be added that we are all creatures of power. Politics and power are inseparable. Politics happens when individuals or groups are in conflict and includes how each side wields power to defend or enhance its interests in that conflict. One is powerful to the degree that one gets what one wants. Just how that is done depends on how one asserts the means at one’s disposal against that of others who want the same thing. The art of power has three vital ingredients. “Hard” power is physical; it is figuratively or literally in your hands like armies, navies, industries, institutions, money, and weapons. “Soft power” is psychological; it is in your head like leadership, plans, values, morale, and will. “Smart power” involves mobilizing, developing, and wielding the appropriate array of hard and soft power assets for prevailing in a struggle. For those individuals and groups that have mastered the art, power is at once a means and an end; power is deployed in ways to get what is immediately sought along with more power to make the next assertion less difficult. Then there is unintended power. The most stunning example for America’s colonial era is the decimation of native peoples by the germs that Europeans unwittingly carried with them to the New World. The fate of those early colonies would have differed drastically had the settlers faced tribal populations anywhere from two to ten times more numerous than the ones they eventually conquered. Another example is expressed by the notion “too big to fail,” when the bankruptcy of a country or corporation triggers a domino effect of linked failures. The British government’s decision that the East India ix

x Introduction

Company was too big to fail and thus had to be saved inadvertently initiated an escalating series of crises between the crown and the colonists that resulted in America’s War for Independence. America’s colonial era began and ended dramatically, with the founding of the first enduring settlement at Jamestown on May 14, 1607 and the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. During those 169 years, conflicts were endemic and often overlapping among the colonists, between the colonists and the original inhabitants, between the colonists and other imperial European peoples, and between the colonists and the mother country. As conflicts were endemic so too were struggles for power. The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776 reveals the reasons for, stages, and results of these conflicts. The dynamic driving this history are two inseparable transformations as English subjects morphed into American citizens, and the core American cultural values morphed from communitarianism and theocracy into individualism and humanism. These developments in turn were shaped by the changing ways that the colonists governed, made money, waged war, worshipped, thought, wrote, and loved. Extraordinary individuals led that metamorphosis, explorers like John Smith and Daniel Boone, visionaries like John Winthrop and Thomas Jefferson, entrepreneurs like William Phips and John Hancock, dissidents like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, warriors like Miles Standish and Benjamin Church, free spirits like Thomas Morton and William Byrd, and creative writers like Anne Bradstreet and Robert Rogers. Then there was that quintessential man of America’s Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin. And finally, George Washington who, more than anyone, was responsible for winning American independence when and how it happened. NOTE 1. Karen Kupperman, ed., Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 272.

Part I

ENDS AND ORIGINS

Chapter 1

Power

“Whoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.” (Walter Raleigh)1 “There is but one expedient left whereby we can save our sinking country and that is by encouraging American manufactures. Manufactures, next to agriculture, are the basis of the riches of every country.” (Benjamin Rush)2 “America, an immense territory, favored by nature with all advantages of climate, soil, great navigable rivers, and lakes . . . must become a great country, populous and mighty, and will in less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off any shackles that may be imposed on her, and perhaps place them on the imposers.” (Benjamin Franklin)3 “America was designed by Providence for the theatre on which man was to make his true figure, on which science, virtue, liberty, happiness, and glory were to exist in peace.” (John Adams)4

Imperialism is the conquest and exploitation of one people by another. Ideally colonies at once enrich the imperial country as sources of resources and markets that are denied to one’s rivals. The Spanish and Portuguese initiated imperialism in the New World in the late fifteenth century, followed by 3

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Chapter 1

the French and English in the late sixteenth century, and finally the Dutch in the early seventeenth century. A deadly mix of geopolitics, trade, and pride forced English monarchs to jostle with their European rivals to conquer and colonize lands in the New World and eventually elsewhere around the world. Although it was a latecomer, England mastered a form of imperialism that over time surpassed that of the other European states. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, England’s leadership developed and asserted international economic and military power that over the next two and a half centuries transformed their realm from a second tier European state into the world’s financial, manufacturing, mercantile, and naval titan with a vast overseas empire that included not just eastern North America, but Ireland, Caribbean Sea islands, and much of India. Sir Walter Raleigh succinctly explained that virtuous cycle of power: “Whoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”5 Like all European countries, England practiced mercantilism. “Beggaring thy neighbor” while enriching oneself is mercantilism’s goal. That happens when the state partners with businesses to develop the economy. The interrelated goals are to achieve as diverse an array of enterprises and the highest trade surpluses as possible. That trade surplus is the country’s profit. The more dynamic the economy, the more revenues the government can extract with which to invest in the infrastructure and industries that further develop the economy, and the army and navy that deters or defeats enemies and conquers lucrative foreign lands and peoples. In a mercantilist world, one country’s gain in products and markets is another country’s loss. From a mercantilist perspective, economic liberalism is economic disarmament. The economies of countries whose governments open their markets to international trade will be ravaged by rival products from mercantilist countries whose governments bar competitive foreign goods from their own markets. No country consistently practiced mercantilism more successfully than England. The crown’s system of chartering private companies to conduct imperialism minimized the state’s costs and maximized its financial benefits with revenues and its strategic benefits as conquered foreign lands were kept from its foes. Although overall the value of England’s imports exceeded its exports, that deficit turned to surpluses when it included those imports that were reexported to foreign markets. As can be seen from the statistics below, England enjoyed trade surpluses with its European rivals, eventually transformed deficits into surpluses with America and Africa, suffered chronic deficits with Asia, and overall achieved vast and growing profits from global trade. Some of that surplus capital financed the investments in agriculture, infrastructure, inventions, mines, and factories that launched the eighteenthcentury industrial revolution that in turn widened Britain’s economic superpower over its competitors.

5

Power Table 1.1  British Trade Statistics in Millions of Pounds Sterling Years A. Sources of Imported Goods 1663–69 1772–74 B. Destinations of Exported Goods 1663–69 1772–74 C. Destinations of Reexported Goods 1663–69 1772–74 D. Trade Surpluses 1663–69 1772–74

Europe

Asia

America/Africa

Total

2665 6037

409 1929

421 4769

3429 12735

1846 4960

30 717

163 4176

2039 9853

1660 4783

14 63

312 972

1986 5818

841 3529

−365 −1149

−46 3583

566 2936

Source: John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 40.

The British entangled the American colonies in a thickening web of economic restraints imposed through the Navigation Acts of 1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, 1699, 1732, 1733, and 1750 whereby a lengthening list of colonial “enumerated products” could only be sold to England and only conveyed there in English ships. For instance, the 1699 Woolens Act outlawed intercolonial trade for wool yarn and clothing, the 1732 Hat Act for beaver felt hats, and the 1750 Iron act for pig iron. The portion of trade between the colonies and Britain carried in vessels owned by Americans or Britons varied considerably among the colonies. On the Revolution’s eve in 1770, New England– owned vessels accounted for 75.0 percent of the trade between that region and the British Isles, followed by Pennsylvania with 37.5 percent, New York with 25.0 percent, and Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia with 12.5 percent.6 Yet, despite these restrictions, in what can be called the “Frankenstein syndrome,” England’s mercantilist and imperialist policies unwittingly nurtured a growing economic giant in the American colonies that eventually turned against its creator and broke free. What happened was that over time the Americans mastered a virtuous cycle of expanding economic, political, military, and cultural power that they asserted from 1765 to 1776 against Britain in a series of crises between them. The bottom line of American colonial power was economic, both what was available and what was desired. WEALTH AND POWER Economic growth and development are related but distinct notions. Growth is simply a numerical measure of how much an economy annually expands

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or contracts. Development is both quantitative and qualitative, including measures of changes both in standards of living and quality of life, of income and wealth, of material and emotional well-being. Diversity is the vital difference between growth and development. An economy develops when the types of jobs expand; people are free to produce and consume what best suits them; more people are making more money; the middle class as a share of the population swells; and people live longer and safer, and more literate, productive, innovative, leisurely, and enriching lives. The greater the array of products that an economy produces and consumes, the greater the creation and distribution of wealth. An economy that relies mostly on a single commodity like tobacco, cotton, or silver may register high annual growth and dismal development that perpetuates stagnant extremes of a tiny rich elite, a small middle class, and masses of increasingly desperate poor. As for raw growth, from 1650 to 1774, America’s economy annually expanded an average 0.6 percent or twice that of Britain’s 0.3 percent rate. In sheer volume, America’s economy swelled from $22,000,000 to $1,892,000,000, and the average American’s income from $384 to $804 in 1980 dollars. That made America’s economy 40 percent the size of Britain’s and the average American twice as wealthy as the average Briton.7 Of course, that was no easy upward stroll but a boom and bust roller coaster that was especially influenced by whether war or peace reigned. And those statistics underestimate the actual economy since countless business transactions went unrecorded. The real economy included the overlapping cash and barter, legal and smuggling sectors. By 1770, America’s population had increased from the hundred men that stepped ashore at Jamestown in 1607 to 2,132,900 or nearly one-quarter the size of the nine million or so people then living in England, Wales, and Scotland.8 That led Benjamin Franklin in his “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind” to foresee the time when “the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this side of the water. What an accession of power to the British empire by sea as well as by land. What increase in trade and navigation! What numbers of ships and men!”9 Despite the imperial restrictions imposed by London, America’s economy developed steadily by virtually all measures. The demand for skilled labor in America brought wages from 30 to 100 percent higher than the same jobs in England.10 Only around one in ten Americans depended on charity to survive compared to around one in five Britons and more than half of Irish. America’s greater wealth was reflected in the taller statures that better nutrition feeds. The average American man was five foot eight inches tall, or three inches more than his less well-nourished British counterpart. Better conditions let people live longer in America, an average forty-five years compared to forty for Britons.11

1650 38,700 1,200 39,900

1720% 1774 $964 $1,264 $455,000,000 $3,070,000,000

1770–1780 21% 31% 27%

1700–1710 20% 53% 29%

1650% $677 $27,000,000

1770 28% 26% 46%

1630 4,600 100 4,700

1700 39% 19% 42%

300

1610 300

1700 239,000 21,100 260,600

1750 934,300 242,100 1,176,400

1770 1,674,300 456,900 2,131,900

New England: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Mid-Atlantic: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. South Atlantic: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Source: McCusker and Menard, Economy of British America, 54; Stuart Bruchey, Enterprise: The Dynamic Economy of a Free People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 69; Russell R. Menard, “Growth and Welfare,” Encyclopedia, 1:470–71.

Per Capita Income Gross Domestic Income

New England Mid-Atlantic South Atlantic D. Increase of Income (1990 dollars)

New England Mid-Atlantic South Atlantic C. Population Rate of Increase

White Black Total B. Population Distribution

A. Population Growth

Table 1.2  Colonial America's Population and Wealth

Power 7

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Chapter 1

Nonetheless, wealth was unequally distributed among America’s population even if it was less inegalitarian than in the British Isles. As always, a small portion of people amassed most wealth. Racially, although most whites were middle class or the “middling sort” as they were then called, nearly all blacks were slaves who lived at a subsistence level. Around 40 percent of Americans were poor; the portion rose with the share of slaves in a colony. Income distribution varied among regions with the richest 10 percent owning 56.8 percent of all wealth in New England, 42.1 percent in the mid-Atlantic, and 48.8 percent in the South in 1774. The quality of life for people in small towns or on farms tended to surpass that for those in crowded cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston or on the frontier. There were pockets of abysmal poverty in cities, along the frontier, and on slave plantations.12 Regardless of their socioeconomic status, Americans worked hard. The work day was five and a half days a week and from twelve to fourteen hours in summer and from ten to twelve hours in winter. Work was suspended half of Saturday and all of Sunday. Of course, hours were more flexible for those who worked the earth, with intense times during tilling, planting, and harvest, and more relaxed labor the rest of the year. A series of increasingly onerous Navigation Acts passed by parliament straitjacketed the colonial economy by determining what Americans produced, where they sold their production overseas, and who carried it to those designated overseas markets. Whitehall designed these restrictions to keep the colonies as a captive market for British manufactured goods, restrict colonists to producing commodities that could not easily be made in Britain, and prevent Americans from manufacturing any products that competed with British-made goods. The British took some extraordinary measures to achieve these goals. For instance, parliament passed a law in 1718 that forbade British textile workers from immigrating to the colonies and another law in 1774 that forbade the shipping of textile-making machinery to the colonies. The policy worked. From the first settlement at Jamestown to the shot heard around the world at Lexington, the colonies suffered chronic trade deficits with Britain. For instance, from 1770 to 1774, on the eve of America’s War for Independence, the Americans sold £1,796,000 worth of products to Britain but bought £3,061,000 worth of products from Britain, for a deficit of £1,265,000. In 1770, commodities comprised 93 percent of American exports to Britain; just four types of commodities—grains, tobacco, fish, and lumber—accounted for 78 percent of all exports. As a result, the colonies owed the mother country ever more money. Americans not only spent the money that they earned but borrowed more money from British financiers to pay for the British-made products that they were forbidden from making themselves.13

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9

Nonetheless, America’s economy did diversify into an expanding array of manufactured goods of which nearly all were bought by the colonists themselves.14 Most commodities that Americans exported were semi-refined: wheat was ground into flour; trees were transformed into lumber, masts, turpentine, and tar; fish and tobacco were dried; and iron-ore was smelted. Whitehall let Americans make their own clothing, shoes, leather, glue, harnesses, saddles, iron, glass, ceramics, paper, books, rum, candles, beer, bricks, soap, barrels, wagons, firearms, tools, salted meats and fish, whale oil, and ships, which they produced in abundance, along with furniture and silverware whose sophistication and beauty eventually matched the best made in England. Enterprising colonists erected grain and saw mills wherever there was a steady hard flow of falling water and demand for those products. Regions specialized in various products such as fish, rum, and whale oil in New England ports, tobacco around Chesapeake Bay, and rice and indigo in the lowland Carolinas. That in turn stimulated intercolonial trade. Although the coastal trade among the regions varied, it averaged around 25 percent of total ship-borne trade. Nearly all manufacturing was “cottage” scale. Indeed most homes had a spinning wheel and many a loom to weave cloth for their own clothes and blankets. A business was considered large if it employed a score or so workers. The manufacture of rum and whale oil were in this category; by 1774, New England had 140 distilleries and 360 whaling vessels.15 Some colonial governments recognized how critical economic diversification was to development and issued measures that encouraged it. For instance, Massachusetts worked with private investors to develop the Saugus ironwork in 1645 that at its peak daily produced a ton of iron. Unfortunately, a lack of skilled workers and raw materials caused Saugus to close in 1670. Massachusetts also provided incentives for entrepreneurs to invest in textile, gunpowder, and glass manufacturing, sheep raising for wool, and waterpowered sawmills and gristmills. Connecticut actually required farm families to devote a portion of their land to growing flax for clothes and hemp for rope. In February 1775, a group of farsighted men established the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufacturing. The first president, Benjamin Rush, explained the organization’s purpose: “There is but one expedient left whereby we can save our sinking country and that is by encouraging American manufactures. Manufactures, next to agriculture, are the basis of the riches of every country.”16 Unfortunately the organization died stillborn as the war with Britain erupted three months later. Shipbuilding was the most important industry that Americans were allowed to pursue. By demanding scores of different products and hundreds of workers just to build, repair, and supply one vessel, shipbuilding was the development engine for the colonial economy much as railroads were for much of the nineteenth century, automobiles were for much of the twentieth

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Chapter 1

century, and information technology has been for recent decades. The wealth generated by complexes of dry-docks, ropewalks, workshops, blacksmiths, and warehouses enriched businesses throughout adjacent regions and far beyond. Although shipbuilding was largely concentrated in New England, the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies contributed their share of products to the construction. Whitehall permitted Americans to build ships for pragmatic rather than altruistic reasons. The semi-refined materials for making ships like oak planks; pine masts and bowsprits; pine-derived tar, pitch, resin, and turpentine; canvas sails; iron nails and spikes; flax sails; and hemp ropes were as abundant in America as they were scarce in Britain. An American-made vessel cost only 40 percent as much as one the same size made in Britain. It made sense for Britain to import as much of those materials to keep its own shipyards busy while letting Americans produce as many of their own vessels to meet local needs. Under the 1705 Naval Stores Act, reinforced by the 1722 White Pine Act, Whitehall reserved the tallest pines for the Royal Navy, marked with the king’s broad arrow. With time, Americans owned a larger share of the vessels plying both intercoastal trade among the American colonies and overseas trade with Britain and the king’s Caribbean colonies. Astonishingly, by the revolution nearly all the ships in that trade were American-made and around four of five were American-owned.17 A shortage of hard cash was the colonial economy’s Achilles heel. A coin no sooner arrived and began to circulate when it was spent on some necessity or luxury plucked from the latest shipment of goods from England. Spanish pieces of eight were the most common of the mélange of coins found in the colonies, with values determined by the weight and portions of metals. Whitehall further distorted markets with its irrational monetary system whereby one pound sterling equaled twenty shillings, and twelve pence equaled one shilling. Exchanges with other currencies were awkward with a Spanish piece of eight worth four shillings and six pence. In early colonial America, such mediums of exchange as wampum beads, beaver pelts, and tobacco leafs were considered nearly as good as gold. Throughout the colonial era, bartering remained a vital mean of exchanging goods and services. Although the colonists were forbidden to coin money, they found ways around that restriction. Massachusetts minted coins with values of three pence, six pence, and one shilling from 1652 to 1682. For three decades they got away with it because the year 1652 was stamped on each coin along with a pine, oak, or willow tree symbol; 1652 was three years after parliamentarians overthrew the monarchy and declared a Commonwealth. After being crowned in 1660, Charles II tolerated the Massachusetts mint until his advisers finally convinced him to stop the practice. Deprived of that source of money, the leaders of Massachusetts devised another. In 1690, Massachusetts

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became the first colony to issue paper money; the reason was to underwrite its expenses during King William’s War. Thereafter other colonies occasionally issued bills of credit to cover their debts and to accept as payment for taxes. Inevitably the paper money provoked inflation and lost its value. The most innovative use of paper money was to stimulate depressed economies as was variously practiced by Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland between 1715 and 1737. Then came the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1763, when nearly all the colonies issued paper money to cover soaring debts, especially the hard-pressed northern colonies. The crown tried to curtail these colonial currencies with the increasingly onerous Currency Acts of 1751, 1764, and 1773.18 Colonists who wanted to borrow money had limited choices. The American ability to develop financially was stunted by a 1741 British law that forbade private banking that paid interest on deposits and received interest on loans. That kept Americans dependent on British merchants who extended credit to purchase goods at high interest rates. Most colonies tried to finesse that law by establishing a “land bank” to secure their paper currencies with property and issue mortgages for land purchases with interest rates ranging from 5 to 8 percent. Loans to invest in new enterprises were tough to find. Each colony partly filled that void by licensing companies of investors for various businesses. Toward the colonial era’s end, in 1752, Benjamin Franklin founded the first insurance company that reinvested its deposits in various enterprises. That inspired other groups of investors to form their own insurance companies, although only a half dozen or so were operating when the Americans declared independence. Labor “markets” were just as restricted and distorted as those governing trade, finance, and manufacturing. At any given time only about half of all those who labored in the colonies did so with the freedom to change where or how they worked. Perhaps two of three migrants were indentured servants whose passage and subsequent food, shelter, and clothing was paid by a master in return for seven years of service.19 That “service” could be harsh. For instance, indentured servants comprised most of the 30,000 workers in the 250 or so ironworks during the 1770s; the work included clearcutting forests and converting them to charcoal, and mining and smelting the ore.20 Then there were apprentices, usually teenage boys, who studied a craft like silversmithing or gun-making for three or more years and freely gave their labor for food, clothing, and shelter. Finally, there were slaves which by the 1770s composed nearly one of five people living in the colonies. Tragically, the colonists made up for the perennial labor shortage with slavery.21 Morality aside, the colonists adopted slavery for a very sound economic reason. The demand for labor was greater than the supply which made owning slaves a potentially profitable investment. It was a better deal to buy

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Chapter 1

a black person’s life than rent a white person’s labor. Slave owners devised a convoluted ideology to justify what they did. They started with the Bible, citing numerous passages that invoke slavery as a natural state for some and admonishing slaves to obey their masters. Since American slavery was confined to black people, they then insisted that blacks were naturally inferior in intellect and morality, and thus slavery actually elevated them into civilization from a brute state of African nature. The first Africans to be sold in the American colonies were twenty who landed at Jamestown in 1619. Those people, however, were treated as indentured servants rather than slaves and later released. Gradually more Africans were sold in Virginia and eventually treated as slaves. Virginia’s government issued the first regulations on slavery in 1641. With time every colony legalized slavery although its economic importance diminished the further north and increased the further south one journeyed among the colonies. When the United States declared independence, the portion of households that owned slaves was 3.3 percent in New England, 16.0 percent in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and 59.6 percent in the southern colonies. Down south slavery diminished the further inland one journeyed with most slaves concentrated in the tidewater region where they outnumbered whites, fewer inhabited the Piedmont, and almost none were in the mountains. Not all blacks were slaves but nineteen of twenty were. Most free blacks lived in port cities where hard labor was in near constant demand. In New York City, roughly half of the blacks were free.22 Slaves were the most fundamental commodity in the triangular and often rectangular trade around the Atlantic Ocean basin. Merchants exchanged an array of British manufactured goods for slaves in West African ports then sold those slaves in West Indian colonies for sugar or in the North American colonies for things like rice, lumber, and grain, then returned to Britain to sell those goods for more manufactured goods. Although in 1672 the Royal African Company was chartered with a monopoly over the slave trade, Parliament rescinded that right in 1698. Thereafter the Royal African Company had to compete with anyone willing to enter that lucrative enterprise. Not just Africans were enslaved but sometimes Indians also suffered that fate if they were captured in war. Indeed, the New Englanders shackled and shipped to West Indian plantations nearly a thousand Indians that they seized during King Philip’s War in 1675 and 1676. However, colonists preferred African to Indian slaves because their supply was greater and they were inured to disease. As for potential Indian laborers, that unseen but invincible European ally, germs, was invaluable for the conquest but harmed the New World’s colonization. The same germs that killed countless potential Indian enemy warriors also killed countless potential Indian miners, peasants, herders, and servants.

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Geography may not be destiny but it certainly provides parameters for a nation’s development. The territory of a people and its neighbors, their topographies, climates, and natural resources, profoundly shapes their respective and interrelated cultures, economies, governments, and conflicts. Each offers unique opportunities and constraints for those who live there. Adam Smith offered this insight into America’s economic development: “The colony of a civilized nation which takes possession, either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place to new setters, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society.”23 Throughout the colonial era, the key economic challenge facing Americans was how to develop abundant natural resources with scarce people and capital.24 Compounding that challenge were the trade, manufacturing, and financial restrictions that the crown imposed on its colonies. London wanted the colonial economies to complement rather than compete with Britain’s economy, for Americans to supply raw materials that industrious Britons could turn into products to sell back to the Americans. America’s economy was only as strong as its infrastructure or skeleton of roads, inns, wharfs, warehouses, bridges, post offices, stables, and ferries that facilitated the flow of commerce within and among the colonies. That infrastructure along with the broader economy developed slowly and haphazardly. With stunted revenues, colonial governments were powerless to invest in large projects with long-term payoffs. Instead they sold licenses to entrepreneurs to open taverns and inns; construct toll bridges, warehouses, wharfs, and roads; run ferries; and convey passengers and mail. Meanwhile, settlers widened existing Indian trails and trampled new trails where they needed to go in expanding webs. Eventually two long roads connected most colonies. One was the postal road that linked seaboard towns and cities from Savannah, Georgia, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The other was the Great Wagon Road that arched southwest from Philadelphia through Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania then south through Frederick, Maryland, Harpers Ferry Virginia and up the Shenandoah Valley, then over the divide and along the Piedmont, North Carolina to terminate at Augusta, Georgia. With time, each colony licensed stagecoach and ferry businesses along those two routes and the maze of secondary roads. Whitehall initiated in 1691 an intercolonial postal system by licensing the first postmaster. Within a few years offices opened in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, with riders carrying letters among those cities. Gradually the network expanded with more offices and extensions of land and water routes. Benjamin Franklin became one of two postmasters in 1753, and the sole postmaster in 1761; he imposed order on the existing chaotic system with regular times, routes, carriers, and fees. Thanks to Franklin a bundle of letters and newspapers could be delivered between New York and Philadelphia in

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a day and between Boston and Philadelphia in three days, cutting previous times by one-third. More importantly, the postal system actually began consistently making money for the first time. That communication system would be a critical element in American efforts first to organize political resistance against the British from 1765 to 1774 and then military resistance thereafter. Despite the astonishing array of ways for Americans to make money, agriculture remained the colonial economy’s backbone. Americans produced far more food than they could consume, at least after they transcended the first few starving years at Jamestown and Plymouth. Britain’s West Indian slave plantation colonies eagerly imported barrels of American wheat, rice, corn, rum, and salted meats and fishes. By the 1760s, Britain itself began importing ever more food, mostly from the American colonies. As for labor, although most whites owned their own farms, tenancy rates were high in the Hudson River valley and the southern colonies. Virtually all blacks living in rural regions labored as slaves on crop fields, with the rest employed either at making things or serving white people. Agricultural surpluses came at an enormous environmental cost. In their 1775 book American Husbandry, John Mitchell and Arthur Young assert a scathing indictment of American farmers: “Seduced by the fertility of the soil on first settling, the farmers think only of exhausting it as soon as possible, without attending to their own interest in a future day. This is a degree of blindness which in sensible people one may fairly call astonishing. . . . American planters and farmers are in general the greatest slovens in Christendom”25 George Washington complained about farm techniques: “The aim of the farmers in this country . . . is not to make the most they can from the land, which is, or has been, cheap, but the most of the labor, which is dear, the consequence of which has been much ground . . . scratched over and none cultivated or improved as it ought to have been.”26 Thomas Jefferson explained why this was true: “We can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we manure an old acre.”27 With time, the soaring demand for soil, wood, pasture, and game destroyed those natural resources, leaving those who depended on them worse off. The more farsighted town councils enacted conservation measures to preserve what was left. Farmers were required to leave a third of their land fallow for several years, rotate the types of crops, and manure fields. Only so many livestock could graze on the village green at any one time. The most ancient trees were left standing and people were encouraged to plant new trees on their land. Hunters could stalk deer and birds only in autumn when their offspring had matured enough to fend for themselves. William Penn enacted the most far-reaching measures with his 1701 Charter for Pennsylvania, by requiring landowners to preserve one acre for every five they cleared. Of course, it is far easier to issue regulations than to enforce them. Pennsylvania

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had no institution to ensure that landowners practiced conservation. Town councils were far better at enforcing statutes than absentee colonial proprietors because the members could observe firsthand the devastation and could shame or indict the miscreants into compliance. That wasteful cornucopian legacy has persisted through the centuries as Americans continue heatedly to debate whether to live for today or for tomorrow. WAR AND POWER War was integral to colonial America’s political, economic, and cultural development. At any one time, if the colonists were not waging war, they were either preparing for or recovering from it. The colonists fought numerous wars against various Indian tribes, three wars against the Spanish and their Indian allies, three wars against the French and their Indian allies, and two wars against all three, Queen Anne’s War or the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) and the French and Indian War or Seven Years’ War (1754– 1763). The Spanish and Indian wars included Elizabeth’s War (1585–1604), Cromwell’s War (1655–1660), and the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1744). The French and Indian wars included the Huguenot War (1628–1632), King William’s War or the War of the League of Augsburg (1689–1697), and King George’s War or the War of the Austrian Succession (1744–1748). The wars that the Americans fought against either the French or Spanish mostly began in Europe and spread to North America where the fighting largely involved small-scale raids along the frontier. During the Spanish and Indian wars, the Americans launched several expeditions by land or sea to capture Fort San Marcos at St. Augustine or destroy villages of Spain’s Indian allies. All the wars against the French and Indians except the last followed the same pattern of low-scale, asymmetrical warfare fought mostly by scores and occasionally hundreds of fighters. French and Indians raided isolated American frontier settlements to destroy them and bring captives back to Canada as hostages. Although the Americans occasionally raided Canada’s frontier, they largely stayed on the defensive. Two British campaigns with thousands of troops departed from this pattern: Hovenden Walker’s 1711 expedition failed to capture Québec; William Shirley’s 1745 expedition took Louisbourg. Walker’s campaign included both professional British troops and American volunteers; but only American volunteers fought the Louisbourg campaign. Although the number of fighters and casualties rose with each war, each side’s respective totals probably never exceeded ten thousand or a thousand before 1754. In contrast, the French and Indian War or Seven Years’ War began on the American frontier, involved large-scale Anglo-American campaigns, and

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ended with Britain’s conquest of France’s North American empire and Spanish Florida. During this war, Americans fought the French from 1754 to 1760 in North America but the Spanish only in 1762 during a campaign to take Havana, Cuba. This war was the first truly global war with campaigns not just in Europe and North America but in the Caribbean, India, West Africa, Argentina, the Philippines, and the oceans linking those far-flung lands. In North America, the French and Indian War exceeded all previous wars in the number of troops and warships involved and how the war was fought. Now the goal was to take and hold strategic sites with thousands of troops. Although the French had no chance of overrunning any British colony let alone all of them, the British sought to conquer New France. Eventually King George II sent over ten times more troops than those that King Louis XV devoted to New France. While the number of men involved in North American campaigns and battles were fractions of those deployed in Europe, the distances covered by a campaign could be as great or more, a hundred or so miles over land and hundreds of miles over sea from the launch to the objective. For land campaigns the challenge was moving and supplying men along trails laboriously hacked into roads. Most campaigns involved trying to defend or take forts at strategic sites, while most battles took place in wilderness with small clearings connected by long narrow paths. With thick forests covering most territory where campaigns unfolded, Indians and rangers replaced cavalry for scouting and getting behind the enemy for a decisive, overwhelming charge. Was the British triumph in North America inevitable? For decades England’s colonies suffered from a vicious cycle of too few settlers, too little economic diversity, and too much debt before eventually developing a sophisticated economy with more than two million consumers. In stark contrast, French Canada, Louisiana and Spanish Florida remained trapped in that vicious colonial cycle until their respective demises. Like the local tribes, the Spanish and French had a fleeting chance to throttle the infant English colonies in their cradles at Jamestown and Plymouth. Each could have acted on its vague overlapping claims to justify expeditions against those nascent colonies. And while the tribes had merely a handful of years to do so, the Spanish and French had decades. The problem in Madrid and Paris was soft rather than hard power, a lack of will rather than arms. Spain’s monarchy was especially distracted and stretched trying to manage a global empire. In the vast scheme of things, England’s New World outposts certainly posed no foreseeable threat; even someone with the imagination of a Miguel Cervantes could not envision that the English colonies would eventually develop into an independent American colossus that dominated the Western Hemisphere and the world beyond. After the English colonies were economically viable, France and Spain still had the power to contain if not uproot them. And

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indeed that is what they did, with France resisting a century and a half, and Spain two centuries until they gave up with treaties in 1763 and 1819, respectively. Indian allies, liberally supplied with muskets and other implements of war and sustenance, were critical to containing first the English and then the American threat. As for fighting Indians, whether Americans faced them alone or allied with Europeans, they fought at a disadvantage. The colonists brought nation-state warfare to a continent where tribal warfare prevailed. Only a few colonial frontier commanders like John Smith, Miles Standish, Benjamin Church, and Robert Rogers mastered the Indian warpath. Most others failed to transit the bewildering, blood-soaked learning curve from state to tribal warfare. State warfare involves well trained, organized, equipped, disciplined, and armed soldiers formed in pyramids of power with each man subject to those above him and in command of those below him. Soldiers were mere tools in the hands of the government to which they swore allegiance. Penalties for disobedience were harsh, including whippings one’s bare back; desertion was punishable by death. Battles were fought on open ground with masses of men trying to kill, maim, or capture each other. Sieges of walled cities or fortresses could take weeks or months. Legally and morally, nation-states distinguished between soldiers and civilians. Ideally soldiers fought each other and spared civilian property and lives. Actually countless civilians suffered devastation not just when they were caught in the crossfire but by marauding troops that robbed, raped, and murdered them, and burned their homes. Another legal and moral understanding among nation-states was to treat prisoners of war humanely. Here again the practice contrasted starkly with the ideal. Prisoners of nation-states usually suffered terribly as they languished packed in buildings or decommissioned ships; countless died from diseases that festered in the squalid conditions. However, captive soldiers generally were spared being tortured. Tribal warfare involved warriors following charismatic leaders to fight enemies for self-defense, honor, vengeance, plunder, and/or captives. Most villages had councils of peace and war chiefs. Once a council decided on war, chiefs who were still vigorous or charismatic younger leaders would rally followers with a frenzied war dance, harangues, and gifts. A leader was only as powerful as his reputation for courage, successful strategies and tactics, and loot, captives, and scalps brought back to the village. The greater his feats, the greater the number of warriors that he might rally. Potential leaders competed for followers. Ultimately, each warrior decided whether to go to war and, if so, who to follow, and how to fight. He could set forth then turn back with no loss of face if he cited a bad omen or too much plunder to carry. Punishments for cowardice were emotional rather than physical, not a onetime brutal beating but lifelong mockery as the butt of village jokes.

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Some tribes fortified their villages within palisades of planted upright logs. None, however, reached the sophistication of European forts, either the square frontier-style wooden palisades with block houses at each corner or the elaborate Vauban-style fortresses with earth packed between parallel stone or log walls.28 Although Indian attackers never succeeded in taking any of the handful of Vauban fortresses in North America, they did overrun numerous frontier palisades, including eight manned by British regulars during the 1763 uprising in the Great Lakes. As for prisoners, both enemy soldiers and civilians were considered fair game.29 Male captives usually had to run the gauntlet between two lines of the village’s inhabitants who were armed with sticks and often gleefully beat them to death. Even if a captive survived the gauntlet, the agony may have just begun. A family that lost a loved one was usually given the choice of adopting him or torturing him to death. The latter choice involved inflicting the most sadistic horrors on the victim. Torture provided a pathological way for people to vent bottled up hatreds and animosities on a scapegoat that social norms prohibited them from openly expressing against each other. Fate was usually kinder to captive women and children that survived the forced march from their distant devastated homes, families, and communities. Chiefs usually doled them out to needy families. Most were integrated into the village after a socialization process that took years following an often cruel initiation phase. In this way, tribes replenished populations depleted from disease and violence. In her book, White Captives, June Namias cites these statistics: “Of 1,187 known male captives of the French, Indians, and French-Indians in the various New England hostilities between 1675 and 1765, 132 (11 percent) . . . died of all causes; of the 392 women, only 16 (4.1 percent) died.”30 Many captives, especially children and far more women than men, ended up preferring Indian to American life and resisted being repatriated when they had a chance. Although each Indian war was unique, its causes were inevitably the same.31 Colonists hunted or settled on Indian land without permission or compensation. The tribe’s leaders protested. Tensions soared to the point where an incident, usually a murder, triggered a vicious cycle of vengeance that resulted in an all-out war. Sooner or later the colonists prevailed and in the imposed treaty took swaths of land and displaced the defeated tribes to territory further from the settlements. Then ever more hunters and settlers intruded on the lands the treaty designated for the tribes and tensions swelled until some tragic event sparked the next war. Colonists used European concepts of law to justify taking and keeping Indian land. Massachusetts governor John Winthrop expressed the standard excuse: “That which is common to all is proper to none. This savage people ruleth over many lands without title or property; for they enclose no ground, neither have they cattle to maintain

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it, but remove their dwellings as they have occasion, or as they can prevail against their neighbors.”32 In war as in other rival endeavors, Indians and Europeans adapted the other’s advantageous methods and mindsets. The result was an evolving tactical hybrid of firepower, mobility, flexibility, and number of fighters. As muskets became easier to reload and more accurate, Europeans shed the body armor that for decades protected them from volleys of arrows. Without armor, Europeans could dodge and run just as quickly as Indians. That in turn pressured Indians to exchange their bows and arrows for muskets which simultaneously enhanced their firepower and dependence on the Europeans. Americans adopted not just Indian strategies and tactics for fighting wilderness war, but at times cruel practices like selling prisoners into slavery or gruesome practices like mutilating and scalping the dead. The utter brutality unleashed by many colonists against Indians was animated by more than zeal for vengeance against what the Indians had inflicted on them. The early settlers genuinely believed that Indians were devil-worshippers who God-fearing Christians were obliged to exterminate. Those who advocated a merciless war against the Indians thumped the Bible to justify their behavior. For instance, Captain John Underhill offered this rationalization: “It may be demanded, why should you be so furious (as some of you have said). Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to David’s war. . . . When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man and all confederates in the action, there be hath no respect to persons, but . . . puts them to the sword . . . the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. . . . We have had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.”33 At times colonial governments offered rewards for scalps. For instance, in 1755, Massachusetts lieutenant governor Spencer Phips issued this declaration: “I do hereby require His Majesty’s subjects of this Province to embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians. . . . For every Penobscot above the age of twelve years that shall be taken . . . to Boston, fifty pounds. For every scalp of a male . . . above the age aforesaid, forty pounds. For every female . . . taken . . . and for every male under twelve . . . taken . . . twenty-five pounds. For every scalp of such female Indian or male Indian under the age of twelve Years . . . twenty pounds.”34 Yet, despite these attitudes and practices, there is only one recorded case each for the use of chemical or biological weapons during the colonial era.35 In 1622, during the war between Virginians and Powhatans, Captain William Tucker and Dr. John Potts invited 200 Powhatans to a peace council and during the feast murdered them all with poisoned wine. During the 1763 siege of Fort Pitt, Captain Simon Ecuyer gave blankets infected with smallpox to

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the Indians during a peace council; the subsequent devastating plague forced the Indians to withdraw. As in Europe, Indians and settlers had a common interest in establishing some limits on warfare. In the late seventeenth century, a Delaware chief made these suggestions to Pennsylvania’s governor: “If we intend at any time to make War upon you, we will let you know of it, and the Reasons why we make War with you, and if you make us satisfaction for the Injury done us, for which the War is intended, then we will not make War on you. And if you intend at any time to make War on us, we would have you let us know of it, and the Reasons for which you make War on us, and then if we do not make satisfaction for the Injury done unto you, then you may make War on us, otherwise you ought not to do it.”36 Of course, establishing rules and following them are two different acts. Overall the Indians won more battles than they lost and inflicted more death than they suffered from 1607 to 1776. But once the settlements were established with overwhelming numbers of colonists, weapons, and provisions, Indian defeat in any war was inevitable. The only chance for decisive Indian victories lay in the first few years of Jamestown and Plymouth when the settlers were few, sickly, starving, isolated, and demoralized. Yet even if the Powhatans and Wampanoags had respectively wiped out Jamestown and Plymouth, thus bankrupting the investments and hopes of the parent companies in London, sooner or later a new company would have received a royal charter for land there or elsewhere. At best, the tribes could delay but not prevent England’s conquest of them. Although the Indians eventually lost every war they fought against the colonists, crushing defeats were few. Only the wars against the Pequot from 1636 to 1638, and the Susquehannock, Wampanoag, and Narragansett from 1675 to 1676, ended with those tribes nearly exterminated. Most wars had more limited results, with the defeated ceding territory and moving westward.37 The 1713 Treaty of Portsmouth with the Abenaki was a typical agreement. In drawing their clan symbols on the document, the chiefs agreed that: “we have made a breach of our fidelity and loyalty to the Crowns of Great Britain, and have made open rebellion against Her Majesty’s subjects . . . that we may hereby enjoy Her Majesty’s grace and favor . . . we . . . hereby acknowledging ourselves the lawful subjects of our Sovereign . . . and promising our hearty subjection and obedience unto the Crown of Great Britain . . . we will cease and forbear all acts of hostility toward all the subjects of the crown of Great Britain . . . and will not entertain any treasonable conspiracy. . . . That Her Majesty’s subjects . . . shall . . . peacefully . . . enter upon, improve, and forever enjoy . . . their rights of land . . . That for mutual safety and benefit, all trade and commerce . . . betwixt the English and Indians shall be in such places and under such management . . . by Her Majesty’s Government . . . That if any

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controversy . . . happen to arise . . . for any real or supposed wrong or injury done on the one side or the other, no private revenge shall be taken by the Indians . . . but proper application shall be made to Her Majesty’s Government.”38 In diplomacy as in war, colonists and natives adapted elements of the other’s practices. Envoys opened negotiations with condolences and gifts that ritually buried with respect those who had recently died from violence, disease, or age. During subsequent negotiations, each side alternated days to make its case and suggest compromises. An envoy emphasized key points by presenting his counterpart with a wampum strip. Indian chiefs accepted the novelty of drawing their totem next to their name on treaties written on paper. Colonists accepted Indian notions of kinship relations among peoples with mutual duties to each other, whereby the militarily and materially stronger side was the “Father” who protected and aided his weaker “Children.” Peoples of equal strength and status were “brothers.” The French usually surpassed the British in Indian diplomacy. Here New France’s inferior population was actually a strength. Canadians and Louisianans occupied far less land and displaced far fewer tribes than Americans. What the French most wanted from the Indians—furs—could only be obtained peacefully. For that the French mastered Indian customs and languages, and married into the tribes. In contrast, the Americans wanted land which could usually only be taken by war or purchase following the threat of war. Aside from a few exceptions like John Smith, Roger Williams, William Johnson, and George Croghan, American colonists tended to spurn nuance and generosity for bluntness and greed as a negotiating strategy. Yet Americans enjoyed one great advantage over the French in relations with the Indians—British goods were cheaper, better made, and more abundant. A number of gifted military leaders emerged in colonial America. Some were Englishmen who spent several years in America then returned home like John Smith and James Oglethorpe. Others came to stay like Miles Standish and William Johnson. Then there were American-born Benjamin Church, John Bradstreet, Robert Rogers, John Stark, and, above all, George Washington. All these men mastered the art of American warfare, a hybrid of the most suitable methods from both continents. For some like Smith, who had fought the Spaniards and Turks, the learning curve was short. For others like Washington, the path was filled with trials and errors but was ultimately triumphant. Nonetheless, militarily the Americans suffered a severe disadvantage no matter who they fought. As English subjects, the colonists carried with them the cultural value against “standing armies.” Instead, all able-bodied men would muster against a military threat then be dismissed after the threat disappeared. Not surprisingly, militiamen generally had abysmal combat records. They tended to cut and run after the first shots. The military skills

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of militiamen eroded the further the frontier receded from their neighborhood, town, or county. The chance of hunting game or fighting French and Indians disappeared with the wilderness, and with it the incentive to keep one’s stalking and shooting skills honed. When dispatched to the frontier, those men viewed the surrounding forests with dread and were easily spooked into flight by sudden war cries, gunshots, and onrushing half naked, garishly painted and tattooed “savages.” Yet even frontier militiamen who knew how to shoot and hunt rarely proved their mettle against French and Indian raiders who could strike, murder, enslave, loot, and burn anytime then disappear as quickly. Dispersed to their farms and family duties, a militiaman’s first warning of danger might be distant popping gunshots or pillars of black smoke. His first gut-wrenching thoughts would be how to save his family. Militia was no better at conventional warfare. During America’s War for Independence virtually all militia everywhere were mustered and their record was mostly awful with well-fought battles like Concord, Bunker Hill, and Bennington as the exceptions. Militia was more successful as a political than a military institution. All able-bodied men from sixteen to sixty years old were required to serve in the militia which contributed to social leveling. Each company’s men elected their officers which promoted democracy. In contrast volunteer regiments had better war records. A regiment was recruited usually for nine months to a year. Those who joined were generally fit and motivated if mostly unskilled. However, before 1754, few volunteer regiments were raised because the scale of fighting and the money to pay for them were limited. The greatest success of American volunteers was capturing Louisbourg in 1745. It was only during the French and Indian War that volunteers supplanted militia as the major force. America’s first home-grown professional soldiers emerged in 1645, when Virginia mustered ranger companies recruited from hardened pioneers who enlisted for a year and whose mission was to patrol the frontier, gather intelligence, and remain constantly prepared to fight should war erupt again. Other colonies raised their own ranger companies. The rangers exemplified an American way of war. Benjamin Church was the seventeenth century’s most brilliant American military leader whose mixed company of frontiersmen and Indians won nearly every battle they fought during the wars of King Philip and King William. Although he was raised a Puritan, he developed a sophisticated appreciation for the subtleties of human nature and culture. He was an exuberant, larger-than-life character, of unwavering courage and decisiveness who flourished as a farmer, merchant, magistrate, and, above all, ranger. His “Entertaining Passages Relating to King Philip’s War,” ghostwritten by his son Thomas, is exactly that. No other account of that war is as vivid, blunt, and ironic. He interpreted the war through the mind of a warrior rather than

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a theologian. He condemned blunderers and cowards no matter how lofty their ranks. He respected the enemy for its prowess. For instance, at one point another commander balked at moving forward for fear of danger. This provoked Church to quip: “Please to lead your company to yonder wind mill on Rhode Island and there they will be out of danger of being killed by the enemy and we shall have less troubles to supply them with provisions.”39 His book is not completely shorn of Puritan pieties. He does attribute to God’s grace his own ability to survive so many fierce battles and the ultimate triumph of the colonists over the Indians. Yet he genuinely respected Indian culture and recruited Indians into his company. He was adept at the style and substance of Indian diplomacy, of ceremonially burying the dead with strings of wampum, smoking the calumet, lyrically expounding his views, and listening attentively as others did the same. Nonetheless, on the warpath he fought ruthlessly against his enemies. Robert Rogers was not just America’s greatest combat officer of the colonial era but arguably of all time.40 He perfected what Church had pioneered. He led more than fifty scouting or raiding missions during the French and Indian, Cherokee, and Pontiac’s Wars. That outstanding record depended as much on brainpower as firepower, as much on his keen intellect and understanding of human nature as on his courage and endurance that inspired his men to follow him. His twenty-eight “Rules for Ranging” are still taught by today’s American army rangers. The critical lesson was to adapt swiftly and decisively to changing threats and opportunities: “Such in general are the rules to be observed in the Ranging Service; there are, however, a thousand occurrences and circumstances which may happen that will make it necessary in some measure to depart from them, and to put other arts and stratagems in practice; and which cases every man’s reason and judgment must be his guide.”41 He revealed his genius through other writings, including The Journals of Major Robert Rogers, A Concise Account of North America, and even a play, Ponteach, or, The Savages of America. Rogers was born on New Hampshire’s frontier at Methuen in November 1731. During his youth he thrilled at exploring the surrounding wilderness and became an excellent hunter and woodsman. Abenakis burned his home in 1748 but he and his family escaped harm. He was physically imposing, over six-foot tall, muscular, and inured to grueling exertions that exhausted most men. He was fearless and displayed no sign that the near chronic stress of warfare emotionally ground him down like it did countless others. He exuded confidence, wit, and vision. He was an articulate, animated speaker and writer of English, and was conversant in French and Algonquian. He was a born war leader. He became a captain at age twenty-three after recruiting around thirty men for a company in response to Governor Benning Wentworth’s appeal

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for volunteers in 1755. His company was attached to Colonel’s Joseph Blanchard’s New Hampshire regiment which joined General William Johnson’s army at Lake George in September. There Rogers volunteered to lead his company on the first of a series of scouting missions throughout the region including within musket shot of French forts Carillon and Saint-Frédéric. In doing so, he acquired a reputation for near superhuman courage and initiative. Johnson wrote that “I believe him to be as brave & as honest a Man as any I have equal knowledge of & both myself & all the Army are convinced that he has distinguished himself since he has been among us, superior to most, inferior to none of his Rank.”42 On March 24, 1756, he received a captain’s commission to recruit a company of 65 rangers. For the next five and a half years, he and his rangers conducted long-range patrols or raids year round with some lasting two or more weeks, and spearheaded army offensives in 1758, 1759, and 1760. In between operations he intensively trained his rangers in tactics, sharpshooting, and wilderness survival skills. Each man was armed with a musket, sixty rounds, and hatchet, was dressed in green wool jacket, waistcoat, and breeches, and during winter wore a wool cap, mittens, and blanket-coat. He was authorized to expand his command to five ranger companies in 1757 and was promoted to major in 1758. All along he led his men to victory in nearly every battle they fought, and killed, wounded, and captured far more of the enemy than they suffered. His exploits were renowned in America and Britain as well as Canada. He and his rangers were present for the final surrender of Canadian governor Vaudreuil at Montreal on September 9, 1760. He then followed orders to journey up the Great Lakes and received the surrender of the French forts dotting that region. In 1761, he and his rangers joined the campaign against the Cherokee. In 1763, he was part of the relief force for Detroit which was besieged by Pontiac and his warriors. When he was Fort Michilimackinac’s commander in 1766, he launched an expedition led by Jonathan Carver to search for the “Northwest Passage” or a land and water route across the continent to the Pacific Ocean; Carver and his men got as far as the Great Plains.43 French and Indians were not the only enemies arrayed against Rogers. Jealous, petty British officers hated that some upstart provincial was acclaimed for his war exploits and not cashiered for disdaining protocol and deferring to his betters. Indeed Rogers was hot-tempered and sharp-tongued and at times skewered redcoat officers’ pretensions and shortcomings. He was essentially a warrior chieftain rather than an army officer. He led by example rather than command. He did not so much issue orders as tersely instruct his men what to do and they zealously did it inspired by his courage, resolve, and logic. Between operations he let his men blow off steam with rum-fueled hellraising. General Jeffrey Amherst was among those with very mixed feelings about Rogers and his rangers: “Althou’ I have a very good Opinion of You,

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& shall Readily Employ You when the service may permit me I have a very Despicable One of the Rangers in General.”44 His Achilles heel was money. It slipped through his fingers like quicksilver and at times he was unscrupulous in how he got more of it. In January 1755, he was arrested for being part of a counterfeiting ring but escaped prosecution by recruiting a company for New Hampshire’s regiment. During the war, he racked up ever higher debt to contractors for vital supplies to his men. He was a poor bookkeeper and sealed most deals with handshakes rather than signatures. The British government reimbursed him for only the fraction of his expenses that he could document. After the war, he spent dismal stretches of time in debtor’s prison until friends paid off enough creditors to free him. He faced treason charges during two periods of his life. In December 1767, he was arrested at Fort Michilimackinac on trumped up claims that he planned to lead an Indian revolt against the British Empire; a court martial finally exonerated him in October 1768. During the first year of America’s War for Independence, Congress rejected his request to form and lead a ranger regiment. Authorities arrested and interrogated him several times on suspicion that he was a spy because he was still on half-pay from the British army and was traveling among the states. He assured General George Washington that “I have leave to retire on my half pay, and never expect to be called into the service again. I love North America, and I intend to spend the evening of my days in it.”45 Being treated like a traitor rather than a hero eventually made him one. In July 1776, he escaped to the British camp on Staten Island where he offered his services to General William Howe. He was assigned to catch American spies. He soon nabbed Nathan Hale who was hanged. Howe then commissioned him a lieutenant colonel to form the Queen’s Rangers. By now Rogers was overweight, alcoholic, and rarely clearheaded. American troops defeated Rogers and his Queen’s Rangers at the Battle of Heathcote Hill in October 1776 and the Battle of Fort Independence in January 1777. After Howe relieved him of command, Rogers sailed to London where for two decades he lived in poverty, obscurity, and often debtor’s prison until his death on May 18, 1795. It was a sordid end for a once great American warrior whose life reads like a Shakespearian tragedy. GOVERNANCE AND POWER As for government, the American colonies eventually developed from autocracies and theocracies into limited democracies. There were three types of colonies, charter, proprietary, and royal. The king granted charter and proprietary colonies to companies and individuals, respectively, and directly ruled a royal colony through an appointed governor. Only when a charter or

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proprietary colony suffered bankruptcy did the king take it over as a royal or crown colony. Virginia became the first crown colony in 1624, followed by New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. Regardless of the type of colony, each had a similar structure with a governor, an advisory council usually appointed by the governor, and a popularly elected assembly. The king appointed or approved the governor and often the council members of every colony except Connecticut and Rhode Island where all institutions were elected by freemen. Most colonies had official religions that all inhabitants had to tithe whether or not they were parishioners. The Puritan Congregational churches prevailed in New England and the Anglican Church in nearly all the other colonies. Only two colonies permitted religious freedom for all Christian sects, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. Britain’s political system underwent several wrenching convulsions during the two centuries between the crownings of Elizabeth I and George III, and that affected political development in the American colonies. The most vital change was the blood-soaked transformation from an absolute into a constitutional monarchy. It took the English Civil War (1642–1649), the Puritan dictatorship called the Commonwealth (1650–1660), the Royal Restoration (1660–1688), and the Glorious Revolution (1689–1691) before that power shift was complete and definitive. During these upheavals the American colonies were largely helpless bystanders on the Atlantic Ocean’s western shore, and that was to their advantage. Each colony’s already tenuous political and economic ties with Whitehall Palace, where the king and his ministers governed, and Parliament became more so. Crown colonies were the king’s dominions in name only. The triumph of parliament over the crown provided the excuse for colonial assemblies to insist on a similar relationship with their governors. If Britain’s “power of the purse” lay in parliament, then that for America lay in each colonial assembly. If like-minded members of parliament could associate as Tories and Whigs, then American assemblymen could also organize themselves into groups that best promoted their differing interests. But the Americans eventually surpassed the mother country in political development.46 By 1775, quasi-republics had emerged within each colony that guaranteed political rights and representation. All thirteen colonies had popularly elected assemblies and many had a council elected by the assembly. Although governors were elected only in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and appointed by the king elsewhere, laws, customs, and often defiant assemblies limited their power in every colony. Local governments in counties, parishes, and towns freely ran their own affairs. Government at every level was lean if not skeletal in its duties and powers. The emphasis was on managing or resolving problems with practical, frugal measures. For instance, cities dealt with

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waste disposal by requiring each residence or business to clean its share of the street; thus did citizens bear the time and costs rather than the government. The closest the Americans came to democracy was in local government, especially New England town councils. The men from each town met at least once a year, mostly to elect their selectmen and constables for the next year. Town meetings grew from and overlapped with church meetings where male parishioners elected their minister and deacons. Indeed at first they both met in the church until prosperity allowed for erecting a municipal building. Often the same people served as town and church officers as their mingled duties often included primary schools, poor relief, road and bridge maintenance, and law and order. Each meeting was an opportunity to discuss other critical issues. The emphasis in both town and church meetings was consensus and unity for often tough choices. The parish was to southern colonies what the town was to northern colonies. Size-wise the parish was comparable to a town but the population was scattered rather than concentrated, and the duties included those of church and state. The parish elected its vestrymen and wardens who had the same broad array of duties as justices of the peace. Democratic principles and practices were embedded in American culture. Eligible Americans voted for their militia, church, and club leaders as well as those who represented them in their local and colonial governments. Yet no colony had a genuine democratic political system. Each had different property, age, and residence qualifications for who could vote and who could run for office. By custom or law all colonies forbade women, Indians, and blacks from either pursuit. The portion of American white men eligible to vote ranged from 50 percent to 80 percent of each colony’s total, more than twice the varying county rates for Englishmen. Eligibility for holding office varied from five to ten times the property requirement for merely voting. Candidates running for election tried to garner potential voters by such timehonored methods as mingled appeals to reason and emotion through public speeches or private cajoling, throwing parties with ample food and drink, and furtively buying votes. The actual vote was by voice or ballot. A scandalized Anglican minister, Charles Inglis described a typical election in 1760: “To ingratiate themselves with the people, candidates . . . appointed places where they invited the Inhabitants to treat them with Liquor . . . which were held once a week for near 2 months before Election Day. . . . The People’s morals were entirely debauched.”47 IDENTITY AND POWER From 1607 to 1776, the identity of most colonists morphed from being English to being American.48 That transformation accompanied, reflected,

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and shaped the development of colonial political, economic, cultural, and military power over one hundred and seventy years. There is a dynamic between identity and interests. One’s interests at once shape and reflect one’s identity, and both can change with time. What is in a name? One’s name is an obvious foundation for one’s identity. America got its name in 1507, when German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published a map of the New World based on Amerigo Vespucci’s narrative of his experiences there. John Rastell, who lived a remarkable life as a lawyer, entrepreneur, publisher, poet, playwright, and would-be adventurer, popularized that name in England by writing and staging a play titled A New Interlude and a Merry of the Nature of the Four Elements, based on his failed attempt to find a colony there in 1516; his men mutinied and forced him to turn back to London before they had sailed beyond the Thames River for the North Sea.49 The identity of people who share a common language is reinforced when they try to communicate with people who speak differently from themselves. During the 170 years of colonial rule, Americans developed accents and expressions of speech distinct from those of the mother country. The snickers of haughty British officers and officials at those linguistic differences bolstered American resentments and pride.50 The transformation of English subjects into American citizens was greatly influenced by revolutionary changes in England. Indeed, England became the United Kingdom or Great Britain in 1707 when Scotland’s parliament dissolved itself within England’s parliament. The monarchy went from being “absolute” to being abolished in 1649, restored in 1660, and “constitutional” in 1689. The calendar jumped ten days ahead from the old to the new style in 1752. The Americans had no say in any of these changes; each change distanced Americans a bit more emotionally and culturally from the mother country. There was a dynamic relationship among American literacy, literature, and identity. The demand for things to read rose with the number of people who could read. That in turn inspired writers and printers to satisfy that demand. The development of printing was critical to American development. In 1639, Harvard University began operating the first printing press and published the Freeman’s Oathe, an appropriate title for the first American-made publication, although no known copies survive. The number of printing presses expanded slowly during the seventeenth century then accelerated in the eighteenth century until by 1775, there were over a hundred printers in the thirteen colonies. From 1639 to 1783, printers published 21,905 books and pamphlets, with only six percent appearing before 1704 and over half after 1763. In 1775, there were thirty-nine weekly newspapers published in twenty-six different towns in every colony except Delaware.51

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What became known as the American dream arrived with at least one of Jamestown’s first settlers. That dream’s essence involved liberty, the right and opportunity freely to fulfill one’s innate potential and ambitions. Captain John Smith exemplified the American dream of being oneself and becoming a self-made man, practices from the nation’s beginning even if the expressions were coined a couple of centuries later. Smith championed liberty: “Let all men have as much freedome in reason as may be, and true dealing, for it is the greatest comfort you can give them, where the very name of servitude will breed much ill bloud and become odious to God and man.”52 The British government’s Register of Emigration surveyed 2,532 white emigrants from 1773 to 1776. The replies were hardly surprising. Nearly all hoped to find a better life than what they left behind.53 The idea that Americans were a chosen people, at once exceptional and universal, was also present almost from the creation. In 1630 John Winthrop asserted that vision by arguing that the new civilization the pilgrims were developing was “a city on a hill” that would illuminate the rest of humanity. In 1765, John Adams wrote that: “America was designed by Providence for the theatre on which man was to make his true figure, on which science, virtue, liberty, happiness, and glory were to exist in peace.”54 War was a vital element of American identity. A shared existential threat forges powerful bonds. During the seventeenth century, most people either experienced the horrors of frontier warfare directly or heard gut-wrenching stories from those who had. Although that portion of the population diminished with the receding frontier during the eighteenth century, the shared narrative of frontier warfare remained a vital part of American identity. Americans believed themselves to be as good as their “savage” Indian enemies were evil. In her brilliant book, The Name of War, historian Jill Lepore explored how wars forged American identity: “English colonists constructed a language that proclaimed themselves to be neither cruel colonists like the Spaniards nor savage natives like the Indians. Later on, after nearly a century of repetition on successive American frontiers, this triangulated conception of identity would form the basis of American nationalism.”55 The near constant colonial experience of war was not unique. The settlers’ roots were in a war-torn continent. What differed was how war affected the respective developments of Europeans and Americans. Charles Tilly succinctly explained the development of European nation-states with this dynamic relationship: “The state made war and war made the state.”56 If Europeans made war and war made their states, Americans made war and war made Americans. America’s wars contributed far more to America’s identity than its institutions which changed little over 169 years. The result was not an increasingly elaborate state but an increasingly complex and defined nation. Lepore explained the dynamic among “the geographical, political, cultural,

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and sometimes racial and national boundaries between peoples. . . . How wars are remembered can be just as important as how they were fought and first described. . . . Waging, writing, and remembering a war all shape its legacy, all draw boundaries.”57 During the French and Indian War, the British government inadvertently accelerated the development of American nationalism and liberalism by the ham-fisted ways it tried to dominate and defend its colonies. English officers and soldiers lorded it over their provincial lessers. They assigned Americans the hard work of hauling, building, and cleaning while they lounged at ease. They issued Americans fewer daily rations than they enjoyed. They inflicted harsh punishments on Americans for minor infractions. They seduced American wives, daughters, sweethearts, and, sometimes, boys. The Royal Navy was just as abusive. Press gangs stalked the ports, nabbing American sailors for warships. Here again American identity deepened against “the other,” in this case a foe who was supposed to be a friend. The frontier was yet another powerful force that shaped American identity. Frederick Jackson Turner’s The Significance of the Frontier in American History remains the most influential interpretation of the nation’s history since he presented it in 1893.58 He wrote it during a time when more Americans lived in cities or towns than farms, industrial monopolies and oligopolies dominated the economy, and, most critically, three years after the Census Bureau officiously proclaimed that the frontier no longer existed. He argued that American democracy developed on the frontier as pioneers worked together to overcome mutual challenges. The frontier thus was at once a place and a process, a wilderness that highly individualistic pioneers worked together to transform into a prosperous, democratic civilization. He worried that democracy might be jeopardized without a frontier. To avoid that, he urged Americans to forge new frontiers in science, education, art, literature, and the preservation of the nation’s past. Having said that, he acknowledged his interpretation’s inherent limitations because: “Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time. . . . History, both objective and subjective, is ever becoming, never completed.” He sought a comprehensive, systematic analysis: “In history, then, there is unity and continuity. Each age must be studied in the light of all the past.”59 Words for historians to live by. Where Turner got it wrong was his belief that frontier settlements were laboratories for democracy. In reality, democracy developed most profoundly in each colonial capital, although in varying degrees and ways over the generations leading to American independence. As for frontier settlements, they began as theocracies whose authoritarianism only gradually diminished with time. Most frontiers were war zones. By necessity as well as theology communitarianism rather than individualism

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prevailed until well into the eighteenth century, especially on the Puritan New England frontier that suffered the worst devastation from the French and Indian wars. For the colonial era, Turner’s thesis best applies to the hundred thousand or so Scots Irish who reached America and headed to the frontier in the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, despite its limitations, Turner’s thesis remains helpful in understanding a critical dimension of American development. The American frontier was at once a place, a process, and a psychology, a transition zone between wilderness and civilization where a mix of enterprising and often desperate people struggled to reinvent themselves, to build success on previous failures by exploiting the land. Although the physical frontier eventually disappeared, the psychology and process of reinvention and new opportunities lingers. Throughout their history, Americans have celebrated their frontier heritage as a critical element of their identity. People are individually and collectively distinguished by what they believe and how they behave. In his book Regeneration through Violence, Richard Slotkin argued that Turner’s theme was not literally true but became culturally true as Americans came to believe and try to embody it.60 That process is not uniquely American but universally human: “The mythology of a nation is the intelligible mask of that enigma called ‘national character.’”61 Yet at a deep subconscious level American frontiersmen personified universal archetypes, especially the “heroic quest.”62 Colonial pioneers interpreted their drives and their subsequent experiences through the Puritan mission to transform themselves, the wilderness, and the savages into “a city on a hill” or virtuous God-fearing theocracy. Only after the American Revolution did people begin to interpret and justify westward expansion as realizing Jeffersonian democracy through an “empire of liberty” that was the nation’s “manifest destiny.” From the beginning Americans have had an antagonistic, exploitive relationship with nature driven by related material and theological values.63 Virtually all colonists viewed nature through materialistic rather than aesthetic or spiritual eyes. They relished fulfilling the Biblical God’s admonition to “multiple and subdue the earth.” But they also feared wilderness as the abode of savages and wild beasts that stalked them. The more wilderness they destroyed, the more secure they felt. A selective reading of the Bible reinforced that attitude with passages that depicted wilderness as synonymous with evil temptations and the Devil himself. At best wilderness was something hellish to endure as Jesus did for forty days and nights and Moses and his people did for forty years. With such a mindset, Americans gleefully clear-cut and transformed forests into cropland, lumber, potash, charcoal, turpentine, tar, and, of course, firewood that in turn were used to make buildings, ships, wagons, barrels, soap, and glass, to name the more prominent. These products voraciously devoured

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forests. It took three to five acres of trees just to make one ton of potash. By one estimate the colonists burned a hundred million cords of wood during the 1760s alone, with a cord measuring four by four by eight feet.64 The colonists also devastated wildlife, especially beaver for their fur and deer for their skin. Those attitudes prevailed throughout the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries. Eventually an alternative view of nature as sublime and even divine emerged. Two English philosophers were critical in influencing that view. Isaac Newton described a benign God who created a rational universe. John Locke famously declared that in the beginning “all the world was like America,” and extolled a state of nature where people were most free. The ideas of Newton and Locke mesh in the philosophy of Deism of which the most prominent American followers were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Deism was still fundamentally materialistic but with a deep appreciation for nature’s sublime beauty. A handful of Americans adopted a Romantic view of nature as divine long before transcendentalist philosophers, poets, and painters celebrated it in the nineteenth century. The frontiersman Daniel Boone reveled in nature especially during his solitary journeys into wilderness that often lasted months even as he shot and skinned countless deer, beaver, and other fur-bearing animals for his livelihood. Boone insisted that “no populous city with all the varieties of commerce and stately structures cold afford so much pleasure to my mind as the beauties of nature I found here.”65 Naturalists like William Bartram delighted in discovering and recording new plant and animal species and the environments where they flourished. In America, the Reformation preceded the Renaissance and Enlightenment which developed together. That transformation resulted in a cultural revolution that began in the early eighteenth century then climaxed by mid-century, with Benjamin Franklin joyfully leading the way. America morphed from puritanism to liberalism; from theocracy to democracy; from communitarianism to individualism; from theism to deism; from the Book of Leviticus to the Book of John; from the sacrifice of Isaac to the Sermon on the Mount; from a wrathful God to a loving God; from God to Providence; from Godliness to worldliness; from divine law to natural law; from God’s nature to Nature’s God; from a supernatural to a natural world; from hanging witches to hanging effigies; from conformity to free thinking; from innately sinful to innately good; from self-denial to self-fulfillment; from duties to rights; from determinism to free will; from Luther, Calvin, and Hobbes to Newton, Locke, and Montesquieu; from Winthrop, Mather, and Edwards to Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine; from “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” to “Common Sense”; and from the City on the Hill to the Declaration of Independence. The new did not supplant the old but emerged alongside it as the dominant force in a struggle for power that has persisted ever since.

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The development of American nationalism made independence inevitable. The only question was when and how. Matthew Prior, an English poet, spy, diplomat, and official worried as early as 1711 that the Americans would eventually seek independence: “Their increasing Numbers and Wealth, join’d to their great Distance from Britain will give them an Opportunity in the course of some years to throw off their Dependence on the Nation and declare themselves a free State, if not curbed in Time by being made entirely subject to the Crown.”66 Around the same time New York Governor Robert Hunter more lyrically expressed that same British paranoia: “ye colonies were infants sucking their mother’s breasts, but . . . would weane themselves when they came of age.”67 A couple of generations later Benjamin Franklin echoed that thought as a hope rather than fear, gleefully foreseeing the time when America’s population surpassed Britain’s, and with that American economic power: “America, an immense territory, favored by nature with all advantages of climate, soil, great navigable rivers, and lakes . . . must become a great country, populous and mighty, and will in a less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off any shackles that may be imposed on her, and perhaps place them on the imposers.”68 And indeed that was what happened. NOTES 1. Sir Walter Raleigh, The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, vol. 8 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1829), 325. 2. Neil L. Yorke, “Technology: British,” Encyclopedia, 3: 235. 3. Franklin Reader, 606. 4. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), 20. 5. Sir Walter Raleigh, The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, vol. 8 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1829), 325. 6. McCusker and Menard, Economy of British America, 192. See also: Lawrence A. Harper, The English Navigation Laws: A Seventeenth Century Experiment in Social Engineering (New York: Octagon Books, 1964). 7. McCusker and Menard, Economy of British America, 55, 57; Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin, 2001), 306–7. 8. B.R. Mitchell, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 5. 9. “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” Franklin Reader, 335. 10. Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), 45. 11. Billy G. Smith, “Poverty,” Encyclopedia, 1: 484. 12. For good books on American class divisions and their broader economic, social, and political dynamics, see: Marcus W. Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Class in Colonial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931);

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Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965); Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979); Alice Harrison Jones, The Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). 13. Jacob M. Price, “Trade and Commerce: Britain,” Encyclopedia, 1: 515–16. 14. Thomas Cochrane, Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialization in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). 15. Diane Lindstrom, “Manufacturing and Extractive Industries,” Encyclopedia, 1: 613–26; Robert C. Ritchie, “Maritime Enterprises,” Ibid, 1: 631–32. 16. Neil L. Yorke, “Technology: British,” Encyclopedia, 3: 235. 17. James A. Henretta, The Evolution of American Society, 1700–1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis (Lexington, D.C.: D.C. Heath, 1973), 78–79. For a good overview, see: Joseph A. Goldenberg, Shipbuilding in Colonial America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976). 18. Richard A. Lester, “Currency Issues to Overcome Depression in Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland, 1715–1737,” Journal of Political Economy, 47 (1939), 324–74; Theodore T. Thayer, “The Land Bank System in the American Colonies,” Journal of Economic History, 13 (1952), 145–59; Joseph Albert Ernst, Money and Politics in America, 1755–1775: A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973); Leslie V. Brock, The Currency of the American Colonies: 1700–1764: A Study in Colonial Finance and Imperial Relations (New York: Arno Press, 1975). 19. David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 20. Philip D. Morgan, “Bound Labor: British and Dutch,” Encyclopedia, 2: 24. 21. For good books on slavery and American development, see: Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Kenneth Gordon Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Holiday House, 1970); Michael Craton, The Sinews of Empire: A Short History of British Slavery (New York: Anchor Press, 1974); Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Barbara Solow, ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Edward Reynolds, Stand the Storm: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Elephant Paperbacks, 1992); Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York: Touchstone Book, 1997); David Eltis and David Richardson, The Atlas of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010); William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2013). 22. Bruchey, Enterprise: The Dynamic Economy of a Free People, 73. 23. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ed. R.H. Campbell, A.S. Skinner, and W.B. Todd, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 564.

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24. For the best overviews, see: Edwin J. Perkins, The Economy of Colonial America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); John J. McCusker, and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 25. Harry Carman, ed., American Husbandry (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1964), 93, 319. 26. Washington to Arthur Young, December 5, 1794, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, 1745–1799, vol. 38 (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931–1944), 31, 440. 27. Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, June 28, 1793, Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 20 (Washington D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903–1904), 9, 141. 28. For good overviews, see: Louis M. Waddell and Bruce D. Bomberger, The French and Indian War in Pennsylvania: Fortifications and the Struggle during the War for Empire (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1996); Rene Chartrand, French Fortresses in North America, 1525–1763 (London: Osprey, 2005); Bernard, Crochet, Vauban et l’Invention du Pre Carre Francais (Paris: Ouest France, 2013). 29. Colin G. Calloway, ed., North Country Captives: Selected Narratives of Indian Captivity from Vermont and New Hampshire (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992); Jane Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Vintage, 1994). 30. Namias, White Captives, 50. 31. For the best books on American-Indian warfare, see: John Ferling, A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980); Patrick M. Mahone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Starkey Armstrong, European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999); Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003); John Grenier, The First War of War: American War Making on the Frontier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 32. Charles M. Segal and David Stinebeck, Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977), 50. 33. Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 222. 34. “Bounty on Penobscot Scalps, 1755,” Calloway, Dawnland Encounters, 168. 35. Bernard Knollenberg, “General Amherst and Germ Warfare,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 41 (1954–1955), 489–94; Elizabeth A. Fenn, “Biological Warfare in Eighteenth Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst,” Journal of American History, 86 (2000), 1552–80; Philip Ranlet, “The British, Indians, and Smallpox: What Really Happened at Fort Pitt in 1763,” Pennsylvania History, 67 (2000), 427–41. 36. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), 158–59.

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37. Dorothy Jones, License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 38. “The Treaty of Portsmouth, 1753,” Calloway, Dawnland Encounters, 107–9. 39. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1973), 166. 40. For the best books, see: Timothy Todish, ed., The Annotated and Illustrated Journals of Major Robert Roberts (Fleischmanns, New York: Purple Mountain Press, 2002); John R. Cuneo, Robert Rogers of the Rangers (Ticonderoga, New York.: Fort Ticonderoga Museum, 1988); Stephen Brumwell, White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery and Vengeance in Colonial America (New York: Da Capo Press, 2004); John F. Ross, War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier (New York: Bantam Books, 2009). 41. Todish, Journal of Major Robert Rogers, 78. 42. William Johnson to Charles Hardy, October 13, 1755, Johnson Papers, vol. 2, 190. 43. Norman Gelb, ed., Jonathan Carver’s Travels through America: An Explorer’s Portrait of American Wilderness (New York: John Wiley, 1993). 44. Ross, War on the Run, 334. 45. Cuneo, Robert Rogers, 260. 46. For overviews of American Political Development, see: Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly of the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963); Lawrence H. Leder, Liberty and Authority: Early American Political Ideology, 1689–1763 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Timothy H. Breen, The Character of the Good Rules: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England, 1630–1730 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1970); George Dargo, The Roots of the Republic: A New Perspective on Early American Constitutionalism (New York: Praeger, 1974); Miller Perry, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1983); J.R. Pole, The Gift of Government: Political Responsibility from the English Restoration to American Independence (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983); Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Politics of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); For political parties and interest groups, see: Alison Gilbert Olson, Anglo-American Politics, 1660–1775: The Relationship between Parties in England and Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Alison Gilbert Olson, The Making of Empire: The Development and Cooperation of London and American Interest Groups (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992). For relations between church and state, see: Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1991). 47. Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, House, Cities (New York: Vintage, 1993), 6.

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48. For books on the development of American cultural identity, see: Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1975); Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Roy Harvey Peace, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); John Canup, Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity in Colonial New England (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1990); Jon Butler, Becoming American: The Revolution before 1776 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000). For books on how Americans have developed their identity by how they recall their origins, see: Terence Martin, Parables of Possibility: The American Need for Beginnings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Ann Abrams, The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origin (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999). 49. E.J. Devereux, A Biography of John Rastell (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1999). 50. H.L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (New York: Knopf, 1984). 51. Charles E. Clark, “The Colonial Press,” Encyclopedia, 3: 115. 52. Smith, Works, 3:287. 53. Bernard Bailyn, Voyages to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 199–200. 54. John Adams, The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 4 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1961), 1, 282. 55. Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), xiv. 56. Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State Making,” in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Charles Tilly, ed., (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), 42. 57. Lepore, Name of War, x–xi. 58. John Mack Faragher, ed., Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the Frontier in History and Other Essays,” (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1993). 59. Faragher, Turner, 18, 22. 60. Richard Slotkin, “Regeneration through Violence,” The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1973). 61. Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 1. 62. Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 10. Slotkin was greatly influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: MJF Books, 1949). 63. For good books on American attitudes and actions toward nature, see: Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1982); D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492–1800 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986); Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body,

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and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500–1676 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003). 64. Peter C. Mancali, “The Ecological Consequences of Economic Development,” Encyclopedia, 1: 738. 65. Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 50. 66. Steven Saunders Webb, Marlborough’s America (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2013). 67. Webb, Marlborough’s America, 305. 68. Franklin Reader, 606.

Chapter 2

Imperialism

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it.” (William Shakespeare, The Tempest)1

Although imperialism may be as old as humankind, from the fifteenth century a series of European states did something unprecedented. Portugal, Spain, France, England, and Holland forged empires that spanned the globe with colonies sustained by trade and naval power. The sun would eventually set on those empires, one by one, but not for another four centuries. Each empire came into existence by default, not design. The original lure was trade not conquest. Farsighted Portuguese succeeded in their quest to evade a succession of middlemen and buy spices directly in Southeast Asia’s markets. Along the way on the coasts of Africa and Asia they bought or seized enclaves upon which to erect trading and supply posts. To enrich themselves other European seafaring states followed Portugal’s lead. Then something unexpected happened, the discovery of the New World.2 There Spain innovated by not taking enclaves but conquering entire archipelagos and ever larger swaths of territory on the mainland. Here too other great powers sooner or later followed the leader. With the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish and Portuguese split South America north to south like a wishbone between them. By the time France, England, and Holland mobilized their own exploration then colonization expeditions, the Spanish had already colonized most of the Caribbean, South and Central America, and southern North America, while the Portuguese took Brazil. However, North America’s eastern third north of Florida was up for grabs. During the seventeenth century, the English, French, and Dutch planted colonies there. 39

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How and why did those five states do what they did? Power is the key. Each wanted more and feared losing what it had. So each sought to master a virtuous cycle that at once massed greater trade, naval, and colonial power for itself and denied those same powers to its rivals. Revolutionary technological advances gave Europeans the means to conquer people literally at the ends of the earth. The most important changes involved how ships were designed and navigated. Hulls were reinforced, deepened, and raised to plow through pounding ocean waves that might swamp the shallow-hulled oared galleys that were best suited for relatively tranquil waters like the Black Sea or Mediterranean Sea. The new oceangoing carrack or caravel style ships carried far more water, food, men, and weapons than the galleys. Formerly a vessel would have either a square or triangular sail on one mast. With the wind at one’s back a square sail caught more wind but was impotent against a wind in one’s face. A triangular or lateen sail caught less wind but was easier to adjust to tack or zigzag the vessel against the wind. New ship designs included three masts with a mix of square and triangular sails to maximize each’s advantages. Improvements in compasses, astrolabes, and quadrants along with accurate maps of the night sky by Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei gave navigators a better sense of where they were. Atop this was the revolution in weaponry. The Chinese discovered gunpowder as early as the ninth century but did not realize its potential for war. Thirteenth-century Mongol conquests carried that technology westward. Europeans first deployed crude handguns and cannons in the fourteenth century. By the fifteenth century, guns were sophisticated enough to play a decisive role in land and sea battles against enemies without those weapons. Finally, the invention of mass printing with movable type by Johannes Guttenberg rapidly spread designs for these inventions along with other technologies, ideas, and knowledge. More than anything, politics stimulated these revolutionary technological advances. After the Roman Empire’s collapse in the fifth century, Europe was fragmented into small, rival states. That incessant competition pressured sovereigns to be alert and reward those who could improve or invent better ways to win battles over territory or trade against rivals. Yet, cooperation was also important. For a couple of centuries, many European states and countless companies of armed men joined forces to reconquer the Holy Land that Muslim Arab armies had overrun in the eighth century. The Crusades lasted from Urban II’s appeal in 1094 until Muslims captured the last Christian toehold, Acre, in 1291. Although the Crusades were ultimately a military defeat, economically and culturally they enriched Europe by stimulating trade, manufacturing, finance, transportation, and learning; among the spoils were crude maps that depicted Eurasia, Africa, and even Japan, and hundreds of “lost” ancient Greek and Roman texts that the Arabs had preserved. However titanic

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that two-century struggle for the Holy Land was, an even longer religious war dwarfed it at the other end of the Mediterranean basin. In 710 Muslim armies invaded and soon overran most of the Iberian Peninsula. The war for Iberia raged on and off for the next seven and a half centuries. Christian armies did not conquer the last Muslim stronghold, Grenada, until 1492. Meanwhile, in 1453, the Muslim Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople, the capital and last stronghold of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire to cap their conquests in southeastern Europe. Christian Europe’s power balance shifted decisively westward toward the Atlantic states in the mid-fifteenth century. So as a result of a millennium of battles among themselves and with Muslims, Europeans had achieved enormous, related technological, economic, cultural, and military developments that surpassed those of other civilizations around the world. Yet, if they now had the means of round-the-world imperialism, what compelled Europeans actually to that end? Profit was the key motive, bolstered by the Christian mission to save souls and the exhilaration explorers experienced in discovering unknown lands and peoples. The Ottoman Empire lay astride and enriched itself as the middleman in the spice trade from Southeast Asia to European markets where there was high demand. European spice merchants could only dream of somehow outflanking the Turks and reap vast riches for themselves. One country was best positioned to do so. Portugal was a small kingdom facing the Atlantic Ocean at southwest Europe’s far end.3 The man known as Henry the Navigator was third in line for the Portuguese throne. He earned his nickname by promoting naval education and expeditions that from the early fifteenth century each year or so sailed further south or southwest into the Atlantic, and along the way discovered and colonized the Madeira, Azores, Canary, and Cape Verde Islands, and traded for gold, ivory, and slaves with West African states. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias reached Africa’s southern tip. From 1497 to 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around southern Africa and across the Indian Ocean to reach India, fill his ship’s hull with spices, silks, and other exotic goods, and return to reap a huge profit in Lisbon. That inspired the dispatch of increasingly larger expeditions. The Portuguese were able to sail ever further by a stepping stone series of trading and supply forts that they established either by treaty or conquest along the African and Asian coasts that by 1543 reached Japan. One man was critical for leading Spain’s way to become the world’s first global empire.4 Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa into a merchant family. He went to sea as a teenager and for several decades sailed on merchant ships that crisscrossed the Mediterranean or reached the Canary Islands, England, and even Iceland. He became obsessed with the idea of sailing west to the Far East. Critics dismissed the notion as an impossible dream

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because no ships could carry enough food and water to traverse 10,000 miles of landless ocean to get there. Columbus countered with convoluted calculations that Japan was only 2,000 miles from the Canary Islands. The naysayers were right and Columbus was wrong about the direct distance westward from Europe to Japan. What neither imagined were the continents of North and South America that lay in between. After a decade of lobbying and relobbying various sovereigns, Columbus finally received the sponsorship of Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella for his voyage. With three vessels under his command, he set forth in August 1492, the same year that the last Muslim stronghold in Spain surrendered. The expedition officially discovered the New World somewhere in the eastern Bahama Islands on October 12, sailed on to Cuba, and then returned to Seville in March 1493 with the extraordinary news. Ferdinand and Isabella backed subsequent voyages by Columbus and other sea captains that founded colonies and chartered more of the Caribbean basin. Pope Alexander VI endorsed the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas whereby Spain and Portugal split the world between them at a longitude whereby Lisbon could take most of Brazil in the western hemisphere. The Spaniards established colonies at Santo Domingo in 1494, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Jamaica in 1509, Cuba in 1511, Mexico from 1519 to 1521, and Peru from 1533 to 1535. Symbolically globalization’s first watery strand came in 1522, after the remnants of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition returned to Seville after a three-year voyage around the world. Credit for officially discovering North America goes to Ponce de Leon and his men who, in 1513, mapped the Florida coast and claimed to have discovered the fountain of youth, although apparently none lived forever. In 1519, Alonzo Álvarez de Pineda sailed from Vera Cruz east to Florida’s west coast and then counter-clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico back to Vera Cruz to determine that there was no northern sea passage. Expeditions led by Francisco Gordillo in 1521 and Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526 sailed north up the Atlantic coast as far as today’s South Carolina. Ayllón founded San Miguel de Gualdape at the Savannah River’s mouth; that first Spanish colony in North America lasted only a few months after the survivors escaped incessant death from Indians, disease, and starvation. Pánfilo de Narváez’s expedition landed in Tampa Bay in 1527, then marched north to the Apalachicola River, where the 200 survivors built boats and headed west along the Gulf coast to Galveston Bay where all perished except Álvar Cabeza de Vaca, Narváez’s deputy, two Spanish soldiers, and Estevan a black slave. In 1536, they reached the Spanish settlement of Culiacan on the Gulf of California; Cabeza de Vaca’s subsequent book about his extraordinary adventures inspired other Spanish attempts to explore North America. In 1539, an expedition led by Franciscan friar Marcos de Niza and guided by Estevan reached the Zuni Indians but turned back after they killed Estevan. Hernando

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de Soto’s six-hundred-men expedition landed at Tampa Bay in May 1539 and for four years slowly zigzagged its way across America’s southeast and lower Mississippi River valley. After de Soto died, Luis de Moscoso led the survivors first southwest as far as northeast Texas then returned to the Mississippi River, where they built boats, descended the river all the way to the Gulf coast then westward until they reached Vera Cruz in 1543. Francisco Coronado’s expedition of 330 Spaniards and 1,000 Indians headed north from Mexico City in 1540 and for the next three years explored the Rio Grande River valley, with detachments reaching the central Great Plains in Kansas, the Colorado River’s Grand Canyon, and the Colorado River mouth. Meanwhile four expeditions sailed successively further north up the Pacific coast. Hernando Cortez reached the Baja Peninsula’s southern tip in 1535, Francisco de Ulloa the Sea of Cortez as far as the Colorado River’s mouth in 1539, Pedro de Alarcón around ninety miles up the Colorado River in 1540, Juan Cabrillo up the Baja and California coasts as far as Monterey Bay in 1542, and Bartolomé Ferrelo as far as Cape Blanco on the Oregon coast in 1543. Five and a half decades passed before the Spanish capitalized on their North American discoveries. Juan de Onate led 500 settlers north to found New Mexico in the upper Rio Grande valley in 1598. After failed attempts to settle in various sites, Santa Fe was firmly established in 1609. Meanwhile another great power struggled to establish colonies on the continent’s other end. During the sixteenth century, France fought mostly defensive wars in Europe against the swelling empire of related Habsburg states with Spain, the most powerful. As for the New World, the French kings could launch only limited probes to North America’s east coast; for now the French had to accept Spain’s domination over much of the rest of the western hemisphere. In 1524, Francis I hired Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano to lead an expedition that reached South Carolina then headed north up the coast to Newfoundland and along the way discovered New York and Narragansett bays. News of that journey provoked a Spanish expedition led by Esteban Gómez but he only reached the stretch of coast between Cape Cod and southern Nova Scotia. In 1534, 1535 to 1536, and 1541 to 1543, Jacques Cartier led expeditions from Saint-Malo to Saint Lawrence Bay and up the Saint Lawrence River westward as far as the Iroquoian village of Hochelaga, Montreal’s future site, just below the rapids, optimistically called Lachine or China. Cartier claimed the Saint Lawrence region for France and during his second voyage wintered at the Iroquoian village of Stadacona, Québec’s future site. Scurvy killed most of his men and he and his surviving crew sailed back to France as soon as the ice melted in the spring. Cartier reappeared at Stadacona in 1541, this time with 1,500 settlers and supplies packed into five vessels. Unrelenting Iroquois hostility and sporadic raids that killed several score colonists finally forced

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them to sail home in 1543. That was also the fate of a separate colony founded by Jean François de La Rocque de Roberval at Cap-Rouge in 1542. Although seven decades would pass before the French established a permanent settlement in Canada, King Charles IX authorized an expedition by Jean Ribault to found a colony on America’s southeast coast in 1562. Ribault reached the St. Johns River in north Florida but decided to find a site less exposed to Spanish attacks. The expedition sailed north to found Charlesfort near the Savannah River’s mouth. Then in 1564, Rene de Laudonniere established Fort Caroline at the Saint Johns River site abandoned by Ribault. Those two French toeholds on the southeast coast were short-lived. In 1565 a Spanish armada under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés wiped them out. He established the towns of San Mateo and San Augustine near Caroline’s ruins, San Felipe atop Charlesfort’s ruins, and eventually Santa Elena on Royal Island sound in North Carolina. Avilés’s ruthless campaign was the first major deadly clash among the great powers in the New World. The following year, Captain Juan Pardo tried to assert power over the region by leading 125 men from San Felipe up the Savannah River, westward as far as northern Alabama, then back east in a loop through South Carolina to San Felipe. Realizing that they were overextended, the Spanish abandoned San Felipe and Santa Elena, and concentrated on developing Florida. San Augustine became Florida’s capital with an expanding network of missions at Indian villages from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Coast. The Spanish empire reached a dazzling peak in 1580 when King Philip II took title to Portugal and its empire when its King Henry died heirless. Spain’s power to conquer so much so quickly in the New World is best summarized by Jared Diamond’s book entitled Guns, Germs, and Steel.5 Meanwhile the French expended more lives and treasures in a failed effort to plant a colony in North America. In 1577, Henri III broke a quarter century of inattention to that continent by naming Troilus de la Roche de Mesgouez Canada’s viceroy. It took Mesgouez twenty years to organize an expedition to realize his title. He founded a settlement on bleak Sable Island a hundred miles east of Nova Scotia in 1597 and annually brought fresh recruits and supplies until 1601 when he retrieved the survivors of that venture that devoured money and lives. For more than a century, England’s exploration efforts were as sporadic and its colonization efforts as unsuccessful as those of the French.6 During the 1470s Bristol merchants dispatched vessels ever farther westward across the North Atlantic in search of fresh fishing grounds. Royal backing came in 1480, when Edward IV issued a charter to a company led by Thomas Lloyd and Thomas Croft to discover new lands. Their vessels sailed to Iceland and Newfoundland. The next official voyage did not come until 1497, when

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Henry VII sent Captain John Cabot to sail from Bristol to Newfoundland. News of those discoveries prompted Portugal’s monarch to send the brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real on an expedition in 1501 that searched for the Northwest Passage all the way from Hudson Bay’s entrance to Nova Scotia’s southern tip. That was the last Portuguese voyage into those northern Atlantic waters. As for England, Sebastian Cabot, John’s son, likely reached Hudson Bay’s mouth in 1508 and 1509, but whatever charts he brought back have been lost. A lack of interest and money prevented any more expeditions until 1527, when Henry VIII sent John Rut and his crew to explore America’s coast from Labrador to Florida. After that initial voyage Henry’s attention was riveted on his efforts to sire a male heir through half a dozen wives while tending other state affairs, with the most far-reaching being his 1534 Act of Supremacy whereby he broke with the Catholic Church and declared himself the head of the Church of England. It was another half a century before the next English expedition set forth for the New World. Although Queen Elizabeth I is renowned for presiding over England’s emergence as a naval and trade power, she was actually cautious for a couple of decades after being crowned in 1558.7 She and most of her advisers feared provoking Habsburg King Philip II who from Spain ruled a vast empire across swaths of Europe, the New World, and even the Philippines. She was forced to focus most of her foreign policy attention on Ireland which the English had been trying to conquer and colonize, and most Irish kept resisting. It was not until 1576 that she felt secure enough to authorize Martin Frobisher to set forth with three vessels to find the Northwest Passage to China. Frobisher’s 1577 expedition sailed around Greenland and on to Baffin Island, where they traded with the Inuit, but ice and dwindling supplies forced them to head back. They returned with what they believed was gold but experts declared it the “fool’s” variety known as mica. Nonetheless the following year Frobisher explored more of those icy waters and lands. That region was more extensively charted by John Davis’s expedition of 1586 and 1587. Among the information gleaned from these voyages was the richness of the northwest Atlantic’s fisheries. Lost to history is just when the first intrepid boat or boats of fishermen first sailed to those waters, but their success inspired a chain reaction of emulators. By the early sixteenth century, fleets of Portuguese, Spaniard, Basque, French, and English fishermen annually sailed across the Atlantic to scour the seas off Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Cape Cod. The fish, mostly cod, were salted and dried on nearby shores then packed in barrels and brought back to port. The biggest sales came during Catholic holidays like Easter and Christmas when dried cod or baccala was stewed with an array of spices and vegetables to become the center dish of feasts.8 Not all Englishmen who reached the New World were primarily explorers and fishermen. John Hawkins and Francis Drake gained fame and wealth in England

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and notoriety in Spain by capturing Spanish merchant vessels when those countries were at war and sometimes when they were not. Drake was the Elizabethan era’s greatest sea captain. His most lucrative coup was seizing £20,000 worth of Spanish silver in a raid on Porto Bello, Panama, in 1573. His most incredible feat was circumnavigating the world in the Golden Hind from 1577 to 1580, during which he sailed up California’s coast as far as Point Reyes thirty miles north of San Francisco. He capped his brilliant career by commanding the English fleet that defeated the Spanish armada’s invasion attempt in 1588.9 Richard Hakluyt is not a household name today but is considered the godfather of English colonialism in America. He was an Oxford University graduate, spoke six languages, served as the ambassador’s secretary to the court of France, became an Anglican bishop, and was a secretary of state for Elizabeth I and James I. Fascinated by the New World discoveries, he read everything he could find on the subject and published books in 1582, 1584, 1589, and 1600 that compiled the existing knowledge and encouraged English colonization in America for related economic, strategic, religious, and humanitarian reasons. The first English effort to found a New World colony came in 1583, when five vessels packed with 260 settlers and led by Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from Plymouth on June 11. It had taken Gilbert five years to drum up the money, men, supplies, and ships for his venture after receiving Elizabeth’s license in 1578 “to discover, finde, search out, and view such remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countreys, and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people . . . to have, hold, occupie and enjoy to him, his heirs and assignes for ever, with all commodities, jurisdictions and royalties both by sea and land.”10 They sailed for Newfoundland beyond which they hoped to discover the Northwest Passage to the Far East. What they found instead were hundreds of fishing boats from various nations dragging nets or moored ashore with the catch drying on the beach. The Newfoundland Banks was a vast shoal east of Newfoundland where the world’s richest schools of cod congregated. Newfoundland was a mostly vast windswept treeless island but the expedition identified a promising place to plant a colony at Saint John’s Bay on the eastern tip. A port at the end of that deep fjord would be protected from the worst storms. Despite the presence of thirty-six fishing vessels of mixed origins, Gilbert claimed possession in the name of Queen Elizabeth for all lands within 200 miles. He did not, however, set his men to work building homes. Diseases and homesickness ravaged his followers. After seventeen days of debating what to do, Gilbert yielded to the pressure to find a more bucolic setting. He packed his sick men aboard one vessel bound for England and headed south with the other four ships. Storms broke up two ships with all hands drowned, including Gilbert. The surviving vessels eventually returned to England to report their wretched, tragic experiences.

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Sir Walter Raleigh was determined to succeed where Gilbert, his half-brother had failed.11 In March 1584, he talked Elizabeth into transferring Gilbert’s imperial franchise to him for six years, with the promise of further extensions to reward successes. The queen also granted Raleigh permission to call the colony Virginia, to honor her acclaimed celibacy. On April 27, he dispatched an expedition of two ships captained by Arthur Barlowe and Philip Amadas with the mission of finding a suitable spot for a settlement with rich soil and mild climate somewhere midway down North America’s east coast. In July the vessels sailed through North Carolina’s Outer Banks or slender barrier islands into Pamlico Sound and the men stepped ashore on an island that the captains dubbed Roanoke.12 The Indians were friendly and interested in trade. The soil was fertile. After lingering several weeks they headed back with two natives to England where Barlowe’s enthusiastic account of their discoveries was published. Raleigh then organized an expedition to found a settlement. Captain Richard Grenville commanded the seven ships packed with 107 settlers led by Governor Ralph Lane that reached Roanoke in July 1585. The settlers erected a triangular palisade and huts within. Lane stayed to govern the settlement, while Grenville sailed back to England to gather more settlers and supplies for Roanoke. Among the passengers were naturalist Thomas Harriot and artist John White. Each left a fascinating record of his experiences, Harriot with his A Briefe and True Account published in 1586 and White with his twenty-eight surviving drawings of the native people. Unfortunately, relations between the Roanoke settlers and the local tribe got off to a bad start. An Indian stole a silver cup which Lane demanded that the chief restore. When the chief refused, Lane had his men destroy the village and kill or drive off the inhabitants. What Lane hoped to do was deter future thefts. What he instigated instead was a fierce desire for vengeance among the survivors of that attack and other Indians in the region. Indians were not the only threat to Roanoke. Philip II opened a war against England in May 1585, by ordering Spanish sea captains or port authorities to seize all English ships at sea or anchored in Spanish ports. Shortly after Roanoke’s colonists devastated the Indian village, Grenville and his crew captured a Spanish ship sailing past. St. Augustine was only about 450 sea miles away. Word of Spain’s war declaration prompted Raleigh to divert the supplies and settlers bound for Roanoke instead to Newfoundland to warn and protect English fishermen there. In the grand strategic picture viewed from London, Roanoke’s settlers would have to fend for themselves until supply ships reached them in the summer of 1586. Elizabeth and her government dispatched an expedition of twenty-five ships crammed with 2,300 troops and led by Francis Drake in September 1585. Drake’s armada first raided Vigo, Spain, then sailed westward to capture Santo Domingo then Cartagena in the Caribbean. In 1586, during the long voyage home, they burned St. Augustine, Florida, but lacked the

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supplies, manpower, and will for a prolonged siege of nearby Fort San Carlos. They then sailed up the coast to Roanoke, reaching the settlement on June 10. By this time, the settlers had exhausted nearly all their supplies and enthusiasm for the New World. They eagerly accepted Drake’s offer to sail with his flotilla back to England. A few days later a relief ship reached now deserted Roanoke; the vessel returned to England. Then in August Grenville arrived with eight ships packed with supplies. Grenville left sixteen men and sailed back to England. In London, the Virginia Company’s proprietors organized another colonization expedition, this time for Chesapeake Bay, after first stopping at Roanoke to pick up the men left behind. Captain Simon Fernandez commanded the ship and artist John White was the governor of the ninety-four men, seventeen women, and nine children departed Plymouth on May 8, 1587. After reaching Roanoke on July 18, Fernandez talked White into resettling that site. A vicious cycle of violence resumed between the settlers and Indians. On August 18, the first English child was born in the New World and was appropriately named Virginia. On August 27, Fernandez, White, and a small crew sailed for England after promising to return as soon as possible with more settlers and supplies. The war with Spain postponed any resupply efforts for the indefinite future. Spies reported that Philip II was preparing a vast armada of ships and troops to invade and conquer England. Elizabeth agreed to Drake’s request to lead a spoiling attack on that armada. On April 2, 1587, his fleet sailed into Cadiz and destroyed thirty-five Spanish vessels that were part of that pending armada. But Drake’s spoiling attack only delayed the armada’s departure. The Spanish armada of 1588 included 131 ships packed with 20,000 troops. The plan was to sail to Flanders, take on another 20,000 troops there, then cross the Channel and invade England. Had the Spanish armada succeeded in conquering England, the history of America along with the rest of the world would have been radically altered. The inhabitants of the vast swath of North America that is now the United States would most likely speak Spanish rather than English, and mostly be mired in a vicious cycle of poverty, corruption, and violence like the rest of Latin America. Fortunately, the English navy was superior in the quality of his ships, crews, cannons, and captains. The English outsailed and outshot the Spanish. Nature finished the job as storms battered the Spanish fleet, causing ever more ships to sink or smash against rocky shores. The war prevented John White from leading a relief expedition for Roanoke until 1590. What he and his men found after dropping anchor on August 15, was profoundly disturbing. The fort was burned to its foundation. There were no graves or bodies. The settlers had vanished. The only possible clue to their whereabouts was the word “Croatoan” carved into a tree but no one understood what that meant. White ordered his gunners to fire their cannons

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periodically for several days but the blasts attracted no one, English or Indian. The expedition returned to England. Over the following decades the English would hear conflicting stories from the Indians over what happened to the “lost colony.” The most convincing explanation came from Chief Powhatan of the Algonquian alliance in Virginia’s tidewater. He confessed to capturing and massacring the settlers to deter any further European invasions. The war between England and Spain continued despite, or more truly, because of the 1588 armada’s crushing, humiliating defeat. A colossal sense of Quixotic Spanish pride provoked Philip and his minions to seek vengeance no matter what the cost. But in doing so, the Spaniards simply compounded the disasters they inflicted on their own country and thus sharply diminished its power and wealth. The armadas that Madrid launched in 1596 and 1597 were smaller than that of 1588, and the English navy defeated them just as decisively. In 1601, 3,500 Spanish troops did land at Kinsale, Ireland, fifteen miles from Cork in 1601, but an army of English and protestant Irish slaughtered them and their Irish Catholic allies. All along, when English sea captains were not massing to fight the latest Spanish incursion they were attacking Spanish shipping on the high seas and raiding Spanish ports in Iberia or the Caribbean. The war did not end until 1604. The following year as the English were enjoying the peace dividend, alert officials thwarted a plot led by Catholic Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605. As the war with Spain wound down, Raleigh dispatched his latest expedition to search for the lost colony. Captain Samuel Mace and his crew reached the Carolina coast and for a month traded with the Indians. He brought back several thousand pounds of cedarwood and sassafras to be ground up and used as medicines for a variety of ailments including syphilis. The sale of those products made Mace’s journey profitable. That inspired a group of Bristol investors to send two ships commanded by Captain Martin Pring in 1603. Pring’s expedition reached Cape Cod then sailed north to Casco Bay before heading back with a load of sassafras that enriched the shareholders. In 1605, Captain George Waymouth sailed with twenty-seven men to retrace Pring’s voyage with hopes of making the same profits while scouting for suitable sites for a future settlement. Word of Waymouth’s lucrative three month voyage would inspire a group of investors to pool their resources and launch what became the first permanent English colony in America.

NOTES 1. William Shakespeare, “The Tempest,” The Complete Works of Shakespeare (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1936), 1323. 2. For primary sources, see: David B. Quinn, Alison M. Quinn, and Susan Hillier, eds., The New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612,

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vol. 5 (New York: Arno and Hector Bye Press, 1979). For good overviews of the first centuries of European discovery and conquest, see: J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450–1650 (London: Cardinal Books, 1973); David B. Quinn, North America from the Earliest Discovery the First Settlement: The Norse Voyages to 1612 (New York: Harper Collins, 1977); Geoffrey V. Scammell The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion, c. 1475–1712 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); William W. Fitzhugh, ed., Cultures in Contact: The Impact of European Contacts on Native American Cultural Institutions, A.D. 1000–1800 (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1985); D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Atlantic America, 1492–1800 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986); William H. Goetzmann and Glyndwr Williams, The Atlas of North America Exploration: From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole (New York: Prentice Hall, 1992); Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empire: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (New York: Barnes and Noble Press, 1996); Quinn, David B., Explorers and Colonies: America, 1500–1625 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2003). 3. For an overview of imperial Portugal, see: A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998). For a comparative analysis of Portugal and Spain, see: Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492–1700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 4. For interesting interpretations of Columbus, see: Samuel Eliot Morrison, Admiral of the Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1991); Kirkpatrick Sale, Christopher Columbus and the Conquest of Paradise (New York: Tauris Parke, 2006); Laurence Bergreen, Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492–1504 (New York: Penguin, 2012). For overviews of imperial Spain, see: John Lynch, Spain, 1516–1598: From Nation State to World Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (New York: Penguin, 2002); Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763 (New York: Harper, 2003). For Spain in North America, see: Philip Wayne Powell, Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: The Northward Advance of New Spain, 1500–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Mibrath, eds., First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492–1570 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1989); David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1992). 5. Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999). For the impact of European imperialism on the Indians, see: Alfred Goldworthy Bailey, The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures, 1504–1700 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969); Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Karen O. Kupperman, Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580–1640 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980); William W. Fitzhugh, ed., Cultures in Contact: The Impact of European Contacts on Native American Cultural Institutions, A.D. 1000–1800 (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1985); Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (New York:

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Cambridge University Press, 1986); James H. Merrill, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from the European Contact through their Removal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Karen O. Kupperman, Indians & English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000); Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001); Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: The Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (New York: Praeger, 2003). 6. For primary sources on English imperialism during this era, see: Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nations, vol. 16 (Edinburgh: E. G. Smid, 1885–1890). For good overviews on English imperialism during this era, see: David B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 1974); Kenneth R. Andrews and Paul E.H. Hair, eds., The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America, 1480–1650 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981); Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); John H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in North America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007); Kenneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585–1603 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 7. For the leading biographies, see: Susan M. Fetch and Donald Stump, Elizabeth I and Her Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009); Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I (New York: Ballantine, 2013); Lisa Hilton, Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2015). 8. Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (New York: Penguin, 2010). 9. Mary Frear Keeler, eds., Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–1586 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1985); John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake (New York: Henry Holt, 1991); Albert, Marrin, The Sea King: Sir Francis Drake and His Times (New York: Atheneum, 1995); Sameul Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577–1580 (New York: Walker Books, 2003). 10. Hume, Virginia Adventure, 21. 11. Mark Nicholls and Perry Williams, Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life and Legend (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011); Raleigh Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (New York: Henry Holt, 2014). 12. For the best accounts, see: David Durant, Raleigh’s Lost Colony: The Story of the First English Settlement in America (New York: Atheneum, 1981); Lee Miller, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony (New York: Penguin, 2002); Karen Kuppermann, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).

Chapter 3

Jamestown

“Because our hands which before were tied with gentlenesse . . . are now set at liberty by the treacherous violence of the savages. . . . So that we, who hitherto have had possession of no more ground than their waste, and our purchase at a valuable consideration to their owne contentement . . . may now by right of warre and law of nations, invade their country, and destroy them who sought to destroy us; wee shall enjoy their cultivated places.” (Edward Waterhouse)1 “To conquer is to live.” (John Smith)2

With his huge bushy beard, swept back long hair, broad face, confident smile, merry eyes, and short, stocky body, John Smith is among American history’s more recognizable characters.3 Indeed, he might be considered the first American with his quenchless curiosity, courage, resourcefulness, decisiveness, generosity, good humor, and search for adventure. Alongside those cherished American values, he was also at once a quintessential medieval knight and Elizabethan Renaissance man. He warred for honor but explored for the thrill of discovering and mapping new worlds. He was a self-made man who rose from yeoman to knight and was equally at ease bantering with nobles and commoners. He wrote lighthearted sonnets and stirring autobiographies. He had a gift for languages and spoke Turkish and Algonquian. He was a lusty man who reveled in the Indian custom of sending a nubile young woman to an esteemed guest’s bed at night.

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Above all John Smith was a professional soldier whose motto was “to conquer is to live.” He fought in numerous battles against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, the Turks in southeast Europe, and the French at sea. On three consecutive days, he killed a Turkish champion in hand-to-hand combat before the fortress of Alba Iulia. For those extraordinary feats, he was knighted with a “Three Turk Head” blazon. The Turks eventually captured and enslaved him but after a year he escaped and journeyed across Russia to the Baltic where he hopped a ship bound for England. He had that rare critical ability to assess a dangerous situation at a glance and then decide how best to overcome it; by acting boldly he avoided the Scylla and Charybdis of rashness or timidity. The book that most influenced him was Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. He understood that psychology was power’s critical dimension and that brains trumped brawn in most struggles. He was adept at emotionally manipulating friends and foes alike, playing on their desires, fears, hatreds, shame, and honor. Confidence and humor were critical to success. Expressing fear and doubt undermined the morale of one’s men and boosted that of the enemy. For all these reasons, most men in his presence eagerly followed him. One of them lauded Smith for these attributes: “that in all his proceedings, made justice his first guide, and experience his second; ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and indignitie, more than any dangers; that never allowed more for himself . . . that upon . . . danger would send them where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want what he had, or could by any meanes get us . . . whose adventures were our leives, and whose losse our deathes.”4 Smith’s most notable weakness was an inability to keep his mouth shut while under the command of fools who bungled or abused the power entrusted to them; that got him in a lot of trouble over the years, including imprisonment and near hanging for “sedition.” An unyielding dedication to morality lay beneath the swagger and violence of Smith’s life. He wrote that “we are not borne for our selves, but each to helpe others, and our abilities are much alike at the houre of our birth, and the minute of our death: Seeing our good deedes, or our badde, by faith in Christ’s merits, is all we have to carrie our soules to heaven, or hell. Seeing honour is our lives ambition; and our ambition after death is to have an honorable memorie of our life: and seeing . . . we would bee abated of the dignities and glories of our Predecessors; let us imitate their vertues to bee worthily their successors.”5 He had crammed several lifetimes of adventures into his twenty-seven years when he embarked for America. He felt immediately at home in that mesmerizing land. He quickly mastered the skills of American wilderness survival, diplomacy, and warfare. Although at times he fought fiercely against the Indians, he deeply admired and enjoyed their company and

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culture. For what became America, no one was more responsible for its first colony’s survival than Captain John Smith. King James I issued a charter to the Virginia Company on April 10, 1605 for a swath of North America one hundred miles inland from the Atlantic coast between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels latitude or from today’s Cape Fear, North Carolina to Eastport, Maine.6 The Virginia Company included two groups of investors, one in London and the other in Plymouth. They split the territory in two overlapping shares, with the London branch’s between the thirty-fourth and forty-first parallels, and the Plymouth branch’s between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth parallels. The London branch most prominently included Thomas Gates, George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, Edward Wingfield, and Thomas Smythe, and the Plymouth branch Thomas Hannam, Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham. The Plymouth branch would need fifteen years to plant a lasting colony in its cession. Not so the Virginia branch which had the decisive mix of money and leaders to do so two years after getting permission. The expedition of three vessels and 144 crew and settlers sailed from London on December 20, 1606. The vessels included the 120-ton Susan Constant, 40-ton Godspeed, and 20-ton Discovery, captained respectively by Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, and John Ratcliffe. Among the would-be colonists were many with bloated ambitions and limited abilities. The expedition would suffer from having too many gentlemen and too few skilled laborers, farmers, and artisans. Greed was their common bond. They counted on reaping endless riches of gold and silver in Virginia just like the Spaniards had in Mexico and Peru. In that they would be terribly disappointed. The expedition sailed under sealed royal orders for the captains jointly to open and implement once they reached Virginia. On May 12, 1607, five tedious months after leaving London, the flotilla dropped anchor at Cape Henry on the south shore of Chesapeake Bay’s entrance. Newport, Gosnold, and Ratcliffe eagerly broke the seal on their orders and bent their heads to see what was there. Newport was to return with the Susan Constant to England and take on more men and supplies. Virginia would be governed by a seven man council including Gosnold, Ratcliffe, John Martin, George Kendall, Edward Wingfield, Robert Hunt, and John Smith; they would elect one among them as president. They were to sail a hundred miles up a navigable river and establish their first settlement at a site with a narrow channel and rich soil. They were to split the men into groups of explorers, builders, and farmers. Two tenets of the orders would prove to be especially problematic: “have great care not to offend the naturals” and “in no case suffer any of the native people of the country to inhabit between you and the sea coast.”7

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At the time all but one of those instructions seemed reasonable enough. The captains, especially Newport, gasped in dismay over the last name on the council list. Just how Smith wrangled a berth let alone a council seat on that expedition has been lost to history. His memoirs are silent on that critical matter and none of his contemporaries explained. What is clear is that during the long voyage Newport grew increasingly irritated by Smith’s criticisms of his decisions and had him arrested on trumped up charges of inciting mutiny, a crime punishable by execution. The thought that now he had to swallow his pride and not just release but accept Smith as an equal must have enraged Newport. The settlers disembarked to take their first steps in the New World. As they erected a cross and bent their heads in prayer a volley of arrows and war cries filled the air from the nearby forest. The men grabbed their muskets and fired back. Startled by the explosions, the Indians fled. Although no one was killed, the incident was richly symbolic of the tragedies that lay ahead, not just for the Virginia Company but for America. The Virginia Company had blundered into a region dominated by the Algonquin-speaking Powhatan alliance composed of twenty-eight villages with perhaps 14,000 people and 3,500 warriors located mostly between the James and Rapidan rivers.8 The Powhatan capital was at Werowocomoco, located inland beyond the York River’s north bank about forty miles from Chesapeake Bay. The Powhatans were largely spared from the epidemics unwittingly borne by European fishermen and explorers that were devastating tribes from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia; the vigor of the diseases diminished as they spread southward and losses among Virginia’s tribes were a fraction of those northward. Powhatan refers to both the alliance and the title of the man who led it, whose real name was Wahunsenacah. The man the Virginians called Powhatan was then in his seventies. William Strachey, the colony’s official chronicler, described him as of “a tall stature . . . of a sad aspect . . . fat visag’d with grey hairs. . . . He hath bene a strong and able salvadge . . . active, and of daring spirit, vigilant, ambitious, subtile to enlarge his dominions. . . . Creull he hath bene and quarellous.”9 When Powhatan became chief, the alliance was only six villages strong. Over the decades he wielded his military and diplomatic prowess to expand the confederacy to its height when the English arrived. Powhatan’s power was akin to that of a feudal lord. In each village a male (weroance) or female (weroansqua) chief appointed by Powhatan collected tribute in baskets of corn and, in case of war, rallied fighters. Although a village had to pay tribute, the decision for war was decided by its council of elders. At least one village in the region, the Chickahominy, was stubbornly autonomous. The alliance’s enemies included Siouan-speaking Manahoac and Monacan westward in the piedmont along the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Iroquois-speaking Susquehanna northward in upper Chesapeake Bay.

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After the English appeared, Powhatan and his council had to decide whether to welcome or expel them. That was an especially tough decision because the colonists held a power over the Powhatan that surpassed even their guns and steel. Strachey reported a “certayne Propheseise afoote amongst the people enhabiting about us . . . which his priests continually put him in feare of . . . how that from the Cheasapeak Bay a Nation should arise, which should dissolve and give end to his empire.”10 A similar prophecy circulated among New England’s Indians before the Pilgrims, the Aztecs before the Spanish, and quite likely other tribes that would be conquered by Europeans. Ironically the extraordinary power of Indian shamans to foresee the future became a self-filling prophecy since it sowed indecision and division rather than a united resolution to destroy the invaders. Another reason for Powhatan’s hesitation was his misunderstanding about the Virginians’ intentions. Perplexed he once admitted to Smith that: “Many do informe me, your coming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my Country.”11 After the attack, the Virginians hastily reembarked and sailed westward to anchor near the James River mouth. There the men assembled a shallop that had been brought in pieces from England. Newport and half a dozen men packed into the shallop and for eight days searched for potential settlement sites. They got wary welcomes at the two Powhatan villages they visited. Kecoughtan was nearby at Point Comfort on the James Peninsula’s tip. Paspahegh was around forty-five miles up the James River on a peninsula where the Chickahominy River flowed in from the north. The English and Indians exchanged goods and expressions of peace, although neither spoke the other’s language. Each was at once amused and troubled by the outlandish appearance of the other. Newport and his men were especially impressed by the wide fields where the women cultivated crops. The site that the leaders hastily picked for their settlement violated their instructions. Jamestown was located on the James River’s north bank around thirty-four miles from its mouth on Chesapeake Bay. With the river there a mile wide, the south shore was far beyond cannon range. Although the site was on a large island, the surrounding waters were mostly easily waded mosquito-infested marshes and sloughs. Worst of all, the Englishmen were trespassing on the land of the Paspahegh who lived a dozen miles upriver. Wingfield put most men to work felling trees and converting them to lumber, clearing ground, planting corn, and erecting huts enclosed by a palisade. Gosnold led twenty heavily armed men inland to scout the area. Newport and half a dozen men headed upriver in the shallop and four days later stepped ashore below the rapids near modern Richmond. The village there was headed by Parahunt, Powhatan’s son. The English experienced the same guarded welcome that had greeted them at other villages. The Indians

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eagerly accepted the beads and knives that Newport gave them. Their seeming satisfaction emboldened the intruders to erect a cross, claim the land for England, and utter prayers of thanksgiving. They then returned to Jamestown to find the company in great agitation. Bumbled diplomacy provoked the first attack on Jamestown. On May 18, Paspahegh’s chief and a hundred warriors appeared with a gutted deer as a peace offering. As the Paspahegh and Jamestown leaders struggled to communicate, a warrior tried to steal a hatchet. A Virginian ran after him, knocked him flat, and retrieved the hatchet. Another Paspahegh charged to rescue his comrade. The Virginians snatched up their muskets and trained them on the Paspahegh who stalked away hurling angry worlds. The Paspahegh avenged themselves on May 26, when around 200 warriors attacked Jamestown, killing two and wounding seventeen colonists before being driven off with musket and cannon fire. Quite likely Powhatan had authorized that attack but had not yet decided on launching the alliance in all-out war to exterminate the invaders. After the attack the colonists redoubled their efforts to erect the palisade. Three hundred foot long walls of upright eight foot split logs formed a triangle with an arrow-head shaped bastion guarding each point. Cannon barrels poked through apertures in the bastions. Narrow firing platforms lined the inside walls. The threat was not just from the land. Indians could attempt a landing by canoe or a Spanish expedition could appear in the James River. Meanwhile the Susan Constant and Godspeed sailed for England where Newport shamelessly presented a false report of a prospering colony to the Virginia Company’s trustees before rounding up supplies and recruits for the return voyage. As if the chronic danger from lurking Indians was not stressful enough, diseases like malaria and dysentery steadily sickened and killed more men. The survivors buried the dead at night so Indian scouts would not report the steady erosion of their strength. The incessant heat, humidity, and mosquitoes sapped everyone’s physical and emotional vigor. Mildew rotted clothes and tents. The river water was brackish. Provisions dwindled rapidly until mandated half-rations stretched their inevitable vanishing point. Competing with the men for food were vile stowaways that had accompanied them from England to the New World. Rats scurried down the ropes to shore, proliferated, gnawed their way into food barrels, and feasted. Atop these calamities the council’s six remaining members viciously turned against each other. Wingfield had Kendall chained aboard the Discovery on “heinous” conduct charges for which he was eventually tried and executed. Then Smith, Ratcliffe, and Martin voted to arrest Wingfield on sedition charges and impose Ratcliffe as president.12 Food was the most critical issue. Smith was charged with leading a seven man expedition by shallop to get provisions by any possible means. The

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expedition pressured the Paspahegh, Chickahominy, and Mamanahunt villages to supply bushels of corn. The men then ascended the Chickahominy River until fallen trees blocked the passage. Smith went ashore with two men then left them to go with two Indians toward the nearby village of Apokant to negotiate for food. Just as he spotted a party of approaching Indians, he heard distant gunshots. Fearing that Indians were slaughtering his companions and were about to attack him, he grabbed one of his guides and used him as a human shield as he withdrew toward the shallop. The Indians cut him off, forced him to surrender, and prodded him along a trail until they reached Pamunkey where Opechancanough, Powhatan’s half-brother, was the chief. Smith understood that his survival depended on him being not just fearless, but confident, friendly, and representative of a technologically superior culture. He seized the initiative and astonished Opechancanough by showing him how his compass worked, then explained that the earth was round and revolved around the sun, that the stars were distant suns, and other marvels. After a week or so of hosting Smith, Opechancanough and his entourage led him to Powhatan’s capital, Werowocomoco. What followed was among the more legendary incidents in American history. Smith was ushered before Powhatan who was “proudly lying upon a Bedstead a foote high upon . . . twelve Mattes richly hung with manie Chaynes of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with a great Covering of Rahaughcums [raccoons]. At his head sat a woman, at his feete another, on each side sitting upon a Matte upon the ground were raunged his chiefe men on each side the fire, tenne in a ranke, and behinde them as many yong women, each a great Chaine of white Beades over their shoulders, their heads painted in redde, and [he] with such a grave and Majesticall countenance as drave me into admiration to see such state in a naked Salvage. hee kindly welcomed me with good words, and great Platters of sundrie Victuals, assuring mee his firneship.”13 Powhatan and his council feasted with Smith as they conferred among themselves. After dinner, the mood shifted abruptly when Powhatan ordered some men to pin Smith to the ground while another bearing a war club stood over him. Then Pocahontas, Powhatan’s favorite daughter, threw herself on Smith and pleaded for his life. Powhatan granted it. Most likely Powhatan staged the incident to test Smith’s courage and, if he passed, provide a facesaving way to spare his life. Had Smith broken down and begged to be saved, Powhatan most likely would have nodded approval for his execution. But Smith’s fortitude saved him then as it had and would in dozens of other life and death crises throughout his life. Indeed Powhatan was so impressed that he adopted Smith as his son, Nantaquoid, appointed him the weroance of the English village, and would eventually release him with a load of corn borne by twelve warriors for Jamestown.14

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As for Pocahontas, she occupies a revered place in American history along with Sacagawea as an Indian woman whose intelligence, courage, and fortitude saved men from likely destruction.15 Smith described his savoir as “a childe of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance, and proportion, exceedth any of his [Powhantan’s] people but for wit and spirit, the only Nonpariel of his Country.”16 William Strachey, the colony’s chronicler, later described her as a “well featured, but wanton young girle” who performed cart wheels naked before the undoubtedly delighted boys and men at Jamestown.17 Pocahontas was a nickname that means vivacious and mischievous. Her real name was Matoaka or white feather, worn by girls and women with special spiritual gifts. By New Year’s Day 1608, Jamestown teetered at mass starvation’s brink. Disease had whittled the settler ranks to 38 emaciated, listless men. Then, on January 2, the survivors received help from two directions. Smith and his Powhatan escort strode into the fort while a ship packed with supplies and 120 new settlers commanded by Newport anchored offshore. Although the infusions of food and men saved Jamestown from pending extinction, the colonists still hovered near the abyss. On January 7, a fire burned down much of the settlement and the supplies. In February, Smith arranged a meeting between Newport and Powhatan. Newport, Smith, and forty men sailed to Werowocomoco on the York River. Newport and Powhatan exchanged signs of peace then bags of beads and copper kettles for baskets of corn. When the beads and kettles ran out, Powhatan demanded guns. Over Smith’s protests, Newport agreed to exchange guns for corn. An Englishman was left behind and an Indian was brought back to Jamestown, each to act as a hostage to help maintain peace. In April, Newport sailed with a skeleton crew for London to present his latest optimistic report to the shareholders and collect more supplies and settlers. Jamestown would need plenty of both. Powhatan sent twenty turkeys to Jamestown but requested twenty swords in return. Smith refused; rather than provide the Indians more sophisticated means with which to kill them, the settlers would further cinch their belts, and hunt, fish, and intimidate nearby villages into giving them sustenance. With summer the diseases returned and killed ever more men. The corn and other crops that the settlers planted withered. The latest crisis flared when Pasapahegh seized two settlers who had offended them and Smith dashed out with a party to free them. Fortunately no one died in the confrontation. Smith and six men set off in the shallop to explore upper Chesapeake Bay. They ascended a number of rivers including the Potomac as far as the site of America’s future capital. As usual Smith had near death experiences. A stingray he stabbed with his sword buried its barb in his shoulder and for days he lay bloated with poison and in excruciating pain. Although most Indian

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encounters were peaceful if tense, they ran two gauntlets. Indians lurking ashore unleased arrows as they tried to ascend the Rappahannock River. A storm blew the shallop into the Nansemond River mouth where warriors showered arrows at them. Fortunately the explorers suffered no casualties as they struggled to reverse course and sail away. Six and a half weeks after setting forth Smith was back in Jamestown where he was dismayed to see that conditions had worsened. The council elected him president on September 10, 1608. During his two year tenure, he diversified Virginia’s economy, expanded its cultivated land, hardened its military prowess, and mobilized its population for an array of projects for the common good. His first step was to put men to work clearing fields for crops, strengthening the palisade, and digging wells. He forged a hybrid form of warfare by uniting European firepower and Indian mobility. He trained his men to fight in pairs to take advantage of cover with one reloading and the other only firing at a clear target. The key to winning was to adapt decisively to immediate threats. For instance, during one battle when the Indians charged while protecting their upper bodies with large wicker shields, he had his men fire buckshot at their vulnerable legs. Physical conditioning was vital and here the natives had the edge. He observed how Indian women bathed their babies daily in creeks no matter how cold the water. Nearly all warriors had sinewy muscular bodies inured to extremes of heat and cold that debilitated most Englishmen. Smith tried to overcome this deficiency by rigorously drilling and marching his men.18 But Smith only resorted to violence when all other means failed to get what he wanted. He preferred to resolve conflicts peacefully. He was naturally generous, a virtue that Indians highly prized. Indeed Indian diplomacy involved the stronger party giving gifts with greater value than it received from the weaker party. An item’s value was related either to its symbolic or functional importance. Smith carefully selected goods that best flattered the recipient’s status and ego. At the same time, he followed a “broken windows” strategy of dealing with Indian thievery. He tolerated no theft, however trivial. He punished the thief if he were caught or forced the nearest village to pay for the stolen item. His intent was to impose a clear barrier between diplomacy and trade on one side, and crime on the other. Although Smith remained a devout Christian, he appreciated Indian spirituality and even more how religious leaders can manipulate their congregations with rituals and beliefs. He seized every opportunity to give Indians the impression that the Christian God was superior to their God by associating Christian rites with success in battle or diplomacy. For instance, he led his men in daily sessions of prayer and song during their sojourn with the Susquehannock. The Susquehannock associated those religious rituals with English military power. One day after a prolonged council among themselves, the

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Susquehannock “began in a most passionate manner to hold up their hands to the sunne, with a most feareful song, then imbracing the Captaine, they began to adore him in like manner [and] began an oration of their loves that ended with a great painted beares skin that they covered our Captaine.”19 Newport arrived with supplies and 70 more colonists on October 8, 1608. This time he brought men with specific skills at making glass, soap, pitch, tar, or clapboards, all commodities that could turn a profit in London. He also brought special gifts to confer upon Powhatan during a “coronation” that designated him a “king” subordinate to the English king. Smith advised him not to hold the ceremony, anticipating that it would cause Powhatan to “so much overvalue himselfe, that he respected us as much as nothing at all.”20 Newport dismissed the advice. During the ceremony at Werowocomoco, Newport bestowed upon Powhatan a scarlet coat, scepter, orb, sword, spurs, and, finally, a copper crown in the name of King James I. Powhatan most likely did not understand that by accepting those gifts and words he had surrendered his sovereignty. Instead, he probably thought that the English captain had sworn allegiance to him. Regardless, he nearly panicked when Newport had cannons fired to consummate the transfer of power. Newport then asked Powhatan to join forces in an expedition against the alliance’s enemies, the Monacan far up the James River in the piedmont. Although Powhatan declined the offer, Newport led his men upriver anyway. About thirty miles west of the falls the expedition reached two villages unaffiliated with either the Powhatans or the Monacans. After forcing the village chiefs to donate bushels of corn, the expedition returned. Newport had hoped that a common enemy would strengthen ties between Jamestown and the confederacy. Powhatan, however, was biding his time, collecting ever more muskets and munitions to the point where he was confident that his men could overwhelm the English. That just might have happened had Powhatan gotten the timing right. The colony’s population fluctuated wildly as each infusion of settlers briefly replenished ranks ravaged by disease since the previous one. Compounding that chronic problem was, as Smith explained in a letter to the London Council, the surfeit of “gentlemen” who worked little and ate much, while there were too few farmers, fishermen, artisans, and soldiers. When Smith wrote that letter, he counted 227 settlers. Disease and starvation killed most of them that winter and spring.21 Smith resorted to desperate measures to save the dwindling survivors. In January 1609, he led an expedition to get corn from the Chickahominy. When they refused to trade, he threatened to destroy their village and take the corn. The chief agreed to placate Smith with 100 bushels of corn that his own

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people needed to survive the winter. Smith then sailed to Nansemond and issued the same demand. At first the chief refused to yield, explaining that Powhatan himself had ordered the chiefs to boycott trade with the English. Once again Smith was able to extract food at gunpoint. He then led his men to Werowocomoco for a showdown with Powhatan. The York River was frozen half a mile from shore. Nonplused, Smith had his men smash the boat’s way through then stride to the village. During the fifth and last meeting between them, Powhatan offered Smith these plaintive words: “you are come to destroy my Countrie, so much affrighteth all my people as they dare not visit you: what will it availe you, to take that perforce, you may quietly have with love, or to destroy them that provide you food? What can you get by war, when we can hide our provision and flie to the woodes, whereby you must famish by wronging us your friends . . . it is better to eate good meate, lie well, and sleep quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merrie with you. . . . Let this therefore assure you of our loves and everie year our firnedly trade shall furnish you with corn.”22 Powhatan offered to trade twenty bushels of corn for twenty swords. Smith refused. That night, Powhatan and his people fled. Smith did not want to loot the village since that would trigger all-out war. Instead he marched to Pamunkey where Opechancanough and his warriors encircled Smith and his men as they approached. Smith grabbed Opechancanough, put a pistol to his forehead, and warned his warriors to stand down or he would kill their chief. They did. The English seized 279 bushels of corn and withdrew to Jamestown. Smith’s presidency ended abruptly with the arrival of Captain Samuel Argall and a shipload of fresh settlers and supplies in July 1609. Argall explained that on May 23, 1609, King James had issued a new charter that split the London and Plymouth councils into separate companies. The London council was reorganized and refinanced with new investors and was renamed the Company of Adventurers and Planters. Lord Thomas West De La Warr would eventually arrive to take command of Jamestown. Meanwhile Smith was to yield his presidency to George Percy. In consolation, Smith sought to start his own settlement with a dozen or so comrades near the James River falls on land granted from local chief Parahunt. Whimsically and prophetically he named his settlement Nonesuch. In September 1609, a stray spark detonated a gunpowder bag that Smith was carrying and severely burned him. The next month he was carried aboard a ship bound for London. He would recover, write extensively about his experiences, and, in 1614, embark on one last voyage to the New World. Conditions at Jamestown went from bad to worse after Smith’s departure. That fall’s supply ship did not arrive. A hurricane had wrecked the ship on the island of Bermuda. The survivors spent ten months living off the land and

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rebuilding their ships’ remnants into two small pinnaces. In spring of 1610, they would sail to Jamestown. The story became the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Meanwhile, the Virginians converted a nearby island into a natural pig pen that they called Hog Island. The pigs fended for themselves, foraging and reproducing. Wherever the colonists needed more food, they canoed over and brought a pig back to Jamestown. One day Indians paddled over to Hog Island and slaughtered all the pigs. That converted a worsening food shortage into a crisis. Over the winter the colony’s population plummeted from around 490 to 60 survivors. Having devoured the last scraps of food, those human skeletons broke one of humanity’s strictest taboos. Their first act of cannibalism was to dig up a rotting Indian, chop him up, and divvy the pieces among themselves. They then began digging up and eating their own comrades. Smith later learned of the horrific story and wrote that “a Salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort tooke him up againe and eat him, and so did divers one another boyled and stewed with roots and herbs.”23 At least one among the living met the same fate. George Percy, the council president, recorded that a man “had murdered his wife Ripped the childe out of her wouambe and threw it into the River and after chopped the Mother in pieces and salted her.”24 A jury swiftly found the suspect guilty and had him burned alive to deter anyone else tempted to prey on the living. The food crisis worsened on May 23, 1610, when the two pinnaces from Bermuda anchored offshore. Aboard were Thomas Gates, George Somers, Christopher Newport, William Strachey, John Rolfe, and a score of others. The leaders made the critical decision to abandon the colony. The survivors packed into the vessels with what water and food they could gather and sailed down the James River on June 7, 1610. They did not get far. The next morning they spotted three ships coming upriver. Aboard was Governor Thomas West, Lord De La Warr with 150 settlers and enough supplies to last a year; two-thirds of the newcomers were veteran soldiers. De la Warr’s most important contribution to Virginia was a revolutionary change in land policy. Henceforth, each colonist could register for a patch and own it after cultivating it seven years. The colonists now had something to fight for beyond their immediate survival and the Virginia Company’s board of rich trustees in London. De la Warr also brought a fresh perspective to the settlement. He summoned and listened to those who knew the most about native politics and customs. What he learned was that Powhatan was a confederacy in name only. Rather than a monolith, the confederacy was really a feudal-type arrangement of autonomous villages whose populations were often bitterly split over their enforced allegiance to Chief Powhatan. Most resented the werowances in their midst who extracted tribute and interfered in

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their councils. With that critical information, De la Warr adopted a divide and conquer strategy that subsequent governors followed after he left in March 1611. The first bloodshed took place on July 2, 1610, when Nansemonds captured and killed a man who strayed from Fort Algernon at the James peninsula’s tip. De La Warr and Gates bent heads to determine how best to react. They agreed that retaliation must be swift and decisive to deter other murders. Tragically, the colonists failed to distinguish aggressive from peaceful villages. They had no reliable means of knowing which villages launched and which restrained attacks against them. So they attacked those that were closest to them. Gates and his men devastated not the Nansemond village on the south shore but Kecoughtan near Fort Algernon. De La Warr then sent Powhatan an ultimatum to return all captives and muskets or face war. Powhatan responded with silence. The next nearest village was Paspahegh, whose people now were peaceful. On August 9, Captain George Percy led 70 colonists to overrun the village, slaughter fifteen or so inhabitants, rout the others including the werowance Wowinchopunck, capture “the queen,” women, children, and a man, burn the dwellings, and scythe the corn stalks. Percy recalled that the soldiers beheaded the man then, their bloodlust still unappeased, a “Cowncell being called itt was Agreed upon to putt the Children to deathe . . . effected by Throweinge them overboard and shoteinge owtt their Branes In the water yett for all this Crewellty the Sowldiers weare nott well pleased, And I had mutche to doe To save the quenes lyfe for that Tyme.”25 Percy and his men returned with the queen to Jamestown and reported to Gates what they had done. Gates “Seamed to be discontente becawse the quene was spared . . . itt was my Lords pleasure that we sholde see her dispatched. The way he thowghte beste to Burne her . . . I replyed that haveinge scene so mutche Bloodeshedd that day now . . . I desired to see noe more and for to Burne her I did not howled itt fitteinge butt either by shott or Sworde to geve her a quicker dispatche.”26 So far the war was between the Virginians and Indian villages within a day or so march or sail from Jamestown. Although most of those villages were members of the Powhatan Confederacy, they had acted independently of the Confederacy’s council so Powhatan refrained from openly supporting them. Then De La Warr provoked a war with the entire confederacy. He led an expedition up the James River to found a settlement at the falls in defiance of Powhatan’s repeated warnings over the years of the consequences of invading his own territory. A twenty man detachment arrived at Appomattac, led by Queen Oppussoquionuske. With beckoning smiles, gestures, and words the queen and other women welcomed the men; the warriors were not in sight. The Virginians eagerly set aside their weapons to enjoy the charms of the ladies. It was a

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classic honey trap. That night the warriors slipped back into the village and slaughtered the Virginians. De La Warr departed for London in March 1611. His replacement arrived on May 19. Thomas Dale had fought in various campaigns in Europe and tried to professionalize the colonial militia with discipline and drill. He organized a 120 man expedition to establish a new settlement at Henrico just below the James River falls. The Powhatan wiped out half those men. Dale was also a despot who imposed a draconian law code. He was merciless toward renegade Englishmen who found Indian life superior to the colony’s wretched existence. He had some burned to death, others “broken upon wheles, others to be staked, and some to be shot to death. . . . To terrify the reste . . . he cawsed them to be bownd faste unto Trees and so sterved them to death.”27 Wowinchopunck and his Paspahegh warriors partially avenged the previous year’s massacre with one of their own. In the summer of 1611, they wiped out a twenty-man detachment in a blockhouse on the settlement’s fringe; Wowinchopunck died in the fighting. The Indians faced a dilemma. No matter how many English they killed, their population swelled. Ships packed with more colonists annually arrived, while more colonists survived thanks to the cultivation of more land and the spread of settlements to outlying areas beyond the cocktail of diseases festering at Jamestown. Most settlements were erected on the ruins of Indian villages to take advantage of their extensive crop fields and networks of paths. The war’s turning point came in March 1613, when Captain Argall captured Powhatan’s favorite daughter by luring her aboard his ship with the promise of gifts. Governor Dale sent word to Powhatan that he would trade Pocahontas for five hundred bushels of corn and all Englishmen, muskets, and tools that his warriors had captured. Powhatan dutifully released seven prisoners along with some broken muskets and tools but said he would only yield the corn only after Pocahontas was safely beside him. Dale massed 150 men, supplies, and Pocahontas, then ascended the York River for either a diplomatic or military showdown with Powhatan. Along the way, he loosened his men against a village whose warriors fired arrows against his armada; the men killed six Indians and burned the village. Dale and Powhatan cut a face-saving deal that ended the six year war that had devastated their respective populations. Their peoples formed a familial relationship when Powhatan accepted his daughter’s marriage to John Rolfe on April 5, 1614, after receiving a pile of precious gifts. That let each side declare victory in a vicious war that both had grievously lost. Much later, Powhatan expressed these heartrending sentiments to an envoy from Dale: “he offered me a pipe of Tobacco, then asked mee how his brother Sir Thomas Dale did, and his daughter and unknowne [Grand] sonne, and how they lived, loved, and liked . . . I gladly accept you salute of love and peace, which while I live, I shall

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exactly keepe . . . he loved his daughter as his life, and though he had many children, he delighted in none such as shee . . . there have been too many of his [Dale’s] and mine saline, and by my occasion there shall never be more.”28 Since her capture, Pocahontas had become fluent in English, converted to Christianity, taken the name Rebecca, and adopted English clothes. In 1615, she gave birth to a son. In 1616, the Rolfes went to England where Pocahontas was received by the king, queen, and their court. At some point she and John Smith had a last bittersweet meeting. She had thought that he was dead and had mixed feelings that he lived. Apparently she had truly loved him and would have married him had he been willing and available. But Smith’s severe accident forced him to return to England and likely rendered him ill-suited for a marriage bed. Although he was happy to see her, at first she refused to speak with him and left to compose herself for several hours. Eventually she returned to scold him for breaking his promises to her father, but then said she would call Smith father and asked him to call her child “and so I will bee for ever and ever your Countrieman.”29 In March 1617, the Rolfes were at Gravesend, at the Thames River mouth, preparing to board a ship bound for Virginia. Pocahontas would never return to her beloved native home. An illness, probably pneumonia atop prolonged tuberculosis, killed her and she was buried in the nearby church. Rolfe left behind in Virginia two extraordinary legacies. As if the peace that he won for Virginia by marrying Pocahontas was not critical enough, he revolutionized the colony’s economy. For years he had experimented with different strands of tobacco, developing increasingly prolific and sweeter versions. Then, in April 1616, Governor George Yeardley issued two decrees that capitalized on Rolfe’s innovations. Henceforth farmers could cultivate tobacco for sale as well as personal use, and tobacco would be the colony’s currency, with its value determined by weight and quality. With their product an addictive drug, tobacco dealers capitalized literally on a captive market. Tobacco exports skyrocketed from 20,000 pounds in 1615 to 60,000 in 1617. Tobacco was the literal cash crop that transformed Virginia’s economy from hand to mouth sustenance into growing prosperity. Tobacco paid for the array of goods that Virginia’s settlers could not make themselves. The Virginia Company reaped revenues from the rising sales that helped service the soaring debt amassed over the previous decade. Virginia’s development was further boosted in 1618, when Governor Dale abandoned communalism for private property and gave each settler three acres to own and use as he pleased. That same year the Virginia Company’s trustees inaugurated the headright system whereby anyone who paid for his own passage and that of others would receive fifty free acres of land for each person. The Virginia Company rewarded all those surviving colonists from the harsh times before 1616 with a hundred acres each. That encouraged the

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colonists to spread out to farms scattered among and beyond four towns, Jamestown, Henrico, Kecoughtan, and Charles City, along with a few small settlements south of the James River. The Virginia Company initiated a rudimentary form of democracy in 1619, by establishing the General Assembly or House of Burgesses that would be subordinate to the governor and his six man council that he appointed. Although the Burgesses could pass resolutions, the governor retained the upper hand with veto power which could not be overridden. There were twenty-two burgesses or assemblymen, with two from each burgess or district; eight represented town and sixteen farm districts. Freeholders with income above a certain level could vote and those with a higher income could run for office. The House of Burgesses first convened on July 30, 1619. As irony would have it, within a month another critical event occurred that would develop into an American institution that was the very antithesis of democracy. A Dutch ship dropped anchor at Jamestown in August 1619. Aboard were twenty African slaves that the Dutch had captured from a Spanish vessel. The captain offered them for sale. Entrepreneurs bought the lot and put them to work on their farms, but as indentured servants rather than slaves. The Virginians did not then believe in slavery. That attitude eventually changed. Virginia’s government issued the first slave regulations in 1641.30 Despite these economic advances, Jamestown and the half dozen other small settlements counted only 350 settlers in early 1619. Then over the next three years, forty-two ships brought 3,570 men, women, and children. Two of three newcomers perished from the gauntlet of diseases, leaving only 1,240 survivors by the summer of 1622.31 Then one-quarter of them would die before the year’s end. The peace between the Indians and English sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe lasted merely eight years. After Powhatan died in 1618, his younger and more assertive half-brother Opechancanough became chief. Fearing that Opechancanough might launch a war against the colony, Virginia’s government unwittingly asserted policies that made that all but inevitable. In 1619, the House of Burgesses passed a law that made selling muskets to the Indians a crime punishable by death. Governor George Yeardley concocted a scheme that he hoped would diminish the Powhatan threat. He paid an Englishman living among them to damage the firing mechanisms of their muskets. The authorities would then refuse to return any muskets that Indian owners brought for repairs. To use an appropriate English expression, Yeardley’s scheme was clever by half. He retrieved few muskets while provoking Indian rage and desire for vengeance. Nemattanew was a prominent Powhatan war chief who had killed numerous English and other enemies over the years. His feats bloated his ego as he

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claimed to be immortal after applying a magic oil that made him impervious to musket balls. In 1621, he murdered an itinerant English merchant then appeared at a trading post adorned with the victim’s hat and boasted of his deed. Alas for Nemattanew, his magic oil failed him as the merchant’s two servants shot him dead. Opechancanough vowed to avenge Nemattanew’s death. The vengeance came on the morning of March 22, 1622, when the Powhatans launched simultaneous attacks on nearly all the thirty-one settlements and plantations that slaughtered 347 of the 1,240 English that day alone. Only eight small fortified houses along with Jamestown survived that assault. The governor called in the survivors from the outlying settlements for a hedgehog defense. During the subsequent weeks, the English launched a series of attacks on the nearby Chickahominy, Pamunkey, and Nansemond villages, killing as many inhabitants as possible, stealing as much food stocks as they could carry away, and destroying the rest along with the crops in the fields. The war dragged on for two years. The English did not fight alone. The Patawomec were invaluable as warriors, guides, diplomats, and translators. The Powhatan did score further victories of which the largest was wiping out a twenty-three man detachment on a corn-buying mission up the James River in April 1623. The English expanded their array of enemies, attacking Moyaone and Piscataway in November 1623. The English fought a merciless war against the Powhatans. Captain William Tucker and Dr. John Potts enticed 200 Powhatans to a peace council and during the feast murdered them all with poisoned wine. In one battle the English trapped and slaughtered around fifty Indians, then scalped them, the first recorded example of English practicing that native war custom.32 Edward Waterhouse explained the transformation: “Because our hands which before were tied with gentlenesse . . . are now set at liberty by the treacherous violence of the savages. . . . So that we, who hitherto have had possession of no more ground than their waste, and our purchase at a valuable consideration to their owne contentement . . . may now by right of warre and law of nations, invade their country, and destroy them who sought to destroy us; wee shall enjoy their cultivated places.”33 The war sputtered into 1624, with mostly small-scale raids. In July, the Pamunkey defended their village in a two day battle before the English finally drove them off then destroyed their homes and crops. Virginia soon made up the loss of life. By 1624, new shiploads of immigrants had raised the population to 1,200 inhabitants who spread among Jamestown and eighteen other palisaded settlements and scores of outlying farms. Yet the war bankrupted the Virginia Company, which had mostly hemorrhaged money over the previous eighteen years. On May 24, 1625, King James I revoked the charter and took over Virginia as England’s first American crown colony.34

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NOTES 1. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown, 210. 2. Virginia Berhard, A Tale of Two Colonies: What Really Happened at Virginia and Bermuda (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 36. 3. Philip L. Barbour, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1964); J.A. Leo Leman, The American Dream of Captain John Smith (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991); David A. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Peter Firstbrook, A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Founding of America (New York: One World Publishers, 2014). 4. A.G. Bradley, The Travels and Works of Captain John Smith (New York: Burt Franklin, 1910), 169. 5. Philip L. Barboar, ed., The Complete Words of Captain John Smith, 1586– 1631, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 361. 6. For documentary sources on early Virginia, see: Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1689 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); For the best overview of early Virginia, see: Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia, vol. 2 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); See also: Wesley Frank Craven, The Virginia Company of London, 1606–1624 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 1993); Ivor Noel Hume, The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne, An Archeological and Historical Odyssey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); David A. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). 7. “Instructions, by way of advice for the intended Voyage to Virginia,” 1606, Edward Arber, ed., The Travels and Works of Captain John Smith, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1910), 1, 34. 8. For the best accounts of Virginia’s Indians and their relations with the colonists, see: J. Leitch Wright, The Only Land They Knew: The Tragic Story of the American Indians in the Old South (New York: Free Press, 1985); Helen C. Roundtree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989); Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990); James Axtell, The Rise and Fall of the Powhatan Empire in Virginia (Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1995); Frederick W. Gleach, Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997); Helen C. Rountree, and E. Randolph Turner, Before and After Jamestown: Virginia’s Powhatans and Their Predecessors (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002). 9. Louis B. Wright, ed., William Strachey, The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, vol. 1612 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1849), 57–58.

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10. William Strachey, The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannic (London: Hakluyt Society, 1849), 101. 11. Smith Works, 1, 246. 12. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown, 49–52. 13. Smith Works, 1, 53. 14. J.A. Leo Lemay, Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992). 15. For the best accounts, see: Grace Steele Woodward, Pocahontas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969); Robert C. Tilton, Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Frances Mossiker, Pocahontas: The Life and Legend (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996); Paula Gunn Allen, Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). 16. Smith Works, 1, 93. 17. Strachey, Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannic, 65. 18. William L. Shea, The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983). 19. Smith Works, 1, 232. 20. Ibid, 2, 181. 21. Ibid, 2, 324. 22. Ibid, 1, 247–48. 23. Ibid, 2, 232–33. 24. George Percy, “A Trewe Relacyon of the Precedeinges and Occurentes of Momene which have hapned in Virginia from the Tyem Sr Thomas GATES was shippwrackte uon the ERMUDES an 1609 until my depture out of the Country wch was in an D. 1612,” Tyler’s Quarterly Magazine, 3 (1922): 267. 25. Percy, Trewe Relacyon, 272. 26. Ibid, 272. 27. Ibid, 280. 28. Smith Works, 2, 248–50. 29. Ibid, 2, 261. 30. Robert McColley, “Slavery: British,” Encyclopedia, 2, 76, 84. 31. Ian Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 45. 32. James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 256, 259–79. 33. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown, 210. 34. Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of Virginia Company: The Failure of a Colonial Experiment (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1964).

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“We must look for the coming of the white men from the direction of the rising sun . . . his coming will put a bar to our happiness, and our destiny will be at the mercy of events . . . he will come to stay, and he shall want all the land, because the land will be so sweet to him.” (Indian prophecy)1 “These present solemnly . . . in the presence of God . . . covenant and combine ourselves into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and . . . to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices . . . as shall be thought ost . . . convenient for the general good of the colony.” (Mayflower Compact)2 “The more I looked, the more I liked it. And when I had seriously considered of the bewty of the place, with all her fair endow[ments], I did not thinke that in all the knowne world it could be parallel’d.” (Thomas Morton)3

Among the myriad of key historic experiences that have shaped American identity, the landing of the Pilgrims on that granite rock, the establishment of Plymouth, and the first Thanksgiving when the colonists and Indians feasted together are perhaps the most beloved.4 Americans marvel at the courage that animated those pilgrims, many with small children, to cram into the cramped, fetid Mayflower, endure months of pounding ocean waves, and then plant their community in the New World. Not greed but a love of freedom, religious freedom, drove them to overcome all those challenges. 73

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That sweet narrative is true in itself but of course is the kid’s cartoon version. It glosses over vast swaths of complex realities and harsh moral dilemmas confronting the Pilgrims with other groups and with each other. The epic journey aboard the Mayflower was not the first time they had fled their native land for an alien land. By 1620, some 400 English Pilgrims, or Separatists as they called themselves, were living in exile in Leiden, Holland, with John Robinson their minister. What did the Separatists believe that provoked the wrath of England’s theocracy, its conjoined crown and church?5 Separatism was the latest logical step in the Reformation that began in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed a list of ninetyfive criticisms of the Roman Catholic religion on the door of Wittenberg’s church. Luther expressed what countless other thinking people under Rome’s repressive sovereignty nervously thought. Corruption permeated the Catholic Church’s hierarchy from top to bottom, a corruption as theological as it was venal. Those few Europeans like Luther who understood Latin and studied the Bible were outraged to discover that many of Catholicism’s rituals, beliefs, and institutions grossly violated rather than reflected the teachings of Jesus. Luther’s heroic protest ignited the Protestant Reformation, a revolutionary movement that sought to break with Rome and practice a version of Christianity grounded strictly on the behavior and beliefs of Jesus. Tragically, Protestant sects like Lutheranism or Calvinism, named after John Calvin, could just be as zealous as Catholics in persecuting “heretics” who disagreed with them. A secular rather than religious leader overthrew Catholicism in England and established a Protestant Revolution. In 1534, King Henry VIII rebelled against Rome with his Act of Supremacy that made him the head of the Church of England or Anglican Church. Catholicism made a comeback from 1553 to 1558, when Henry’s daughter Mary I, known as “Bloody Mary,” was queen. Upon Mary’s death her half-sister Elizabeth took the throne. Elizabeth I asserted her own Act of Supremacy that restored the Church of England with herself as its head. In 1563, she issued the Thirty-nine Articles that detailed Anglican theology and powers. Puritanism arose when theologians pointed at elements of the Anglican Church’s structure, its Book of Common Prayer, and its Hymns that violated a strict reading of the Bible. Puritans did not disavow the existing Anglican hierarchy but wanted to purify it of anything contrary to scripture. Separatists were Puritans who condemned any institutional hierarchy and insisted that each church should be an autonomous, self-governing community that elected its minister and whose members were bound by a covenant of faith. They proudly took their name from Paul’s statement: “Wherefore come out from them and be ye separate, saith The Lord.”6 Aside from how Christians should organize themselves, Puritans and Separatists shared the same theology. Everyone was destined for either eternal

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salvation or damnation. Although only God knew each individual’s fate, one’s character hinted at whether one was among “the elect,” that sliver of humanity that was heaven-bound, or among the vast majority condemned to hell. Constant devotion to Godly behavior and prayer along with ceaseless toil at one’s livelihood reflected the possibility that one was among the elect. Countless other signs existed. Everything happened for a reason that reflected God’s mysterious will. Free human will was a delusion. Thomas Browne, a Cambridge University graduate, was Separatism’s first charismatic leader who was jailed 31 times before fleeing with his followers to Holland in 1582. There he had published his Booke which sheweth the Life and Manner of True Christians. However, three years later he recanted and returned to England where he served as an Anglican deacon. John Robinson emerged to lead the Separatist cause which he expressed in sermons before his congregation and later with his 1618 book The People’s Plea for the Exercise of Prophesy. The Church of England condemned but did not outlaw Puritanism or even Separatism. However, the crown did persecute leaders who appeared to advocate treason, which prompted Browne’s flight across the North Sea. Although dozens of Puritans were jailed and several executed under Elizabeth, the number of martyrs soared under James I, who as the Anglican Church’s head was far more zealous and self-righteous than his predecessor. Indeed, in 1604, he responded to a petition for religious freedom signed by 1,000 Puritan ministers by demanding that they obey the Anglican Church’s Thirty-Nine Articles. He issued this vow against those who remained defiant: “I will make them conform themselves or else I shall harry them from this land, or else do worse.”7 His crackdown in 1608 provoked Robinson and his congregation to flee to Holland. Freedom from religious persecution in Leiden led to different sources of anxiety. Holland was one of the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands fighting for independence from the Hapsburg Empire. In England the sea and warships protected the country from its enemies. Only a string of fortress cities shielded the Dutch Netherlands from the Hapsburg Netherlands stretched along the southern border. Then there was homesickness that preyed on the exiles. Most Separatists missed their homes, communities, and country, if not the government that persecuted them. They feared that their children were losing their English identity. They would have eagerly returned to their mother country if they could have practiced their faith in peace. Hoping that the king’s repression would end, they retained their English nationality but in doing so excluded themselves from lucrative professions that only Dutch citizens could perform. While the Separatists freely worshipped in Holland, they struggled to survive on the economic, political, and cultural fringe.

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Two Separatist leaders, William Brewster and Edward Winslow, remained as outspoken in exile in Leiden as they had been in England before they were forced to flee. In 1618, they published a pamphlet criticizing the Church of England. Copies smuggled across the sea and distributed across England outraged the king. James ordered a rendition operation whereby a team of secret agents would journey to Leiden to arrest the dissidents and return them to London to face treason charges. Learning of the danger, Brewster and Winslow went into hiding. Brewster resolved to put an ocean between Separatists and the Church of England. In 1619, he got two deacons, John Carver and Robert Cushman, to apply for a land grant from the Virginia Company. By then the Virginia Company was teetering at bankruptcy’s brink. Since Virginia’s founding in 1607, its governing Council had annually dispatched ships packed with settlers to the New World. A dozen years later, the investors had little to show for all their efforts except swelling debt. Desperate for income from any source, the Council agreed to license a settlement franchise to Carver and Cushing in June 1619. Separatist investors could not pool enough of their own money to purchase a ship and supplies to found a new colony. On July 1, 1620, they made up the difference by forming a seven year partnership with a group of London investors known as the Adventurers headed by Thomas Weston. The Adventurers hoped to make money by marketing in London furs traded, fish caught, and clapboards cut by Pilgrims in the New World. It took a year before the two groups could coordinate their efforts to procure all that was needed for the journey. In August 1620, the Separatists purchased a vessel, the Speedwell, in Leiden, and sailed to Southampton, where they would sail to America. Only a quarter of the Separatist community in Holland actually departed. The Speedwell was too small for all those who wanted to go along with their belongings, so they bought the Mayflower in Southampton. They first sailed west to Plymouth where they picked up more settlers and supplies. As the wealthiest man and the largest shareholder among the Separatists, John Carver was the ostensible leader. He and other prominent shareholders and deacons formed a council that made and implemented decisions. The two vessels sailed from Plymouth on September 6, 1620. The Speedwell sprung leaks and had to turn back. Aboard the Mayflower Separatists composed only about half the 102 passengers and dubbed the rest “Strangers” whose journey to the New World was animated by dreams of getting rich. What united the two groups was that almost every adult was there of his or her own free will. Only a dozen or so indentured servants accompanied them. Another common ground was that none among them were pacifists. The Mayflower displaced 160 tons and bristled with twelve cannons and there were crates of matchlock muskets in the hold. Sailing the Mayflower were

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Captain Christopher Jones and a dozen crew members. The Pilgrims hired a professional soldier, Miles Standish, to lead them in war if need be. Standish was well below average height but overcompensated for whatever jeers and bullying his diminutive statue may have attracted during his boyhood by pushing himself to be as tough, brave, and ruthless a man as possible. He had honed his military skills fighting Spaniards in Flanders. Every able-bodied male from sixteen to sixty years old was expected to serve in the militia. Given the overlapping backgrounds among the Mayflower’s passengers, the term “Pilgrim” is suitable since they were all searching for something. The Pilgrims intended to settle around the Hudson River mouth but poor navigation skills and adverse winds carried the Mayflower far off course. They first viewed their promised land on November 9, 1620. The low land that ran straight north and south before them was Cape Cod’s upraised forearm. They sailed south a day but turned back at shallow and rough seas off Cape Cod’s elbow. On November 11, they sailed past Cape Cod’s fist and curled inside to drop anchor in a deep sheltered harbor where Providence was later founded. That day, after nearly two months at sea, they rather belatedly drew up a compact whereby “these present solemnly . . . in the presence of God . . . covenant and combine ourselves into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and . . . to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices . . . as shall be thought most . . . convenient for the general good of the colony.”8 Fortyone men signed the Compact and elected Carver the colony’s first governor; the nine who did not were mostly seamen who had hired on only for a round trip. Thus did a nascent democratic community emerge from the Mayflower’s hull. The Mayflower Compact is among the critical founding documents of American political culture, akin to what the 1215 Magna Carta was to the political development of first England then Britain and America. The Pilgrims gratefully disembarked. While most people fished or gathered shellfish, Standish led 16 men to scout around the area. Carver and the council mulled then rejected the idea of settling there. Although the harbor was excellent the soil was sandy and the land was windswept. They sailed south down the bay and landed near an abandoned Indian village where they helped themselves to corn caches buried beneath the wigwams. They continued clockwise around the bay for a day before next dropping anchor. Standish and a dozen men packed into the long boat and rowed to shore. They were greeted by volleys of arrows and war cries from around 30 warriors. Standish and his men fired back. No one was hit in the exchange. The assailants were likely the warriors of the village where the Pilgrims stole the corn. Standish and his men hurried back to the Mayflower. The Pilgrims appropriately named that spot “First Encounter Beach.” They sailed up the bay’s west side until they spotted what appeared to be a promising landing spot.

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The Pilgrims disembarked at the place they would call Plymouth on December 21, 1620. It was hardly the best place within Cape Cod Bay. The water was so shallow that they had to anchor the Mayflower half a mile away and make repeated trips in the longboat to get all the people and supplies ashore. There was no nearby river that could have provided a water way inland, just a shallow creek. But they were all so exhausted from being cooped up in the ship that they just wanted to reach solid ground and begin building shelters before snow storms began burying the land. The Pilgrims erected a large communal building and a surrounding palisade atop a 165 foot hill with sweeping views of the bay and their stretch of shore. Their labor was greatly eased because the land was already cleared. An Indian village and crop fields had once occupied that site but were now mysteriously deserted. The Pilgrims attributed that vacancy to one of God’s miracles on their behalf. There was a much worldlier reason. The region where the Pilgrims settled was not unknown to Europeans. Cape Cod was passed and noted by most explorers sailing along the coast including Portuguese John Cabot for England in 1497, Florentine Giovanni da Verrazano for France in 1524, Portuguese Estevan Gómez for Spain in 1526, Portuguese Simon Fernandez for England in 1580, Englishmen John Walker in 1580, Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, Martin Pring in 1603, Frenchman Samuel Champlain in 1605, and Englishmen George Waymouth in 1605, Edward Harlow in 1611, John Smith in 1614, and Thomas Dermer in 1619. Countless other visits by European fishermen went unrecorded. Encounters between Englishmen and Indians mingled mutual misunderstandings, hopes, fears, and, sometimes, outright treachery. For instance, Waymouth’s expedition reached the Kennebec River and traded with an Abenaki village in 1605. A crew member recalled that the Abenaki were “very civill and merrie, showing much thankefulnesse for those things we gave them. We found them . . . a people of exceedingly good invention, quicke understanding and readie capacitie. . . . They behaved themselves very civilly, neither laughing nor talking all the time, and at supper fed not like men of rude education. Neither would they eat or drinke more than seemed to content nature.”9 Despite these good impressions, Weymouth increasingly worried that the arrival of ever more Indians aboard was the prelude to an attack. He ordered them off. Then a few days later he enticed five Abenaki aboard and had his men seize them to take to England, all the while teaching them English to serve as future guides. The anger provoked by Waymouth’s belligerence and kidnappings was likely a major reason why the first attempt to plant a colony in the region failed. George Popham and Raleigh Gilbert tried to establish the Sagadahoc colony on the Kennebec River in August 1607. Popham and a dozen men died from disease while Abenaki killed eleven others. The company broke up into

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bitter factions over whether to stay or leave. The great fear was that Micmacs and French would join the Abenaki in wiping them out. In spring 1608, the survivors agreed to abandon the colony. Two extraordinary forces, nature and prophecy, boosted the odds that the Pilgrims and subsequent shiploads of settlers would survive and eventually thrive and spread across the region. A plague, likely bubonic, devastated the native peoples from 1616 to 1619, wiping out as many as nine of ten inhabitants of some villages. The survivors bore a longstanding prophecy among the region’s tribes that one day “we must look for the coming of the white men from the direction of the rising sun . . . his coming will put a bar to our happiness, and our destiny will be at the mercy of events . . . he will come to stay, and he shall want all the land, because the land will be so sweet to him.”10 Two other powerful forces favoring the Pilgrims were where they settled and who they settled among. Plymouth was on the northeast fringe of Wampanoag territory whose central cluster of villages was around Narragansett Bay’s north side. The Wampanoag numbered several thousand warriors before the plague, but now could field only several hundred. The head chief or sachem was Massasoit at the village of Pokanoket. The Wampanoags were aligned with the Nauset tribe on Cape Cod and the Massachusetts tribe north of Plymouth. Their foes were the Narragansetts whose land stretched westward from the bay named after them. One key reason why Massasoit welcomed rather than wiped out the Pilgrims was that he hoped to gain guns and an alliance with them against the Narragansetts. So Plymouth was nestled among three allied tribes. That would be a safe haven from distant potential threats as long as peace prevailed between the Pilgrims and their neighbors. The Pilgrims passed a miserable first winter in their new home. They mostly huddled in smoky shelters or trampled paths through snow to gather firewood. They might have all perished of starvation had they not uncovered corn caches in the abandoned Indian village. Nonetheless, sickness killed nearly two of every three people. Indians occasionally lurked in the woods and stole tools that had been foolishly left there. They received an unexpected gift in the spring. Samoset was an Abenaki who had been captured by English fishermen and was finally released among the Wampanoag. In March 1621, he entered Plymouth and in broken English introduced himself. A few days later he returned with Squanto, a Wampanoag who was the last survivor of his village called Patuxet which the pilgrims had taken over. Squanto had been captured by the Spanish, sold to the English, and was eventually returned. Although history celebrates Samoset and Squanto for teaching the Pilgrims native techniques for planting, hunting, and gathering, their most important role was diplomatic. They conveyed an invitation from Massasoit for an envoy to journey to Pokanoket for talks.

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Edward Winslow journeyed with his guides to spend several days with Massasoit. He carried with him knives, alcohol, and other items that might strike the sachem’s fancy. Massasoit was pleased with the gifts and accepted Winslow’s invitation to visit Plymouth. Massasoit, Winslow, and several score warriors reached Plymouth on March 22. After several days of talks, Governor Carver and Sachem Massasoit shook hands on a deal whereby each side promised to keep peace with the other, punish any of their people who committed crimes against the other, and join the other in war if the other was unjustly attacked. Massasoit planted corn in a nearby field to symbolize his permission for the Pilgrims to settle on Wampanoag land. With a skeleton crew, the Mayflower sailed for England on April 5 and reached London a month later. Captain Jones reported to the company’s trustees all that had happened over the past seven months. The trustees were disappointed that the Mayflower was not packed with furs, dried fish, and other products that could be sold to help service the Company’s worsening debt. Director Weston wrote a polite but pointed letter to Plymouth’s governor: “And likewise give us account as . . . how our moneys were laid out. . . . And consider that the life of the business depends on the lading of this ship, which if you do to any good purpose, that I may be freed from the great sums that I have dispersed . . . I promise you that I will never quit the business though all the other Adventurers should.”11 Weston and his associates would dutifully pack another ship with more settlers and supplies bound for Plymouth. Meanwhile, in April a disease killed Governor Carver and the council elected William Bradford to take his place. Sometime in early autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims and Indians celebrated Thanksgiving for the bountiful harvest and the peace between them. They enjoyed platters of corn, squash, peas, beans, barley, venison, fish, and fowls, including turkey. In November a small ship arrived to deposit thirty-seven settlers ashore. Within the palisade were seven houses to accommodate a community that now numbered around seventy people. By allying with the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims became the Narragansett’s enemies. In 1622, the Narragansetts sent Plymouth a snakeskin quiver filled with arrows. Bradford and the council debated how best to respond. Squanto and Standish insisted that the only appropriate reply was to remove the arrows, fill the quiver with gunpowder and shot, and send it back. That idea of matching one warning with another eventually carried. At least the Narragansett had given fair notice. Thereafter the Pilgrims kept a sharp lookout. They strengthened the palisade walls and built blockhouses at the corners. Standish regularly mustered the militia for training. These deterrence measures were obvious enough. Another was more debatable. The colony adopted a no-tolerance policy toward Indian thefts of Pilgrim property. A

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prompt stern response might deter further thefts or escalate a minor incident into a crisis and even war. The Pilgrims redoubled their defense measures after word arrived that summer of the massive Indian revolt against Virginia in the spring that wiped out nearly a third of the settlers. The geopolitics got more complicated when John Sanders and sixty men arrived to found a non-Separatist settlement at Wessagusset near the Massachusetts village of Neponset about twenty-five miles up the coast. Thomas Weston was the lead investor financing that colony. Wessagusset competed with Plymouth for the Indian trade in fish, furs, and corn. Each community sent complaints about the other back to London. The essay “Good News from New England” that Edward Winslow sent to London for circulation among government officials and leading merchants in 1624, justified Plymouth’s policies and excoriated those of Wessagusset. Meanwhile, Winslow earned Massasoit’s devotion to him and Plymouth by purging the chief of a disease that nearly killed him; Winslow scraped the fungus from Massasoit’s tongue and mouth that kept him from eating, then spoon-fed him broth until he recovered. That year in Plymouth, however, the only threat was when the Separatists and Strangers nearly came to blows. The Strangers had boisterously celebrated Christmas with drinking, eating, singing, and sports. This offended the Separatist belief that celebrating Christmas was blasphemous. With the Separatist men behind him, Bradford actually confiscated the game equipment and forbad any further celebration. The Strangers yielded before Bradford’s formal authority and the Separatist’s superior numbers. The Strangers undoubtedly remarked on the hypocrisy of the Separatist insistence that everyone conform to their version of Christianity, having been victims of Anglican intolerance in England. Meanwhile the Massachusetts and Nauset soured steadily on having the English for neighbors, especially the rowdy, larcenous mob at Wessagusset. They mulled the idea of launching a surprise attack that wiped out both settlements the same day. The Pilgrims got word of that plot by an Englishman living with the Massachusetts. Bradford, Standish, and the rest of the council debated how to thwart that threat. Standish argued that only a hard stand and decisive act could deter an attack, while appeasement would invite one. Wituwamat was the Massachusetts chief who most zealously urged war against the colonists. Bradford and the council approved Standish’s plan to lure Wituwamat into a trap. Standish invited Wituwamat and his entourage to dinner at Wessagusset, ostensibly to promote peace. At his signal, he and his men slaughtered Wituwamat and five warriors and captured several others, including wives and the chief’s brother. Standish cut off Wituwamat’s head and after returning triumphantly to Plymouth, displayed it high atop a pole in the village center. He had the brother hanged and the body left to rot. He released the

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women to warn the Massachusetts chiefs that he would wipe out their entire tribe if they harmed a single settler. Those murders could have provoked a war of vengeance by the Massachusetts against the colonists. Yet, astonishingly, Standish’s promise that the murders would deter the Indians came true. Massachusetts villages close to the colonists packed up and moved far away to land where the people felt safe. Meanwhile most colonists celebrated Standish as a hero. Not everyone backed the hardline policy. John Robinson was the Separatist community’s pastor who had stayed in Leiden. Upon hearing of the outbreak of violence with the Indians, he wrote Bradford that peace was possible only by converting the Indians to the true faith. He suggested that they were overly influenced by Standish who “may be wanting that tenderness of the life of man made after God’s image.”12 Bradford and the council agreed that conversion would at once preclude the need for confrontation and fulfill their mission to fulfill God’s will. They assigned Winslow to lead the missionary effort. Bradford and the council took a critical progressive step in the colony’s development in 1623, when they abandoned communal for private property. In Plymouth as in Jamestown, the collective experiment had failed miserably. The Pilgrim leaders finally recognized that owning and being responsible for one’s own land is a far more powerful incentive to be productive than when everything is jointly owned and supposedly worked. Communalism breeds animosities between the enterprising, responsible individuals who do most of the labor, and the indolent, who sponge off and exploit them. As in Virginia, Plymouth’s economy began to grow and diversify after people could freely produce and consume what they wanted.13 Meanwhile Plymouth’s population steadily swelled as each year a ship or two arrived with more colonists. New settlements spread further from Plymouth. Winslow led a trade mission north up the coast to Abenaki villages on the Kennebec River in 1625; he and several others sailed aboard a shallop packed with sacks of corn and returned packed with bundles of furs. Although the first colonists searched in vain for gold they eventually found a substitute worth its weight. Wampum is a tiny oblong bead laboriously made by grinding and polishing pieces of quahog clam shells and then drilling an even tinier hole lengthwise through them. Wampum comes in two colors, white and purple, with the latter twice as valuable as the former. Strings of wampum were interwoven and presented as talking points or gifts in diplomacy. The colonists put a monetary value on wampum and used it like a currency. When the Adventurers disbanded in 1626, Plymouth’s two overlapping communities formed a twelve man partnership they called the Undertakers, with eight Separatists including Bradford, Standish, and Winslow, and four Strangers, to buy out the outstanding stock shares and £1,800 in debt. To

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pay what they owed then earn a profit, the Undertakers asserted a monopoly over the fur trade. They dispatched merchants along the New England coast and up its rivers to trade for furs from the Indians. Furs, primarily beaver pelts, played a critical role in making Plymouth economically viable much as tobacco did for Virginia. The price for a beaver pelt quadrupled from five shillings a pound in 1621 to twenty shillings a pound in 1628. From 1630 to 1636 alone, the colony sent £10,000 worth of furs back to England. But ultimately Plymouth survived and eventually thrived largely because of the outstanding leadership of three men, John Bradford for his governing skills, Miles Standish for his military skills, and John Winslow for his diplomatic skills. Those same governing, military, and diplomatic skills were also critical for Virginia’s development, although there not three men but one man exemplified them, Captain John Smith. The biggest perceived threat by Plymouth’s leaders was not the Indians but a free-spirited Englishman named Thomas Morton.14 He was born into a wealthy Anglican family, studied law at London’s Clifford’s Inn, and reveled in the Elizabethan Renaissance of learning, art, literature, theater, and other sensual delights. In 1622, he first visited Plymouth aboard a supply vessel and was ecstatic by what he found: “The more I looked, the more I liked it. And when I had seriously considered of the bewty of the place, with all her fair endow[ments], I did not thinke that in all the knowne world it could be parallel’d. For so many goodly groves of trees, dainty fine round rising hillocks, delicate fair large plaines, sweet crystal fountains, and clear running streams that twine in fine meanders through the meads. . . . For in mine eye it was Nature’s masterpiece.”15 Morton returned with a group of settlers led by Captain Richard Wollaston in 1624. Wollaston acquired land from the Indians on Boston bay’s south side at today’s Quincy, and named the settlement Mount Wollaston. Morton led a revolt against Wollaston after learning that he had sold indentured servants among them to Virginia. After Wollaston fled, Morton assumed leadership over the settlement. He then did something revolutionary. He renamed the settlement Merry Mount, dedicated it to self-fulfillment, pleasure, and love, and presided as the “lord of misrule.” All members were free to believe and behave as they wished, restricted only by the rule not to harm others. Morton penned and read aloud at boisterous community gatherings satirical and ribald poems that mocked the Puritans and other authoritarians. He also issued paeans to: “Drinke and be merry . . . boyes. Let all your delight be in the Hymens joys. Joy to the Hymen now the day is come. About the merry Maypole take a Roome.”16 In between orgies he got rich selling land to eager new members and guns to Indians for furs, while the settlers produced ample crops on their farms. He genuinely respected and liked the Indians who he found

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“more full of humanity, then the Christians, & haue had much better quarter with them. . . . The more Salvage the better quarter, the more Christian the worser quarter.”17 Such free thinking and joyful natural behavior was anathema to the Puritans especially when it was just 30 miles or a long day’s trek north from Plymouth. Governor Bradford condemned Morton and his followers for setting up “a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together like so many ferries or furies rather; and worse practices. . . . Morton likewise to show his poetry composed sundry rhymes and verses, some tending to lasciviousness, and others to the detraction and scandal of some persons, which he affixed to the Maypole.”18 He and his council realized in horror that Merry Mount threatened their stern Puritan theocracy on profound interrelated political, social, economic, theological, and sexual levels. They resolved to destroy Merry Mount or else “all the scum of the country, of any discontents, would flock to him from all places, if this nest was not broken.”19 In June 1628, Captain Standish led militiamen to Merry Mount, hacked down the May Pole, arrested Morton, and dragged him off to Plymouth for trial. He was found guilty of selling guns to the Indians and sentenced to be imprisoned on an island off New Hampshire’s coast until he could be deported to England. Merry Mount continued to prosper without their leader although doubtless with much of the animating spirit gone. The Puritans remained harshly jealous that Merry Mount’s fields yielded crop surpluses while their own often withered and they starved. During the winter of 1629 Captain John Endicott and the militia invaded Merry Mount and at gunpoint robbed the settlers of their surplus food. Morton reappeared at Merry Mount in 1630 and tried to rally the demoralized, depleted settlers. Learning of his return, the Massachusetts Bay Colony arrested and deported him. In London, Morton lobbied the government for compensation for his losses. In response to the complaints of Morton and others, King Charles I revoked the Plymouth colony’s charter in 1635. Morton further avenged himself with his 1637 book, New English Canaan, that ridiculed Puritan authoritarianism, pretentions, and hypocrisies. However, Morton’s belief that he had humbled the Puritan authorities proved to be a delusion. In 1642, he was promptly arrested and charged with sedition after he disembarked in Boston. This time the Puritans finally broke the “Lord of Misrule.” Morton begged forgiveness, received clemency, and was allowed to live on an island off Maine’s coast where, in 1647, he died in solitude and poverty at age seventy-one. And thus did Puritanism vanquish libertarianism in America, a conquest that persisted for another three and a half centuries until a generation of free spirits finally shattered those chains.

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NOTES 1. Colin G. Calloway, ed., Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1991), 29. 2. Jeffrey D. Schultz, John G. West, and Iain Mclean, eds., The Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1999), 275. 3. Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (London: Charles Green, 1632), 41–42. 4. For the best books on Plymouth, see: George F. Willison, Saints and Strangers (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1945); George D. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620–1691 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1966); Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633 (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historical Genealogical Society, 1995); Robert Charles Anderson, The Plymouth Migration: Immigration to Plymouth Colony, 1620–1633 (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historical Genealogical Society, 2004); Nick Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, A New History (New York.: Vintage, 2010). 5. For the best books on Puritanism, see: Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1953); Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1956); Andrew Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989); Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English-Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominium: Magic and Religion in Early New England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2004). 6. King James Bible, 2 Corinthians, 6, 17. 7. Frank Lambert, The Founder’s Traditions and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003), 43. 8. Jeffrey D. Schultz, John G. West, and Iain Mclean, eds., The Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1999), 275. 9. Colin G. Calloway, ed., Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1991), 39, 41. 10. Calloway, Dawnland Encounters, 29. 11. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647 (New York: Modern Library, 1981), 102. 12. Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 134. 13. For a good overview of New England’s economic development, see: Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). 14. For leading books and articles on Morton, see: Robert Arner, “Mythology and Maypole of Merrymount: Some Notes on Thomas Morton’s ‘Rise, Oedipus,’” Early American Literature, 6 (1971), 156–64; Richard Drinnon, “The Maypole of

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Marrymount: Thomas Morton and the Puritan Patriarchs,” Massachusetts Review, 21 (1980), 382–410; Donald Conners, Thomas Morton (New York: Twayne, 1969). 15. Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (London: Charles Green, 1632), 41–42. 16. Morton, New English Canaan, 91. 17. Ibid, 77–78. 18. Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, 227. 19. Ibid, 230.

Part II

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

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Developments

“For wee must consider that wee shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are uppon us.” (Governor John Winthrop)1 “You know that we can live without you, but you cannot live without us.” (Governor Thomas Dongan)2

The fate of Thomas Morton and Merry Mount was a harbinger of future conflicts. The critical struggle for power among the American colonists during the seventeenth century was between the vast majority who sternly upheld the prevailing theocracy and communitarianism against a growing minority of those who championed humanism and individualism. That struggle intensified as the colonists emerged from the early years of desperately trying to survive into decades when the population swelled steadily in numbers, affluence, and security. As people became more prosperous, critical thinkers among them sharply questioned the prevailing hierarchy of theological, political, and economic power. And like Morton, most of them paid harsh penalties for challenging those prevailing powers. The first wave of the Great Puritan Migration dropped anchor before Salem, Massachusetts, on June 22, 1630.3 Packed aboard in eleven vessels were over 700 settlers, of whom 200 would be dead before the following spring and another 80 would crowd onto the first ship returning to England. Those grim survival odds did not deter another 21,000 migrants over the next decade, pushed by worsening anti-Puritan measures by King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud, and pulled by the hope of somehow creating a better life in the New World. 89

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Leading that first wave was John Winthrop.4 For the next nineteen years until his death in 1649, he was the most powerful of Massachusetts’ coterie of Puritan leaders whether he served as governor or deputy governor. He was highly qualified to rule. He was born into a wealthy family in Groton, Suffolk, in 1587. He followed his father’s prominent footsteps into a legal career after studying at Cambridge University’s Trinity College then London’s Grey’s Inn. In London, his fine mind and integrity won him a position at the prestigious Court of Wards and Liveries. He was much more than a first-rate lawyer and politician. The natural and supernatural world fascinated him. He was an amateur scientist who dabbled in astronomy, medicine, and alchemy. He was the first person known to take a telescope to America where he exalted in exploring the stars and planets in pitch-black moonless night skies. He was a passionate man. At the young age of eighteen, he contracted the first of what would be three marriages to morally release “the lusts . . . so masterly as no good could fasten upon me.”5 Among his children, his namesake would be the most prominent as one of Connecticut’s founders and governors. Winthrop was among the investors in the New England Company, soon renamed the Massachusetts Bay Company, which the king chartered in 1628. That charter included the astonishing clause that entitled the holders to a swath of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels latitude. In March 1629, Charles I dissolved parliament and had arrested any “dissenters” who defied or criticized the Church of England’s authority. That prompted Winthrop to write and publish an essay that cited a dozen reasons to emigrate to the New World. In October 1629, the Massachusetts Company elected him the future settlement’s governor. The Arbella was Winthrop’s flagship for the flotilla that sailed on April 8, 1630. Either before leaving or aboard Winthrop penned what became among the most acclaimed expressions of American values. In his sermon called “A Modell of Christian Charity,” he unveiled the principles and rules that would govern the colony. With an astonishing mix of chutzpah and vision, he expressed American exceptionalism: “For wee must consider that wee shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are uppon us.” What that imagined audience was watching was how truly God’s chosen people, the Puritans, adhered to His commands. Although Winthrop guaranteed that everyone would have land of their own, the shares inevitably would differ because that was God’s will: “God Almightie in his most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed the Condition of mankind as in all time some must be rich, some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie, others meane and in subjection.” What bound them was love and devotion first to God and then to each other: “Conformity with the . . . end we aime at . . . in our duty of love . . . wee must be knit together in this worke as one man, we must entertaine each

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other in brotherly Affection, wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, wee must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekenes, gentleness, patience and liberality, wee must delight in eache other, make others Condicions our owne: rejoyce together, mourne together, labour, and suffer together, allways having before our eyes our Commission and our Community in the worke.”6 Winthrop’s first critical decision in the New World was for his followers not to reinforce the existing settlement at Salem but to start a new one at what he was told was a promising site in a bay twenty miles down the coast. On the bay’s western shore was a large, slightly hilly headland with freshwater springs, fields for pasture and plowing, patches of trees for firewood and lumber, and a narrow neck to the mainland which was ideal for defense. Winthrop and most colonists would disembark there to establish Boston, the capital, while the rest would settle in towns along the Charles and Mystic rivers that flowed from the west and north, respectively just above Boston. Massachusetts was at once a theocracy and democracy. Although church and state were essentially one, the positions were elected by a limited franchise. Governing the colony was a General Court that combined executive, legislative, judicial, and theological powers, and initially included the governor, deputy governor, and eight assistant magistrates. That governing structure was mirrored in each town which was autonomously run by “selectmen” who chose one among them to lead. Each church had a similar governing structure with the positions elected by its male members. Only “freemen” could vote in annual town and colony elections for the selectmen and assistants, respectively, who in turn elected the executives. Freemen were all those who were sixteen years and older, church members, and had at least £20 of property, requirements that limited the franchise to about one in five men. Church ministers were prohibited from simultaneously holding government posts. Nonetheless, Puritanism determined the decisions of those in power. Winthrop was a complex, paradoxical man. He was at once a humanist, a humanitarian, and an authoritarian whereby circumstances determined which dimension dominated. In his official duties authoritarianism prevailed to the point where he violated the law when he could get away with it. The charter called for the election of the governor and deputy by the colony’s freemen, not the assistants. He concealed that for four years. A crisis erupted in 1634 when some suspicious freemen asked Winthrop to show them the charter. He reluctantly yielded to their request. Discovering that Winthrop and his assistants had hoodwinked them profoundly upset them. When the freemen demanded that Winthrop explain why he had deceived them and violated the charter, he expressed his belief that assistants were better qualified than freemen to make such a critical choice. The freemen pressured Winthrop to setup a bicameral legislature with an upper house called the Court of Assistants and

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a lower house called the General Court with two delegates elected by each town’s freemen. The next significant political development came in 1642, but it was hardly progressive. The General Court codified its laws in accord with Biblical teachings, especially the Old Testament books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers with their “Show no pity: A Life for a life” notion of justice.7 Not just murderers would be executed but also adulterers, blasphemers, sodomites, witches, and anyone sixteen years or older who cursed or struck his parents or was rebellious or stubborn. In 1643, Massachusetts’s government took the extraordinary step of essentially asserting its sovereignty by removing any reference to the king from the pledge of allegiance to itself. Puritans saw no hypocrisy in denying others the freedom with which they practiced their version of Christianity. Indeed anyone who failed to conform to Puritanism was automatically an antinomian which means “against the law.” The Puritans who dominated the colonies of Plymouth, New Haven, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut rejected any pressure to accept Anglican bishops and hierarchy. Indeed they did everything possible to ensure that New England was their own exclusive religious sanctuary. Each town was required to establish and maintain a Puritan church with taxes collected from all local householders regardless of their faith. Puritanism was a paranoid theology. Ironically Puritans were dissidents who could not abide any dissent against themselves within the communities that they controlled. Preachers extolled their congregations to watch and suspect each other for any sinful transgressions. Banishment was the fate for lucky dissenters, execution for those who refused to stay away like Quakers or those convicted of witchcraft. The General Court and lesser courts determined who was guilty of such crimes. The defiance of that repressive theocracy by courageous dissidents and their followers was critical to the development of American values, institutions, and power. That struggle between liberals and theocrats persisted for generations. Theocrats would prevail throughout the seventeenth century by persecuting, exiling, and even executing the dissidents. But the power balance between them would shift decisively in the eighteenth century. Roger Williams grandfathered religious freedom and the separation of church and state in America.8 Although most Americans celebrate him as an early liberal hero, his contemporaries mostly scorned him. Theological Cotton Mather condemned him as “the first rebel against the divine church under establishment in the wilderness.”9 Williams was born in 1603 to a Puritan family headed by a tyrannical father in Smithfield on London’s outskirts. Although his own family escaped persecution, several relatives were burned alive for heresy. He learned to read, write, do sums, and express his learning

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at a very young age. The prodigy was only thirteen years old when the brilliant jurist Edward Coke learned about him and hired him as his assistant. Coke sponsored his protégée’s education at Charterhouse School in London and Cambridge University’s Pembroke College. Coke’s judicial philosophy would have a powerful impact on America’s future constitution. It was Coke who coined the phrase “an Englishman’s home is his castle,” meaning that there he enjoyed rights of privacy and property that could only be violated by a due process of judicial proceedings grounded on probable cause of criminality. He also originated the concept of judicial review whereby the courts determined any law’s constitutionality. He drafted the Virginia Company’s 1606 charter which included the tenet that settlers “shall have and enjoy all Liberties, Franchises, and immunities . . . as if they had been abiding and born within this our Realm of England.”10 He served in a succession of high government posts including the House of Commons speaker, solicitor general, attorney general, chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, chief justice of the King’s Bench, and membership within the King’s Privy Council. As Coke’s privileged assistant, Williams was poised to follow in his mentor’s footsteps. Coke’s insistence on the rule of law, which subjected even monarchs, got him in trouble first with James I and then Charles I. That along with the worsening persecution of Puritans prompted Williams to sail for America. Roger Williams and his wife Mary stepped ashore in Boston in January 1631. He soon provoked his first controversy when he rejected Governor Winthrop’s offer to serve as an assistant in the Boston church because it was not Separatist enough. Having the purity of their Puritanism questioned insulted the pride of Winthrop and the other colonial elite. Williams accepted a teaching post at Salem’s church after being convinced that it met his Separatist standards. But, under the General Court’s pressure, the church withdrew its offer. Williams and Mary then headed to Plymouth hoping that he would find a post there. Fortunately, Governor William Bradford recognized Williams’ genius and hired him. Indians fascinated Williams and he eagerly accepted a post of being Plymouth’s envoy to them. He had a gift for languages and swiftly acquired fluency in Algonquian. His attempts to make amends with Winthrop and the Massachusetts elite succeeded when they offered him a teaching post at the Boston church. He was not there long when he again offended prominent egos with a succession of outspoken stinging criticisms. Williams cleverly wielded Separatist logic against the Separatists. He attacked Charles I’s language in the Massachusetts charter, whereby in God’s name he granted land to settlers. That was blasphemous, he insisted, and not just the king but anyone who benefited from the king’s assertion was just as blasphemous. Thus did Williams at once condemn the monarch and hundreds

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of his benefactors in the colony. Alongside that moral issue was a legal issue; neither the king nor anyone else had legal title to any land unless the Indians sold it to them. Another blasphemous practice that he called on the colonists to cease was that of declaring an oath in the name of God. Finally, he criticized the practice of forcing people to pay tithes to support the local minister and church; any contributions should be purely voluntary. That prompted Governor Thomas Dudley to have Williams arrested in July 1635 on charges of heresy and sedition, crimes punishable by death. Thomas Hooker was the prosecutor who succeeded in convincing the General Court that Williams was guilty as charged. What the General Court subsequently failed to do was force Williams to recant. In November, when he remained defiant, the General Court ordered him banished rather than executed. Politics rather than a strict legal interpretation determined that sentence. Williams had many followers. The elite did not want to transform Williams into a martyr who inspired other dissenters. They simply wanted to rid the colony of him permanently and as soon as possible. They did let him stay in the colony until spring as long as he kept his heretical views to himself. He refused to silence his tongue on theological issues. After learning that the authorities were planning to arrest him, Williams fled in the dead of winter to the Narragansett tribe where he bought a swath of land. In the spring, his wife, child, and around fifty other people joined him to build the settlement that they called Providence; for their subsequent colony they accepted the region’s existing name of Rhode Island given by Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. Williams sold his land in equal sized lots to the settlers and gave the titleholders equal votes and voices in governing the settlement. People could worship as they pleased or not at all. There were no tithes or oaths for serving in the government. The colony’s founders contracted “to subject ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such orders and agreements as shall be made for the public good . . . by the major consent of present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things.”11 That oasis of genuine religious and political liberty attracted other freedom-loving, tolerant people. By 1643, although nearly a thousand settlers lived there, Rhode Island’s continued existence was by no means secure. Massachusetts and Connecticut had overlapping claims to Rhode Island and would have happily split the land between them like a wishbone. Williams sailed to London to lobby parliament for a charter. There he had an important ally in former Massachusetts governor Henry Vane, then a member of Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Plantations. In February 1644, Williams published his pamphlet “Mr. Cotton’s Letter Examined and Answered” which refuted John Cotton’s attempt to discredit his lobbying for a charter by condemning him for heresy. On March 14, 1644, Parliament issued Rhode Island a charter that granted the people “full Powre & Authority to Governe

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& rule themselves . . . by such a form of Civil Government as by voluntary consent of all, or the greater Part of them shall find most suteabe to their Estates & Conditions” as long as they conformed “to the Laws of England.”12 Before sailing to America with his extraordinary grant of self-government, Williams had published his most profound and sweeping theological expression of tolerance and diversity, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience discussed in A Conference between Truth and Peace. Cotton eventually asserted the authoritarian Puritan rebuttal with his The Bloudy Tenent, Washed made white in the bloode of the Lambe. Williams countered that with his The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy in which he insisted that sovereignty or ultimate worldly power was grounded in the people. Williams arrived in Boston armed with two letters from parliament; one called on the General Court to guarantee his safe passage through Massachusetts, the other called for reconciliation with him. Governor John Endicott and Deputy Governor John Winthrop spurned those instructions and again banished Williams from the colony. Despite having a charter of self-government, Williams did not organize a constitutional convention for Rhode Island until May 1647. The result of the three-day meeting of delegates was a sixty-one page constitution and legal code dedicated to “Democraticall, that is to say, a Government held by ye free and voluntarie consent of all, or the greater parte of the free Inhabitants.” Rhode Island’s freeholders annually elected their governor and general assembly. This was the world’s first democratic constitution. Yet there were some gaps between the ideals and realities. For instance, although slavery was outlawed and no one could be an indentured servant for more than ten years, authorities turned a blind eye to violations. The restoration of royal rule in 1660 filled many Puritans and others with trepidation. To the relief of most, Charles II was conciliatory rather than vengeful. He had only thirteen Puritan leaders executed, although one was Henry Vane. Having done so, the king stressed tolerance for the different Christian sects, including Catholicism. In 1663, Charles II granted a new charter that set Rhode Island’s boundaries and confirmed its liberal constitution. Anne Hutchinson was the most prominent dissident that Massachusetts persecuted after Roger Williams.13 She arrived pregnant along with her husband William and eleven surviving children at Boston in 1634. Then forty-three years old, she added the profession of midwife to her duties as wife and mother. She was highly intelligent, articulate, confident, and, above all, charismatic. She had a gift for not just eloquently and profoundly expressing her beliefs but she experienced revelations and prophecy as well. During the voyage her prediction of the date that the ship would reach America astonished her fellow passengers when it came true. She claimed actually to hear the voices of Biblical prophets echoing in her head.

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Hutchinson came to America as a follower of the minister John Cotton, whose sermons had electrified her and countless others in Lincolnshire, England. Cotton insisted that his church be solely composed of “saints” or those who had experienced signs of God’s grace for salvation. When the Anglican Church tried to prosecute Cotton on charges of sedition, he immigrated to Massachusetts with the Hutchinsons and countless other families in his wake. He was nearly as divisive in Boston, where he and his followers split with the existing church to form their own. Hutchinson carried Cotton’s theology to its logical conclusion. If God had predetermined each person’s fate no matter how they lived, then ministers who condemned sin committed blasphemy. Each man or woman harbored a spark of God that freed that person to interpret the Bible in the “inner light” of his or her own experiences and then live a Christian life in accord with that understanding. Salvation was more likely to come from nurturing one’s own spirituality than from pursuing worldly success. She expounded her beliefs in weekly sessions with as many as eighty people crammed in her home where anyone was free to express her or his own visions of God’s grace. Among her community was Governor Henry Vane, then twenty-three years old, who was “born again” when he was fifteen. While Hutchinson was nurturing with her followers, she was outspoken against authoritarian figures. Indeed she was so bold or rude as to walk out of church when she disagreed with a minister’s sermon. The interruption was compounded as her female disciples dutifully followed her out the door. Hutchinson’s beliefs were not the only source of controversy. She concealed what the superstitious would have construed as evidence of the vilest of criminals. The baby she delivered from Mary Dyer was grotesquely deformed, a clear sign that the mother was a witch. After receiving Cotton’s approval, Hutchinson had the child swiftly buried to prevent anyone beyond the family from becoming alarmed at its repulsive appearance. But rumors of the monster and Hutchinson’s cover-up inevitably spread. After retaking the governorship from Vane, John Winthrop was determined to terminate Hutchinson’s sessions. The trouble was that he and other Puritan leaders had trouble figuring out just what law or laws she had violated. In November 1637, they finally summoned her before the fortymember General Court. Winthrop asked her whether she agreed with the sermons of Minister John Wheelwright who was recently banished for heresy. Hutchinson nimbly evaded his attempt to establish guilt by association with this reply, her first recorded words: “I am called here to answer before you, but I hear no things laid to my charge.”14 And that began a remarkable exchange where Hutchinson parried each accusation against her with reason, wit, and a knowledge of Biblical passages that surpassed any of her persecutors. That, of course, only goaded Winthrop and the General Court’s other

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hubris-bloated men to find her guilty on trumped up charges. That troubled the General Court’s humbler souls who struggled to prevent the proceedings from being a genuine witch-hunt. The conservative majority in turn dismissed the dissidents. William Coddington, Boston’s wealthiest man, was among those fired for his views. He was courageous enough to state for the record that: “I do not, for my own part, see any equity in the court in all your proceedings. Here is no law of God that she hath broken, nor any law of the country that she hath broke. Therefore I would entreat you to consider whether those things you have alleged against her deserve such censure as you are about to pass.”15 John Cotton lacked Coddington’s moral backbone. Although he too was on the General Court, he repudiated his star disciple to avoid being a fellow persecution victim. The General Court found Hutchinson guilty of heresy and sedition but refused to cite any Biblical or common laws to justify their convictions. Instead they condemned her for holding unauthorized scripture meetings and sharing views with heretic Wheelwright. Winthrop announced the verdict and sentence: “Mistress Hutchinson . . . you are banished from our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society, and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send you away.”16 She reacted with defiance rather than contrition: “Take heed how you proceed against me. For you have no power over my body. Neither can you do me any harm for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah, my savior. . . . God will ruin you and your posterity and this whole state!”17 The ruling applied to the entire Hutchinson family. The General Court did grant one mercy. Since Hutchinson was pregnant, she and her family were permitted to winter in the colony under house arrest in the nearby town of Roxbury. In March 1638, Hutchinson partly recanted, describing her attraction to Wheelwright’s heretical views a mistake, but refused to admit that she herself was a heretic. That was not good enough for the General Court which demanded that she acknowledge her guilt and apologize for every verdicts against her. This she refused. The General Court ordered her immediately to leave the colony while the Boston church decreed her excommunication. The Hutchinsons and thirty other families, including William Coddington’s, moved to Rhode Island, where they founded Portsmouth. Her husband William Hutchinson was elected Rhode Island’s governor in 1642 but died shortly thereafter. In 1652, Anne Hutchinson and sixteen family members and friends moved to Pelham, New York, just a half dozen miles north of Manhattan. Indians slaughtered her and most of her tiny community in July 1643. New England’s rulers persecuted scores of other nonconformists. Among them was Samuel Gorton who insisted that everyone was partly divine and thus the Puritan distinction between insiders and outsiders was blasphemous. After suffering persecution, he and his followers moved to Rhode Island

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where they founded Warwick in 1643. As the wife of New Haven’s governor, Anne Eaton was even more highly placed than Anne Hutchison, yet suffered for her outspoken beliefs. In 1645, a court found her guilty of heresy for denouncing infant baptism and the church’s minister John Davenport. Although she was excommunicated, she continued to live in New Haven. No sect experienced worse persecution than the Society of Friends, known as the Quakers. As a young man George Fox had mystical experiences of spiritual union with God. He spent the 1640s and 1650s traveling around England encouraging anyone who would listen to discover his or her Inner Light through communities of people devoted to love, pacifism, egalitarianism, simple living, and universal salvation. The thousands of people who eagerly became Quakers embraced a creed that challenged the theological and political authority of the Anglican and Puritan churches. For that, during the Civil War the Puritans imprisoned over a thousand Quakers including Fox. Fifty-nine Quaker missionaries, including twenty-six women, journeyed to the American colonies to proselytize between 1655 and 1663. Boston banned them, expelled them after they arrived and started preaching, and executed them if they returned. The most famous Quaker martyr was Mary Dyer, who was among Anne Hutchinson’s followers and gave birth to the deformed child that was secretly buried. In the early 1650s, she joined the Quakers and expressed her beliefs in Boston. Three times the authorities found her guilty of heresy and deported her and three times she reappeared to carry on her mission. The authorities hanged her alongside two Quaker men on Boston Common in June 1660. Although New England’s Puritan governments crushed those who openly defied their theocracies, they could not suppress a growing worldliness in attitudes as the population expanded in numbers and affluence. For decades, everyone had to attend local church services even if they were not formal members. In that two-tier system, the lower class of those assumed to be condemned to hell obviously resented the upper class of the heavenly Elect. Ever more lower class members sporadically attended or stopped coming to services. Puritan leaders sought to stem the drift of parishioners from their churches. During synods in 1657 and 1662, they implemented the Half-Way Covenant that permitted children to be baptized even if their parents had not experienced God’s grace that counted them among the Elect and Saints. Now the only requirements for adult baptism and church membership was a public pledge to adhere to Biblical teachings and community laws. Amidst and often as a result of these theological and political conflicts, the number of colonies expanded steadily. By 1700, of the thirteen colonies that seventy-six years later declared independence, nine existed, each with its own unique development.18 Massachusetts inadvertently fathered the dissident

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colony of Rhode Island and seeded clusters of other settlements of whom most eventually became the nucleus for new colonies. New Hampshire began in 1623 with a settlement near today’s Portsmouth on land granted by Plymouth to Captains Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason. The banished dissident John Wheelwright founded Exeter in 1638. New Hampshire remained a Massachusetts province until 1679, when Charles II designated it a crown colony with an appointed governor and council, and an assembly elected by freemen. New Hampshire was incorporated into the Dominion of New England from 1689 to 1691, then became a separate colony until 1699 when it was reunited with Massachusetts until it finally achieved permanent separation in 1741. The Massachusetts government authorized settlements in what became the colony of Connecticut. During the 1630s, Puritans founded settlements at Windsor in 1632, Wethersfield in 1633, Hartford in 1635, and Springfield in 1636 up the Connecticut River valley, and at Fort Saybrook in 1635 at that river’s mouth. Hartford was established by Reverend Thomas Hooker, who led colonists there after a theological dispute with John Cotton in Boston. In 1638, Hartford became the capital when delegates from all the settlements met there and devised the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut as a province of Massachusetts. The separate colony of New Haven was founded on the coast in 1637. Charles II granted Connecticut a charter in 1662 and united New Haven with Connecticut in 1664. In territory that remained in Massachusetts, John Pynchon was the driving force behind settlements up the Connecticut River valley, including Northampton in 1653, Hadley in 1660, Pocumtuck (Deerfield) in 1665, Hatfield in 1672, and Swampfield (Sunderland) in 1673. He was a forceful, enterprising character, a one-man magistrate, merchant, speculator, and financier. Conflicting land claims and a common Indian threat caused Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut to form the Council of New England in 1643. With two delegates from each colony, the council rotated among the capitals of Boston, Plymouth, and Hartford. Resolutions passed with five or more votes which gave a colony a potential veto power if its two delegates were opposed. Far to the south, a new colony emerged as Virginia’s northern neighbor. Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore converted to Catholicism in 1624. From that time he longed to found a society free from the religious persecution that Catholics suffered in England. In 1632, he received a charter from Charles I to establish a colony dedicated to Christian religious freedom. In gratitude he named the colony Maryland to honor the queen.19 He died two months after receiving the charter. England’s colonization of the New World achieved its latest first on March 25, 1634, when Andrew White, a Jesuit priest, set foot with two hundred other settlers at the site on the Potomac River they would call Saint Mary’s City. During its first session in 1638, Maryland’s General Assembly issued an “Act for the Liberties of the People” whereby

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all Christian inhabitants except slaves “shall have and enjoy all such rights, liberties, immunities, privileges, and free customs within this Province as any natural born subject of England has or ought to have or enjoy in the Realm of England by force or virtue of the common law or Statute Law of England.”20 The toleration did not last long. Protestants took over in 1645 and deported Father White. In 1649, Maryland’s assembly restricted religious freedom only to those who believed in the trinity. Settlers from other faiths outnumbered Catholics who declined as a share of the population. In 1676, Anglicans signed a petition calling on Charles II to transform Maryland into a royal colony. The king had close ties with Lord Baltimore and so refused to act on the petition. Power expands with autonomy. The autonomy of the American colonies became more so during the civil war that raged in England between royalists and parliamentarians from 1642 to 1649. Fortunately the Americans were spared the death and destruction in the mother country if not the bitter divisiveness. Naturally most New Englanders favored the largely Puritan parliamentarians and most Chesapeake colonists favored the largely Anglican royalists. After taking power and executing Charles I, the parliamentarians sent a naval squadron across the Atlantic to force the surrender of the royal governors of Barbados, Antigua, Bermuda, Virginia, and Maryland. The English civil war resulted in England’s first professional modern army. The New Model Army that Oliver Cromwell established in 1645 was appropriately named. The troops wore red wool uniforms, carried standardized arms, were drilled to march and fight in unison, received a monthly salary, were strictly disciplined, were organized in regiments with ten companies of a hundred men each, and attended daily Puritan services.21 The parliamentarians won the civil war, executed the king, and established what they called a Commonwealth. The Commonwealth, however, was not a republic, but a theocratic dictatorship eventually ruled by Cromwell. Mercifully the Commonwealth’s end and restoration of royal rule was engineered peacefully. In 1660 General George Monk, who took power after Cromwell died two years earlier, invited would-be Charles II from his exile in France to the English throne in London in return for his promise to respect parliament’s rights and powers. Charles II disbanded most of the New Model Army but retained an elite Guards regiment. He reasserted control over England’s empire with a series of Navigation Acts including the Enumeration Act (1660), Staple Act (1663), and Plantation Duty Act (1663) that respectively restricted what American colonists could produce, required most traded goods to be carried in Englishowned vessels, and raised tariffs on many goods. Royal advisor Benjamin Worsley presented this rationale for the harsh restrictions: “And it is that our wealth here that is properly increased for as much alsoe as by the multiplying of the English in those parts more familyes are provided for & raised

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to a better Condicion then if they had staid here. And that it is the Empire of England likewise that is hereby rendered the more August, formidable, and Considerable abroad.”22 In 1675, the king established within his Privy Council the Lords of Trade to oversee the colonies and ensure royal laws. In 1696, Whitehall transformed the Lords of Trade into the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, known as the Board of Trade, which monitored the colonies and implemented policies set by the Secretary of the Southern Department, whose duties included colonial affairs. Not long after being crowned, Charles II added new lands to the English empire. From 1609 to 1664, the Dutch colony of New Netherlands was a huge wedge between the Chesapeake Bay and New England colonies.23 That ended during the second Anglo–Dutch War in 1664, when four warships commanded by Colonel Richard Nicolls anchored in New Amsterdam bay and forced Governor Peter Stuyvesant to surrender. Nicolls was the colony’s first English governor. His first order of business was to rename both the seaport and the colony “New York” after James II the duke of York and younger brother of King Charles II who had granted him the colony if he could take it from the Dutch. Nicolls then drafted a law code that protected property and Christian religious rights, and established an advisory assembly of delegates with one from each of the colony’s eighteen towns.24 Unlike its namesake, New Amsterdam had been no haven of religious tolerance. Stuyvesant made the Puritanical Dutch Reformed Church the only legitimate church and banned religious services by Quakers, Lutherans, Catholics, and Jews. That religious monopoly ended with the English takeover. Under the transfer treaty, the English agreed to tolerate the Dutch Reformed Church along with other Christian faiths. James himself had converted to Catholicism in 1672. Not only could Catholics hold public offices but Governor Thomas Dongan, who served from 1683 to 1688 was of that faith. Dongan brought with him a “Charter of Libertyes and Priviledges” that formally accepted the existing system whereby the king appointed the governor, the governor appointed the council, and freemen elected the eighteen man assembly. The charter guaranteed political rights and English nationality for all European Christians, regardless of their ethnicity. The governor’s powers included being able to call or dismiss the assembly as he wished; irrevocably to veto any assembly resolution; and appoint city mayors, town magistrates and justices, and county sheriffs and judges. Freemen voted for their town’s overseers and a constable, and county supervisors who acted like councils of advisors for the appointed officials. No officials had wider powers than sheriffs who not only apprehended criminals but collected revenues, fines, and fees, supervised elections, and executed county court rulings. Cities like New York, Albany, and Schenectady were split into wards, in which freemen elected two aldermen, two assistants, and a constable.

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Charles II granted a charter to found the province of Carolina to eight powerful supporters, of whom most had already enriched themselves from West Indian colonies. Although the proprietors received their charter 1663, they needed seven years to pool enough money, settlers, and provisions to realize their grant. On May 23, 1670, Colonel William Sayre led 148 people ashore at the tip of a peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper rivers where they founded Charles Town (Charleston from 1783). Charles intended Carolina both as a source of wealth and as a bulwark against Spanish Florida whose capital St. Augustine was only 250 sea miles away. The proprietors tried to attract settlers with generous economic, religious, and political incentives. Settlers would be rewarded with 150 acres for each family member with an annual tax or quitrent of only half a pence an acre. The private worship of all Christian sects and even Judaism was allowed. An assembly was established with electors and members eligible to all freeholders. The most important sources of wealth were growing rice, raising cattle and pigs, extracting turpentine and tar from pinewood, and trading for deerskins from the southeastern Indians. By 1700, Carolina’s population included 3,800 whites and 2,800 blacks.25 William Penn is among the seventeenth-century colonial leaders most celebrated for how far he developed American democracy.26 He was born in London in 1644 amidst the worsening civil war that led to the king’s beheading and the Puritan dictatorship before the restoration of royal rule in 1660. His father, Admiral William Penn, was a key player in these and other events. Although he initially fought for the Puritans he eventually switched to the royalists. In 1660, he loaned his fortune to would-be King Charles II and sailed him from exile in France to his throne in London. For that the grateful king knighted Penn, made him navy commissioner, and promised that he would repay that loan the day he could afford to do so. The admiral did not live to see that day but his son did. From a young age, William Penn Jr., got into trouble by sharply questioning authority in the guise of parents, teachers, ministers, officials, or nobles. He enjoyed an excellent education, first at the exclusive Chigwell School then Oxford University’s Christ Church College, but at the latter was punished with a fine and reprimand for publicly protesting the firing of a theology professor for his rationalist interpretations of Scripture. Hoping that the experience would refine his rebellious son, his father sent him to the court of Louis XIV. Instead Penn was attracted to a school of French theology that embraced free will, an outlook opposed to Puritan determinism. After returning to England, Penn mulled notions of becoming a doctor or soldier but instead converted to Quakerism. Here was a religion that preached and practiced an equalitarianism so authentic that men and women had equal opportunities to express the “inner light” of their spirituality in

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community meetings free of any clergy, while men spurned swearing oaths of allegiance, bowing, and doffing their hats to those of higher status. His quick mind and assertive character won him the post of right hand man to George Fox, the faith’s founder. Fox and Penn proselytized together and separately across parts of England and Europe. In his Truth Exalted: To Princes, Priests, and People (1668), Penn exposed the failures of all Christian sects except Quakerism to exemplify the life and teachings of Jesus. That heresy earned Penn his first stint in the Tower of London in 1668. The experience deepened his faith. After he was released eight weeks later, he redoubled his efforts to expound Quakerism through preaching and pamphlets. He was incarcerated again, this time in Newgate Prison. During the subsequent trial, the jurors found Penn innocent of all charges despite the judge’s pressure on them to issue a guilty verdict; indeed, at one point the judge actually jailed the jurors for their defiance. The case became so notorious that the Law Lords asserted the Bushel’s Case ruling that codified the rights of trial by a jury of one’s peers, freedom from being tried twice on the same charges, and habeas corpus or being released from custody if no formal charges are filed. This ruling had a vital impact on the development of law in America. As persecutions of Quakers worsened, Penn and other leaders established a refuge for them in America by purchasing West Jersey in 1677. Penn then obtained an audience with Charles II during which he pleaded for an even larger realm where all people enjoyed religious freedom. In 1680, the king granted him proprietorship over 45,000 square miles of land west of the Delaware River and north of Maryland in return for Penn forgiving the £16,000 that the king owed his deceased father and now owed him. It was Charles who insisted on Pennsylvania or “Penn’s Woods” for the colony’s name. Penn drafted a Framework of Government that guaranteed a two-house legislature, jury trials, habeas corpus, private property, and religious freedom for all faiths. In 1682, he sailed to America, visited various existing settlements up the Delaware River, and founded Philadelphia or the City of Brotherly Love. He designed Philadelphia’s grid of wide streets and squares between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. He spent two intensive years organizing the colony before returning to London in 1684. The population grew quickly to total 8,000 settlers by 1686. Penn was determined to forge a lasting and just peace with the Indians. He proved to be a near ideal “Father” for the tribes by treating them with respect and generosity. He or his secretary John Logan negotiated a series of peace and land purchase treaties with the tribes culminating with that of 1701, beautifully depicted by Benjamin West’s 1771 painting. Tragically, Logan did not share Penn’s sense of morality. He and his successors cheated the Indians shamelessly, although not enough to push them to war. Penn was blissfully

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oblivious to the malfeasance as he was a visionary rather than bookkeeper and naively assumed that all other men shared his own innate goodness. Penn understood that peace, prosperity, and trade generally reinforced each other. For that he sought commerce not just with the Indians but also with the distant French. He sent this message to Canada’s governor: “I have set up a society of traders in my province to traffic with thee and thy people, for your commodities, that you may be furnished with that which is good, at reasonable rates.”27 Unfortunately England’s Navigations Laws prevented Pennsylvania and New France from enriching their economies by trading with each other. Penn returned to Pennsylvania in 1699, when he established the beautiful country estate of Pennsbury Manor twenty-five miles up the Delaware River from Philadelphia. He commuted to and from his capital in a barge with six rowers. Unfortunately Penn entrusted day-to-day control over his colony either to inept or corrupt men. No overseer was more nefarious than Philip Ford who tricked Penn into signing over the proprietorship to him. That led to decades of court battles over who actually owned the colony. By the time the crown ruled in Penn’s favor in 1708, court costs and Ford’s blatant thieving had devoured his fortune. Penn actually spent time in debtor’s prison and died penniless in 1718, a pathetic end for someone who contributed so much to America’s development. The most wrenching political development in the American colonies during the seventeenth century was the establishment of the Dominion of New England in 1686, whereby James II revoked the charters of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth and imposed a governor to rule over the new entity. The justification for doing so was to impose order on that hodgepodge of colonies and thus extract greater royal revenues from them and force them to accept the Anglican Church. After Joseph Dudley, the Dominion’s first president, arrived at Boston on May 14, 1686, he immediately encountered passive resistance to his regime. Nearly all the prominent local leaders who the king had tapped for the president’s council refused to serve while most militia officers resigned their commissions. Dudley’s attempts to enforce the Navigation Acts and establish the Anglican Church provoked heated protests. He eventually yielded to the political pressure and shelved those policies. The man who replaced him on December 20, 1686 was deadset to succeed where Dudley had failed in asserting the king’s will. Edmund Andros was familiar with America, having served as New York’s governor from 1674 to 1683.28 He sought to break the will of those who resisted. When a minister, John Wise, led his parishioners in protest, Andros had him arrested, tried, fined, and finally released with these words: “Mr. Wise, you have no more privileges Left you then not to be Sold for Slaves.”29

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When Boston’s Puritan congregations baulked at sharing their churches with Anglicans, Andros forced them to hand over their keys. When town councils protested his taxes, he issued a decree forbidding them to meet other than once a year to elect new officers. To assess taxes, he required all those inhabiting land to present their deeds to prove that they were the rightful owners; those with dubious or no titles were evicted and the land confiscated. Having consolidated his rule over much of Massachusetts, Andros then turned to the other colonies. A celebrated incident occurred on October 31, 1687, after his officials arrived in Hartford to confiscate Connecticut’s charter and assert Dominion rule. Connecticut’s leaders somehow spirited the document from beneath the noses of the officials and hid it in a nearby hollow tree, thereafter known as “the Charter Oak.” But that did not prevent the officials from taking over. By December 29, 1687, Andros had subjected the colonies by having his officials occupy the capitals, but he lacked enough loyal men to extend his tyranny over all the towns. That challenge worsened on May 7, 1688, when James II added New York, East Jersey, and West Jersey to the Dominion. Andros journeyed to those colonies to assert power. Most people condemned the Dominion as a military dictatorship that abused the people it was supposed to protect. Militiamen complained that the regular soldiers treated them contemptuously and inhumanely. They put the provincials on starvation rations, giving “them no more in seven dayes that they might eat in four days.” They inflicted harsh punishments like “beatings and torture for minor offenses.” The ultimate source of these abuses of power was Andros himself, who on the march was overhead ordering a sergeant “to kill them Souldiers that were not able, or unwilling” to continue.30 Massachusetts’ opposition leaders tapped Increase Mather to sail to London to lobby James II for Andros’s recall and the charter’s restoration. Mather reached London amidst a revolution. On June 20, 1688, Parliament stripped James of his crown and invited William, the Dutch Prince of Orange, and his wife Mary, the usurped king’s Protestant daughter, to take his place. Colonial affairs were not a priority as William and Mary tried to consolidate power and the new king mobilized an army to vanquish James, who had fled with his followers to Ireland. In December 1689, Parliament assured that a constitutional rather than an absolute monarchy ruled England with the Bill of Rights that guaranteed parliamentary supremacy and the Mutiny Act that forbade a peacetime standing army unless parliament annually reauthorized and refinanced it. News of “the Glorious Revolution” inspired uprisings against the Dominion. In Boston the presence of a hundred redcoats and the warship H.M.S. Rose offended rather than intimidated most people. Tensions swelled as Bostonians endured the condescension of the officers and the rowdiness of the soldiers and sailors. The breaking point came on April 18, 1689, when a mob seized the Rose’s captain. Andros escaped to Fort Hill. The Rose’s lieutenant readied his crew to bombard the city. Boston’s militia mustered. The Bostonians

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demanded that Andros surrender himself with his troops and the Rose. He did so the following day. The Bostonians disarmed then released the redcoats. Similar political convulsions shook New York where Andros made Colonel Francis Nicolson the lieutenant governor. Shortly after Nicolson established his headquarters at Fort James in New York City, complaints arose that he and his soldiers were abusing their powers. Nicolson had a hairtriggered temper and flew into florid-faced rages of curses and threats against those who imperfectly obeyed his commands. Religious hatreds enflamed the animosities. Nicolson was rumored to be a Catholic. Militia Captain Jacob Leisler led the chorus of those opposed to Nicolson. Word of the Andros regime’s fall reached New York City on April 26, 1689. That did not temper Nicolson’s behavior. The explosion came on May 31, after Nicolson threatened to torch the city after a militia lieutenant refused to obey his order. Leisler mustered the militia, led them into Fort James, disarmed the hundred-men garrison, arrested Nicolson, and then packed the deputy governor and soldiers onto a vessel bound for England. Leisler formed a government that wrote William and Mary an explanation of why they deposed Nicolson and pledged their loyalty to the monarchs. Not long after that promising start, New Yorkers discovered that they had exchanged an English tyrant for a local variant. Leisler’s dictatorial and corrupt rule provoked a swelling opposition and appeals for help from the crown. He dismissed New York’s assembly and thereafter ruled by decree when it did not approve his tax proposals. He fired officials and replaced them with his cronies. He issued requisition contracts only to merchants who slipped him kickbacks. He had arrested anyone who objected to his rule. Learning of Leisler’s dictatorship, William and Mary appointed Colonel Henry Sloughter to replace him, but made the mistake of sending ahead 200 troops commanded by Major Richard Ingoldesby to restore order before Sloughter arrived. After Ingoldesby led his men ashore in January 1691, he demanded that Leisler and his militia yield Fort James. Leisler refused. A heated exchange ensued over which armed group should rightfully control New York. They finally struck a deal whereby Ingoldesby and his troops would shelter in the city hall and control half the town. A crisis erupted on March 4, when Leisler had his men arrest four redcoats for intruding on the militia’s side of the city. Ingoldesby called for recruits and more than a hundred joined his ranks. On March 17, Leisler demanded that Ingoldesby discharge those volunteers. Ingoldesby refused. Leisler ordered his men to advance on city hall and fire at the redcoats, the first time Americans fought royal troops. A few men were killed or wounded on each side before Leisler withdrew the militia to Fort James. Sloughter finally arrived on March 19. After Ingoldesby and his men escorted him safely to city hall, Sloughter issued a royal proclamation

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for Leisler and his men to surrender the fort. When Leisler prevaricated, Sloughter strode alone into Fort James and up to Leisler, stared him hard in the eyes, and restated his demand. Leisler yielded. The militia marched out and the regulars marched in. The subsequent treason trial of Leisler and his nine-men council acquitted two and found the rest guilty, of which six were pardoned while Leisler and Jacob Milborne, his deputy and son-in-law, were hanged on May 16, 1691. Typically, with the newest government New Yorkers experienced changes in the appearance rather than substance of power. After Sloughter died shortly after the trial, Ingoldesby briefly replaced him until Benjamin Fletcher arrived in 1692. Fletcher was just as tyrannical and corrupt as his predecessors. He purged all non-Anglicans from public offices and, in 1693, got New York’s assembly to pass the Ministry Act that made Anglicanism New York’s official faith. Anglicans enjoyed the lion’s share of government contracts and business licenses. He pocketed bribes from anyone who needed government assistance along with huge shares of the tax and tariff revenues. Meanwhile, Maryland experienced its own revolution. John Coode arrived in Maryland in 1672, as an Anglican priest. He married a rich widow and soon became a leading voice against the Baltimore proprietors. In 1681, he was among those arrested for leading a revolt against that clan but eventually was released. In April 1689, he mustered 700 men, overthrew the government, installed himself as governor, and sent word of his allegiance to William and Mary. On July 27, 1691, he peacefully ceded power to Nehemiah Blakiston who arrived with his royal commission as governor and a charter that proclaimed Maryland a crown colony. The new charter forbade Catholics from holding public offices and required all inhabitants to pay tithes to the Anglican Church regardless of their faith. In 1694, William and Mary transferred the capital from mostly Catholic Saint Mary’s City to mostly Protestant Baltimore. No colony benefited more from the Glorious Revolution than Massachusetts. In London Increase Mather received on October 7, 1691 a charter from William and Mary that let all freemen vote regardless of their Protestant sect, empowered the assembly to elect the council, and incorporated Plymouth into Massachusetts. The only catch was that now the king rather than the council appointed the governor. The Dominion’s abuses of power were burned deeply into New England’s collective memory, especially Massachusetts. Thereafter New Englanders were hypersensitive to any behavior of royal officials, civilian, and military alike, who violated the rights of English subjects and human decency. Economic development paralleled and reinforced political development in the American colonies.31 By 1700 each colony was largely self-sufficient in food and clothing. Crops and livestock provided food along with flax

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and wool that could be woven into cloth. Settlers bartered any surpluses for imported goods that they needed. Staples like flour, tobacco, rice, dried fish, or salted beef paid a lot of bills. Gradually colonial entrepreneurs emerged to make things like glass, soap, barrels, pottery, pewter, paper, and iron. By the mid-seventeenth century, shipbuilding became the engine of colonial development. The Americans enjoyed seemingly endless reserves of nearly all the raw materials for making ships including wood, iron-ore, tar, and flax, and the skills for extracting and refining them into lumber, masts, iron implements, and sails, then assembling those products into vessels. The economy was most diverse where the population was the largest and most concentrated, nowhere more so than in bustling ports. In his book The Urban Crucible, historian Gary Nash noted that “seaboard commercial cities were the cutting edge of economic, social, and political change.”32 Although most trade was between each colony and the mother country, trade among the colonies expanded. Vessels carried nearly all the goods exchanged among the colonies. While a web of roads united each colony, few roads linked them together. Two long distance roads led from Boston, one to Albany and the other to New York. In contrast to the dynamic seaboard economy, the frontier was largely a subsistence economy where families or individuals produced as much to satisfy their own needs as possible then bartered any surplus for what they could not make. “Calvinist capitalism” was a vital reason why and how America’s economy developed as it did. The Puritan or Calvinist values of working as productively as possible, continually improving one’s skills, saving and investing money wisely, delaying self-gratification, and educating one’s children in those values along with reading, writing, and accounting skills increased the odds that one could achieve material success on earth and salvation in the afterlife. But values alone do not explain American economic development. Entrepreneurs may have founded America, but their entrepreneurship was not grounded in free competition in free markets. A group of enterprising investors obsessed with getting rich would successfully lobby the government to grant their company a monopoly to conquer and colonize a swath of land by whatever possible means. Any successful lobbying campaign invariably involved investors bribing powerful officials and politicians. Innovations and inventions are critical elements of economic development. Governments can spur innovations and inventions by rewarding their creators. In England titles, riches, and monopolies were the most common rewards. The monarch occasionally bestowed a title, money, or land on someone who devised a more clever way of doing something. Protection for inventors and their inventions began in England when parliament passed the “Statute of Monopolies” in 1623. Henceforth an inventor could apply for a patent or license for his invention which granted him a fourteen-year

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monopoly over its manufacture. Massachusetts passed a patent law in 1641. The first American to receive a patent was Joseph Jenckes for his water pump in 1646. Jenckes went to receive a patent for an improved scythe in 1655. The next colonies to pass patent laws were Connecticut in 1672 and Carolina in 1691. The greatest spur to innovation in the colonies was the Royal Society, which in 1662, bestowed memberships on thirty Americans, most notably John Winthrop junior and Cotton Mather. Americans were cash-starved.33 What little coin they earned disappeared to pay for goods unloaded from the latest vessel that dropped anchor. For most of the century, wampum in New England and tobacco in the Chesapeake region served as mediums of exchange. During the Commonwealth, Massachusetts began producing what eventually became £5 million worth of three pence, six pence, and shilling coins from melted down silver from 1650 to 1686. The money became known as pine or oak coins for the tree symbols on them. In 1662, Charles II angrily demanded why a colony was violating the royal monopoly to mint money but relented when he learned the oak symbol honored the time he hid from pursuers in the branches of an oak tree. In 1690 a lack of silver forced Boston’s mint to switch to printing paper money worth ten shillings, one pound, and five pounds but inflation caused them to be discounted as much as 30 percent. Entrepreneurs developed the economy but represented a relatively small share of the population. Eight of ten Americans farmed. European and Indian ways of farming differed greatly. Indians tilled with hoes and planted in mounds “the three sisters” of corn, beans, and squash whereby the corn stalk acted as a pole for the beans while the spreading squash vines with their broad leaves retained moisture. The first settlers had to adopt Indian hoe, mound, and “three sister” methods because they had no plows and draft animals. However, as plow and draft animals became common, farmers reverted to European methods of long straight furrows for corn and the separation of crops. They retained native crops but added European crops like wheat, rye, barley, and peas. Unfortunately, they abandoned the careful European management of soil, water, and wood that conserved rather than destroyed them. Instead, with land abundant and labor scarce, they devoured those resources with heedless disregard for the future. And the future inevitably arrived. Despite considerable advances, American economic development faced formidable obstacles. Most hobbling were England’s Navigations Laws of 1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, and 1699 that forced all trade to be in Englishowned vessels and forbade Americans from manufacturing a lengthening list of goods that they could only buy via middlemen in the mother country. The most obvious result was the worsening debt of Americans to English merchants. Less obvious were the forgone opportunities for the creation and

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distribution of wealth in the colonies had free rather than straightjacketed markets prevailed.34 England’s acquisition of the Caribbean colonies of Saint Christopher (1624), Barbados (1627), Nevis (1628), Montserrat (1632), Antigua (1632), and Jamaica (1655) gave American merchants an expanding market in which to sell salted meats, rice, tobacco, rum, and lumber in return for sugar, molasses, and slaves. A few entrepreneurs actually conducted an especially lucrative quadrangular trade among England, West Africa, the West Indies, and America’s east coast ports. The demand for slaves in the West Indian colonies was voracious and thus highly profitable to those who met that demand. Slaves comprised nearly four of every five people living in England’s West Indian colonies. During the seventeenth century, 96 percent of the 275,000 slaves brought to the English empire went to West Indian plantations. Disease and overwork killed one of three slaves within three years. Malnutrition kept conception rates low while one of four slave children born died within a few years.35 Slavery followed closely each American colony’s establishment, justified by practical need and Biblical sanction.36 The enslavement of Indians came first as settlers practiced native customs. After a war, many Indians who surrendered were enslaved, with males mostly sent to West Indian plantations and women and children mostly retained as servants for prominent families. The first Africans in the English colonies appeared in 1619, when a Dutch sea captain sold twenty to Jamestown settlers. Those Africans were treated like indentured servants and freed after seven years, as were most other Africans subsequently sold in Virginia and other colonies for the next generation. But by the 1640s, slavery was the fate for Africans brought in chains to the colonies. William III boosted the incentive for buying and selling slaves by abolishing the Royal African Company’s monopoly over the trade in 1698. Of course, the slave trade did not just affect the Western Hemisphere. African slavery likely began with humanity there. Roman chroniclers noted slave caravans arriving in North African ports after a thousand or so mile journey across the Sahara from central Africa, a trade that persisted for millennia. Another slave caravan route led to Red Sea ports. It was Portuguese traders sailing down and eventually around Africa’s coast that bought slaves directly at the sources. They and the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch seafarers who followed them, exchanged a range of goods, most importantly guns, to African potentates in return for shiploads of slaves. The guns empowered coastal African kingdoms to mount expeditions that conquered peoples ever further inland and brought back to the ports ever more slaves. The mortality rate for slaves across the Atlantic was about 10 percent, far higher than the 4 percent rate suffered by English convicts brought in chains to the American colonies. Of the approximately eleven million slaves transported from Africa

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to America from 1500 to 1850, around 250,000 arrived in England’s North American colonies or the United States.37 Slavery was not the only practice that distorted America’s economic development. The seventeenth century has been called the golden age of piracy.38 Pirates harmed the colonies by plundering hundreds of trading vessels and forcing insurers to raise their rates. Colonies only benefited when pirates sold their loot and spent their coins in American ports. Whether pirates stole more from the colonies or sold and spent more there from plunder seized elsewhere cannot be determined. Certainly, pirates enriched countless officials including governors and judges with generous bribes and countless merchants with fire-sale priced goods. And “evil” pirates often became licensed “patriotic” privateers during England’s wars against Spain, France, and Holland. As Jamaica Governor Thomas Vaughan aptly expressed it: “These Indyes are so vast and Rich. And this kind of Rapine so sweet that is one of the hardest things in the World to draw those from it which have used it for so long.”39 Regardless, while most people might not consider them role-models, pirates did practice a sort of honor among thieves version of economic justice. In divvying up the plunder, able-bodied men got equal shares, the captain got varying shares depending on what he negotiated with his crew before the voyage, and severely wounded pirates received generous donations from their mates. Likewise, while pirates are rarely considered models of democracy, most gangs reached decisions by consensus rather than command, with the captain chairing the often heated discussions. Ironically, most pirates were more progressive, at least among themselves, than the folks they robbed, raped, and murdered. As for fighting pirates, England had plenty of laws against the practice dating as far back as 1490. The 1670 Treaty of Madrid committed England to suppress piracy. A 1673 Order in Council required all captured pirates to be tried in admiralty courts where bribery was less rampant than in common courts. In 1682, Parliament ruled that all merchant vessels over 200 tons must mount at least twenty cannons and defend themselves against pirate attacks. The problem came with enforcing these measures. It was not until the eighteenth century that Whitehall had the naval power and political will to war against piracy. Until then many officials turned a blind eye and open palm to pirates. The fur trade was vital to sustaining the first settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts then diminished in economic importance as the colonists became self-sufficient in food production and devised new ways to make money. The Indians, however, remained dependent on the trade, which gave the colonists enormous power over them. For an array of superior products the Indians eagerly abandoned or supplemented their traditional implements like flint knife-blades and arrowheads for iron knife-blades and arrowheads,

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bows and arrows for muskets, stone hatchets for iron hatchets, bone for iron awls, gut or hardened clay pots for copper or iron pots, shell beads for glass beads, hide clothes for wool or linen clothes, fur blankets for wool blankets, and native intoxicants for alcohol, and sought silver earrings, bangles, and broaches for which they had no equivalent. In return they offered furs, skins, and, sometimes corn for sustenance, women for sex, or warriors for war. As for the colonists, beaver pelts from colder northern regions and deer skins from hotter southern regions comprised the bulk of the trade, supplemented by whatever muskrat, otter, mink, elk, moose, buffalo, bear, wolf, panther, and lynx skins the Indians had taken and were willing to exchange. Beaver pelts fetched relatively high steady prices because the short inner hairs were turned into felt for hats.40 Much colonial wealth was extracted as tribute from the tribes. Virginians survived for a decade or so largely because of the corn they forced Indian villages to deliver. In just three decades, from 1634 to 1664, New Englanders forced the Indians to pay them “21,000 fathoms of Indian wampum (nearly seven million beads), worth between £5,000 and £10,000 once converted to furs.”41 Few tribes dared to resist. Any tribe that revolted was soon crushed. Besides, the Indians had become dependent on European guns, clothes, tools, and jewelry. During difficult negotiations with the Iroquois in 1687, New York governor Dongan bluntly reminded them of the imbalance of power: “You know that we can live without you, but you cannot live without us.”42 The English, French, and Dutch competed for furs trapped by Indians by giving them guns. That had a catastrophic impact on traditional tribal animosities, especially between the Iroquois Five Nations and nearly all other tribes. An arms and fur race ensued which, in the late 1640s, led the Iroquois to launch the “Beaver Wars.” For several decades the Iroquois systematically decimated tribes ever further from themselves to kill their trappers, steal their furs, and enslave their women and children to replenish the hundreds of warriors they lost on the war path. With all the tribes diminished and devastated, the Beaver Wars finally ended with a peace treaty between the Iroquois and New France in 1701. That same tragedy unfolded in the south as colonists traded guns for deerskins and slaves. Like the Iroquois, the Yamasee devastated rival tribes to steal their skins, kill their hunters, and capture their women and children. The devastation and displacement of some tribes by disease and war often resulted in refugees uniting into new tribes. Among these was the Westo, who lived in the Carolina piedmont. The Westo raided the Gaule and Cusabo tribes in northern Florida then traded captured slaves to the Carolinians for muskets. The Westo also acted as middlemen between the Carolinians in the tidewater and the Cherokee in the Appalachian Mountains.

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Early Americans were hardly noted for their tolerance but by necessity had to adapt to circumstances that included native ways of food, farming, trade, and war. The colonists found ways to make money by swapping their manufactured goods for furs and wampum, and growing tobacco. However, they cherry-picked customs from the “savages.” Most settlers viewed Indians with mingled fear and loathing. Unlike Canadians, Americans condemned mixed sexual liaisons let alone marriages with Indians; that between Pocahontas and John Rolfe was consummated before such relationships were banned socially and eventually legally. And, of course, people of African heritage were beyond the pale, acceptable only to exploit as slaves or servants. The American ideal of “out of many one” (e pluribus Unum)—did not emerge until after the colonial era. In 1782, Congress adopted that motto to celebrate and encourage the confederation that was on the cusp of winning independence from Britain. Each colony and later state jealously guarded its autonomy and fiercely protested any intrusions. The notion of an ethnic and racial melting pot was a twentieth-century construct. By 1700, the American colonies counted 265,000 people, including 234,000 whites and 31,000 blacks. That was an astonishing transformation from the hundred settlers who stepped ashore at Jamestown in 1607. Although the population stretched from bustling port cities to lonely cabins on the frontier, around nine of ten people lived within fifty miles of the Atlantic coast. By the midseventeenth century, America’s population increased more from procreation than immigration. Americans married earlier than Europeans, generally from twenty to twenty-three for women and from twenty-four to twenty-six for men compared to twenty-five for women and twenty-six to twenty-eight for men in Europe. The inevitable result was that younger brides begat more children, six or seven for American families compared to four or five for European families.43 Most Americans were of the “middling sort” who lived comfortable, secure lives within their own family homes supported by their farms or businesses. Perhaps one of ten people, mostly merchants or planters, were quite rich by the standards of their day. During the seventeenth century the quality of life for most colonists steadily improved. Gradually people went from living in makeshift huts to small one-room dwellings to large multi-room center chimney salt-box style houses. As for furnishings, most folks initially made do with a crude table, wooden bowls, pewter utensils, a few chairs, trunks for storing, and straw-filled pallets for sleeping. As people acquired more wealth they demanded from craftsmen often elaborately carved heavy oak dining tables, bedsteads, and armoires, or bought silver utensils, ceramics, and books imported from Britain or Europe. The first portraits of Americans appear in the late seventeenth century. Most of the artists are unknown and their skills were limited. The most talented painters were Thomas Smith and

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Joseph Allen, who emigrated from England to Boston in 1671 and 1684, respectively.44 Some colonial governments tried to restrain those who liked to express themselves with extravagant or outlandish dress. In 1619, Virginia’s House of Burgesses imposed a law whereby one’s taxes rose with the number and type of clothes one owned. In 1651, Massachusetts’s General Court issued a law that only permitted officials, officers, and gentlemen to wear gold or silver lace embroidery, large boots, or colorful ribbons, or their wives similarly to decorate their dress. But those laws eventually became dead letters as growing wealth and vanity trumped austerity. Americans lightened their lives with music and dance, aside from Massachusetts which for long stretches banned anything but hymns especially if it involved a May Pole. Most ballads and country dances originated in England but many were devised in the colonies. Immigrants from Holland, Ireland, Germany, and other lands carried their own songs and instruments with them to the New World. Congregations sang together each Sunday. Moravians were especially renowned for their choruses. Music and dance were not the only recreations the colonists enjoyed. Men and women alike made corn husking a pleasure rather than drudge by doing it together. Women gathered to lighten such chores as spinning, quilting, sewing, embroidering, and candle-dripping. Men bonded by hunting, fishing, target-shooting, footracing, and wrestling. Although by related legal, cultural, economic, political, and religious measures, men subjected women, most did so respectfully.45 During the early colonial era when males far outnumbered females, greater kindness might give a suitor an edge over his more boorish rivals if they were otherwise relatively matched in status, wealth, and looks. Sensitive manners persisted even as the sexes evened out numerically. Weddings were civil not religious rites. A man’s gentility was reinforced by the belief that procreation depended on mutual pleasure in bed. Nonetheless, discrimination against females was blatant and wide-ranging. Women could not vote or hold public office. Women could not speak in church unless they were Quakers who could freely expressed their “inner light” equally with men. Fewer girls received schooling than boys and none could attend college. When a woman married, her husband took legal title to any property she owned. A widow did acquire her husband’s entire wealth unless she had adult children who got two-thirds of the estate. Divorce was rare. Only assemblies granted divorce and only then on grounds of proven cruelty, infidelity, bigamy, impotence, or desertion. During the colonial period, New England’s assemblies granted ninety-eight of 128 divorce petitions, with eighty-one submitted by wives and thirty-five submitted by husbands.46 The Puritan reputation for being killjoys is mostly true. Ministers condemned sex beyond marriage. Children born out of wedlock shared the shame

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with their parents. In 1631, Massachusetts’s General Court actually passed a law making adultery a crime punishable by death, although it was never actually inflicted. Public whippings, the stocks, and scarlet letters, however, were frequent. Nonetheless, draconian penalties failed to deter all furtive couples happily in lust or love. In New England perhaps one of five brides at the altar was visibly heavy with child.47 Child-rearing was often a painful experience for all concerned.48 Preachers exhorted parents liberally to wield the rod in beating the devil from defiant children. Puritan theologian John Robinson insisted that “there is in all children . . . a stubbornness . . . of mind arising from natural pride, which must . . . be broken and beaten down; that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness other virtues may be, in their time, built therein.”49 If that did not work, parents might send the offending child to another household to serve as a servant and be disciplined into compliance. Massachusetts even had a law on the books decreeing the death penalty for any child sixteen years or older who cursed or struck a parent, although that penalty was never invoked. In stark contrast, Quakers raised and schooled their children with reason rather than punishment to invoke learning and civility. Parents of all faiths often apprenticed their boys to craftsmen in their early teens regardless of their dispositions. One key element of Protestant theology proved to be critical to the development of American liberalism. Protestants valued literacy, and by extension schooling, as essential for directly revealing the Bible’s teachings.50 One’s chance of salvation bettered with one’s first-hand knowledge of Scripture. In 1642, Massachusetts’s General Court passed a law declaring that all parents had a moral duty to ensure that their children could read and that any parents who failed in that duty were subject to hefty fines. That provoked protests from parents who argued that schooling should be a civil rather than family responsibility. In 1647, the General Court ruled that all towns with fifty or more households had to appoint at least one teacher to educate local children. Within several years most eligible towns had established grammar schools, with Boston’s Latin grammar school achieving renown for the quality of its education and graduates. A 1683 law required all towns with a hundred or more households to have four schools. One by one other colonies setup their own schools. Thanks to the will of a rich man, Virginia’s first school was established in 1635. Rhode Island founded its first school in 1640. With a 1650 law, Connecticut required all towns to have schools. New York kept and anglicized New Amsterdam’s existing school system. Most other colonies did not establish schools until late in the seventeenth century. The first prominent textbook was The New England Primer, written by David Barton and published in Boston in 1690; the textbook taught reading with simplified Bible stories and was used until

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the early nineteenth century. By the end of the seventeenth century, around four of five white men and half of white women could read in colonial America, with the ratios highest in New England, lower in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and lowest in the southern colonies.51 Higher education in America had a genesis diametrically opposed to academic principles.52 Following Anne Hutchinson’s persecution for heresy, the General Court asked John Harvard, a recently arrived wealthy and educated man, to begin at Newton a college dedicated to teaching Puritan theology. Although Harvard died within the year, he bequeathed £400 and his library to the college. In 1638, the first ten students began attending classes at Harvard College and Newtown was renamed Cambridge to evoke the university of the same name. The 1650 charter committed Harvard to “the advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences.” Nearly three centuries later that mission continues. John Eliot sought to extend both literacy and Christianity to the Indians. After becoming fluent in Algonquian, he began preaching among the Indians in 1646 and established the first “Praying Town” or mission at Natick in 1650. By 1675, there were fourteen “Praying Indian towns” with around 1,100 inhabitants among them. He was instrumental in getting Harvard University to open an Indian College in 1651. Eliot’s most astonishing feat came in 1663 when he completed his translation of the Bible into Algonquian. Tragically, only four of Eliot’s Praying Indian Towns survived King Philip’s War from 1675 to 1676. Eliot’s humanitarian approach to the Indians was exceptional. Far more common was the attitude of “saving the man by killing the Indian,” exemplified by Cotton Mather who argued that “the best thing we can do for our Indians is to Anglicize them in all agreeable instances, and in that of language as well as others. They can scarce retain their language, without a tincture of other savage inclinations.”53 Even a century and a half after Johannes Guttenberg invented movable type, books were still relatively expensive and scarce in England let alone America. With cargo space limited on the cramped ships traversing the Atlantic, books were not a priority for most passengers. Yet books were highly prized by some early Americans, and the demand rose with the number and wealth of literate settlers. Jamestown settler John Pory expressed these classic bibliophile sentiments in 1619: “I am revolved to have some good book always in store, being in solitude the best and choicest company. . . . Among these crystal rivers and odoriferous woods I do escape much expense, envy, contempt, vanity, and vexation of mind.”54 Harvard College began operating the first printing press in 1638, the same year classes began. However, freedom of the press got off to a shaky start. Massachusetts established a licensing board for publications in 1649 and expanded its powers to censor in 1662. Virginia’s government shut down a printer in 1682. The Massachusetts General Court suppressed the newspaper

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“Publick Occurrences” shortly after it appeared in 1690, enraged at critical articles. Early American literature was far more remarkable for its substance than its style. Even vigorous, prolific writers John Smith, William Bradford, John Winthrop, and Cotton Mather would have benefited from a meticulous editor. During the seventeenth century eight often-overlapping genres emerged including exploration, settlement, salvation, biography, Indians, war, captivity, and poetry. American literature most vividly and symbolically begins with Captain John Smith. His books at once celebrated himself, promoted the New World’s colonization, and provided insights into the Indians, wildlife, landscapes, and climate that he had experienced. As such he inaugurated the American literary genre of adventure memoirs, of how one made and interpreted history. His books are far from flawless. He justified and exaggerated his own actions and denigrated those who opposed him. He offered few regrets or apologies. He tried to leave the last word for history to carry forward. His books include A True Relations of Such Occurrences . . . as Hath Hapned in Virginia (1608), A Map of Virginia with a Description of the Countrey (1612), A Description of New England (1616) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Lines blurred among historical, promotional, and theological accounts of the colonies. Even the two best histories, William Bradford’s Of Plimouth Plantation (1630–1651) and Cotton Mather’s A Short History of New England (1694), interpreted events through a Puritan mindset that saw God’s hand in everything. Most books celebrated successes and obscured disasters to reassure investors and entice more settlers, including Thomas Harriot’s A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), John Brereton’s A Briefe and True Relation on the Discouerie of the North Part of Virginia (1602), Alexander Whitaker’s Good News from Virginia (1613), John Winslow’s Good News from New England (1622), Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan (1632), John Underhill’s Newes from America or A New and Experimentall Discovery of New England (1638), Edward Johnson’s The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion’s Saviour in New England (1654), Joseph Hammond’s Leah and Rachel, or the Two Fruitful Sisters, Virginia and Maryland: Their Present Condition, Impartially Stated and Related (1656), George Alsop’s A Character of the Province of Maryland (1666), John Joselyn’s New England’s Rural Rarities (1672), and William Penn’s A Further Account of the Province of Pennsylvania (1685). The horrors and ultimate victory that New Englanders experienced with King Philip’s War inspired an outpouring of books trying to recall and understand what happened, with twenty-one published within eight years of the war’s end.55 Among these the most prominent were John Easton’s A

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Relacion of the Indian Warre (1675), Edward Wharton’s New England’s Present Sufferings Under Their Cruel Neighboring Indians (1675), Nathaniel Saltonstall’s The Present State of New England in Respect to the Indian War (1675), Increase Mather’s A Briefe History of the Warr with the Indians in New England (1676) and A Relations of the Troubles which have hapned in New England by Reason of the Indians There (1677), Samuel Nowell’s Abraham in Arms (1678), and William Hubbard’s Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians (1678). In varying ways and degrees, these authors integrated a common theme in their narratives. In punishment for their sins, the colonists suffered God’s wrath in the form of demonic Indians who destroyed their homes and murdered, tortured, or enslaved them. In ruthlessly destroying the Indians, the colonists redeemed themselves by exorcising some of their sins. Another American literary genre emerged from Philip’s war, the captivity narrative.56 The first and most apocalyptic was The Sovereignty & Goodness of God . . . The Narrative of Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682). She recalled the nightmarish Indian attack on her community: “Their first coming was about Sun-rising. Hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out several Houses were burning. . . . There were . . . the Father and the Mother, and a suckling Child, they knock’ed on the head. . . . Another there was, who was running along, was shot and wounded and fell down: he begged of them his Life, promising them Money . . . but they . . . knock’d him on the head, stripped him naked, and split open his bowels. . . . The Indians getting up upon the Roof of the Barn had advantage to shoot down upon them over their Fortifications.” The terror continued after she was captured: “Oh the roaring and singing and dancing and yelling of those black creatures in the night which made the place a lively resemblance of hell.” Meanwhile “I must sit in the Snow (by a little fire and a few boughs behind me) with my sick Child in my lap, and calling much for water, being now (through the wound) fallen into a violent Fever (my own wound also growing so stiff that I could scarce sit down or rise up).” At one point she is so famished that she snatches a boiled horse ankle from a child captive and gnaws at the stringy flesh. Later when she reached a village she was relieved that “sleeping all sorts together; and yet not one of them offered the least abuse or unchastity to me in word or action.” She is presented to Philip who “bade me come in and sit down, and asked me whether I would smoke. For though I had formerly used Tobacco, yet I had left it ever since I was first taken. It seems to be a Bait the Devil lays to make men lose their precious time.” The horrors that she experienced during the massacre and her eleven week captivity haunted her the rest of her days: “I can remember when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts . . . but now . . . when others are . . . about me and no eye open . . . my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awful dispensation of the Lord towards us.”57

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Historian Jill Lepore explored the varied meanings Puritans attached to the “redemption” or liberation of prisoners: “In one sense (emancipation through payment), the ransom redeemed Rowlandson from physical bondage; in another sense (delivery through spiritual salvation), her bondage itself redeemed her from sin by teaching he to stand still and accept God’s will. Twenty pounds bought her freedom; captivity saved her soul.”58 For Puritans these stories were metaphors for God’s harsh punishments on sinners but ultimate salvation for the elect who enjoyed his divine grace. Poets offered readers and listeners solace from the terrors of merciless war and God’s judgment. Of America’s two most celebrated poets during the seventeenth century, Anne Bradstreet was the first.59 She was born Anne Dudley to a wealthy family around 1612. She was seventeen and married in 1630, when she immigrated to Massachusetts where she eventually bore eight children and wrote poetry in her spare time. Both her father, Thomas Dudley, and her husband, Simon Bradstreet were Massachusetts governors. She offered a timeless complaint of the challenges that a woman faces in trying to get published in her prologue to the third edition of her The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, or Severall Poems, Complied with great Variety of Wit and Learning full of Delight which was originally published in London in 1650: “Men can do best, and women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours. Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.”60

Bradstreet exalted in her loving marriage: “If ever two were one, then surely we If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man. Compare with me, ye women, if ye can . . . Then, while we live, in love let’s so persevere. That when we live no more, we may live ever.”61

Edward Taylor’s poetry exceeds Bradstreet’s in profundity and erudition. His poetry benefited from his education at Cambridge University. As a devout Puritan he had to end his teaching career in 1662, when Charles II signed the Act of Uniformity requiring all state officials to acknowledge the king as the Church of England’s head. A crackdown on Puritans caused Taylor to immigrate to Boston in 1668. He served first as an assistant then minister in various churches. He was inspired to begin writing poetry after reading Bradstreet’s collection. He eventually wrote several hundred pages

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filled with poems, although few were published during his lifetime. Many of his poems are existential quests for meaning for a sinful and seemingly insignificant and fleeting individual’s life amidst a sublime and at times gutwrenching eternity created and ruled by God. “Infinity, when all things it beheld In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build . . . Who laid its Corner Stone? . . . Where stand the Pillars upon which it stands? . . . Who hung the twinckling Lanthorns in the Sky? . . . His Glorious Handywork not made by hands . . . Gave All to nothing Man indeed whereby . . . But Nothing man did throw down all by Sin: And darkened that lightsome Gem in him.”62

Then there was Benjamin Tompson who sadly is forgotten by all but experts, even though he was a better poet than Bradstreet and Taylor. Unlike them, he was not just born in America but his clean verse explores the American experience, most ambitiously with his two epic poems on King Philip’s War, “New England Crisis” (1677) and “New England Tears” (1678). He graduated from Harvard, taught at Boston Latin School then Roxbury Latin School, and was afflicted by life-long melancholy. In these lines, he portrays the plight of the Indians: “My friends our Fathers were not half so wise As we ourselves who see with younger eyes. They sell our land to English men who teach Our nation all so fast to prey and preach: Of all our country they enjoy the best And quickly they intend to have the rest.”63

Theology engendered the most prolific outpouring of publications. The sermons of leading preachers were printed and widely distributed, of which the most renowned were John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” (1630) and “On Liberty” (1645); Thomas Hooker’s “The Soule’s Preparation” (1632), “The Soule’s Humiliation” (1637), “The Soule’s Vocation” (1637), “The Soule’s Implantation” (1637), “The Soule’s Exaltation” (1638), and “The Application of Redemption” (1656); John Cotton’s “The Way of Life” (1641) and “God’s Promise to His Plantations” (1646); Thomas Shepard’s “The Sound Believer” (1645) and “The Sincere Convert” (1646); Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom” (1662); Samuel Danforth’s “A Brief Recognition of New England’s Errand into the Wilderness” (1671); and Cotton Mather’s “Humiliations followed by Deliverance” (1694).

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Several leading theologians wrote books on witchcraft. Increase Mather, a minister and Harvard University’s president, offered his insights in his An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684) and Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1692). His son, Cotton Mather wrote the books Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689) and Wonders of the Invisible World (1692). One theologian, Samuel Willard, was bold enough to express some doubts as to the severity of the witch infestation in his “Some Miscellany Observations on Our Present Debates Respecting Witchcraft, in a Dialogue between S. and B” (1692). Samuel Sewall, one of the Salem witch trial judges, wrote a book about his experiences and perspectives entitled Some Apocalyptical Phenomena Configured in Relation to the New World (1697). Robert Calef actually criticized Increase and Cotton Mather in his More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700). The believing and skeptical accounts alike were attempts to explain supernatural phenomena, some of which the authors actually witnessed. Witchcraft is the attempt by adepts to conjure up supernatural forces for good or bad purposes. The practice is probably as old as humankind and has existed in virtually every traditional and modern society. Witches have also been known as shamans, sorcerers, conjurors, and medicine men and women. In some traditional societies people feared and persecuted witches because of the harm they were believed capable of inflicting on others. Indeed, the Bible’s book of Exodus issues this admonition: “You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live.”64 The Enlightenment dawning in Europe cast a pale light in seventeenthcentury America. Most Americans were not just God-fearing. An array of other supernatural forces frightened them including witches. They believed that witches could do incredible things like fly, change shape, and become invisible. Authorities had some foolproof methods of determining whether an alleged witch who pleaded innocence was telling the truth. The first step was to strip the suspect naked and carefully examine him or her. Any warts or “witch’s tits” were signs of guilt. If that did not yield proof, then torture usually elicited a confession. Another method was to tie suspects and throw them into deep water; if they sank they were innocent but if they floated or struggled to the surface they were witches, whereupon they could be executed. For centuries Americans cherry-picked the Bible, especially the Old Testament to justify such practices as enslaving people and executing alleged witches. Armed with such commands from God Himself, Americans could dutifully and even gleefully commit acts that are now considered heinous crimes. Most of those accused of witchcraft were social misfits and outcasts living at the fringe of the village or in the woods. Many were women who lived apart and scornful of men. They became scapegoats upon which villagers

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projected their own vilest pathologies. Many were misers who had squirreled away small fortunes or had land that others wanted. From 1622 to 1724, authorities charged 232 people with witchcraft and executed 36 of them.65 The most infamous witch hunt occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.66 Eventually 142 suspects were arrested, of whom fourteen women and five men were found guilty and hanged, a man was crushed to death with stones, and four others died in jail. Samuel Parris was Salem church’s fire and brimstone preacher. The witch hunt began in January when his nine-year-old niece and eleven-year-old daughter began suffering mysterious spells of convulsions and gibberish. Parris forced the girls to reveal that they had been part of a group that dabbled in witchcraft taught by Tituba, their female slave. After Tituba confessed what she had done, she and the girls accused other, older teenage girls of also practicing witchcraft. When those girls were identified they went into convulsions and claimed to see demonic spirits imposed on them by adult witches. Governor William Phips established the Court of Oyer and Terminer to process the witchcraft charges on May 27. Any suspected witch was guilty until proven innocent. The accused faced a horrific choice. If they confessed they could be executed. If they refused to confess, that could be interpreted as a satanic sign of guilt and they could be tortured into confession then executed. Under torture people will say anything to stop the pain. If they then recant, they will suffer even more painful torture. The best chance of saving oneself was to confess and then accuse others, thus proliferating a vicious cycle of confessions, accusations, arrests, torture, and more confessions that eventually packed jails in Salem, Ipswich, and Boston. The turning point came on October 12, when someone insisted that the governor’s wife was a witch. With that Phips forbad any further imprisonments on witchcraft charges and dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October 29. Over the next half year, Phips dismissed the charges or reprieved and released those convicted, usually after they paid court costs. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Salem’s mass witch hysteria was that it was the only one in colonial America. Countless other communities harbored the same explosive ingredients of a harsh theocracy; weekly hellfire and damnation sermons at church; high-strung girls and sexually suppressed society; the threat or infliction of torture; and hatreds swirling within and between families, neighbors, villages, classes, sects, and races. But accusations elsewhere resulted in just one or two scapegoats being executed. Samuel Sewall was among the nine judges who heard the cases. Five years after the last alleged witch was hanged, he apologized in church for his role in the hysteria. No other judge echoed his apology from either cowardice or conviction that he had done nothing wrong. However, a number of accused and accusers did confess their guilt in naming innocent names and violating

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them with heinous charges. But that did little to sooth the devastated psyches of the hundreds of accused along with their families and friends, let alone bring back the dead. Thus did the power of those who upheld theocracy and communitarianism continue harshly to suppress most advocates of humanism and individualism as the seventeenth century ended. Their power was rooted not just in laws, institutions, and select Biblical passages. They could also point to a real or imagined French, Spanish, Dutch, and/or Indian military threat somewhere along the long and expanding American frontier. Only by remaining united could the American colonists repel and ideally one day vanquish their foes. NOTES 1. Colonial American Literature, 244–50. 2. Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 111. 3. For books on New England’s settlement, see: Harry M. Ward, The United Colonies of New England, 1643–1690 (New York: Vantage, 1961); Philip S. Haffenden, New England in the English Nation, 1689–1713 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); Richard R. Johnson, Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675–1715 (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1981); Charles E. Clark, The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England, 1610–1763 (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1983); David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Virginian DeJohn Anderson, New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 4. Jon Moseley, John Winthrop’s World: History as a Story, the Story as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1992); Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (New York: Pearson, 2006); Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: Biography as History (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009); Michael Parker, John Winthrop: Founding a City on a Hill (New York: Routledge, 2013). 5. Bremer, Winthrop, 83. 6. Colonial American Literature, 244–50. 7. Deuteronomy 19:21, Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 195. 8. Roger Williams, The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963); Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1967); Edwin S. Gaustad, Liberty or Conscience: Roger Williams in America (New York: Judson Press, 1999); Edwin S. Gaudstad, Roger

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Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (New York: Penguin, 2012). 9. Barry, Rogers Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, 194. 10. Roger Lockyer, The Early Stuarts: A Political History of England, 1603–1642 (New York: Longman, 1989), 28. 11. Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 28. 12. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, 309. 13. Emery Battis, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962); Eve Laplante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (New York: Harper One, 2005); Michael P. Winship, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided (Topeka: University of Kansas Press, 2005); Timothy D. Hall, Anne Hutchinson: Puritan Prophet (New York: Pearson, 2009). 14. LaPlante, American Jezebel, 13. 15. Ibid, 127. 16. Ibid, 130. 17. Ibid, 120–21. 18. For the best books on seventeenth century American political development, see: Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962); Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly of the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963); Lawrence H. Leder, Liberty and Authority: Early American Political Ideology, 1689–1763 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Michael G. Kammen, Deputyes and Libertyes: The Origins of Representative Government in Colonial America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1969); Alison Gilbert Olson, Anglo-American Politics, 1660– 1775: The Relationship between Parties in England and Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); George Dargo, The Roots of the Republic: A New Perspective on Early American Constitutionalism (New York: Praeger, 1974); Stephen S. Webb, The Governors-General: The English Army and the Definition of Empire, 1569–1681 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Miller Perry, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1983); J.R. Pole, The Gift of Government: Political Responsibility from the English Restoration to American Independence (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983); Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Politics of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989); Alison Gilbert Olson, The Making of Empire: The Development and Cooperation of London and American Interest Groups (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992). For

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books on New England government and theology, see: Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956); Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1953); Timothy H. Breen, The Character of the Good Rules: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England, 1630–1730 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1970); Dewey Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Charles Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experiences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Andrew Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989); David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990); Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English-Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1995); Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 19. Gloria L. Main, Tobacco Economy: Life in Early Maryland, 1650–1720 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982); David W. Jordan, The Foundation of Representative Government in Maryland, 1632–1715 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Robert Emmett Curran, Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 (Washington D.C: Catholic University Press of America, 2014). 20. W. Keith Kavenaugh, ed., The Foundations of Colonial America, vol. 3 (New York: Chelsea House, 1973), 2, 1182. 21. Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil War (New York: Penguin, 2007); Diana Purkiss, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain (New York: Basic Books, 2007); Roger Manning, An Apprenticeship in Arms: The Origins of the British Army, 1583–1702 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Peter Ackroyd, Rebellion: The History from James I to the Glorious Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015). 22. David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 5. 23. For the best overview, see: Richard Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (New York: Vintage, 2005). 24. For books on New York’s seventeenth century development, see: Patricia Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York: Columbia University, 1971); Thomas Elliot Norton, The Fur Trade in Colonial New York, 1686–1776 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974); Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke’s Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977); Sung Bok Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society, 1664–1775 (Chapel

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Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978); Donna Merrick, Possessing Albany, 1630–1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). 25. For the strategic importance of Carolina and the southern frontier, see: Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1929); James Letch Wright, Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in North America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971); W. Stitt Robinson, The Southern Colonial Frontier, 1607–1763 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979). 26. For original sources, see: Jean R. Soderland, ed., William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). For biographies and Pennsylvania politics, see: Catherine O. Pearce, William Penn A Biography (New York: Lippincott, 1957); Mary Maples Dunn, William Penn: Politics and Conscience (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967); Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681– 1726 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968); William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); John Moretta, William Penn and the Quaker Legacy (New York: Pearson, 2006). 27. Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), 224. 28. Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637–1714 (Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2002). 29. Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 277. 30. Douglas Leach, Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial America, 1677–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 17–18. 31. For books on seventeenth century American economic development, see: James M. Smith, Seventeenth Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959); Brooke Hindle, Technology in Early America: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1968); Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625–1742 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Brooke Hindle, ed., America’s Wooden Age: Aspects of Its Early Technology (Tarrytown, New York: Sleepy Hollow Press, 1975); D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Atlantic America, 1492–1800 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986); Edwin J. Perkins, The Economy of Colonial America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); For New England’s economy, see: Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). For the Chesapeake region’s economy, see: Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

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32. Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), 7. 33. Curtis Nettels, The Money Supply of the American Colonies before 1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1934); John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978). 34. For English institutions and policies toward the American colonies, see: Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967); Michael G. Kammen, Empire and Interest: The American Colonies and the Politics of Mercantilism (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1970); Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974); Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerland, Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and its Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 35. Richard Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974). 36. Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619–1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998). 37. Taylor, American Colonies, 329. 38. Angus Konstam, Piracy: The Complete History (London: Osprey, 2008). 39. Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against Pirates (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1998), 142. 40. For a good overview for one colony, see: Thomas Elliot Norton, The Fur Trade in Colonial New York, 1686–1776 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974). 41. Taylor, American Colonies, 194. 42. Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 111. 43. W. Elliot Brownlee, The Dynamics of Ascent: A History of the American Economy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 44–46. 44. For overviews of seventeenth century American cultural development, see: Gary B. Nash, Class and Society in Early America (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970); Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1975); Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter Albert, eds., Of Consuming Interest: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993). For American architecture, see: William H. Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architecture: The Colonial and Neoclassical Style (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1974); Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic (New York: Dover,

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2001); Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture: From the First Colonial Settlements to the National Period (New York: Dover, 2010). For American craftsmanship and decorative arts, see: John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture: Early America, the Good, Better, Superior, and Masterpiece (New York: Crown Publishing, 1993); Edwin Tunis, Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginning of American Industry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Rosemary Troy Kirk, Early American Decorative Arts, 1620–1860 (New York: Altamira Press, 2910); Carl Bridenbaugh, The Colonial Craftsman (New York: Dover Publications, 2012).For American painting, see: James Thomas Flexner, American Painting: The First Flowers of our Wilderness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947); Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture: The Economic, Religious, Social, Cultural, Philosophical, Scientific, and Aesthetic Foundations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For regional art, see: Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, vol. 3 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982); Jessie Poesch, The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and the Products of Craftsmen, 1560–1860 (New York: Harrison House, 1989). 45. For family and gender, see: Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth Century New England (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York: Vintage, 1991); John P. Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Father: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996); J. William Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014). 46. Roger Thompson, “Social Mores and Behavior: British,” Encyclopedia, 2, 688. 47. Ibid, 2, 686. 48. For seventeenth century childrearing, see: Philip J. Grevin, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Childrearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 49. Demos, A Little Commonwealth, 135. 50. For education in seventeenth century America, see: Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607– 1783 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970); Wilson Smith, ed., Theories of Education in Early America, 1655–1819 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973); James Axtell, The School Upon the Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1974); Sheldon S. Cohen, A History of Colonial Education, 1607–1776 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974); John Morgan, God’s Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning, and Education, 1560–1640 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 51. Deborah Keller-Cohen, “Literacy,” Encyclopedia, 3, 6. 52. Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). 53. Lepore, Name of War, 44.

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54. Kevin J. Hayes, “Libraries and Learned Societies,” Encyclopedia, 3, 124. 55. Lepore, Name of the War, chapter 2. 56. Colin G. Calloway, ed., North Country Captives: Selected Narratives of Indian Captivity from Vermont and New Hampshire (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992); Jane Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Vintage, 1994). 57. Wendy Martin, Colonial American Travel Narratives (New York: Penguin, 1994), 12, 13, 22, 33, 43, 46–47. 58. Lepore, Name of War, 127–28. 59. For her works, see Anne Bradstreet, The Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Jeannine Hensley (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2010). For the best biographies, see: Heidi Nicolls, Anne Bradstreet: A Guided Tour of the Life and Thought of a Puritan Poet (New York: P and R Publishing, 2006); Faith Cook, Anne Bradstreet: Pilgrim and Poet (New York: Evangelical Press, 2010). 60. Colonial American Literature, 283–84. 61. Ibid, 289. 62. Ibid, 311. 63. Harrison T. Meserole, ed., American Poetry of the Seventeenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985), 228. 64. Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 76. 65. For good overviews of witchcraft in colonial America, see: Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominium: Magic and Religion in Early New England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial North America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998); John P. Demons, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 66. For the best books on the Salem witchcraft hysteria, see: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974); Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Doubleday, 1995); Richard Francis, Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience (New York: Harper Collins, 2005); Stacey Schiff, The Witches: Salem 1692 (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2015).

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“The Dutch have too much trade and the English are resolved to take it from them.” (George Monck)1 “And those that first entered found sharp resistance from the enemy who both shot at and grappled with them; others ran into their homes and . . . set them on fire . . . and . . . more were burnt to death than was otherwise slain. . . . It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink . . . but . . . they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them . . . give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.” (William Bradford)2

Elizabeth I was a tough act to follow. The “Virgin Queen” is celebrated for presiding over England’s cultural Renaissance and expansion into a great power with grace, wit, and wisdom. Her successor James I has a well-earned reputation for being a dour, self-righteous religious zealot who had witches burned and Puritans hanged while enjoying the charms of his male lovers.3 Yet, after being crowned England’s king in 1603, James accomplished two great things; he sponsored the beautiful translation of the Bible named after himself and kept England at peace for two decades. Indeed, without that peace a French or Spanish expedition might have wiped out Jamestown and Plymouth in their nascent years as they struggled to survive. Then, in 1625, James died and his son Charles took power. Charles led England into disastrous wars with Spain from 1625 to 1630 and France from 1626 to 1629, followed by a civil war from 1642 to 1649 that cost him his throne and life. 131

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However, by this time, the American colonies were solidly established and would most likely have repelled a foreign attack that mercifully never came. For nearly a century and a half, no European power appeared to threaten England’s American colonies more than France. That threat, however, was never existential. Not once during five wars between France and England in North America did the French and their Indian allies have even the remotest chance of conquering any American colony let alone all of them. Nonetheless, the horrific carnage that French and Indian war parties inflicted on the American frontier scorched that developing nation’s psyche. As the Americans fought, prepared to fight, or recovered from fighting the French and Indians, their identity deepened and they projected their worst characteristics onto hated enemies. It was France’s North American empire that faced the true existential threat. In each war, the Americans hoped to conquer Canada and did so decisively on the fifth attempt. Like England, France’s acquisition of a North American empire happened much more by chance than design.4 Throughout the sixteenth century nearly every French king authorized discovery expeditions to North America. Given the lengthening list of failures, they did so mostly with Gallic shrugs of fatalism and indifference. Each monarch felt compelled to do something to offset Spain’s expanding empire across the Western Hemisphere even if it were little more than a gesture. The most important effort was Jacques Cartier’s 1534 voyage that sailed up the Saint Lawrence valley as far as today’s Montreal. Cartier claimed for France that swatch of North America he called Canada. For the next seventy years, each decade or so French expeditions sailed to Canada and failed to establish a colony. The turning point came in 1603, when Henri IV issued a ten-year trade monopoly for Canada to Aymar de Chaste, François Gravé Du Pont; among his officers was Samuel Champlain. The expedition traded its way up the Saint Lawrence valley to tarry at Montreal then returned to France. Du Pont passed the monopoly to Pierre du Gua de Monts, who named Champlain his deputy. The subsequent settlement of Sainte Croix in Passamaquoddy Bay in 1604 lasted a year, defeated after scurvy killed half the thirty colonists. The survivors established Port Royal on Nova Scotia’s southern coast in 1605. The following year, Champlain sailed south as far as Cape Cod but hostile Indians deterred any settlement in that direction. In the summer of 1608, Champlain and his men abandoned Port Royal and established Québec.5 For the first decade or so Québec had a precarious existence as diseases and Indians killed more men, only a trickle of new settlers arrived, furs and fish were the only sources of wealth, and most crops withered in the short growing season, making the settlement dependent on annual grain shipments from France. In 1609, Champlain deliberately got involved in a perennial

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Indian war that would have enormous consequences.6 He did so after making a tough calculation of the limited power at his disposal: “I had come with no other intention than to make war for we had with us only arms and not merchandise for barter.”7 He and two of his men joined an Abenaki expedition heading south up the 125-mile long lake that he named after himself. Near present-day Ticonderoga, an Iroquois war party attacked them. With their matchlocks, Champlain and his men fired a volley that killed the chief and several others, and terrified and routed the rest. From that day for nearly a century, the Iroquois were dead set to exterminate the French. To that end, they first eagerly traded furs for guns with the Dutch, who established posts up the Hudson River valley, then the English after they conquered New Netherlands and transformed it into New York. During these years a civil war diverted France’s efforts to develop Canada. From 1610 to 1629, Catholics and Protestants, known as Huguenots, fought the eighth war between them in as many decades. This latest Huguenot war was the first European war that spread to North America after Charles I, prodded by his closest advisor, George Villiers, Duke Buckingham, sided with the Huguenots against Louis XIII. He did so even though an ongoing war against Spain since 1625 had resulted in nothing but soaring debt and defeats. In the last year of his life, James I had allied with the Dutch to help defeat a Spanish invasion of the Netherlands. The Spanish repelled an English attack on Cadiz with heavy losses. The justification for war with France was primarily commercial rather than religious. In 1626, the French commander at Bordeaux ordered the seizure of 180 English and Scottish vessels involved in the wine trade after learning that English privateers had captured three French vessels. Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis Richelieu, Louis XIII’s prime minister, sought negotiations to prevent the crisis from erupting into war. Buckingham talked Charles into spurning that offer and instead authorize the seizure of French ships in England and the high seas and the expulsion of the French retinue of his wife Henrietta Maria, Louis XIII’s sister. Buckingham then got the king to name him the commander of an expedition to aid the Huguenots who were besieged by Louis XIII’s army in the port city of La Rochelle. That resulted in a debacle in 1627, when the French army shattered Buckingham’s army, wiping out 4,000 of his 7,000 troops and forcing the remnants to reembark and sail back to England. Meanwhile, when Parliament protested the wars and refused to fund them, Charles dismissed it, ruled by decree, and raised money through forced loans and taxes. England scored its only significant victory during that war in North America, then squandered it. Gervaise Kirke was a prosperous, ambitious merchant who reaped much of his wealth from trade with France. In 1628, he obtained a royal license to capture and colonize Canada. He set sail with several score men and supplies packed in three vessels. When he dropped anchor at the

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Montagnais village of Tadoussac at the Saguenay River’s mouth, the Indians welcomed him for breaking the French monopoly with cheaper, better made, more abundant goods. After Kirke and his men reached Québec, Champlain rejected his surrender demand. The marauders captured that year’s supply fleet of five vessels along with nineteen smaller fishing boats, then sailed to sell their haul at English prize courts. Those losses crippled Québec and forced Champlain to surrender when Kirke and his flotilla reappeared the following year. Kirke and his partners formed the Anglo-Scot Company to take over the fur trade and send 30,000 pelts back to European markets in 1630. England restored Canada to France in the 1629 peace treaty. Champlain repossessed Québec in 1632. In all, Kirke’s fleeting conquest and exploitation of Québec was a tiny dress rehearsal for the massive and permanent conquest 130 years later. American colonists were only vaguely aware of the war between France and England, and Québec’s capture. For New England’s leaders the most pressing concern was how to expand trade and maintain peace with all the Indian tribes. The dilemma was that to befriend one tribe often meant sharing its enemies. For instance, Uncas headed the Mohegan tribe that lived in a cluster of villages along the Connecticut River valley’s middle stretch. He welcomed the English for their trade, especially guns, and tacit alliance against enemy tribes like the Pequot eastward and Iroquois westward. The Pequot lived in a dozen or so villages between the Thames and Mystic rivers with that of chief Sassacus at what is now Mystic, Connecticut.8 They numbered around 4,000 people of whom 900 or so were warriors, and had recently mastered a virtuous cycle of economic and military power. They controlled most of the meticulous manufacture of wampum, strings of tiny white beads from welk clam shells and purple beads from quahog clam shells. Wampum had become a medium of exchange not just among the tribes but also the coin-starved English and Dutch settlers. The Pequot exploited their geographic position by playing off Dutch and English traders against each other to obtain ever more guns along with other useful goods like cloth, hatchets, and pots for wampum and furs. Nearly all the neighboring tribes feared and hated the Pequot for their growing power, including the Mohegan to the northwest, the Narragansett to the north, the Niantic just east, the Wampanoag east, and the Niantic on Block Island to the south. The Pequot’s only ally was the westward Niantic. A slow-burning blood feud eventually ignited the Pequot War.9 In 1634, Dutch traders enticed Pequot sachem Tatobem aboard their vessel, seized him, demanded ransom, and then murdered him even after his tribe paid them a bushel of wampum beads. Some English traders were just as ruthless. Massachusetts’ General Court banished John Stone on charges of impiety,

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adultery, drunkenness, and theft. Stone and seven followers sailed to the Connecticut River where they abducted two Niantic men to guide them upriver to trade with the tribes. A Niantic war party murdered Stone and his men to liberate the captives. Rather than mutter “good riddance,” the General Court issued a demand not to the Niantic, but to their overlord Sassacus that he turn over the killers to be tried for murder; the logic was that failing to do would endanger God-fearing Puritans who traded with the Indians. Sassacus tried to compromise by paying wampum to atone for those deaths at the hands of the tribute tribe’s warriors but refused to extradite the killers. The General Court could have accepted the blood money but instead insisted on its original demand. Neither side budged from its position. Memories of the deadlock faded for the next several years until another murder reanimated it. On July 20, 1636, the Block Island Niantics killed English trader John Oldham and several of his men to prevent them from sailing on to trade with the Pequot. When word of the murders reached Boston, Governor Henry Vane demanded that the Narragansett deliver the killers of their allied tribe. The Narragansett instead pointed the finger at the Pequot and offered to join the English in warring against them. For now Vane and the General Court spurned the offer and instead dispatched Captain John Endicott and ninety men to Block Island. Spotting the expedition’s approach nearly all the Niantics escaped except for a straggler that the English killed as they looted and burned the village. Endicott and his men then sailed on to Pequot territory where they burned a village when the chief refused the impossible demand to deliver Stone’s killers and instead fled with his people to safety. That provoked the Pequot to war against the English, although they delayed launching it until the following spring. On April 23, 1637, Chief Sequin led a war party that killed nine settlers and captured two at Wethersfield, Connecticut. Raids against other settlements killed another thirty colonists. Pequot war parties skulked around Fort Saybrook and taunted the defenders to come out and fight. Connecticut and Massachusetts coordinated an effort to join forces against the Pequot at Fort Saybrook. In mid-May two relief forces met there, Connecticut Captain John Mason with seventy English and sixty Mohegans led by Uncas, and Massachusetts Captain John Underhill with ninety English. Instead of fighting the local Pequot, the expedition sailed eastward to Narragansett Bay to attack the Pequot from that unexpected direction. Sassacus believed that the English had actually sailed to Boston so he led a hundred or so warriors up the Connecticut valley to attack the English settlements there. Mason and Underhill talked several hundred Narragansett into joining them against the Pequot. The English and their Indian allies attacked the palisaded Pequot town of Mystic on May 26, 1637. Perhaps as many as seven hundred Pequot men, women, and children died in the fighting or burned to death. Plymouth

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Governor Bradford recalled: “They approached . . . with great silence and surrounded it both with English and Indians, that they might not break out; and so assaulted them with great courage, shooting amongst them, and entered the fort with all speed. And those that first entered found sharp resistance from the enemy who both shot at and grappled with them; others ran into their homes and . . . set them on fire . . . and . . . more were burnt to death than was otherwise slain.”10 To justify the slaughter, Underhill thumped the Bible, insisting that “the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. . . . We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”11 Bradford echoed that excuse: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof: but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”12 Mason then marched with 160 English and forty Mohegans after Sassacus and his remaining four hundred or so people. They cornered the Pequots in a swamp near today’s Fairfield, Connecticut. Mason demanded that they surrender. Sassacus and his warriors refused, but around 200 mostly old men, women, and children gave up. Mason then led an attack that killed around 180 Pequots. Sassacus and around 80 warriors escaped and fled westward, hoping to find refuge with the Mohawks. Instead the Mohawks slaughtered them and sent their scalps to Boston. Several hundred Pequots from other villages also survived. Under the Treaty of Hartford, singed on September 21, 1638, two hundred Pequot captives were split between the Mohegans and the Narragansetts to integrate into their respective populations. The English sold a hundred Pequots that they held to Bermuda or West Indian slave plantations. In all, the colonists and their Indian allies fought a total war of either extermination, enslavement, or assimilation against the Pequot. Victory in the Powhatan war followed by the crown’s takeover of Virginia prompted a virtuous cycle of more settlers and production. In 1634, the English completed a palisade that stretched six miles from the James River to the York River and thus protected the entire wedge of land eastward to Chesapeake Bay. By 1638, Virginia’s population surpassed 14,000 spread throughout the tidewater region. Despite these advances, Virginia’s security faced an imminent peril. By 1644, Opechancanough was more than ninety years old and determined to exterminate the English before he died. The attack came on April 18 and was even bloodier than the one twenty-two years earlier. The Indians slaughtered more than 500 settlers before the survivors drove them off. Governor William Berkeley rallied the militiamen and led them in a series of attacks that devastated villages ever further from Jamestown, including Pamunkey,

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Powhatan, Chickahominy, Appomatatox, Weyanoke, Warraskoyak, Nansemond, Chowanoke, and Secotan. He then had three forts constructed at the tidewater to guard the western frontier, Fort Royal on the York River, Fort James on the Chickahominy River, and Fort Charles on the James River. The war reached a turning point in August 1646, when Berkeley led sixty men in a raid that captured Opechancanough. His hope to use the chief as a bargaining chip to end the war died when a guard murdered Opechancanough. Nonetheless, in November 1646, Berkeley and Necotowance, the Powhatan’s new chief, agreed to a treaty whereby the Indians recognized the English ownership of tidewater lands between the Blackwater and York rivers, returned all captives and muskets, and annually paid a symbolic tribute of twenty beaver skins to acknowledge the English king as their Great Father. The subsequent peace lasted nearly three decades. The Netherlands was an anomaly among the great powers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.13 Fueled by the related forces of expanding wealth, trade, literacy, nationalism, Protestantism, and seapower, the Dutch fought and eventually won a war of independence from the Hapsburg Empire that lasted eight decades from 1568 to 1648. With the 1579 Treaty of Utrecht, seven provinces formed a federation with a parliament called the States General headed by a State-Holder or constitutional monarch, the prince of Orange. Only unanimity among the provinces approved a policy proposal. The capital was The Hague in Holland, the province with the largest population and economy. Without enough land to be self-sufficient in food, the Dutch literally had to trade and fish or die. Fishing, mercantile, and naval vessels crowded ports at the mouths of the Rhine, Maas, and Scheldt rivers that ran through their territory. As the Dutch fought for independence they became more militarily, economically, and culturally powerful. Amsterdam, the largest Dutch city, exceeded London as a dynamic financial, mercantile, manufacturing, ship-building, publishing, artistic, and free-thinking city. The Dutch government licensed the East India Company in 1602 and the West India Company in 1621, each with monopoly power over half the world, with the former spanning the Indian and Pacific basins and the latter the Atlantic basin. In its realm each company had the power to fight wars, negotiate treaties, and conquer lands on behalf of the Netherlands. The Dutch interlude in North America began in 1609, when Henry Hudson discovered the river that he named for himself and claimed that watershed for the Netherlands. Dutch vessels annually reappeared to trade furs from the Mahicans and other Algonquian speaking tribes up the Hudson valley and the Iroquoian Mohawks up the Mohawk River. In 1614, The Hague granted the newly formed New Netherlands Company a three-year trade monopoly over the region. That year the company established Fort Nassau on an island near present-day Albany. When that company went

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bankrupt, The Hague transferred its monopoly to the Dutch West India Company which erected Fort Orange at present-day Albany in 1624, then bought Manhattan Island and established New Amsterdam at its southern tip in 1626. The Dutch tried to establish settlements in the lower Delaware and Connecticut River valleys in the 1630s; they succeeded in the former but the English drove them out in the latter. The West India Company flourished with the value of the furs it traded soaring from 27,125 guilders to 61,075 guilders from just 1624 to 1628. Despite that promising beginning, New Netherlands mostly lost money as corruption devoured profits.14 But New Netherlands was just one link in a vast global network of farflung colonies and trading posts in parts of the Caribbean, South America, West Africa, Cape Colony, India, Southeast Asia, and even Japan that mostly made plenty of money for the shareholders. In New Netherlands the Dutch capitalized on the chronic animosities and frequent wars between Algonquian and Iroquois peoples by avoiding taking sides, making each side dependent on Dutch weapons and other trade goods, respecting Indian customs, and prohibiting any Christian proselytizing. Geographically New Netherlands was a powerful wedge between England’s New England and Chesapeake Bay colonies. By the 1650s, the Dutch had settlements along stretches of the Hudson and Delaware River valleys and Long Island. But there were only about 4,000 colonists and one in three of them was English. The largest English contingent was in a cluster of towns on eastern Long Island whose settlers had come from and kept trade and cultural ties with New England. As the world’s two most dynamic trading nations with overlapping land claims in the New World, England and Holland were natural rivals. That made conflict if not war inevitable between them. Yet, while they competed for markets and territory, they shared similar religious views. For strategic and religious reasons, Elizabeth I signed the 1585 Treaty of Nonsuch whereby England allied with the Netherlands in its war for independence from Spain. That alliance lasted two decades until the 1604 Treaty of London brought peace between England and Spain. Thereafter the English and Dutch became imperial rivals as each chartered East and West Indian trading companies licensed to carve out their own respective commercial and territorial empires by any possible means. The Dutch independence war meshed with the Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648, which had multiple causes and dimensions, most critically as the final bloodbath between Protestants and Catholics. During that war, the Dutch fleet destroyed the Spanish fleet at the Battle of the Downs in 1639, making the Netherlands the world’s greatest naval power. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended that war and the series of religious wars following the Protestant Reformation that Luther had launched in 1517. Henceforth, the prince of each sovereign state could freely determine

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his realm’s religion. In 1650, the Netherlands and Spain signed a peace treaty whereby Madrid finally recognized Dutch independence more than eight decades after they began fighting for it. Most Englishmen now feared that the Netherlands would turn against them after having finally and decisively defeated Spain. The Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell initiated several acts that actually provoked what the English intended to prevent. In March 1651, Cromwell sent a delegation to The Hague with an offer that the Netherlands join the Commonwealth as a junior partner like Scotland. Not surprisingly, the Dutch rejected the notion. The Commonwealth policy shifted to “if you can join them, beat them.” Or, as General George Monck bluntly put it: “The Dutch have too much trade and the English are resolved to take it from them.”15 In October 1651, Parliament passed a Navigation Act that forbade the Dutch from trading with English colonies anywhere and authorized English warships and privateers to capture any Dutch smuggling vessels. Over the next half year, English ships seized more than 140 Dutch ships. Despite these depredations no battles between English and Dutch warships occurred until May 29, 1652, when English Admiral Robert Blake ordered his fleet to open fire on the passing fleet of Admiral Maarten Tromp when the Dutch did not dip their flags in salute. The result was the first of three wars between the English and Dutch within a quarter century, from 1652 to 1654, 1665 to 1667, and 1672 to 1674.16 The fighting consisted mostly of naval battles in European, African, Caribbean, and North American waters. England lost the second war but won the first and third. The nadir for England came in 1667 when a Dutch fleet battled its way up the Thames River nearly to London and left dozens of destroyed English warships in its wake. In North America, the one and only critical action was England’s bloodless takeover of New Netherlands in 1664. Although the Dutch briefly retook their former colony in 1673, they surrendered all claims to it with the Treaty of Westminster on February 9, 1674. Charles II committed an act in March 1664 that had vital consequences for American colonial development. He granted his brother James, the duke of York and Albany, the Dutch colony of New Netherlands if he could conquer it. With that incentive, York mobilized an expedition of 450 troops and four warships commanded by Major Richard Nicolls. The English flotilla dropped anchor just beyond cannon shot of New Amsterdam on June 24, 1664. Nicolls sent a demand for Governor Peter Stuyvesant to surrender. Stuyvesant wanted to fight but most of his men did not. He bitterly agreed to capitulate. Nicolls had Captain George Cartwright sail his vessel up the Hudson to receive Fort Orange’s capitulation. Cartwright then convened a council with the Iroquois whereby the Five Nations transferred their alliance from the Dutch to the English. The Iroquois had hated the English for arming their enemies but now accepted what they could not prevent. They insisted that the English award

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their subsequent loyalty with a steady stream of muskets and other vital goods upon which they had become dependent. New York became the name for both the bustling sea port of New Amsterdam and the entire colony, while Fort Orange became Albany. With their pursuit of profit above all, New Amsterdam’s merchants were happy to rename their city and transfer their loyalty from Holland to England as long as business remained robust. William Berkeley was Virginia’s governor from 1642 to 1652 and from 1666 to 1677, and became increasingly unpopular the longer he ruled. In 1643, he began a campaign to force non-Anglicans either to convert or leave the colony. In 1670, he restricted the vote to property-owners. All along he placed his favorites in official positions with generous salaries paid by higher taxes. He was obsessed with maintaining order and repressing any opposition. To that end he was quite happy to keep the populace as ignorant as possible: “I thanke God . . . there are noe free schools nor printing and I hope wee shall not have these [for a] hundred yeares, for learning hath brought disobedience and herisie and Sects into ye World and printing has divulged them and Libells against ye best Government. God keep us from both.”17 Whether or not those policies retarded Virginia’s development, by the mid-1670s, the population numbered 38,000 English settlers, 2,500 African slaves, and 3,500 Indians. Tobacco drove the economy with over 17,000 pounds exported from the Chesapeake Bay region in 1675.18 That relative prosperity was devastated from 1675 through 1677, when Virginians fought two wars, one against Indians and the other against each other.19 The Susquehannocks were an Iroquoian speaking tribe who once lived in a large palisade on the lower Susquehanna River. They traded furs to the colonists and sporadically warred against the Algonquian speaking Delaware and the Iroquois Five Nations. Iroquois raids during the 1660s forced the Susquehannock to move to palisaded Piscataway town on the Potomac River near the smaller Doeg tribe. In July 1675, the Doeg drove off some hogs from the Virginia plantation of Thomas Matthew after he refused to pay them what they believed he owed them. Matthew called out the militia which pursued, killed several Doegs, and recovered some of the hogs. A Doeg war party retaliated by killing a settler. The militia then marched against the Doeg village, killing ten people from that tribe and fourteen visiting Susquehannocks. That provoked the two tribes to war against the Virginia and Maryland frontiers. By March 1676, the Indians had killed over 350 colonists. A joint command of 500 Virginia and 350 Maryland militiamen besieged Piscataway and murdered five men who came out to negotiate. During the seven week siege the Susquehannock killed or wounded over fifty militiamen in various sorties, then killed another dozen as they escaped to the Shenandoah Valley.

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Nathaniel Bacon was a wealthy, charismatic Virginia planter and Council member from Henrico. He became enraged when Berkeley refused to issue him a militia officer’s commission that he demanded. In April 1676, he defied the governor by leading 200 militiamen westward to search for the Susquehannocks. The Occaneechee tribe lived in the upper Roanoke valley and enriched itself as middlemen in trade between the English and the Cherokee southwest in the Appalachian mountain foothills. Bacon’s expedition visited the Occaneechee and talked several score warriors into joining the expedition. The allies eventually found and attacked a Susquehannock village, slaughtered thirty people, and seized several score others along with a horde of furs. Then the victors disputed how to split the loot. The Occaneechee attacked the English and killed a dozen until the colonists rallied and drove them off, killing at least fifty. While returning to Jamestown Bacon and his men torched the Occaneechee village. Berkeley was outraged by Bacon’s unauthorized campaign and attack on the Occaneechee. When Bacon rejected his demand for an apology, Berkeley dismissed him from the Council and called for new House of Burgesses elections. To Berkeley’s furor, Bacon was elected to the assembly where he denounced the governor and his followers. Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel and had him arrested for his seditious speech. After Bacon confessed and apologized for his crimes, Berkeley released him. Bacon returned to his plantation, rallied around 400 militiamen from the region, and marched on Jamestown, arriving on June 22. Berkeley again declared Bacon a rebel, but without enough troops to oppose him, fled to the eastern shore to rally the militia there. Bacon then led his men to attack, loot, and burn the village of the Pamunkey who were English allies. In September, Berkeley led loyal militia into Jamestown. Bacon marched his followers to Jamestown to besiege the governor and his men. Berkeley ordered an attack which was repulsed with twelve loyalists killed. After Bacon brought up cannons for a bombardment, Berkeley withdrew during the night. On September 19, Bacon and his men pillaged and burned Jamestown, inflicting £45,000 worth of damage, then withdrew to Bacon’s plantation.20 Dysentery killed Bacon on October 26. Nonetheless, with the rebel and royal forces in Virginia roughly even, the civil war might have persisted for months or longer. Fortunately Charles II had responded to Berkeley’s plea for help by sending a thousand troops packed in fourteen vessels commanded by Admiral Robert Morris. That expedition’s arrival in December tipped the power balance decisively in the crown’s favor. Berkeley and the loyal troops reentered Jamestown’s ruins in January 1677, then marched after the rebel remnants. Without their charismatic leader, the rebels capitulated. The governor was merciless to the rebel leaders, of whom twenty-three were executed and their property confiscated, but he pardoned all other participants. In all Bacon’s rebellion had

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been a disaster for Virginia, leaving hundreds of settlers dead and swaths of destroyed property. Bacon’s rebellion was the first armed revolt against royal authority in America but his cause that mingled anarchy, murder, robbery, and egomania was diametrically opposed to the American Revolution’s liberalism and nationalism a century later. Accompanying Morris was a three-man commission to reassert royal power and investigate the rebellion’s reasons and results. One disturbing finding was that the militia split between supporting Berkeley or Bacon. The commissioners recommended stationing regular troops in Virginia under the governor’s sole command. That did not happen because Charles could not spare the expense from his opulent court. Instead, he established within his Privy Council a committee called the Board of Trade to oversee the colonies and especially to ensure that the monarchy got its cut of revenues generated by tobacco and other exports. Having repressed the rebels, Berkeley then formally ended the Indian war by gathering most chiefs in council to sign the Treaty of Middle Plantation which designated reservations for each tribe. The Indian War had significant consequences, having destroyed two once powerful independent tribes, the Susquehannock and Occaneechee along with the lesser Doeg, and further dwindled already weakened friendly tribes like the Pamunkey whose reservations were fractions of their prewar lands. The Susquehannock fled to the Seneca and Onondaga who absorbed them and claimed their former territory in the Shenandoah Valley. Settlers swiftly moved into the lands the tribes were forced to cede. With the middlemen eliminated, colonial merchants could now trod the Occaneechee trail directly to the Cherokee. The Indian war known as King Philip’s War that raged between New Englanders and the Wampanoag, Nipmuck, and Narragansett tribes from 1675 into 1677 is somewhat of a misnomer.21 Philip was the English name for Metacom, the Wampanoag sachem or chief, who did not possess Europeanlike monarchial powers. Yet Metacom did call himself Philip before English people. For the sake of convenience, King Philip’s War will suffice for this exploration. By 1675, southern New England was inhabited by around 40,000 colonists and 12,000 Indians. Of the New England Council members, Massachusetts had around 17,000 people, Connecticut 10,000, and Plymouth 5,000. Rhode Island’s population of 8,000 would remain stubbornly neutral during the war even after Indian attacks devastated Providence and smaller settlements. The Indian population was diverse with the largest tribes including 4,000 Narragansetts, 3,000 Nipmucks, 1,000 Wampanoag, 1,000 Mohegans, and a half dozen or so smaller tribes and bands with populations ranging from hundreds to scores, and fourteen Praying Indian or Christian towns with about 1,000 inhabitants.

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The Wampanoag people lived in eight villages on Narragansett Bay’s northeastern side, with the capital Pokanoket where Philip resided. Although Philip was the son of Massasoit, who was allied with Plymouth, he, most of his people, and most other tribes could cite a litany of reasons to hate the English. Narragansett leader Stonewall John bitterly complained to Roger Williams that: “You have driven us out of our own Countries and then pursued us to our Great Miserie, and Your own, and we are Forced to live upon you.”22 One warrior asserted this scornful taunt: “You English since you came into this Countrey have grown exceedingly above the Ground, let us now see how you will grow when Planted into the Ground.”23 The proselytizing of missionaries in their midst was a chronic irritant. The preachers offended countless Indians by condemning their deeply held spiritual beliefs and practices as the Devil’s work. After hearing rumors that Philip was plotting an uprising, the New England Council called him to Taunton to question and intimidate him in April 1671. Although on April 10, Philip signed a treaty whereby he pledged peace, the rumors persisted. In September he was summoned to Plymouth where he reassured Governors John Leverett of Massachusetts, John Winthrop junior of Connecticut, and Thomas Prence of Plymouth of his peaceful intentions, renewed his covenant with Plymouth, and promised to pay Plymouth a tribute of £100 worth of goods. For the next half dozen years Philip burned with desire somehow to avenge these humiliations and liberate his people from New England’s domination and exploitation. Although an Indian uprising against New England was all but inevitable, a murder trial ignited the smoldering pervasive hatreds into war. John Sassamon was a minister in the Christian Indian town of Namaset. In January 1675, he trod to Plymouth to inform Governor Josiah Winslow that Philip was planning a revolt and asked him not to reveal who told him. Tragically, Winslow rejected both Sassamon’s warning and plea, “because it had an Indian original, and one can hardly believe them [even] when they speak truth.”24 As Sassamon headed home, three Wampanoags, including one of Philip’s advisors, murdered him and dumped his body in a pond. His corpse was found and retrieved from beneath the ice on January 29, 1675. Plymouth’s Council opened an investigation into his death. Among those who received a subpoena was Philip, who denied any knowledge or connection with the murder. A witness came forward to reveal who murdered Sassamon. The Council ordered the three Wampanoags arrested and charged with murder, a jury of twelve Englishmen and six Indians found them guilty, and they were hanged on June 8, 1675. The war began on June 24, when Wampanoags attacked Swansea and killed nine settlers. What followed was a war without mercy whereby each side tried to exterminate the other. The New Englanders eventually slaughtered or enslaved thousands of Indian men, women, and children, burned

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their villages, and uprooted their crops. They justified doing so with the Biblical notion of a life for a life because: “It is the Manner of the Heathen that are now in Hostility with us, contrary to the Practice of all Civil Nations, to Execute their bloody Insolences by Stealth and Skulking in small Parties, declining all open Decision of their Controversie, either Treaty or by the Sword.”25 New England’s religious leaders exacerbated the carnage by urging a holy war against the Indians. That appalled Quaker Edward Wharton, who lamented that: “Our Rulers, Officers, and Councellors are like as men in a maze not knowing what to do; but the Priests spur them on, telling them the Indians are ordained for destruction.”26 The Massachusetts government issued this proclamation on August 13: “It shall be lawful for any person, whether English or Indian, that shall finde any Indian travelling or skulking in any of our Towns or Woods . . . to command them under their Guard and Examination, or to kill and destroy them as they best may or can.”27 The New England Council named Josiah Winslow to command an army that included 517 troops from Massachusetts, 315 from Connecticut, and 158 from Plymouth along with several hundred Indian allies. In that slaughter or be slaughtered mindset, each side desperately sought allies with “you are either for us or against us” warnings. Most Pocumtucks, Niantics, and Nipmucks in central and western Massachusetts, and Abenakis in northern New England eagerly joined the Wampanoags in warring against the English. The New Englanders convinced the Pequots and Mohegans of Connecticut to join them against the hostile tribes. An offensive by combined Massachusetts and Plymouth troops against the Wampanoag in July literally bogged down in Pocasset swamp where the Indians sheltered. The New Englanders withdrew after they exhausted their supplies. The Wampanoag escaped from the swamp to other villages on the Mount Hope peninsula. From there the Wampanoag launched attacks across southeastern Massachusetts, with Brookfield, Rehoboth, and Taunton suffering the worst devastation. Meanwhile Nipmuck, Pocumtuck, Niantic, and Abenaki war parties attacked Connecticut valley settlements westward, devastating Deerfield, Squakeag, Northfield, and Springfield. Captain Benjamin Church was the outstanding colonial combat leader to emerge from the war. He studied Indian tactics then trained his men to emulate them. An Indian explained to Church the differences in how natives and colonists practiced war, to the latter’s detriment: “The Indians gained great advantage of the English by two things: the Indians always took care in their marches and fights not to come too thick together. But the English always kept in a heap together; that it was as easy to hit them as to hit a house. The other was that, if any time they discovered a company of English soldiers in the woods, they knew that there was all, for the English never scattered, but the Indians always divided and scattered.”28

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By late 1675, the Narragansett had not only remained neutral but Chief Ninigret offered to act as a mediator to end the war. Rather than embrace that offer, the New England Council succumbed to paranoia that the Narragansett would soon join the hostile Indian alliance, and in doing so made that a self-fulfilling prophecy. During a meeting at Hartford, the Council forged a plan for a winter campaign to crush the Narragansett with converging forces against their central palisade village in the Great Swamp. In mid-December over 1,000 New England troops surrounded the Great Swamp palisade. During the battle, hundreds of Narragansetts died from the fighting or burned to death after the village caught fire, while around 300 survived and several hundred more somehow escaped. The New Englanders suffered 250 casualties. During the spring and summer of 1676, offensives by Massachusetts and Plymouth against the remaining Narragansett and Wampanoag, and by Connecticut against the Indian coalition east of the Connecticut River valley succeeded in devastating those tribes, with the worst carnage several hundred dead or captured each at Bloody Brook and Turner Falls. In mid-summer, the Mohawks launched their own merciless attacks against the hostile Indians. By late summer 1676, Philip had only forty warriors left. His end came quickly. On August 2, Church and his company wiped out most of Philip’s men and captured his wife and nine-year old, although he escaped. Church and his men finally caught and executed Philip at Mount Hope on August 12. Church brought back his head and mounted it atop a large pole in Plymouth’s center. The authorities held a day of Thanksgiving. As for Philip’s wife and son, they were likely shipped into slavery in the West Indies along with more than a thousand other Indians. Philip’s death did not end the war. Sporadic raids and skirmishes continued for months, mostly in the Connecticut River valley. Under the treaty of Casco, signed on April 12, 1678, the northern New England tribes agreed to a peace whereby they released their English captives in return for annual corn supplies. King Philip’s War was the bloodiest Indian war in American history. James Axtell tallied the carnage: “Of some 11,600 natives in southern New England in 1675, King Philip’s War claimed almost 7,900 victims or 68 percent of the belligerent population, in little more than a year: perhaps 1,250 died in battle, 625 later died of wounds, 3,000 succumbed to exposure and disease, 1,000 were sold as slaves and transported out of the country, and 2,000 became permanent refugees from their native land.”29 The colonists suffered grievously as well, with around 1,000 dead. Indians attacked fifty-two of New England’s ninety towns, destroyed seventeen, and plundered twenty-five. Each colony went deep into debt to pay for its campaigns, with Massachusetts alone owing creditors more than £1,000.30 Massachusetts recouped some of its war expenses by selling Indians into slavery. From June 25 to September 1676 alone, the colony earned £397

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from 188 such sales; the average captive cost £3.31 The Indian slave trade was not new. It began after Plymouth’s founding, gradually expanded with New England, and peaked with King Philip’s War. As with black slavery, traders made fortunes with Indian slavery. Not everyone lauded the practice. Missionary John Eliot vehemently protested enslaving Indians on practical and moral grounds: “That the terror of selling away such Indians . . . for perpetual slaves . . . is like to be an effectual prolongation of the ware & such an exasperation of them, as we know not what evil consequences upon all the land. . . . God commands that we should enlarge the kingdom of Jesus Christ . . . that to sell them for slaves is to hinder the enlargement of his kingdom. . . . If they deserve to dy, it is far better to put to death, under Godly governors . . . when Christ hath provided meanes of grace for them . . . we are highly obliged to seeke theire conversion.”32 Setting aside Eliot’s moral arguments, he was wrong about the geopolitical results of ridding New England of more than a thousand former enemies into West Indian slavery. The war shattered Algonquian Indian power in lower New England as the tribes were devastated and dispersed. The prewar checkerboard of English and Indian towns disappeared as refugees fled their burned villages to join other tribes far beyond the settlements westward or northward. The colonial governments took title to and sold off Indian lands to eager settlers. Indeed New England’s Indian allies fared little better than its enemies. Unsurprisingly, Puritan leaders interpreted King Philip’s War as God’s punishment on his chosen people for their sins. However, apparently few statements or sermons identified mistreating the Indians as the war’s original sin or cause. Instead, they argued that the Puritans had provoked God’s wrath by failing to convert the Indians to the true faith. Massachusetts’s government issued this proclamation: “The Righteous God hath heightened our Calamity and given Commission to the Barbarous Heathen to rise up against us, and to become a smart Rod and severe Scourge to us, in Burning and Depopulating several hopeful Plantations [and] Murdering many of our People . . . hereby speaking aloud to us to search and . . . turn again unto the Lord our God from whom we have departed with a great Backsliding.”33 New France slowly, steadily expanded its population and settlements during the seventeenth century. By 1685, Canada’s French settlers numbered 10,977, with the largest settlements at Québec, Montreal, and Trois Rivieres. The 160 mile swatch of the Saint Lawrence River valley from Québec to Montreal was largely settled, with rectangular land grants stretching inland from both river banks. Canada’s Achilles heel was its dependence on France for food, especially grain. The Canadians had a fighting ability disproportionate to their numbers. King Louis XIV sent 1,200 troops of the Carignan-Salieres Regiment in 1665.

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Although he withdrew the regiment in 1668, 350 soldiers were discharged to be settlers. In 1670, he returned six of the regiment’s companies to Canada, but transferred them to the Marine Ministry and thus transformed them from soldiers into marines. Over the next ninety years, the Marine Ministry dispatched more marine companies to Canada or Louisiana until there were forty by the 1760 conquest. Most companies garrisoned frontier forts. In addition all able-bodied men were organized into militia companies. A large portion of the male population participated in the fur trade and thus were experts in wilderness survival skills including marksmanship and Indian diplomacy. The French erected a defense-in-depth on the most accessible route from the American colonies to Canada, that north down Lake Champlain to the Richelieu River and then down it to the Saint Lawrence. Three forts defended the Richelieu River, Fort Sorel at the mouth, Fort Chambly half-way up, and Fort Saint Therese at the source. In 1666, Fort Anne was established on Ile la Motte, about ten miles up Lake Champlain. The French had mutually advantageous trade relations with most tribes up the Saint Lawrence River valley and across the vast Great Lakes region, defended with a string of trading posts, including Fort Cataraqui founded in 1673, Fort Frontenac in 1673, Fort Niagara in 1676, Fort Saint Joseph in 1679, Fort Crevecoeur in 1680, Fort Prudhomme in 1682, and Fort Saint Louis in 1682. Several religious orders including the Jesuits, Oratorians, and Recollets established missions among the Indians. The relationship between the trade in goods and souls was symbolized by the expedition led by Captain Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette that discovered and claimed the Mississippi valley for France in 1672. Robert La Salle’s 1682 expedition explored the Mississippi River as far south as the Red River’s mouth. The most formidable obstacle to French imperial expansion was the Five Nation Iroquois confederation that sprawled over two hundred miles from Lake Ontario’s southeastern shore to the lower Mohawk River valley, and included from west to east the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk. During the seventeenth century, as the French armed both their Algonquian and Iroquoian speaking enemies in the Saint Lawrence valley and Great Lakes, the Five Nations became increasingly dependent on the Dutch and English for guns in exchange for furs. The flow of ever more canoes packed with furs down Lake Ontario from the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi valleys provoked the Five Nations’ jealousy. The result was the Iroquois Beaver Wars that devastated the Huron in 1649, the Petun in 1650, the Neutral and Susquehannock in 1651, and the Eire in 1657. The Five Nations became trapped in a vicious cycle whereby they sought both furs to trade for guns and other trade goods, and captives to replenish their populations depleted by war. Many Beaver War survivors fled to relative safety in French Canada with various Algonquians founding Three Mountain village

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near Montreal, dissident Mohawks Caughnawaga near Montreal, and Hurons Lorette near Québec. Iroquois power peaked in the early 1680s then receded. A war party of Ojibwa and Fox defeated an Iroquois war party in 1683. The Iroquois besieged but failed to capture Fort Saint Louis in 1684. The turning point in the Beaver Wars came in 1687, when New France Governor General Joseph de la Barre organized an expedition against the Seneca. In June, General Jacques Rene, marquis Denonville led 2,722 armed men, including 832 marines, 1,030 militia, 160 coureurs de bois or backwoodsmen, 300 mission Indians, and 400 Indians from Montreal up the Saint Lawrence to Fort Niagara then south into Seneca country. The Seneca had about 750 warriors to resist the invasion. The French and Indians burned five Seneca villages and destroyed 400,000 bushels of standing or stored corn. During a series of running fights around forty-five Seneca were killed and sixty wounded while the French and Indians lost about eleven killed and eleven wounded. The Seneca rallied the Five Nations against the invaders, and hundreds of Iroquois warriors harried them as they withdrew then lingered for weeks around Forts Niagara and Frontenac, sniping at the defenders. Other Iroquois war parties headed for the Saint Lawrence valley to attack Canadian settlements. Word of the French invasion set off alarm bells in the American colonies. In 1688 New York Governor Thomas Dongan sent word to Barre that an attack on the Iroquois was an attack on England’s empire. In Boston, Governor Edmund Andros ordered a raid against Baron Jean Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint Castin’s trading post on the Penobscot River in Abenaki country. That provoked Abenaki retaliatory raids on the settlements of New Dartmouth, Yarmouth, and Kennebunk in Maine, then a province of Massachusetts. Andros responded by reinforcing or establishing eleven frontier forts. The frontier war that erupted in North America in 1688 preceded but did not cause the formal war declarations at Versailles and Whitehall against each other in 1689. Louis XIV’s ambitions to expand France to its “natural frontiers” provoked what was called the War of the League of Augsburg in Europe and King Williams’ War in England. His primary target was the Austrian Netherlands, modern-day Belgium. English King William III was also Dutch Prince William of Orange, the sovereign ruler of the Netherlands. William signed defensive alliance treaties on behalf of both England and Holland with Austria in May 1689. When the French invaded the Austrian Netherlands, England joined the Netherlands and Austrian against France. North America’s frontier war resumed during the summer of 1689. In June, an Abenaki and Pennacock raid on Dover killed twenty settlers and abducted twenty-nine. In August, French Captain Saint Castin’s forces destroyed Fort Pemaquid (Bristol). In September, Captain Benjamin Church and his 250 men

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repelled a French and Indian attack at Deering Oaks near Fort Casco (Falmouth). Although the French enjoyed the military initiative in New England, they had to defend themselves against attacks much closer to home. The town of Lachine is sited at the Saint Lawrence rapids just six miles upstream from Montreal. In August 1689, an Iroquois war party attacked Lachine, killed twenty-four settlers, forty soldiers, and several Indians from nearby Caughnawaga village, and took ninety prisoners. Desperate for soldiers, Governor Louis, count Frontenac withdrew the garrisons at Forts Niagara and Frontenac on Lake Ontario to Montreal. For 1690, Frontenac organized three expeditions. The first raid fell on Schenectady on February 9, when 114 Canadians and ninety-eight warriors killed sixty-two settlers, captured twenty-seven, and burned much of the town. The other two raids came in May. Castin’s party of twenty-five Canadians and twenty-five Indians, attacked Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, killing thirty-four and capturing fifty-four. Another party of fifty Canadians and sixty Abenaki destroyed Fort Casco and Fort Loyal (Portsmouth), killing over a hundred colonists. Meanwhile, Governor Jacob Leisler invited the other colonial governors to a war council in New York City in April 1690. Governors came from Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut. The governors of Rhode Island and Maryland sent letters promising contributions of money and men, respectively. Only Virginia ignored the invitation. The troop pledges came to 855 men, including 400 from New York, 160 from Massachusetts, 135 from Connecticut, 100 from Maryland. Financial constraints, political conflicts, corruption, and incompetence resulted in only a fraction of those troops, and the supplies and money to sustain them, actually appearing. Nonetheless, Leisler’s effort was noteworthy as the first attempt to forge a united American military front. The New Englanders not only beat the New Yorkers to the punch by two months but actually inflicted a blow against the enemy. They launched their own campaign in May just as those two French and Indian war parties attacked their frontier. The expedition’s commander was William Phips, who was among America’s earliest examples of the self-made man.34 He was born on the frontier at Pemaquid, Maine, became a shipbuilder in Boston, but made his fortune salvaging a wrecked Spanish treasure ship in the Bahamas in 1687. James II rewarded him with a knighthood after Phips arrived in London to present the king his royal tenth share. Phips returned triumphantly to Boston just in time for the governor to name him commander of the 736 volunteers packed on eleven vessels bound for Canada. After setting sail on May 9, 1690, the expedition’s first target was Port Royal on Nova Scotia’s south coast. The 60 defenders surrendered within days after the expedition dropped anchor nearby on May 19. The New Englanders looted and burned

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the town, then sailed back to Boston. In September Captain Church led 300 men first to relieve Fort Penobscot (Brunswick) then attack an Abenaki village at Livermore Falls. As he withdrew, Abenaki attacked him at Cape Elizabeth, killing seven and wounding twenty-four of his men. New York’s ability to retaliate was inhibited by the sharp divisions between English and Dutch, and Leisler and anti-Leisler factions. Leisler mustered only 150 militiamen and seventy Iroquois, and assigned the command to his political ally and son-in-law Jacob Milborne. Most of the volunteers, however, refused to march unless they were led by Fitz-John Winthrop, Leisler’s political rival. Leisler bitterly agreed to appoint Winthrop the commander and Milborne the quartermaster. Milborne’s incompetence and greed deprived the expedition of enough supplies vital to sustaining it. It was not until July 30 that Winthrop led 400 militiamen and Iroquois from Albany but they got no further than Wood Creek which flows north into Lake Champlain. Exhausted supplies forced them to withdraw to Albany. Captain John Schulyer was determined to strike a blow against the enemy. He led twenty-eight tough frontiersmen and five Indians by canoe north down Lake Champlain. By paddling at night and hiding by day, they evaded detection. After concealing their canoes several miles upriver from Fort Chambly, they headed overland northwest to the village of La Prairie with an adjacent stockade. On August 23, the New Yorkers attacked the village, killed five Canadians, took 19 prisoners, slaughtered 150 cattle, and burned most of the buildings. By August 30, Schulyer and his men, prisoners, and loot were back in Albany. There they received acclaim for inflicting partial vengeance for the French and Indian attack on Schenectady. In contrast to New York’s minor efforts, New England mustered 2,300 militia and packed them aboard thirty-four vessels under Phips’ command. Amidst celebrations, the armada set sail on August 21, 1690, bound for Québec. Eight weeks later on October 17, the armada dropped anchor beyond cannon shot of Québec. Confident that the New Englanders would soon sail away, Governor Frontenac disdainfully rejected Phips’s demand to surrender. Québec posed formidable defenses to an attacker. The city is sited on the high granite wedge of land on the west bank where the Saint Charles River joins the Saint Lawrence. Over 3,000 armed men defended the fortified lower and upper towns. Freezing autumn winds had already stripped the leaves from the trees and the rains would soon turn to snow. Phips lacked enough troops and heavy cannons to conduct an adequate siege. He had the lower town bombarded. He landed 1,200 troops on the Charles River’s east bank and marched up it in search of a ford. Skirmishes with Canadians killed 30 of his men. Six cannons he landed got stuck in tidal muck. He recalled his troops and extracted his guns. Provisions dwindled. Smallpox struck. Phips and his officers finally agreed to return to Boston amidst plummeting

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temperatures and snow squalls. The expedition cost the lives of over 1,000 men, mostly from disease and three shipwrecks, and £40,000, all for naught. The Massachusetts Council printed paper money to pay its debts, the first time that ever happened in England or its colonies. That alleviated the government’s financial woes at the cost of long-term inflation. The expedition’s devastating losses of men, money, and confidence crimped New England’s ability and will to wage war on the same scale for years thereafter. After deposing Leisler’s regime and restoring royal rule, Governor Henry Sloughter sailed upriver to Albany where he convened a council with the Iroquois and other tribes. In return for a heap of presents, the chiefs agreed that their warriors could join the New Yorkers against the French. On June 22, Captain Schulyer led 300 men, half colonial and half Indian, north toward Canada. The raid unfolded with a strategy similar to that of the previous summer but on a much larger scale. Several miles upstream of Fort Chambly, Schulyer and his men disembarked. He left twenty-seven men to guard the hidden canoes then led the rest toward La Prairie. Scouts had warned the French of the enemy’s approach. Montreal Governor Louis Hector de Callieres led 400 Canadians and Indians to the rescue on August 1. Although Schuyler and his men were outgunned, they charged and scattered the Canadians and Indians, then hurried back to the canoes. Along the way they repelled swarms of attackers. They left behind the bodies of twenty-one New Yorkers and twenty-two Indian allies, but killed that many or more Canadians and Indians. Tactically the raid was a failure because Schulyer and his men failed to destroy La Prairie. However, strategically the raid succeeded by forcing the French on the defensive on the New York front for several years. Major Benjamin Church sailed with 300 men to attack the Androscoggin River village. The men were all out hunting and only women, children, and two white captives were present. The New Englanders liberated the prisoners and slaughtered the women and children. They then trekked to another village where they freed seven captives, killed twenty Indians, burned the dwellings, and captured Chief Moxus, who had led numerous raids against New England. They had hoped to take Moxus back to Boston and publicly hang him but he escaped. As Church and his men withdrew to the boats, they fought off an attack and killed eight more Indians. That destructive raid partly accomplished the larger goal. Moxus and other chiefs sent their collective word that they wanted to talk. Delegates from both sides met at the Kennebec River mouth from November 23 to 29. As a peace offering the Abenakis released ten captives and promised that they would free the rest at a council at Wells on May 1, 1692. Tragically that council did not take place. Instead, on February 5, 1692, over 300 Abenakis and several Canadians attacked York, slaughtered 48 settlers, and prodded seventy-three prisoners back to their villages. The next

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attack came at Wells on June 10 by 400 Abenakis and twenty Canadians led by Moxus and Captain Saint Castin, respectively. Carefully aimed musket shots by Captain James Converse and his twenty-nine men kept the raiders from overrunning the fort but could not prevent them from burning the town and slaughtering the livestock. The New Englanders sought vengeance later that summer in August when Phips, Church, and 450 men sailed to Pemaquid. Phips dispatched Church with most of the troops against the Abenaki while with the remaining men he supervised the construction of Fort William Henry. After recalling Church, he garrisoned the fort with sixty men then the expedition returned to Boston. On the New York front, a French and Indian war party of several hundred men attacked three Mohawk villages on February 8, 1693. After learning of the attack, Captain Schulyer led 150 men, half white and half Indian, in pursuit. On February 17, they caught up, attacked the raiders, and killed several. Governor Frontenac invited the Iroquois to a peace council at Montreal. Negotiations ended when Frontenac refused make peace with the English as well as them. To do so would have defeated his ultimate purpose of transforming the Iroquois into allies against the English. After failing to take Québec in 1690, the New Englanders resolved not to mount another such effort without significant numbers of English warships and troops. Then, in 1693, Sir Francis Wheeler’s expedition dropped anchor in Boston for that very purpose. He had sailed from the West Indies where yellow fever and other tropical diseases had wiped out two-thirds of his 4,500 troops. Compounding that tragedy were the yellow fever-bearing mosquitos that accompanied the fleet. The disease killed hundreds of Bostonians before it burned itself out. Despite his horrendous losses, Wheeler was determined to strike Canada but Phips bluntly rejected his demand for New England troops. Instead, Phips conducted both war and diplomacy on the frontier. He dispatched Converse with 300 men to patrol the trails leading to the settlements. He had a stone fort built at Saco Bay. Then in August he negotiated a truce with thirteen Abenaki chiefs at Fort William Henry. A lull in the fighting followed but the tribal council eventually agreed to continue the war. In July 1694, the Abenaki destroyed Oyster Bay (Durham), New Hampshire, killing or capturing 90 settlers. A lull in the war lasted throughout 1695 and most of 1696, until Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville shattered it at the head of a flotilla that joined the Abenaki before Fort William Henry on July 14. Captain Pascoe Chubb commanded the ninety-five man garrison and fifteen cannons. After a short French bombardment, Chubb surrendered in turn for the garrison’s parole. Iberville’s men looted and demolished the fort. That triggered a New England counterattack. Church led a 500 man expedition that sailed as far as Nova Scotia, attacking and destroying Abenaki villages along the way. He

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met little resistance because Iberville had sailed with his men to raid English settlements on Newfoundland. Frontenac, meanwhile, persisted in trying to intimidate the Iroquois into neutrality or, ideally, alliance. Although he was seventy-nine years old, he led 2,000 regulars, militia, and Indians up the Saint Lawrence River to establish Fort Frontenac, then headed south to disembark on Lake Ontario’s south shore and march inland to Onondaga country. Throughout July his men burned villages, destroyed crops, killed those who resisted, and captured those who yielded. New York Governor Benjamin Fletcher soon got word of the invasion but lacked the money, men, and will to respond. That failure to help the Iroquois was a major reason why they embraced neutrality four years later. The war’s last major raid occurred on March 15, 1697, when Abenaki destroyed Haverhill, New Hampshire, killing twenty-seven people and taking thirteen prisoners. Among the prisoners was Hannah Dustin, who was horrified to witness the Indians slaughter her newborn baby along with other family members and friends. She and two other captives were given to a family of two men, three women, and seven children. One night as her captors were sound asleep she handed hatchets to the other captives and they bashed in the skulls of everyone except an old women and a child, took ten scalps, and made their way back to New England where she was acclaimed a heroine and awarded £50 for each scalp. The war ended with the Treaty of Ryswick signed on September 30, 1697. Louis XIV ceded his claims to Hudson Bay and Newfoundland to England, recognized William III as England’s king, returned Lorraine, retained Strasbourg, and restored trade with the Dutch. In North America, the war had inflicted heavy losses on both sides, with around 650 Americans, 300 Canadians, 100 French Indian allies, and 750 Iroquois killed, hundreds others captured, and hundreds more forced to be refugees.35 King William’s war widened existing differences between Englishmen and Americans. The royal officers and troops sent to aid the colonists did little for their defense but their arrogance and abuses of power reinforced American identity. The war’s economic impact was mixed. Hard coin did circulate as army and navy officers requisitioned supplies while soldiers and sailors spent their pay in taverns and brothels, but prices soared as shortages of goods and services mounted. The war did not end between the French and the Iroquois. Canadian and Indian war parties in 1699 and 1700, killed around ninety Senecas and seventy Onondagas each year. The Five Nations finally agreed to bury the hatchet with the French. Governor Louis Hector de Calliere convened a peace council at Montreal in July 1701 that included 1,300 delegates from thirtyone allied tribes and the Five Nations. The Iroquois promised to stay neutral in any future wars between the English and French. As such, although the

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Iroquois had lost the war, they won a very shrewd peace that maintained their power for another eight decades. Meanwhile, the Iroquois sent delegations to Albany for a conference in which they granted their Great Father, King William III, an astonishing gift. In return for his protection and annual presents, they declared his sovereignty over themselves and by extension to the tribes that had accepted Five Nations sovereignty. Theoretically that declaration stretched the English empire westward across the Lake Ontario, Erie, and Huron regions, and Ohio River valley. The American colonists would spend the next six decades trying to realize that theory. NOTES 1. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 48. 2. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (New York: Modern Library, 1981), 331. 3. Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: The Life of James IV and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014). 4. For overviews of French colonization, see: W.J. Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, 1663–1701 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963); Marcel Trudel, The Beginnings of New France, 1524–1663 (Toronto: McGill University Press, 1973); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Charles J. Balesi, The Time of the French in the Heart of North America (Chicago: Alliance Francaise, 1992); W.J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983); W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1560–1783 (New York: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1998); James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 5. For the best overview of Champlain and early Canada, see: David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream: The European Founding of North America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). 6. For French-Indian relations, see: Robert A. Goldstein, French-Iroquois Diplomatic and Military Relations, 1609–1701 (The Hague: Mouton Company, 1969); Bruce G. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1985). 7. Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 41. 8. Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry, eds., The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990). 9. For the best overview, see: Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996). For different views of the war’s origins, see: Alfred A. Cave, “The Pequot Invasion of Southern New England: A Reassessment of the Evidence,” New England Quarterly, 62 (1989), 27–44; Steven T. Katz, “The

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Pequot War Reconsidered,” New England Quarterly, 64 (1991), 206–24; Alfred A. Cave, “Who Killed John Stone?: A Note on the Origins of the Pequot War,” William and Mary Quarterly, 49 (1992), 509–21; Steven T. Katz, “Pequots and the Question of Genocide: A Reply to Michael Freeman,” New England Quarterly, 68 (1995), 641–49; Ronald Dale Karr, “Why Should You Be So Furious?: The Violence of the Pequot War,” Journal of American History, 85 (1998), 876–909. 10. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (New York: Modern Library, 1981), 331. 11. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1973), 76. 12. Bradford, Plymouth, 331. 13. For good overviews of Dutch imperialism, see: Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Vintage, 1987); Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy of World Trade, 1585–1740 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (New York: Penguin, 1991); Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); For good overviews of New Netherlands, see: Van Cleaf Bachman, Peltries or Plantations: The Economic Policies of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherlands, 1623–1639 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1969); Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986); Donna Merrick, Possessing Albany, 1630–1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (New York: Vintage, 2005); Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherlands: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth Century America (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2009); Willis Griffis, The Story of New Netherlands: The Dutch in America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2014). 14. Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 31, 43. 15. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York: Charles Scribner’s’ Sons, 1976), 48. 16. D.R. Hainsworth, The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars, 1652–1674 (London: Sutton, 1998); R.J. Jones, The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2013). 17. Stephen Saunders Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 29. 18. Steele, Warpaths, 49. 19. For the best books, see: Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957); Webb, 1676; James D. Rice, Tales form a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 20. Webb, 1676, 65. 21. For original accounts of the war, see: Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959); Benjamin Church, Diary of King Philip’s War, edited by Alan and Mary Simpson (Chester, Connecticut:

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Pequot Press, 1975); James Folsom, So Dreadful a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War (Hartford, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1999). For the war’s causes, see: Arthur J. Warrall, “Persecutions, Politics, and War: Roger William, Quakers, and King Philip’s War,” Quaker History, 66 (1977), 73–86; Philip Ranlet, “Another Look at the Causes of King Philip’s War,” New England Quarterly, 61 (1988), 79–100; Yasuhide Kawashima, Puritan Justice and the Indian: White Man’s Law in Massachusetts, 1630–1763 (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1986); Yasuhide Kawashima, Igniting King Philip’s War: The John Sassamon Murder Trial (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001). For good overviews of the war, see: Russell Bourne, The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675–1678 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (East Orleans, Massachusetts: Parnassus Imprints, 1992); Jill Lepore, The Name of War King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Viking, 1998); James Drake, King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675–1676 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999). For the war’s aftermath, see: Colin G. Calloway, ed., After King Philip’s War: Presence and Persistence in Northern New England (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1991); Michael Puglisi, Puritans Besieged: The Legacies of King Philip’s War in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (New York: University Press of America, 1991). 22. Roger Williams, April 1, 1676, Glenn W. LaFantasie, ed., The Correspondance of Roger Williams (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1988), 2, 273. 23. A Farther Brief and True Narrative of the Great Swamp Fight in the Narragansett Country December 19, 1675 (Providence, R.I.: Society of Colonial Wars, 1912), 3–4. 24. Josiah Winslow and Thomas Hinckley, “Narrative Shewing the manor of the beginnings of the present War with the Indians of Mount hope and Pocasset,” in Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, David Pulsifer, ed., (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 74–75. 25. Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), 33. 26. Lepore, Name of War, 102. 27. Ibid, 183. 28. Colonial American Literature, 303. 29. James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 293. 30. Bourne, Red King’s Rebellion, 36, 242–43. 31. Plymouth Colony Records, 10, 401. 32. John Eliot to Massachusetts governor and council, August 13, 1676, Plymouth Colony Record, vol. 10, 451–52. 33. Lepore, Name of War, 102. 34. Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651–1695 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 35. Peckham, Colonial Wars, 53.

Part III

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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Developments

“I was not discourage’d by the seeming magnitude of the undertaking, as I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and . . . makes the execution of that plan his sole study and business.” (Benjamin Franklin)1 “It may in its consequences affect every Freeman that lives under a British Government on the main of America. It is the best Cause. It is the Cause of Liberty.” (James Hamilton)2

If there were a contest to determine “America’s Greatest Man of the Eighteenth Century,” Benjamin Franklin should win it hands down.3 Indeed he would be a leading contender for the greatest American of all time. His life personified the classic rags to riches, self-made man journey. He was also the quintessential Renaissance and Enlightenment man as a worldly erudite savant, scientist, wit, essayist, poet, inventor, innovator, humanist, and humanitarian. His mind continually stretched beyond the boxes of conventional thinking and connected far-flung dots of ideas. Two measures of his extraordinary multi-dimensional mind were that during his life he used around ninety pseudonyms and signed his name forty-two different ways. Most importantly, Franklin led and symbolized the eighteenth-century metamorphosis from English subjects into American citizens, and prevailing values from theocracy and communitarianism into humanism and individualism.4

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Franklin was a master of smart power, of assembling and asserting the appropriate array of “hard” physical and “soft” psychological resources to defend or enhance one’s interests in a conflict. No matter what the challenge was, he was interested in what worked and finding ways to overcome what was wrong. Rather than confront his political opponents, he sought to convert them to his views with the Socratic method of reasoning. He observed this frequent failing among those in power: “Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous experience, but forced by the occasion.”5 Franklin continually sought remedies for that. He valued humanism far above materialism, preferring that after he died, people would say that “He lived usefully, than He died rich.”6 His humanism naturally made him a humanitarian and philanthropist. He constructed his successes upon a profound understanding of human nature. Here is one insight: “The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than showing a great deal yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with his own facetiousness and ingenuity will the sooner come into it again. Most men . . . seek less to be instructed and diverted than approved and applauded.”7 Civility was a critical ingredient in his endeavors. For instance, his guidelines for his Junto philosophical club were that all discussions be conducted “without Fondness for Dispute or Desire of Victory,” with “Direct Contradiction” outright banned.8 As for religion, Franklin was a deist who believed in “the existence of the Deity; that he made the world and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I esteem the essentials of every religion. . . . I respect . . . them all.”9 As for Christianity, “I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavor to lessen it in any man. But I wish it were more productive of good works than I have generally seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit.”10 When it came to sexual morality, he was a naturalist rather than a traditionalist. As a young man he fathered three known children, of whom two were with his common law wife Deborah. Much to her discomfort, he brought his other child, William, to live with them. William became New Jersey’s governor and a loyalist during the American Revolution; Franklin was as proud of his son’s first feat as he was ashamed of the second. Benjamin Franklin was born the fifteenth of seventeen children of a candlemaker father in Boston on January 17, 1706. He had only two years of formal education before being apprenticed at age twelve to his brother as a printer. There he indulged his love of reading and writing. At age sixteen, without

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his brother’s knowledge, he printed and distributed fifteen satirical essays under the byline “Silence Dogood.” His brother was furious when he found out and his persistent badgering finally provoked Franklin to escape and seek his fortune elsewhere. He was only seventeen when he arrived penniless and friendless in Philadelphia. After eight years of hard work and enterprise, he owned his own printing press and published the weekly Philadelphia Gazette. After getting established, Franklin enriched Philadelphia and by extension America with a series of cultural, humanitarian, and scientific institutions. In 1727, he founded the Junto as a club whose members shared humor and ideas on the prevailing issues. In 1731, he formed the subscription Library Company whereby people pooled their books and paid a small borrowing fee; by 1770, the library held over 2,000 volumes. In 1732, he began publishing his monthly “Poor Richard’s Almanack” of essays and witticisms. In 1735, he established the Union Fire Company. In 1747, he reasoned the pacifist Quaker-dominated colonial assembly into raising a defense “Association,” a thousand man volunteer regiment. His brilliance and integrity was rewarded with an array of leadership positions. Through elections or appointments he became the Grand Master of Pennsylvania’s masons in 1734, the General Assembly’s clerk in 1736, Philadelphia’s justice of the peace and postmaster in 1737, a city council member in 1748, a city alderman in 1751, and Indian commissioner in 1753. He declined being named the militia regiment’s colonel for want of military experience. He was forty-two years old in 1742 and annually making over £2,000 from his various enterprises, when he decided to devote the lion’s share of his efforts to public service and scientific research. His 1743 essay entitled “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America” generated enough enthusiasm among the city’s leading intellects for him to establish the Philosophical Society in 1744. Modeled on the Royal Society, the Philosophical Society was dedicated to nurturing technological and scientific progress or “all philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life.”11 When he attended meetings he was the brilliant star in a constellation of Enlightenment thinkers that included botanist John Bartram, physician and mathematician David Rittenhouse, physician Benjamin Rush, and naturalist Thomas Nuttal. Three and a half centuries later the Philosophical Society is still a vigorous institution. He was on the cutting edge of scientific theory and application. His 1747 treatise “Experiments and Observations in Electricity” won him international renown in scientific communities. He initiated a major step in America’s economic development when, in 1752, he founded the Philadelphia Contributorship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, the first colonial insurance company and thus investment bank. He invented

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a fuel-efficient stove, bifocals, a flexible catheter, a musical instrument he called the harmonica, a device for placing or retrieving books from high places, the lightening rod, fireproof construction methods, and better ways to heat and cool buildings. He lamented being unable to invent a way to bring the dead back to life, especially to realize his “very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence.”12 As a boy he had only a few years schooling before he was put to work. He was determined to provide children with a fundamental education that he was not privileged to enjoy. In 1749, he expressed his humanistic and practical approach to schooling with his pamphlet “A Proposal Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.” In 1751, he helped found then served as the first president of the Philadelphia Academy, whose curriculum and pedagogy was grounded on his philosophy. The institution developed into the College and Academy of Philadelphia and eventually the University of Pennsylvania. He was a one-man publishing industry. He offered eager readers plenty of practical self-help advice, especially for fortune seekers whether they were individuals with The Use of Money: Hints for Those Who Would Be Rich, (1737), Time, Credit, and Money: Advise to a Young Tradesman, (1748), How to Get Riches (1749), and governments with A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency (1729), and Plan for Saving One Hundred Thousand Pounds (1756). He also dispensed ideas for more sensuous pursuits like Advice on the Choice of a Mistress (1745). He enjoyed devising rules for groups that he established or joined like Regulations for the Junto (1728), Constitutions of the Free-Masons (1734), and Plan for the American Philosophical Society (1743). He proposed ways to better conditions for humankind with essays like “Protection of Towns from Fire” (1735), “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations” (1743), and “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania” (1749). His Autobiography is an engaging journey through phases of his life filled with humor, irony, wisdom, and the virtues that he developed in himself that led to his worldly success. He at once extolled America’s rising greatness and British imperial expansion in two essays, “Considering the Increase of Mankind” (1751) and “The Interests of Great Britain Considered” (1760). When he was only nineteen precocious years old, he wrote a pamphlet called “Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain” (1725) of mingled cynical and nihilistic musings on the search for meaning in life. His core argument was that if God had predetermined our fate in the afterlife, then we could be as decadent as we wanted in this life. Like many people, he later came to regret publicly exposing such views that were radical at the time and he tried to track down and burn the copies. Fortunately, some escaped his arson. He shrugged off his youthful assertions as reflecting his state of mind

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when he was struggling to find his way in life and harboring ideals that collided with the world’s hard realities. As he did in so many other fields, he surpassed colonial Americans as a satirist. His works fall into two types, spoofs on human nature like The Silence Dogood Papers (1722) and political satire like An Edict by the King of Prussia and Rules by which a Great Empire may be Reduced to a Small One (1773). No eighteenth-century American satire was more influential than Franklin’s The Speech of Polly Baker which involves a fictional character on trial for bearing five bastard children. Polly’s defense of her lifestyle is a witty and profound expression of such liberal values as equality before the law for all people and freedom for consulting adults behind closed doors. The story lampooned Puritanical morality and double-standards. It also called for accepting children born out of wedlock, of whom Franklin contributed at least one. Not surprisingly that paean to free love most influenced French writers, including Francois Arouet Voltaire, Antoine Nicolas, marquis Condorcet, Guillaume Raynal, and, most famously, Pierre Beaumarchais with his “Marriage of Figaro” which in turn inspired Amadeus Mozart’s opera of the same name. He took on an array of new public duties during the 1750s. In 1751, he was elected to Pennsylvania’s assembly. In 1753, he became deputy postmaster of the American colonies. In 1754, he helped organize the Albany Congress that devised a plan for American union although no colonial government espoused it. In 1756, Britain’s Royal Society elected him a member. In 1757, Pennsylvania’s assembly sent him to London as its lobbyist to the government. In 1760, he got Whitehall to tax Pennsylvania’s proprietor Penn family for the colony’s good. As he prepared to return home in 1762, his friend and acclaimed thinker David Hume expressed the loss for Britain: “America has sent us many things . . . but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her.”13 The worsening conflicts between the crown and colonies prompted Pennsylvania to return Franklin to London in 1765. His lobbying strategy was to pressure Whitehall both by button-holing key politicians and publishing essays and letters in various newspapers and journals. In 1766, he gave a celebrated prolonged and profound defense of American interests before parliament. During this stint he was appointed the agent for Georgia in 1768, New Jersey in 1769, and Massachusetts in 1770. Franklin caused a ruckus in 1773 after he intercepted letters penned by Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson that revealed his machinations against the patriot party. He promptly sent copies of those letters to Boston’s resistance leaders. Meanwhile he presented to Whitehall a petition to recall Hutchinson. Although he had warned them not to do so, the patriot leaders published the letters in June. The result was a political uproar on both sides of the Atlantic. The Privy Council summoned Franklin for a blistering

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interrogation on January 29, 1774. Although he staved off charges of libel and sedition, Whitehall fired him as postmaster. Realizing that he could do nothing more in London to reverse the deteriorating relations between Britain and America, Franklin sailed for home on March 25, 1775. He arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, just in time to attend the Continental Congress. He swiftly assumed an array of leadership positions. He chaired Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety. He presided over the convention that wrote the state’s constitution in spring 1776. And he was among those who with mingled pride and trepidation signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Benjamin Franklin’s extraordinary political, economic, cultural, scientific, and humanitarian achievements up through 1776 paralleled, reflected, and shaped America’s developing Renaissance and Enlightenment. For instance, his Junto and Philosophical Society inspired learned and well-to-do Quakers in Philadelphia to establish the American Society in 1750, New Yorkers the Society for the Promotion of Arts, Agriculture, and Oeconomy in 1764, and Virginians the Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge in 1772. His Philadelphia’s Library Company inspired the founding of Newport’s Redwood Company, Charles Town’s Library Society, and New York’s Corporation Library. Then there was Freemasonry, a fraternal organization that espoused the Enlightenment values of republicanism for government and deism for religion. In Britain the first grand lodge convened at London in 1717. During the 1730s, grand lodges opened in one American colony after another and ever more of America’s political, economic, and social elite joined, with George Washington its most prominent member. Starting in the late 1740s, a group of brilliant and worldly New Yorkers led by Cadwallader Colden and William Livingston promoted a cultural renaissance inspired by the achievements of Franklin and his colleagues in Philadelphia. Indeed the “Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge” that they formed in 1748 was modeled on Franklin’s club. They followed that up with a medical society in 1749, an art society in 1764, and a debating club in 1748. They also initiated a series of short-lived journals like “The Occasional Reverberator” in 1753, “The Plebian” in 1754, “The Instructor” and “John Englishman” in 1755, and “The Pacquet” in 1763. Franklin was the most renowned of scores of eighteenth century American writers who reflected and elaborated the full spectrum of Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment themes and genres.14 They had an increasingly avid and widespread audience. By the time of the Declaration of Independence around seven of ten white Americans could read, with literate portions of around nine of ten New Englanders and half of southerners straddling the average for mid-Atlantic dwellers.15

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The first weekly newspaper was “Publick Occurrences” which appeared in Boston in 1690, but a lack of demand killed it within the year. The first successful newspaper was the Boston News-Letter that began in 1704. That publication’s popularity and profitability inspired the founding of dozens of other newspapers across the colonies. No publisher was more successful than Franklin whose Pennsylvania Journal, with 2,300 weekly copies, far surpassed all other newspapers in sales. By 1775, there were 39 weekly newspapers in 23 towns including four each in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, three in New York, two each in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and one each in New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia; only Delaware lacked a weekly newspaper. Inspired by such monthly British magazines as The London Gazette and The Gentlemen’s Magazine, the rival Philadelphia printers, Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Bradford respectively began publishing The General Magazine and American Magazine in February 1741; within a year both had died for lack of enough paying readers. As for books and pamphlets published in the colonies, the number annually rose from sixty-five in 1700 to 852 in 1775.16 The notion of freedom of the press tiptoed into the eighteenth century then several decades later took two giant leaps forward. Those in power fumed at those who criticized or mocked them; some governments blatantly tried to suppress the publications and publishers. For instance, in 1728, the Massachusetts General Court asserted “prior restraint” and arrested printer James Franklin for “contempt” with his newspaper The Courant. Franklin turned over operations to his younger brother Benjamin. The Grand Jury refused to indict Franklin and thus dismissed the case. This was the last time the General Court tried to censor the press. The colonial era’s most critical freedom of the press case occurred a few years later in New York. James Alexander was a prominent lawyer, New York Governor’s Council member, and political opponent of Governor William Crosby. He founded the New York Weekly Journal with John Peter Zenger the publisher. Then for nearly a year starting from November 5, 1733, he had the Journal anonymously publish scathing essays critical of Crosby and his political cronies. Crosby had the journal publicly burned and, on November 17, 1734, had Zenger arrested on libel charges. Zenger spent eight and a half months in jail before his case came to trial on August 4, 1735. During the trial Chief Justice James De Lancey tried to bully the jury into finding Zenger guilty as charged. Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that the libel charge against Zenger was unjust because the accusations in the articles were true and that a jury of one’s peers rather than the presiding judge should determine whether a suspect is guilty or innocent. He then brilliantly put the trial in the context of American freedom: “The Question before the Court and you Gentlemen of the Jury is not of small nor private Concern, it

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is not the Cause of a poor Printer, nor of New York alone. . . . It may in its consequences affect every Freeman that lives under a British Government on the main of America. It is the best Cause. It is the Cause of Liberty.”17 The jury acquitted Zenger. Hamilton’s “A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger” became a model for how America’s patriot leaders espoused liberal principles.18 America’s intellectuals made good use of freedom of the press. After Franklin no one wrote on a more diverse array of subjects than Cadwallader Colden. His History of the Five Nations (1727) was the colonial era’s most comprehensive book on Indians. His First Causes of Action in Matter and of the Cause of Gravitation (1746) and The Principles of Action in Matter (1751) synthesized existing perspectives on those subjects. Colden, however, was a rather dreary writer as well as a prude and a loyalist. For sheer good company, William Byrd ranks with Franklin as a wit, sensualist, savant, and libertine. He was born on a wealthy plantation in Virginia, studied law at London’s Middle Temple, was named a Royal Society member, returned to Virginia to inherit the plantation and marry, and served in the House of Burgesses. In 1728, Governor William Gooch appointed him to the surveying party to determine the boundary with North Carolina. His A History of the Dividing Line (1728) and Secret History of the Line (1729) offer official and bawdy versions of the same expedition. The subsequent boundary was astonishingly straight despite all the boozing and carousing the party enjoyed. Here was a typical debauch: “My Landlord had unluckily sold our Men some brandy which produced much disorder, making some too Cholerick and others too loving. So that a Damsel who came to assist in the Kitchen wou’d certainly have been ravish’t if her timely consent had not prevented the Violence. Nor did my Landlady think herself safe in the hands of such furious lovers, and therefore fortify’d herself safe in her bed chamber & defended it with a Chamber Pot charg’d to the Brim with Female Ammunition.”19 Although he was a wealthy plantation and slave owner, Byrd was among the few Americans capable of seeing the unique abilities and virtues within each person regardless of his or her race: “All Nations of Men have the same Natural Dignity and we all know that very bright Talents may be lodg’d under a very dark skin. The principal difference between one People and another proceeds only from the Different Opportunities of Improvement.”20 Although not meant for publication, Byrd’s Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westove (1709–1712) offers entertaining and often ribald insights into eighteenth century colonial life. There was an outpouring of histories that, unlike those of the preceding century, were largely straightforward accounts shorn of Puritan pieties and helped developed American identity and nationalism. The most important included Thomas Bray’s Memorial Representing the Present State of Religion

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on the Continent of North America (1700), Robert Beverly’s The History and Present State of Virginia (1705), George Keith’s A Journey of Travels (1706), John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), David Neal’s History of New England (1720) and History of the Puritans (1738), Hugh Jones’s The Present State of Virginia (1724), Cadwallader Colden’s History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New York in America (1727), Thomas Prince’s A Chronological History of New England (1736), John Mason’s A Brief History of the Pequot War (1736), David Horsmanden’s Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of a Conspiracy . . . for Burning the City of New York (1742), James MacSpartan’s America Dissected (1752), William Smith’s A Briefe State of the Province of Pennsylvania (1755) and History of the Province of New York (1757), Lewis Evans’s Geographical, Historical, and Mechanical Essays (1755–1756), Samuel Johnson’s Raphael or the Genius of America (1763), William Smith’s Historical Account of the Expedition against the Ohio Indians (1765) and Historical Account of Bouquet’s Expedition (1766), Thomas Hutchinson’s History of the Colony of Massachusetts (1763) and History of the Province of Massachusetts (1767), and James Adair’s History of the American Indians (1775). The rich diversity of nature in America inspired a succession of writers. Early colonists like Thomas Harriot, John Smith, and Thomas Morton noted a spectrum of native plant and animal species in narratives that attempted to relate the entire spectrum of their experiences. More than a century later Byrd revived the genre with his History of the Dividing Line. The first American works devoted systematically to studying nature came with Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahamas (1731) and Dissertatio Brevis et Principiis Botanicorum et Zoologicorum (1738). The scientific approach of Catesby and Swede Carl Linnaeus with his Systema Naturae (1737) inspired John Bartram’s years exploring nature which he described in his Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Production, Animals, and other Matters Worthy of Note (1751) and Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida in 1765 and 1766, although it was published posthumously in 1791 after the colonial era ended. In the field of medicine, three American treatises appeared during the eighteenth century, Cotton Mather’s The Angel of Bethesda (1724), Colden’s Essay on Yellow Fever (1745), and John Morgan’s Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools (1765), while starting in the 1760s, Benjamin Rush periodically penned essays on the subject. None of these works got beyond the prevailing belief that bad “humors” caused bad health, an ancient Greek notion. Health could be restored by eliminating the humors with blood-letting, induced vomiting and defecation, and diuretics. Of the estimated 3,500 “doctors” in the colonies in 1775, less than one in ten had a professional degree, of whom most were trained in Europe and immigrated to America. During the

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colonial era, the ratio of doctors steadily improved from about one in 1,000 to one in 420 to 800 depending on the region.21 Medical schools opened at the College of Philadelphia in 1765 and at King’s College in 1767. Only two hospitals existed in colonial America, Philadelphia’s general hospital from 1751 and a hospital for the insane at Williamsburg from 1773. Unfortunately, no colonial researcher tried to understand and record how Indian medicine men used plants and psychology for healing. Indeed, most Americans scorned Indian “medicine” as demonic witchcraft.22 Three writers left us outstanding accounts of warfare. Benjamin Church’s Entertaining Passages Relating to King Philip’s War was published in 1716; his son Thomas acted as scribe as he recounted his experiences that occurred three decades earlier with his memory probably revived by a journal. George Washington was a first rate writer of prose and thought. His thousands of surviving letters reveal a keen, questioning mind. Parts of the journals he kept during his younger years, especially the French and Indian War, read like a novel. America’s greatest combat leader during the colonial era was also a wonderful writer and penetrating analyst. Major Robert Rogers led his rangers on around fifty missions during the French and Indian War and Pontiac’s War. His Journals and Concise Account of North America (1765) provide vivid insights into Indian culture and the grueling, cruel nature of wilderness warfare.23 Dozens of published captivity narratives appeared during the eighteenth century’s first six decades, each fascinating and insightful.24 Susana Johnson’s was the best written and most profound. For instance, here is how she distinguished her enemies: “I could pardon the Indians for their vindictive spirit, because they had no claim to the benefits of civilization. But the French, who give lesson of politeness to the rest of the world, can derive no advantage from the plea of ignorance.”25 John Williams’ The Redeemed Captive, Returning to Zion (1707) was the most popular, going through six editions between 1707 and 1795. Williams was the father of Eunice who refused to be “redeemed” because she had converted to Catholicism and married an Indian with whom she had two daughters. Theology remained a vigorous genre for its number and quality of publications. Cotton Mather struggled zealously to prevent pious Puritans from morphing into worldly Yankees by furiously penning 450 pamphlets and books of which the greatest were Magnalia Christi Americana, or Great Works of Christ in America (1702), Bonifacisu: An Essay Upon the Good (1710), and The Christian Philosopher (1721). All along he asserted the core Calvinist belief that God determined everything and that individual free will was a delusion, yet one glorified God by trying and ultimately failing to understand the mysteries of His ways. With 1,200 published sermons and books, Jonathan Edwards was not just more prolific than Mather but was a far better writer. His spirituality was

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deeply meshed with nature which he most lyrically revealed in his A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737) and A Personal Narrative (1739). It is easy to get carried away with quoting Edwards because his prose and mystical experiences are so moving, but here is a morsel: “I walked . . . alone in a solitary place in my father’s pasture for contemplation. . . . The appearance of everything was altered. . . . God’s . . . wisdom, purity, and love seemed to appear in everything, in the sun, moon, and stars, in the clouds and blue sky, in the grass, flowers, trees, in the water and all nature. . . . And scarce anything among all the works of nature was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning. . . . And while I viewed, used . . . to sing or chant forth my meditations; to speak my thoughts in soliloquies and speak with a singing voice.”26 His ecstatic oneness with nature is as powerful as those felt and expressed by Henry Thoreau and John Muir. Quaker John Woolman’s Journal (1774) lyrically expressed his spiritual development. Unlike most other Christian sects whose missionaries imposed their theology on their converts, Quakers sought the mutual nourishing and understanding of the relationship of humans with God. Here is Woolman’s attempts to nurture the “inner light” in himself and Indians he hoped to encounter: “I was led to think on the Nature of the Exercise which hath attended me. Love was the first Motion and then a Concern arose to spend some Time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their Life, and the Spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some Instructions from them, or they be in any Degree helped forward by my following the Leadings of Truth amongst them. . . . I looked upon it as a more favorable Opportunity to Season my Mind and bring me into a near Sympathy with them.”27 Alas, America’s eighteenth century poets, starting with Richard Lewis, Roger Wolcott, and John Maylem tended to be stilted, derivative, and overwrought. What else they did with their lives was often more interesting than what they wrote. None had a more remarkable life than Phillis Wheatley who was born in Africa, enslaved, shipped to America, bought by a prominent Boston family, lovingly raised by them as an adopted daughter, and freed in 1774. Her book of thirty-nine poems titled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) emulate the works of English poets like Alexander Pope. During the siege of Boston, Wheatley sent the general her poem, “To His Excellency George Washington.” He was deeply touched and wrote this response: “I thank you most sincerely for your . . . elegant lines. . . . The style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents. . . . I would have published the poem had I not apprehended that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity.”28 Among Wheatley’s many inspirations was the poetry of Jupiter Hammon, a Long Island slave, whose first of many poems, “An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with Penetintial Cries,” was published in 1760.

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Then there were the precocious college students who, to their credit, competed in the field of poetry rather than sports. John Trumball’s Prospect of the Future Glory of America which he read during Yale’s 1770 graduation ceremony, was far more patriotic than literary. Not to be outdone, Philip Freneau and Hugh Brackenridge jointly penned the epic poem entitled The Rising Glory of America which they read during the College of New Jersey’s 1771 graduate ceremony. Before the war, Trumball published two more works, The Progress of Dulness (1772) and M’Fingal (1775). If Americans fell short as poets, several excelled as satirists. Ebenezeer Cook’s The Sotweed Factor (1728) mocked the pretensions, corruption, and incompetence of Maryland’s ruling elite. A group of dissidents wrote a searing satire about a colonial experiment that fell far short of the promises that inspired those who launched it. A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia (1741) by Patrick Tailfer, Hugh Anderson, and David Dougles, blistered James Oglethorpe as a promoter and leader. Yet none of these writers matched the wit and depth of Franklin’s satires. Getting published during the colonial era was largely confined to male writers. The poets Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley were among the rare exceptions. Women were limited to expressing themselves through letters and diaries. Letter-writing was an art form in those days. Most people carefully composed their missives knowing they would be read aloud or passed around in a society starved for hard news and frivolous gossip. Here ladies like Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren achieved acclaim for their elegant and thoughtful prose. A number of women’s journals have survived from the colonial era.29 From different ends of the pecking order, two are especially insightful and vivid. Highborn and freewheeling Sarah Kemble Knight penned mirthful, somewhat scornful picaresque scenes of her misadventures during her travels. Apparently a stern Puritanism was still vigorous in New England during the eighteenth century’s first decade: “They are governed by the same Laws as wee in Boston, (or little differing) thr’out this whole Colony of Connecticut. And much the same way of Church Government, and many of them good, Sociable people . . . but . . . in their Zeal very Riggid in their Administration toward such as their Lawes made Offenders, even to a harmless Kiss or Innocent merriment among Young people. Whipping being . . . frequent . . . in their sentences.”30 Elizabeth Ashbridge was born into working class England, eloped at age fourteen, was widowed five months later, sold herself into indentured servitude to get to America, married a man she despised and who beat her, and despaired until Quakerism’s “inner-light” rescued her. Her Some Account of the Fore-Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge (1774) presents a harrowing but ultimately triumphant story. Perhaps the clearest sign that individualism had surpassed communitarianism in America during the mid-eighteenth century were the self-help books

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that appeared including The Friendly Instructor or A Companion for Young Ladies and Young Gentlemen (1746), The Countryman’s Help and Trader’s Friend; or A Pocket Companion for Debtor and Creditor, Buyer and Seller (1747), The Lady’s Preceptor (1759), The Servants’ Directory or HouseKeeper’s Companion (1760), The American Instructor or Young Man’s Best Companion (1760), and The Complete Letter Writer (1763). Here again, Franklin mastered the genre with his own essays. The only genre without Franklin was a new one that appeared in 1762, books for small children with titles like Food for the Mind or a New Riddle Book, A Little Pretty Pocketbook, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, The Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses, and Be Merry and Wise. The only genre that American writers avoided was the novel despite the appetite among many American readers for English novels, especially Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Pamela with their moral themes. Although the first colony was settled when William Shakespeare was still writing brilliant plays, theater in America did not take off for another century. Undoubtedly countless amateur productions in private residences preceded the first theater which was built in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1718, then a generation passed before theaters appeared in New York City in 1733 and Charleston in 1735. A professional acting troupe from England immigrated to Virginia in 1752, called themselves the American Company, and toured the colonies for two decades. George Washington was an avid theater-goer, sometimes attending several times a week when he was in Williamsburg, Philadelphia, or New York. America had eager theater-goers centuries before it had excellent playwrights.31 Only three plays written by Americans or by Englishmen in America emerged during the colonial era and none are known to have been staged. The first was New York Governor Robert Hunter’s Androboros: A Biographical Farce in Three Acts (1715) that lampooned his predecessor Edmund Andros. The second was Thomas Godfrey’s The Prince of Parthia (1765), a pale imitation of English romantic comedies. The third play was as remarkable as the first was silly and the second banal. Robert Rogers’ play Ponteach: or the Savages of America: A Tragedy (1766) is a moving sympathetic, existentialist version of Ottawa war chief Pontiac’s ultimately doomed revolt against British rule. For instance, Rogers has Ponteach deliver lines like these: “Such is the State of Men and human Things; We weep, we smile, we mourn, and laugh thro’ Life. Here falls a Blessing, there alights a Curse as the good Genius or the evil reigns. It’s right it should be so. Should either conquer, the world would cease, and Mankind be undone. . . . This constant Mixture makes the Potion safe, and keeps the sickly Mind of Man in Health.”32 Ponteach is filled with startling passages

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like this that make the play more compelling philosophy and poetry than drama. Architecture was another art that Americans mastered.33 The eighteenth century brought a revolution in designs for buildings. Churches grew more elaborate with soaring steeples atop large entrance halls, tall side windows, long naves, and enclosed pews for hundreds of worshipers. House styles gradually changed from the compact saltbox to the stately Georgian. The classic saltbox was a one- or two-story center-chimney house with a back roof that sloped further down than the front roof. The classic Georgian house had a central hallway and staircase dividing four rooms on each floor, often with twin chimneys on each side and fireplaces in each room. Virtually all saltbox and Georgian houses were wooden except for folks rich enough to afford brick or stone. While most saltbox houses were unpainted, most Georgian homes were painted, mostly white but sometimes shades of grey, yellow, reddish brown, or blue. Likewise in either style a vegetable garden was usually directly behind the house except for the wealthy who planted a formal ornamental garden there and placed their vegetable garden elsewhere. The translation of Andrea Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture, whose original version dated to 1570, inspired aficionados to construct buildings with neoclassical features. Thomas Jefferson’s home Monticello and his design for the University of Virginia are magnificent examples of how one brilliant man adapted Palladio’s style to American sensibilities, although the former went through many stages to its current state and the latter was not built until after the colonial era. The change in furniture style was even more stunning than that in architecture. The previous century’s heavy oak furniture yielded to elegant and often elaborately carved Chippendale style walnut, maple, cherry, or mahogany tables, chairs, beds, tall chests, sofas, and tall clocks. Although most people continued to use utensils, plates, and cups made of wood, pewter, or pottery, the rich demanded silver utensils and chalices to accompany their china plates, dishes, and cups. American-made furniture and silverware matched their British counterparts in beauty and refinement. As for illumination wax candles burned brighter and cost more than tallow candles, while those made from whale spermaceti burned the brightest of all for those who could afford them.34 Another sign of conspicuous consumption was the demand of wealthy people for portraits from professional artists.35 During the early eighteenth century the best painters were born and trained in England or Europe. As for quality, there were plenty of second-rate painters like Charles Bridges, Godfrey Kneller, Justus Engelhardt, Abraham Delanoy, Lawrence Killburn, Thomas McIllworth, Cosmo Alexander, John Durand, Gustavus Hesselius, and John Hesselius, and slightly better painters like John Smibert, Robert Fekes, and John Wollston. America produced two extraordinary painters

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during the colonial era, John Singleton Copley of Boston and Benjamin West of Philadelphia.36 After a decade or so of painting in America both immigrated to London where they joined the Royal Society of Painters and produced their greatest works. West’s Death of Wolfe (1771) depicts an idealized scene of General James Wolf dying before Québec where the British decisively defeated the French; he is surrounded by representatives of the British Empire including redcoated officers, a greencoated provincial ranger, and even an Indian. Another celebrated American painter, Charles Willson Peale, began his career on the revolution’s eve but would never achieve the artistic heights scaled by Copley and West.37 Those who could not afford paintings decorated their homes’ bare walls with engravings or mezzotints made by American-born craftsmen like Thomas Emmes, James Franklin, Thomas Johnston, Henry Pelham, Nathaniel Hurd, James Claypoole, Henry Dawkins, John Norman, Amos Doolittle, Peter Pelham, John Verelst, William Burgis, Richard Kennys, and, most famously, Paul Revere. Then as now aesthetic and social refinements varied among economic classes. As a young man George Washington famously jotted down his Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation from a seventeenth-century book entitled Youth’s Behavior, or Decency in Conversation among Men. A gentleman avoided such vulgar behavior as speaking loudly, gesturing wildly, blowing or picking one’s nose, eating with one’s fingers or one’s mouth open, humming or whistling, yawning, belching, and passing gas before others. Outside of one’s family, one avoided hugging, kissing, roughhousing, or even touching others. During the eighteenth century like the preceding century, people literally bowed to their social betters who returned a perfunctory nod. America remained largely a deferential rather than democratic culture up through 1776 and long thereafter. Formality prevailed in public settings whether the encounter was political, social, economic, or religious. Yet the elite was open to newcomers. Those with new wealth were accepted by those with old wealth as long as they minded their manners. Yet equality emerged in at least one area for those who could afford it. The subjects of the British crown entered the eighteenth century with the freedom to dress as they wished. In 1694, Parliament revoked the sumptuary laws that had governed the range of clothing styles for each class since they were enacted in 1510. Although news of that change would have left most practical Americans indifferent, social climbers pounced. Now wealthy merchants and their wives could emulate nobles without suffering any consequences other than scorn. Copley’s paintings reveal how upper crust eighteenth century Americans dressed. Ladies wore the latest European clothing styles made from velvet, satin, or silk. The color scarlet had previously been limited to nobles because it came from the cochineal shell and was very expensive to

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produce. The price for scarlet-colored clothes rose with the demand as those with ready cash and gaudy taste placed their orders. Most Americans, however, continued to wear linen, wool, and linsey-woolsey clothing either in its undyed natural state or with inexpensive vegetable dyes. Dancing became increasingly popular even in Puritan New England where it was formerly banned. Wealthy people took lessons so they could shine at elaborate balls. Some dancing masters organized their own balls for whoever could pay the admission price for the hall and musicians they hired. There were ever more steps to learn. Americans danced contras, minuets, jigs, hornpipes, reels, and cotillions. Music was the most important influence that people of African ancestry had on American culture. African instruments like banjos, drums, and tambourines accompanied European fiddles and guitars for popular songs. Tap dancing meshed with British jigs. Chants meshed with hymns to eventually produce gospel music. The development of American high and popular culture reflected an increasingly prosperous population. By 1774, America’s thirteen colonies enjoyed a diverse and dynamic economy.38 From 1700 to 1770, with more than twice as fast a growth rate, America’s economy expanded from 4 percent to 40 percent the size of Britain’s, while the average American became twice as wealthy as the average Briton.39 By 1770, America’s total wealth was £109,570, including £60,221 of land, £21,463 of slave and indentured labor, £10,114 of livestock, £9,095 of other producer goods, and £8,677 of consumer goods. The average white male American enjoyed a “middling” material wealth of £172.3, including his income and the value of his furnished house, land, and other property; the total average for everyone was £37.4. White males were best off in the Middle Colonies with £179.2, then New England with £170.3, and finally the South with £169.1. With slaves and indentured servants added, the South took the lead with £394.7, then the Middle Colonies with £186.8, and finally New England with £161.2 for an average of £252.0 for each while adult American male. As for the distribution of wealth among individual Americans, disparities were the worst in the South, less in the Middle Colonies, and the most egalitarian in New England. Yet the south was the wealthiest region with £60,518 of which £40,188 was non-human and £20,330 was slave or indentured, followed by the middle colonies with £26,814 of which £25,782 was non-human and £1,032 was slave or indentured, and finally New England with £22,238 of which £22,136 was non-human and £101 was slave or indentured. The ration between non-human and human wealth also differed greatly among the regions. Of total non-human wealth, New England had 25.1 percent, the Middle Colonies 29.3 percent, and the South 45.6 percent. Of total human wealth, New England had 0.5 percent, the Middle Colonies 4.8 percent, and the South 94.7 percent.40

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America’s population rose tenfold from 265,000 to 2,148,076. Of the colonies, Virginia’s population was the largest with 447,016 followed by Pennsylvania with 240,057, Massachusetts with 235,808, Maryland with 202,599, Connecticut with 183,881, North Carolina with 197,200, New York with 162,920, New Jersey with 117,431, New Hampshire with 62,396, South Carolina with 124,244, Rhode Island with 58,196, Delaware with 36,416, and Georgia with 23,375. Although most people were ancestrally linked to the British Isles and many from other European countries, nearly one in five had roots in Africa.41 The five largest cities included Philadelphia with 28,000 people, New York with 21,863, Boston with 15,520, Charles Town with 10,863, and Newport with 9,200.42 Most cities grew haphazardly and ended up with a maze of streets. Philadelphia, Charles Town, and Savannah were planned cities with regular streets and occasional squares surrounding parks. Muddy or dusty streets eventually were paved over with brick or cut stone. Tree-lined streets, however, were rare. Taverns were places not just to socialize but to conduct business and even politics, most famously at Williamsburg’s Raleigh Tavern, Philadelphia’s City Tavern, and New York’s Fraunces Tavern. Cities were bustling, colorful places as a rather judgmental killjoy John Adams described Boston in 1760: “Parade, Pomp, Nonsense, Frippery, Folly, Foppery, Luxury, Politicks, and the soul-Confounding Wrangles of the Law will give me the Higher Relish for Spirit, Taste, and Sense.”43 They could also be noxious places. Free roaming pigs fattened on garbage and dung deposited in the streets before their owners slaughtered and devoured them.44 While two of three Americans enjoyed no legal limits on where or how they worked, slaves, apprentices, and indentured servants comprised around one of three workers.45 Of the black population, 480,932 were slaves and 17,761 were free, a ratio of 27 to one. The number of blacks and their share of the general population varied considerably among the regions. New England’s black population was 15,004 or 2.5 percent of the total, with 1,350 free and 13,654 slaves or 0.2 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. In the middle colonies, the black population was 37,748 or 5.9 percent of the total, with 3,576 free and 34,172 slave or 0.6 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively. The South’s black population was 445,941 or 40.3 percent of the total, with 12,835 free and 433,106 or 1.2 percent and 39.1 percent, respectively. As for non-slave labor, overall there were 1,802,258 free and 53,016 indentured or 76.6 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively or a ratio of 33 to one. New England had 580,935 and 11,856 or 95.6 percent and 2.0 percent, respectively; the middle colonies 581,573 free and 21,374 indentured or 581,573 free and 21,374 indentured or 90.8 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively, and the South 639,750 free and 19,786 indentured or 57.9 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively.46

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Socioeconomically the British Empire may have surpassed the rest of the world by many measures but lagged in one critical era. In 1583, Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree that resolved a ticking time-bomb of a problem left by the annual calendar that Julius Caesar imposed fifteen centuries earlier. The Julian calendar was 365 days long while the earth actually took that plus another six hours in its journey around the sun. Gregory brought the Catholic world up to date. In 1752, Britain finally caught up with continental Europe when Whitehall announced that the calendar would jump ahead by eleven days and the New Year would begin on January 1 rather than March 25. Delaware was the first of four new colonies. The first permanent settlement in what eventually became Delaware was Swedish. In March 1638, the New Sweden Company established Fort Christina on the Delaware River at today’s Wilmington, and gradually other settlements dotted that stretch of the valley. Delaware changed hands from Sweden to Holland in 1655 to New York in 1664 to Maryland in 1669 to Pennsylvania in 1682 to the Dominion of New England in 1689 and back to Pennsylvania in 1691 which staved off a Maryland claim. In 1701, Governor William Penn appointed a lieutenant governor and assembly for Delaware at Newcastle. In size and population Delaware was neck and neck with Rhode Island to be the smallest colony. It was split into just three counties each with a sheriff, magistrate, and three justices of the peace, all governor appointees. What became New Jersey, like Delaware, emerged from overlapping claims of rival imperial powers.47 Swedes and Dutch were the first European settlers in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1664, the land passed to England’s control after the peaceful conquest of New Netherlands. Charles II gave New Netherlands to his brother James, the Duke of York, who renamed the colony New York after himself. He severed New Jersey from New York and sold it to two supporters who in turn sold East Jersey to Scottish Presbyterian investors in 1674, and West Jersey to Quaker investors in 1683. In 1702, Queen Anne reunited the halves as a royal colony with an appointed governor and twelve-men council, and a twenty-four-men assembly elected by landowners with a thousand acres or more. From then until 1776, the capital seesawed between Perth Amboy and Burlington to placate the former halves. New Jersey’s first governor simultaneously served as New York’s governor and was an unfortunate choice for both colonies. Edward Hyde, lord Cornbury was a corrupt, snobbish, foppish transvestite who publicly sashayed in the latest lady’s fashions. In 1708, Anne finally recalled him after half a dozen years of receiving furious complaints against him. What became North Carolina began with the first waves of settlers in the 1660s.48 That region of Carolina was dubbed Albermarle County and divided into precincts in 1689. Albemarle’s distance from Carolina’s capital

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at Charles Town bred separate interests and identity among the colonists. They complained of neglect during Indian wars and of interference during crackdowns on smuggling and piracy rampant in ports like Eden, New Berne, Wilmington, and especially Bath. The proprietors agreed to split Carolina into north and south halves in 1710, and implemented that decision in 1712. The proprietors appointed the governor and council for each half, and allowed each an elected assembly. North Carolina became a royal colony in 1729 when George I bought out seven of the eight proprietors for £22,500. In 1739, the precincts became counties headed by elected sheriffs. King George II granted James Oglethorpe’s request for a charter to found the colony of Georgia.49 Each man had a different motive. George wanted a new colony to secure the southern frontier against Imperial Spain. Oglethorpe was a philanthropist who sought to create a just society where debtors could rebuild their lives. In 1733, he founded Savannah twenty miles up the Savannah River, then Augusta 125 miles further upstream. With that line secure, he had a series of forts built southward toward Florida, one on Saint Simons Island, two on Cumberland Island, one on San Juan Island, and one at the Saint John’s River’s mouth. In 1737, the crown formed the 42nd foot in Georgia to help deter a Spanish attack.50 These measures soon proved their worth. As for the economy, at first, Georgia restricted land grants to fifty acres a person, and forbad slavery, lawyers, and rum. Oglethorpe sought an egalitarian society: “If we have Slaves, we act against the very Principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed.”51 That so inhibited immigration that eventually the grants were doubled and slavery, rum, and lawyers legalized. By 1775, 18,000 whites and 15,000 blacks inhabited Georgia. The economic Achilles heel of the American colonies was that they were just that, captive markets for British goods that they were forbidden from making themselves. That mired the colonies into a vicious cycle of underdevelopment whereby they ran constant trade deficits with Britain, which meant they fell deeper in debt, and most money they earned from the commodities that they exported was whisked away to creditors in London and elsewhere rather than invested in promising American enterprises.52 Nonetheless, each colony diversified its economy in varying ways and degrees within the straitjacket imposed by Whitehall.53 Of the major export products, New England’s were ships, timber, masts, shingles, dried fish, whale oil, furs, and potash; the Middle Colonies’ were grain, corn, livestock, tobacco, and flax; and the South’s were rice, indigo, tar, turpentine, and deerskins. “Bog iron” deposits were mined and refined in New England, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland. The most important industry was shipbuilding which spawned an array of related makers of lumber, sails, ropes, tar, iron tools, nails, spikes, and other implements, along with

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thousands of ore and coal miners, hemp and flax farmers, teamsters, wagonmakers, blacksmiths, and tavern keepers. Rum making was another big business that raised spirits even as it emptied pockets and did little to develop the economy. In 1763, the colonies imported 8 million gallons of molasses from West Indian sugar plantations mostly for 140 rum distilleries. Smuggling finessed the trade restrictions. Whitehall estimated that during the 1760s the amount of smuggled goods at £700,000, a figure higher than the legal trade.54 By cheating taxmen and middlemen, Americans saved an enormous amount of money that they spent on other goods and services. They also became habitual and casual lawbreakers, a practice, mindset, and interest that helped fuel the protests, petitions, boycotts, and violence against repressive crown policies during the decade that lead to Lexington and Concord. During the early eighteenth century, the crown did the colonies one huge favor by crushing piracy. In 1700, parliament passed the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy which, among other measures, made aiding pirates a hanging offense, including the colonial officials and merchants that pocketed bribes or fenced goods. That spooked New York governor Richard Coote, Earl Bellomont into betraying his business associate Captain William Kidd and sailing him in chains to London. The Admiralty Court found Kidd guilty and had him hanged then his body stuffed inside a gibbet and hoisted beside the Thames River where the seagulls feasted off him. The crown suspended its anti-piracy campaign during Queen Anne’s War from 1702 to 1713, and actually licensed many pirates as privateers to prey on French and Spanish shipping. By the war’s end over 20,000 pirates in hundreds of vessels were operating along the Atlantic seaboard and West Indies. Then, from 1716 to 1726, the Royal Navy campaign killed perhaps a thousand pirates and captured and sent to trial another five hundred or so. By the 1730s, with piracy essentially eliminated, trade flourished and insurance rates fell as never before.55 Commercial water transport on inland waterways, along the coast, or across the ocean was as old as each colony. Commercial land transport, however, took nearly a century and a half to develop. The first stagecoach line did not emerge until 1752, when a company established a route across New Jersey between Amboy on New York Bay and Burlington on the Delaware River. The following year, a stagecoach line opened between Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. A combination of economies of scale and potential rich clients explains why stagecoach lines took so long to become viable. At most a stagecoach’s capacity was limited to half a dozen passengers and their trunks. Sailing ships came in greatly varying sizes but even the smallest carried far more passengers and cargo than a stagecoach. A vessel was limited only by the depth of the water beneath it and the prevailing winds. Cargo ships made money as easily as stagecoaches lost money. To

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profit, a stagecoach owner had to link markets with enough wealthy customers to vie for an expensive seat or cargo space on the daily passage. By the revolution, every colonial government had some means of encouraging creative people with patents and money. However, no institution better publicized and promoted innovations and inventions than Philadelphia’s American Philosophical Society, with one of its six committees devoted to mechanics and architecture, and another to agriculture and husbandry. The Society sponsored its own endeavors including canal building, silk making, and paper making, and corresponded regularly with London’s Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, founded in 1751. Around mid-century several individuals received government payments if not patents for their own creations, including Hans Christiansen for a system of wooden water pipes and pumps for a municipal waterworks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1754; Christopher Colles for a similar system in New York in 1774; Virginian John Hobday for inventing a threshing machine that produced 120 bushels daily in 1774; and Philadelphian Arthur Donaldson for a horse-powered clam-dredge in 1775. Benjamin Franklin was the most prolific colonial inventor, renowned for his lightening rod, glass instrument armonica, and stove. Franklin believed in giving credit and rewards to inventors as strongly as he reviled those who stole or denied the inventions of others: “There are everywhere a number of people who, being totally destitute of any inventive faculty themselves, do not readily conceive that others may possess it. . . . With these everyone who offers a new invention is deemed a pretender [who] had it from some other country or from some book. . . . They are confirmed too in these sentiments by frequent instances of pretentions to inventions which vanity is duly producing. That vanity too, though an incitement to invention, is, at the same time the pest of invention. Jealousy and Envy deny the merit of your own inventions . . . but . . . claims it for its own. The smaller your invention is, the more mortification you receive in having the credit of it disputed. . . . The origin of many of the most extraordinary inventions, though produced within but a few centuries past, is involved in doubt and uncertainty. We scarce know to whom we are indebted for the compass, and for spectacles, nor have even paper and printing that record everything else, been able to preserve with certainty the name and reputation of their inventors.”56 As for unsung inventors, Franklin might have cited two recent innovations by Pennsylvanians who history failed to record. During the early eighteenth century, German Americans improved two existing technologies in ways that would give pioneers critical advantages in conquering and settling the frontier, the Conestoga wagon and the long rifle. The ingenuity of Mennonite German craftsman in the 1710s dramatically lowered land freight costs. What became known as the Conestoga wagon

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was developed in the town of that name on the Susquehanna River. The Conestoga was longer than a regular wagon and slightly bowed downward in the middle to carry up to six ton loads with greater stability along with a spare wheel or two on the side. Its only drawback was that full loads usually required teams of three paired draft animals rather than two pairs for smaller wagons and one pair for carts. During the 1740s, Pennsylvanian Germans began manufacturing rifles as long versions of the shorter models that originated in the old country. The rifle had a thick barrel with a spiraling grove inside that spun and thus propelled a fired ball several times further and more accurately than a smoothbore, thin-barreled musket. That enabled a skilled rifleman to be a far deadlier shot against men or beasts than someone armed with a musket. The rifle’s disadvantages were that it took longer to load, could not mount a bayonet, and was much more expensive to make than a musket. For those reasons muskets remained the standard infantry weapon. Frontiersmen, however, eagerly carried rifles into the wilderness to hunt game or defend themselves. With a killing range of a couple hundred yards, a frontiersman was much more assured of bringing down elusive game or skulking warriors. The long rifle led to the long hunt. Starting in the 1760s, groups of riflemen with their supplies on packhorses headed over the Appalachian Mountains into the rich hunting grounds of Kentucky and Tennessee by various passes, most commonly Cumberland Gap, and spent months and even a year or more hunting and trapping, processing and packing the skins, and finally bringing their production back to eastern markets. By replacing Indians in that role they made more money if they survived the adventure. Naturally the Indians resented the long hunters for trespassing on their land and stealing their livelihoods so they robbed or even killed them when they tracked them down. Perhaps no long hunter was more skilled and passed more time in the wilderness than Daniel Boone, but Indians twice robbed him of months of production just as he was about to head back over the mountains.57 The trade for deerskins from the southwest tribes and furs from the northwest tribes grew steadily during the eighteenth century. According to the vaguely written fifteenth clause of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, British enjoyed equal access with French to trading with Indians. Louisianans bristled as merchants from the Carolinas and eventually Georgia peddled their goods for deerskins across their territory as far as the Mississippi River. The average number of deerskins shipped from Charles Town alone was 54,000 from 1700 to 1715 and 152,000 from 1740 to 1762.58 The Indian trade had political as well as economic results. One empire’s gain was another’s loss politically and economically. Canadians were outraged when, in 1726, New Yorkers established Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario and attracted ever more Indians with fur-packed canoes for their cheaper priced

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and better made goods. Yet that outrage was hypocritical for most people who expressed it. Most Montreal merchants whose traditional customers dwindled were themselves smuggling furs to Albany in return for goods. The more dependent the tribes became on the Americans, the more likely they would fight with rather than against them during the inevitable next war against France. Franklin explained: ”Securing the Friendship of the Indians is of the greatest Consequences to these Colonies and the surest Means of doing it are to regulate the Indian Trade so as to convince them, by Experience, that they may have the best and cheapest Goods, and the fairest Dealing from the English.”59 Unscrupulous colonial officials and merchants enraged the Indians by cheating them of their land. The most notorious deal was the 1737 Walking Purchase. Pennsylvania governor Thomas Penn did not share his father’s ideals of dealing fairly with the Indians. The Delaware agreed to sell a swath of land westward for as far as a man could journey in a day and a half. Penn recruited the colony’s three fastest runners to jog on a prepared path. The fastest man covered seventy miles by the deadline. That yielded Pennsylvania 1,200 square miles of territory or about twice what the Delaware anticipated. The Delaware complained bitterly to the king but the cession held. Higher education took off in the American colonies during the eighteenth century when eight new universities joined ranks with longstanding Harvard. Although William and Mary College received its royal charter in 1693, it did not begin teaching university students until 1728. Yale University actually opened its doors in 1701, a generation earlier. A cluster of universities opened around mid-century including the College of New Jersey (Princeton University) in 1746, College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in 1749, King’s College (Columbia University) in 1754, Rhode Island College (Brown University) in 1764, Queen’s College (Rutgers University) in 1765, and Dartmouth College in 1769. Those universities flourished because lower school education expanded steadily to varying degrees in all the colonies.60 The most influential university president was John Witherspoon, who headed the College of New Jersey from 1768 to 1794.61 Witherspoon was a University of Edinburgh graduate who brought the Scottish Enlightenment to America. John Locke and David Hume were the greatest philosophical influence on Witherspoon, who expressed his secular, humanistic approach to schooling with his Letters on Education (1765). He became a fervent American patriot and was among those who signed the Declaration of Independence. His most notable political philosophy student was James Madison, who made critical contribution to crafting the 1787 constitution and writing the Federalist Papers. Of the graduates during his tenure, there were one president, nine cabinet members, twenty-one senators, thirty-nine congressmen, three Supreme Court justices, and twelve governors.

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Congregationalist minister and Yale graduate Eleazar Wheelock also helped develop American education. He was dedicated to bringing schooling and salvation to colonial and Indian boys alike. To that end, in 1743, he founded Moor’s Indian Charity Church at Lebanon, Connecticut. Nearly fifty Indian students attended during the quarter century that the school lasted. The most famous graduate was Joseph Brant or Thayendanegea, a Mohawk who would lead bloody raids against the frontier during the American Revolution.62 Wheelock founded Dartmouth College at Hanover, New Hampshire in 1769. Unlike Franklin’s humanist pedagogy, Wheelock was a martinet. Indeed one of Wheelock’s Indian students complained: “Brother, you must learn of the French ministers if you would understand & know how to treat Indians. They don’t speak roughly nor do they for every little mistake take up a club & flog them.”63 The second most prominent graduate of Wheelock’s school was Samson Occam, a Mohegan, who embarked on a missionary career in 1747, when he began proselytizing among the Montauk Indians at Long Island’s eastern tip. In 1759, he became the first ordained Indian Christian minister in the British colonies. Occam was a Presbyterian who not only preached but taught school. He proselyted among the Oneidas three times from 1761 to 1763. He sailed to England in 1766 for a two year sojourn during which he raised funds for Wheelock’s school, but became embittered when Wheelock used it to found Dartmouth College. He led a small group of followers to found the missionary community of Brothertown in Oneida territory in 1773. Occam’s influence helped keep the Oneida on the American side during the revolution when the five other Iroquois tribes fought with the British. Protestants practiced a diverse array of versions of their faith by mid-eighteenth century. The largest sect were Congregationalists, originally Puritans and Separatists, with 450 churches mostly in New England, followed by Anglicans with 300, Quakers with 250, Presbyterians with 160, Baptists with 100, Lutherans with 95, Dutch Reformed with 78, and German Reformed with 51. There were a few Catholic churches, mostly in Maryland and Jewish synagogues in Newport, New York, and Charles Town. The portion of churches to populations varied among the regions with around one church for every 470 people in the middle colonies, one for 600 in New England, and one for 1,050 in the south.64 The power of those churches over the lives of their parishioners and everyone else in the community declined precipitously.65 Those seventeenthcentury stern, judgmental, Bible-thumping, witch-hanging Puritans would be aghast at what happened to their creed during the eighteenth century.66 Not only were the last witches executed in 1692, but rather than obsess about salvation, saints, and demons, their descendants mostly concerned themselves

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with making money. One’s status had more to do with the size of one’s house than the frequency of one’s church attendance. Dissident Christians could publicly express their faith without fear of being banished or executed, although they might still be socially shunned by the dominant church’s members. Protestant sects like Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and Arminians essentially enjoyed religious freedom, although Catholics and Jews still suffered malicious discrimination. Sexual mores loosened during the eighteenth century, measured by the increasing numbers of children born out of wedlock or pregnant brides at the church altar. That was partly caused by the transformation of moralistic Puritans into worldly Yankees. Greater wealth brought relaxed attitudes toward sensual indulgences. Transgressions were easier to obscure as populations swelled in towns and especially cities. The proliferation of sects made it easier to evade any church’s hellfire and damnation sermons. Nonetheless, at the other end of America’s time spectrum, twenty-first century denizens might be surprised to learn that genuine religious freedom remained rare. When America’s war for Independence began, church and state were separate only in Rhode Island and Virginia. Although there were communities of Catholics and Jews in every colony, Catholics could worship freely only in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and Jews only in New York and Rhode Island. Of the Protestant theologies, Arminianism provoked the most controversy. Arminians believed that God created a rational universe which humans could understand. Although Jesus was purely human, no one has ever more deeply explored the spiritual realm and provided insights into the nature of God and how to achieve salvation. Humans enjoyed not just reason but also free will. One’s fate in the afterlife depended on one’s decisions in this life. This theology became the foundation for Unitarianism whose first congregation did not openly declare itself until 1787 at King’s Chapel in Boston, and would not begin to spread to other states until the nineteenth century. The “Great Awakening” was an evangelical American religious revival that lasted from the middle 1730s until the late 1740s.67 The fervent followers of this emotional version of Christianity became known as “New Lights” as opposed to “Old Lights” with their rational approach to God. It began in New Jersey’s Raritan River valley with the preachings of Dutch Reformed minister Theodore Frelinghuysen and Presbyterian ministers Gilbert, John, and William Tennent. Then in 1738, at near opposite ends of the colonies, two even more charismatic evangelicals popularized the movement. From the pulpit of his church in Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards preached what he called “A Faithful Narrative” or account of his spiritual awakening and ecstasy but also warned of suffering eternal damnation in hell.68 Salvation was possible by immersing oneself in the passionate love of God. The Second Coming of Jesus was imminent and he would appear

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first in America. In 1741, Edwards delivered his two most famous sermons, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” at Enfield, Massachusetts, and “The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God” at New Haven, Connecticut. His greatest appeal was to young people with no outlet for their sexual energies and drives. Like other Puritan preachers, Edwards literally tried to scare the hell out of his audience with lines like these: “Oh sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath you are held over in the hand of that God. . . . You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it.”69 He was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, the only son of eleven children whose father was a Harvard-educated Congregational minister. After graduating from Yale in 1720, Edwards was a minister in New York City, returned to Yale for graduate studies, then became a minister in Northampton where he mostly spent the rest of his life. Like countless others, he grew intolerant as he aged. In 1750, his congregation expelled him for refusing to accept for full membership people who had not experienced being reborn in faith. In 1757, when he was fifty-four, he reluctantly accepted the presidency of Princeton University, but died of smallpox shortly after he arrived. Starting in Georgia, Englishman George Whitefield began the first of eventually seven missions that took him to nearly all the colonies with a theatrical style of preaching that attracted hundreds and at times thousands of impassioned followers at outdoor revivals.70 His performances were so powerful that one of them even swayed that wise skeptic and Deist Benjamin Franklin, who ruefully recalled: “I silently resolved that he would get nothing from me. I had in my Pocket a Handful of Copper Money, three or four silver Dollars, and five Pistoles in Gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the Silver, and he finished so admirably that I emptied my Pocket wholly into the Collector’s Dish, Gold and all.”71 It is certainly debatable whether Jesus would approve of that mega-church, moneymaking style of preaching that has become increasingly popular in America. What is certain is that for two and a half centuries countless millions of people have believed that their donations to fiery charismatics like Whitefield was money well spent. In their era, Edwards and Whitefield inspired thousands of followers of whom scores became evangelical preachers. Thomas Prince edited the weekly journal “Christian History” which from March 1743 to February 1744 published narratives of conversion experiences from across the colonies. Many New Lights formed or joined existing Methodist and Baptist congregations. The Great Revival contributed to the outbreak of the American Revolution several decades later by making emotional dissent and outright rupture with existing Congregationalist and Anglican churches morally justifiable. Evangelicals would overwhelming support the Patriot cause against Britain.72

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As more of their parishioners became “New Lights,” mainstream church leaders criticized the evangelicals on theological and social grounds. Boston Congregationalist minister Charles Chauncy spearheaded the counter-revival through his books Enthusiasm Described and Cautioned Against (1741) and Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England (1742). During his second tour, Whitefield was frustrated to have his requests to borrow the pulpit refused at one church after another. Some towns penalized New Light churches with taxes. During the revolution, Anglican congregations initially split around equally for and against the patriot cause. If the fear of malevolent witches haunted many seventeenth century Americans, the fear of slave revolts obsessed many eighteenth century Americans, mostly slaveholders, with even more tragic results. By the mid-eighteenth century, blacks numbered nearly one of every five people in the thirteen colonies.73 The greater the number of blacks, the more fearful whites became that they would rise against their oppressors.74 That fear was real but exaggerated. The most common form of resistance was to try to escape either to an Indian tribe or a free black community in a large city like New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. When slave violence occurred it usually involved slaves poisoning their masters or burning their homes, two types of crimes that were tough to trace. Actual slave revolts were rare. New York City suffered an uprising on April 6, 1712, when blacks murdered nine whites and wounded six. Eventually authorities captured seventy-three free or enslaved suspects, tried forty-three, acquitted eighteen, and convicted and executed twenty-five. The worst was the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739, when a hundred or so slaves murdered a score of white men, women, and children before most of them were killed or captured and executed.75 Then in the spring of 1741 a conspiracy developed in New York that would have resulted in mass death and destruction had it succeeded.76 Lawabiding New Yorkers felt terrorized as mostly blacks committed a series of nighttime burglaries and ten arsons, including attempts to burn down Fort George and the governor’s mansion. The headquarters for the criminals was a grogshop with a mixed racial clientele and owned by John Hughson, a white man. Governor William Crosby deployed the militia in a roundup of suspects that netted 152 free or enslaved blacks and twenty whites. Eventually eighty blacks confessed to a vast conspiracy to burn down New York City, murder the white men, and enslave the white women. The resulting trials led to convictions whereby thirteen blacks were burned at the stake, seventeen blacks were hanged along with two white men, including Hughson, and two white women, eighty-four blacks were sold as slaves to West Indian plantations, and seven whites were pardoned but banished from New York.

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Like Salem’s 1692 witch trials, hysteria animated New York’s 1741 slave uprising trials that resulted in 172 people incarcerated and thirty-four people executed for crimes that most of them did not commit. The critical difference was that the handful of women in Salem who actually did dabble in witchcraft hurt nothing but theological and social proprieties. In New York, some of those convicted actually did commit vicious crimes, while others got away with them.77 More thoughtful people questioned New York’s show trials as they had Salem’s. One unsigned letter that was angrily passed among New York’s political elite blistered them not just for the tortured confessions and show-trials but for slavery itself: “Negro & Spectre evidence will turn out alike. . . . Possibly there have been some murmuring amongst the Negroes & a mad fellow or 2 has threatened & designed Revenge for the Cruelty & Inhumanity they have met with . . . the Negroes . . . are flesh & blood as we as we & ought to be treated with humanity.”78 Yet, although slavery burned the consciences of many people, no abolitionist group let alone movement emerged during the colonial era and few individuals spoke publicly against the institution. The most powerful abolitionist voice came from Quaker John Woolman. He first exposed the evils of slavery in his Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754), then twenty-two years later mingled autobiography and an appeal for emancipating slaves in his Journal of John Woolman (1774). His key argument was that in varying degrees and ways slavery entangled virtually all white Americans in a terrible moral dilemma that only freedom could resolve. For instance, when he was a clerk: “My employer, having a Negro woman, sold her and directed me to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who bought her. The thing was sudden and though the thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow creatures felt uneasy, yet I remembered I was hired by the year, that it was my master who directed me to do it, and that it was an elderly man, a member of our Society, who bought her; so, through weakness I gave way and wrote it.” After the sale was completed and the new master and his slave departed, Woolman expressed his regret to his boss and “he told me that keeping slaves was not altogether agreeable to his mind, but that the slave being a gift made to his wife, he had accepted of her.”79 That story was a metaphor for slavery in America. By the eighteenth century, the institution had so thoroughly entangled the colonies economically, socially, and politically that virtually all people accepted it even if many believed that it was morally and philosophically wrong. Indeed, the signers of the Declaration of Independence would espouse a line dedicated to the principle that “all men are created equal” even as slavery was legal in every colony. The humanism and individualism that transformed eighteenth-century America had distinct racial limits that would persist for two centuries.

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NOTES 1. Franklin Reader, 131. 2. Jill Lepore, New York: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan, (New York: Viking, 2005), 118. 3. For the best biographies, see: Edmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986); H.W. Brands, The First America: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Doubleday, 2000); Edmund Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003); Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Penguin, 2004); Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). 4. Wood, Americanization of Franklin, 14. 5. Ibid, 65. 6. Benjamin Franklin to Abiah Franklin, April 12 1750, Franklin Papers, 3, 475. 7. Franklin Reader, 281. 8. Norman Fiering, “Philosophy,” Encyclopedia, 3:140–41. 9. Franklin Reader, 117. 10. Ibid, 235. 11. Ibid, 321. 12. Ibid, 482. 13. Ibid, 8. 14. For overviews on America’s Enlightenment, see: Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Henry Steele Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1977); Robert Ferguson, The American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997); Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenment (New York: Vintage, 2005). For overviews on colonial American cultural development, see: Richard Beale Davis, Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, vol. 3 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978); Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage, 1993). For overviews of colonial America literature, see: Everett Emerson, ed., American Literature: The Revolutionary Years, 1764– 1789 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977); Ronald Gottesman, ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986); Emory Elliot, ed., American Literature: A Prentice Hall Anthology, vol. 1 (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1991). For science in colonial America, see: Whitfield Bell, Early American Science: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955); Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956); Silvio Bedini, Thinkers and Tinkers: Early American Men of Science (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975); John Greene, American Science in the Age of

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Jefferson (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1984). For technology in colonial America, see: Brooke Hindle, Technology in Early America: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1968); Brooke Hindle, ed., America’s Wooden Age: Aspects of Its Early Technology (Tarrytown, New York: Sleepy Hollow Press, 1975). 15. Deborah Keller-Cohen, “Literacy,” Encyclopedia, 3, 6. 16. Ibid, 8. 17. Jill Lepore, New York, 118. 18. For primary accounts, see: Stanley Katz, ed., The Trial of John Peter Zenger (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963); Livingston Rutherford, John Peter Zenger: His Press, His Trial, and a Bibliography of Zenger’s Imprints (New York: Forgotten Books, 2015). 19. Wendy Martin, ed., Colonial American Travel Narratives (New York: Penguin, 1994), 124. 20. John Spenser Bassett, ed., The Writings of Colonel William Byrd of Westover Virginia (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1901), 102. 21. J. Worth Estes, “Medical Practice: Colonial Medicine,” Encyclopedia, 3: 214–15. 22. C. Keith Wilber, Revolutionary Medicine (Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 1997); Oscar Reiss, Medicine and the American Revolution: How Diseases and Their Treatments Affected the Colonial Army (New York: McFarland and Company, 2005); Jeanne F. Abrams, Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and Health (New York: New York University Press, 2013). 23. Robert Rogers, A Concise Account of North America (London: J. Millan, 1765); Robert Rogers, The Annotated and Illustrated Journals of Major Robert Rogers, edited by Timothy Todish (Fleischmans, New York: Purple Mountain Press, 2002). 24. Alden T. Vaughan and Edward W. Clark, eds., Puritans among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676–1714 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981); Colin G. Calloway, ed., North Country Captives: Selected Narratives of Indian Captivity from Vermont and New Hampshire (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992); Jane Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Vintage, 1994). 25. Calloway, North Country Captives, 75. 26. Colonial American Literature, 416. 27. Frederick B. Tolles, ed., The Works of John Woolman (New York: Corinth Books, 1971), 132. 28. Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2010), 220. 29. William L. Andrews, ed., Early American Women’s Narratives (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). 30. Colonial American Literature, 370. 31. For theater in colonial America, see: Hugh Rankin, The Theater in Colonial America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); Jason Shaffer,

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Performing Patriotism: National Identity in the Colonial and Revolutionary American Theater (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 32. Tiffany Potter, ed., Ponteach, or the Savages of America: A Tragedy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 148. 33. For architecture in colonial America, see: William H. Pierson, American Buildings and Their Architecture: The Colonial and Neoclassical Style (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1974); Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic (New York: Dover, 2001); Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture: From the First Colonial Settlements to the National Period (New York: Dover, 2010). 34. For craftsmanship in colonial America, see: John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture: Early America, the Good, Better, Superior, and Masterpiece (New York: Crown Publishing, 1993); Edwin Tunis, Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginning of American Industry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Rosemary Troy Kirk, Early American Decorative Arts, 1620–1860 (New York: Altamira Press, 2910); Carl Bridenbaugh, The Colonial Craftsman (New York: Dover Publications, 2012). 35. For painting and the fine arts in colonial America, see: James Thomas Flexner, American Painting: The First Flowers of our Wilderness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947); Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture: The Economic, Religious, Social, Cultural, Philosophical, Scientific, and Aesthetic Foundations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Jessie Poesch, The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and the Products of Craftsmen, 1560–1860 (New York: Harrison House, 1989). 36. For the best biographies on Copley and West, respectively, see: James T. Flexner, John Singleton Copley (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993); Emily Ballew Neff and William L. Presley, John Singleton Copley in England (New York: Merrell Press, 1995); Carrie Rebora, John Singleton Copley in America (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998); Robert C. Alberts, Benjamin West: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971); Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986). 37. Edgar Robinson, Charles Willson Peale and His World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982); David C. Ward, Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic (New York: University of California Press, 2004). 38. For the best overviews, see: Alice Hanson Jones, The Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Edwin J. Perkins, The Economy of Colonial America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 39. Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin, 2001), 306–7. Christina J. Hodge, Consumerism and the Emergence of the Middle Class in Colonial America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 40. Jones, Wealth of a Nation to Be, 51, 56–58, 155–60, 302–3. 41. William Lerner, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington D.C.: Census Bureau, 1975), chapter 1.

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42. Robert V. Wells, “Population and Family in early America,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole, eds., (New York: Blackwell, 1994), 46. 43. Bushman, Refinement of America, 197. 44. For an excellent overview of American colonies city life, see: Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). 45. Marcus Wilson Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, 1607–1783: Studies of the Economic, Educational, and Social Significance of Slaves, Servants, Apprentices, and Poor Folks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931); Mariana L.R. Dantas, Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in the Eighteenth Century Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 46. Jones, Wealth of a Nation to Be, 39–42. 47. Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1975). 48. Harry Roy Merrens, Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Historical Geography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964); Hugh T. Lefler, and William S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973). 49. Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province: Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 1733–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976); Kenneth Coleman, Colonial Georgia, A History (New York: Kraus International Publications, 1976); Thomas D. Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012); Noeleen McIlveene, The Short Life of Free Georgia: Class and Slavery in the Colonial South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 50. For books on Oglethorpe and early Georgia, see: Larry E. Ivers, British Drums on the Southern Frontier: The Military Colonization of Georgia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974); Joyce Blackburn, James Edward Oglethorpe (New York: Turner Books, 2004); Thomas D. Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012). 51. Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin, 2001), 242. 52. For money in colonial America, see: Curtis Nettels, The Money Supply of the American Colonies before 1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1934); Leslie V. Brock, The Currency of the American Colonies: 1700–1764: A Study in Colonial Finance and Imperial Relations (New York: Arno Press, 1975); John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978). 53. For British imperial policies and the American colonies, see: Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967); Michael G. Kammen, Empire and Interest: The American Colonies and the Politics of Mercantilism (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1970); Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the

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American Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974); Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerland, Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in early Modern Britain and its Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 54. P.D.G. Thomas, ed., “Parliamentary Diaries of Nathaniel Ryder,” Royal Historical Society, vol. 7 (1969), 234. 55. For good overviews, see: Marcus Redkiker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against Pirates (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1998); Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006): Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates (New York: Harcourt Books, 2007); Angus Konstam, Piracy: The Complete History (London: Osprey, 2008). 56. Benjamin Franklin to John Lining, March 15, 1755, Franklin Papers, vol. 5, 521. 57. For the best books on Daniel Boone, see: John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Henry Holt, 1992); Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 2008); Meredith Mason Brown, Daniel Boone and the Making of America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008). For a good book on the long hunters, see Ted Franklin Belue, The Hunters of Kentucky: A Narrative History of America’s First Far West, 1750–1792 (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2003). 58. James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 107. 59. Benjamin Franklin to James Parker, March 20, 1651, Franklin Papers, vol. 4, 117. 60. For education in colonial America, see: Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); Robert Middlekauf, Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth Century New England (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1963); Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970); Wilson Smith, ed., Theories of Education in Early America, 1655–1819 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973); Carl F. Kaestle, The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973); James Axtell, The School Upon the Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1974); Sheldon S. Cohen, A History of Colonial Education, 1607–1776 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974); Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975); Howard Miller, The Revolutionary College: American Presbyterian Higher Education, 1707–1837 (New York: New York University Press, 1976); Margaret C. Szasz, Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607–1783 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988). 61. Jeffrey H. Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2007). 62. Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743–1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984).

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63. James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 181. 64. Taylor, American Colonies, 342. 65. For the weakening role and diversification of religion in colonial America, see: Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1991). 66. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1995); Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 67. For original sources on the Great Awakening, see: Richard L. Bushman, ed., The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740–1745 (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American Life, 1989).For good overviews, see: Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001); Thomas Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009); Joseph Tracey, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (New York: Forgotten Books, 2015). 68. Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004). 69. Charles Faust, ed., Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), 165. 70. Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelical of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 (London: Banner of Trull, 1970, 1980); Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2014). 71. Franklin Reader, 141. 72. Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap, 1966); Cedric B. Cowing, The Great Awakening and the American Revolution: Colonial Thought in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 73. For African Americans during the colonial era, see: Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987); William D. Piersen, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in the Eighteenth Century New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988); Donald R. Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 74. For slave revolts, see: Mark M. Smith, ed., Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005); Jill Lepore, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth

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Century Manhattan (New York: Vintage, 2006); Kerry Walters, American Slave Revolts and Conspiracies: A Reference Guide (Los Angeles: Abc-Clio, 2014). 75. Lepore, New York Burning, 58. 76. For the brilliant, definitive account, see: Lepore, New York Burning. 77. Lepore, New York Burning, xii, xvi. 78. Ibid, 204–5. 79. Colonial American Literature, 449–450.

Chapter 8

Wars

“We desire only what is our own, and that we will have.” (Governor William Shute)1

Like any war, that for the Spanish Succession that raged from 1702 to 1713 was not inevitable.2 What made it likely was the preceding series of wars provoked largely by King Louis XIV’s ambition to expand France to its “natural borders” which included the Low Countries of the Spanish (Belgium) and Dutch Netherlands. Before Charles II, Spain’s Hapsburg king, died without an heir in 1700, he designated Philip d’Anjou de Bourbon, his grandnephew and Louis XIV’s grandson, as his successor. In addition, Philip acceded to Louis’s request to occupy the Spanish Netherlands in 1701. That prompted the Dutch and Austrians to ally to deny France that aggrandizement. They championed Austrian King Leopold’s son, Charles, who was also Charles II’s nephew, as the legitimate heir to Spain’s throne. Two reasons drove Queen Anne and her government to join that alliance in 1702. One was strategic. They deemed it essential for England’s security to prevent France from taking over the Low Countries with its enterprising, wealthy peoples and ports just across the North Sea. The other was dynastic. When William III, the English king and Dutch prince, died in March 1702, Anne, the Protestant daughter of ousted Catholic King James II, took his place. Louis XIV rejected the legitimacy of Anne’s rule and instead promoted the candidacy of James II’s son as James III. In England the War of the Spanish Succession became known as Queen Anne’s War. England’s strategy had three key elements. One was to reinforce the Austrian and Dutch forces in the Low Countries with an army led by Sir John Churchill, who Anne soon named the Duke of Marlborough for his brilliant 195

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victories. Another was to capture French and Spanish colonies in the West Indies. The third was to roll back the North American empires of France and Spain. The war began in the Western Hemisphere when Admiral John Benbow acted on standing orders for his fleet to capture Spain’s treasure fleet after learning of war with Spain. In July 1702, the English took over the French half of Saint Christopher Island, also known as Saint Kitts. In North America fighting began on the southern front. Carolina Governor James Moore sought to conquer Spanish Florida in 1702. He recruited 500 volunteers with the promise of £10 a month and all the loot they could carry. He also enticed about 300 mostly Yamasee Indians to join him. The expedition sailed in fourteen vessels and landed near San Augustine in October. After disembarking, the English and Indians overran the town but failed to capture nearby Fort San Marcos. Nearly 1,500 refugees crowded in the fort defended by 250 soldiers and 36 cannons, and commanded by Governor Jose Zuniga. Moore’s army besieged Fort San Marcos for two months but lacked the heavy artillery essential for breaching the walls. The siege ended on Christmas day when two Spanish warships arrived and trapped the Carolinian flotilla. Moore burned his ships and the town, abandoned his cannons, and led his men overland through the swamps and forests back to Carolina. Moore had promised that Florida’s spoils would pay for the expedition’s £8,500 cost. Instead, Carolina’s government covered its debts by issuing paper money.3 That disastrous expedition exhausted South Carolina’s enthusiasm and money for war. In 1703, Queen Anne dismissed Moore and replaced him with Nathaniel Johnson. Eager to reestablish his fortune and reputation, Moore led 50 volunteers and 1,000 Creeks to attack Spanish missions along the Apalachee River in 1704. The invaders slaughtered around 400 Indians, burned thirteen mission towns, and then wiped out about half of a relief force of 30 Spanish soldiers and 400 Apalachee. But total victory eluded them for lack of artillery with which to besiege Fort Saint Luis (Tallahassee). In all the fighting only four Englishmen and fifteen Indian allies died. Moore restored his fortune and honor with his share of the thousand Indian slaves that his men herded back to Charles Town. What followed on the southern front was a stalemate as neither side was powerful enough to invade the other. It became a war of surrogates. The English encouraged Chickasaw and Creek attacks on Spanish Pensacola in 1707 and 1708, and on French Mobile in 1709. The French and Creeks signed a peace treaty in 1712. All along Spanish and French privateers harassed the Carolina coast but only managed to capture stray vessels. When the war began, Joseph Dudley governed both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Unlike his Carolina counterpart, Dudley was determined to keep the peace. During councils with Abenaki chiefs in 1702 and 1703, he

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got them to promise to stay off the warpath in return for heaps of gifts. But after Dudley’s June 1703 council, Canadian governor Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil outbid him for Abenaki loyalties. Captain Michel La Neuf de la Lallière de Beaubassin, Abenaki Chief Moxus, and other chiefs launched simultaneous attacks by Abenaki and Micmac warriors against York, Wells, Winter Harbor, Casco, and Saco on August 10, slaughtering or capturing over a hundred settlers. The next attack on New England’s frontier did not come until February 29, 1704, when 200 Canadians and 140 Abenakis and Caughnawaga mission Iroquois led by Captain Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville attacked Deerfield in western Massachusetts. At a cost of eight dead, they killed thirty-eight settlers and herded 111 captives toward Canada. The militia gathered, pursued, and killed around thirty raiders, while losing nine of their own, but failed to liberate the prisoners. The most famous captive was Eunice Williams, the daughter of minister John Williams. Unlike nearly all other prisoners who survived the mid-winter trek to Montreal, she later refused to be “redeemed” or ransomed by her father. Instead she converted to Catholicism, married an Indian man, and gave birth to two children.4 In Boston, Colonel Benjamin Church organized an expedition to retaliate for the Abenaki attacks of the previous August. On May 21, 1704, Church and 550 volunteers sailed in a flotilla to strike vulnerable Abenaki villages up the coast all the way to Nova Scotia. They arrived before Port Royal in mid-July but Church and his officers agreed that the fort guarding the town was too strong to capture. They returned to Boston with a hundred captives to trade for those in French and Indian hands. Church lost only five men killed in what was the last of his five expeditions against the French and Indians in two different wars. In an exchange of letters, Dudley and Vaudreuil agreed to discuss a prisoner exchange. Dudley sent Samuel Vetch to Québec to negotiate with Vaudreuil. Eventually the English swapped seventy for sixty captives. Vetch also asked Vaudreuil for a prolonged truce for the war’s duration. Vaudreuil was willing to do so only if all the American colonies were included and the New Englanders agreed to stop fishing in Newfoundland’s teeming waters. Dudley could not agree to this. Meanwhile, a French threat arose from a new direction. Just before and during this war, the French aggrandized their North American empire. The colony of Louisiana began in 1699, when Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville established the town of Biloxi, then expanded with Mobile’s founding in 1701. Meanwhile, the French stretched Canada toward that new colony in 1701, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac established Fort Detroit on the Detroit River that runs south from Lake Huron into Lake Erie. The French hoped eventually to settle a swath of the Gulf coast and the entire Mississippi valley, link Louisiana and Canada, and plant settlements eastward as far as the

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Appalachian Mountains, thus containing the footloose Americans beyond that formidable barrier. For now, Iberville looked south rather than north. In April 1706, he sailed with an expedition that captured Nevis and Saint Kitts. The emergence of French Louisiana beside Spanish Florida set off alarm bells in Charles Town. The immediate threat, however, came from St. Augustine, which was the staging area for an expedition against Charles Town in 1706. The Carolinians repelled an attack then counterattacked and captured 230 Spaniards. An English flotilla led by Colonel William Rhett sailed against a fleet of Spanish and French vessels and drove them off. In 1707, Carolina took the offensive by launching two raids with officers leading Talapoosas warriors against Pensacola, just sixty miles east of Mobile. The raids killed or captured a couple score Spaniards, and burned the town but lacked cannons to breech the fort’s walls. The war on the northern front resumed in May 1707, when Dudley dispatched a flotilla packed with 1,076 men led by Colonel John March against Port Royal. After landing, the troops rampaged through the town but stopped beyond musket shot of the fort. Neither March nor any of his officers knew how to conduct a proper siege. They finally agreed to return home. Dudley was incensed at their return and ordered March to try again. March dutifully did so in August but with the same results. The latest tilt in that see-saw frontier war came a year later when, on August 29, 1708, Jean Baptiste Hertel de Rouville led 250 Canadians and Abenaki against Haverhill, New Hampshire. The invaders burned most of the homes, killed sixteen settlers, and captured another score but could not take the fort where most people fled. The militia led by Captain Samuel Ayer pursued, caught up to the rear guard, and killed nine and wounded eighteen, while losing several killed including Ayer. Queen Anne and her ministers forged a consensus in 1709 that Canada’s conquest would abruptly end the war in North America and obtain a bargaining chip for peace negotiations. For the first time during the war, Whitehall instructed New York and New England to launch simultaneous attacks against Canada. The expedition from Boston was cancelled in July when its leaders failed to assemble enough money, men, supplies, and vessels. Colonel Francis Nicolson, Virginia’s former lieutenant governor, did succeed in massing 1,500 troops, 600 Iroquois, supplies, and transport at Albany. By September his men had built a wagon road from Albany to Lake Champlain’s south end and three forts along the way. The next step was to construct enough boats to carry the expedition to Canada. The trouble was a shortage of provisions and time. Nicolson dismissed the Iroquois and led his men back to Albany before winter buried the region with snow. Nicolson went on to London where he successfully lobbied for command of an expedition from Boston the next year. He arrived in Boston in July

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1710, sailed with 2,000 men in September for Port Royal, and received its surrender on October 2. Nicolson renamed the town Annapolis Royal. He then returned to London to talk the government into launching an armada against Québec the following year while he led another expedition against Montreal. Boston bay was the assembly point for Admiral Hovenden Walker’s fourteen ships-of-the-line and sixty-three transports packed with 4,300 redcoats and 6,500 New England volunteers commanded by General John Hill. In the Saint Lawrence River disaster struck on August 24, when nine ships wrecked ashore during a storm and fog, and 700 troops and 200 sailors drowned. Despite that terrible loss, the expedition still had enough warships, troops, and supplies to overwhelm Québec and at least three months to do so before Canada’s winter arrived. Yet Walker and Hill decided to call off the expedition and return to Boston. Nicolson meanwhile endured the same frustrations on the Lake Champlain front. Although the road and forts were intact, he could not scrape up enough men, money, supplies, and transport to launch an expedition that stood a good chance of success. He abandoned the effort after learning of the Walker expedition’s fate. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Utrecht signed on April 11, 1713. Britain emerged from the war with its power greatly enhanced. France recognized British sovereignty over Hudson Bay, Acadia, Newfoundland, and the Five Nations in North America, and Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. As for trade, the British won equal access with the French to trade with the Indians. Atop all that France ceded the Asiento or right annually for thirty years to sell 4,800 slaves and send one trading ship to Spain’s empire. Spain recognized Britain’s conquests of Gibraltar and Minorca. In return for recognizing Philip as Spain’s legitimate king, Louis XIV promised that the crowns of France and Spain would always be on separate heads. Finally, Louis XIV promised not to dispute the legitimacy of England’s monarch. Although Britain won far more from Queen Anne’s War than King William’s, it also expended far more lives and treasure. Tens of thousands of men were killed or wounded and tens of thousands of pounds sterling were expended in the Low Countries. In North America, the losses were relatively light, around 200 on the northern front with Canada and 150 on the southern front with Florida. The worst loss in North America was the 900 who drowned during Walker’s 1711 expedition.5 The scale of New World warfare expanded during Queen Anne’s War. The armada led by Walker and Hill was the crown’s largest military effort in North America at that time. The territory that France ceded forced Versailles to reevaluate New France’s defenses. Versailles authorized the Louisiana and Canada governors to build new forts and settlements at strategic sites in their territories. Within a few years, Louisiana governor Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac dispatched

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three expeditions in opposite directions to secure the western, northern, and eastern frontiers, with Fort Natchitoches up the Red River and Fort Rosalie up the Mississippi River in 1714, and Fort Toulouse on the Tallapoosa River in 1717. Each fort was sited amidst a tribe, with Natchitoches among the Natchitoches, Rosalie among the Natchez, and Toulouse among the Lower Creek of the Creek Confederation that sprawled across most of today’s Alabama. Of the three, Fort Toulouse was the most important. With Fort Toulouse, the French hoped to capture the deerskin trade from Carolina. The rivalry with Carolina was about more than trade. The Carolinians traded muskets to the Creeks and instigated them to attack the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana. In 1718, Cadillac founded New Orleans as Louisiana’s capital. Then in 1721, the French took a long stride far up the Mississippi River to found Fort de Chartres close to the mouths of the Illinois and Missouri rivers. A succession of Canadian governors bolstered their colony’s frontier defenses. Deprived of Nova Scotia, the French began building the fortress city of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in 1720. Among the more strategic corners of the French empire was the thirty-seven-mile-long Niagara River which runs north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, with the magnificent falls about midway. In 1678, the French built Fort Conti, later renamed Fort Denonville, on the east bank where the Niagara River flows into Lake Ontario, but abandoned that site in 1688. In 1726, the French began building Fort Niagara there. The most direct invasion route between the empires was the 220 mile corridor between Albany and Montreal. More than half of that route can be paddled on Lake Champlain which is 125 miles long. About a hundred miles south up the lake is a huge bay on the western side that culminates in a peninsula that points north. The lake narrows from several miles to several hundred yards east of that peninsula. In 1731, the French began building Fort Saint Frederic with its octagonal tower on the peninsula’s northeast tip overlooking that narrow strait. Should an enemy army with overwhelming strength appear before Fort Saint Frederic, its defenders could easily escape north by boat. Financial and diplomatic constraints prevented the French from doing more. Mounting an expedition to build, man, and supply frontier forts was extremely expensive. Preceding those expenses was the delicate and costly diplomacy to lease the site from the tribes that claimed that land as their own. Ideally the fort funded itself by also serving as a trading post, but expenses far exceeded profits, especially during an Indian war. The French fought two Indian wars in the early eighteenth century, one in Canada and the other in Louisiana. Although they ultimately triumphed, each drained the empire of money and men. The French had invited a band of Fox Indians to join the Huron, Ottawa, and Potawatomi living near Detroit. The unfortunate result was worsening animosities between the established tribes and the newcomers that erupted

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into an all-out war in 1712. The French sided with the Huron, Ottawa, and Potawatomi to drive the Fox westward to their original home in the Wisconsin River valley. Allied with the Sauk, the Fox launched a retaliatory war against the French, Ottawa, Huron, and Pottawatomi along with the Illinois, Miami, and Ojibwa. The war continued for a decade. Atop the human carnage of hundreds dead on all sides, the trading system collapsed, hurting everyone. The war ended in 1730 as the French organized a campaign that trapped and forced the surrender of over a thousand Fox and Sauk that were distributed among the victorious tribes. The Natchez were a powerful tribe that retained the all-powerful chief system from the prehistoric mound-builder era. The French alienated the Natchez by allying with its enemies like the Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. Although the Natchez had initially welcomed Fort Rosalie as a convenient trading post in their midst, they increasingly resented the influx of settlers who took their land. In 1729, the Natchez launched a surprise attack that slaughtered around 250 French and destroyed Fort Rosalie. The French mobilized their own manpower and that of their Indian allies for a campaign that eventually crushed the Natchez; the survivors fled to be adopted by the Chickasaw. Conflict then arose with the Chickasaw as the French tried to acquire land for forts on the Mississippi River in their territory. In 1736, Governor JeanBaptiste Le Moyne de Bienville organized a massive two-pronged invasion. The Chickasaw defeated both the Canadian, Illinois, and Wyandot force from the north, and the French, Choctaw, and free black force led by Bienville from the south. It took Bienville three years to make up those losses and mount another campaign. In 1739, he led over 1,000 French militia, 300 free blacks, and hundreds of Indian allies into the Chickasaw realm. Bienville established Fort l’Assumption on the site of modern Memphis but was unable to defeat the Chickasaw. Instead a treaty was signed whereby the Chickasaw permitted Fort l’Assumption to remain on their land. Bienville had exhausted Louisiana’s hard and soft power resources in two campaigns, one disastrous, the other disappointing. Louisiana had lost prestige along with men, money, and material. Intrepid American traders would exploit that void. During the eighteenth century’s first half, the American colonies fought and won their own Indian wars that subdued, diminished, or drove off tribes that impeded their territorial and economic expansion. The advance of colonial settlements into Indian lands provoked native protests and eventually wars that they lost. The Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora lived in the Carolina piedmont. In 1707 they suffered a smallpox epidemic then an attack by Seneca and Susquehannock. Meanwhile, Carolina settlements spread into their territory.

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In 1711, the Tuscarora launched a war against the settlers, killing or capturing 130 colonists. In retaliation Colonel John Barnwell led thirty-three volunteers and 500 Catawbas and Yamasees on a campaign that destroyed a minor village but failed to march on to the main village of Hancock’s Town. Nonetheless the Tuscarora verbally promised to bury the hatchet and recognize the recent settlements. That did not remove the shadow of Tuscarora power over the Carolinas. In March 1713, Colonel James Moore led a combined force of fifty Carolina volunteers and 1,500 Cherokee, Creek, and Catawba allies to kill perhaps 800 and enslave another 1,000 Tuscarora, while suffering fifty-eight dead and eighty-four wounded. Around 1,500 surviving Tuscarora trekked north to join the Iroquois and transform the Five Nation into the Six Nation Confederacy.6 Two years later the Carolinians turned against the Yamasee who lived on the upper Savannah River. The Yamasee had been their allies against Spanish Florida and the Tuscarora. They had also racked up higher debts to Carolinian traders. Carolina’s government used this as an excuse to take land in compensation. On April 15, 1715, the Yamasee retaliated by seizing all traders in their territory and attacking Carolina’s frontier forts. That success inspired the Catawba and Guale to join them. Carolina’s government desperately sought help from Virginia along with the Cherokee and Creek. The Yamasee, Guale, and Catawba defeated the first expedition into their territory later that year. The Spanish gleefully supplied those tribes muskets and other essential war resources. In 1716, Carolina launched a campaign with 1,000 militia and several hundred Indian allies, backed by 500 black laborers. The expedition defeated the Catawba who withdrew into neutrality but the Yamasee and Guale fought on for another eleven years. Unable to muster enough men and material for a decisive campaign, Carolina instead fortified the frontier with Fort Moore in 1716, Fort Royal in 1718, and Fort King George in 1721. The war was a tremendous drain on Carolina’s power; over 400 settlers died, the economy stalled, and the government plunged deeper into debt. Fighting erupted on New England’s frontier as settlements encroached on tribes from three different directions, Nova Scotia, the Maine coast, and the Connecticut River valley. The Abenaki, Micmac, Penobscot, and smaller tribes of that region, known as the Wabanaki Confederacy, had not been consulted let alone had agreed to the cessions of their land by the French with the 1713 Utrecht treaty. That elicited no sympathy from Massachusetts governor Samuel Shute. During a 1717 council with the tribes, he asserted that “We desire only what is our own, and that we will have.”7 The closest Abenaki village to the Maine villages was Norridgewock, mid-way up the Kennebec River. Father Sebastian Rale headed the Catholic mission there and preached war against New England in many of his sermons. In 1722, a war party destroyed Georgetown at the Kennebec River’s mouth.

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Shute promised a £100 bounty for each scalp of a male Indian more than twelve years old and dispatched Colonel Thomas Westbrook with 300 men to destroy Norridgewock. Westbrook and his troops burned the village but Rale escaped with most other inhabitants. The Abenaki retaliated by destroying Brunswick in July while Rale and his congregation returned to rebuild Norridgewock. Problems raising money and men prevented Massachusetts from launching another expedition until August 1724, but this one killed Rale along with twenty-eight Abenaki and burned the town. The survivors migrated to the Abenaki town of Saint Francis in the Saint Lawrence valley. The Kennebec valley was now free of Indian villages but American settlements in the lower valley were still vulnerable to raids from more distant sites. The fighting In the Connecticut River valley was known as either William Dummer’s War or Grey Locke’s War, after the Massachusetts governor or Abenaki chief, respectively. Starting in 1723 and persisting through 1726, Grey Locke led his warriors on repeated raids down the valley that attacked Deerfield, Westfield, and Northfield. The war sputtered to a close with treaties between the Massachusetts and New Hampshire governors and the tribes in 1726 and 1727. Hundreds died on both sides before the two colonies forced the Indians to accept new boundaries, at least for now. Meanwhile, the American frontier took a giant leap westward in 1722, when fur traders erected a post where the Oswego River flows into Lake Ontario; New York’s government erected a fort there in 1727. Owego was an economic and strategic thorn in the French empire’s side. It was the first English settlement beyond the watershed between the Hudson valley and the Great Lakes and Lawrence River valleys. The post prospered because the traders offered ample goods with lower prices and better quality than the French equivalents at an easily accessible site for Indians in the Lake Ontario basin. The alliance between the Iroquois and American colonies was Oswego’s best source of security. The American colonies became entangled in the latest European war after King Philip V ordered all British ships in Spain seized in 1738. The subsequent war was eventually called the War of Jenkins’ Ear.8 The name originated in a gruesome mutilation that took place in 1731 after a Spanish tribunal found Captain Robert Jenkins guilty of violating the prohibition against more than one British ship a year trading with its empire. The penalty was cruel. A Spanish official sliced off Jenkins’ ear and handed it to him. It was not until 1738 that those in parliament who sought war with Spain to retaliate for its confiscation of British vessels had Jenkins display his severed ear before that body. With a parliamentary majority behind him, Prime Minister Horace Walpole demanded that Spain pay £93,000 to Jenkins and other merchants

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whose cargos and vessels the Spanish had confiscated. In January 1739, Madrid actually agreed to do so but broke its promise. Although Britain’s government officially declared war against Spain on October 23, 1739, it had been waging war for months before that. On July 10, George II authorized British warships and privateers to destroy or capture any Spanish war or merchant vessels wherever they could find them. On July 20, Admiral Edward Vernon’s squadron of six ships-of-the-line sailed from Britain bound for Porto Bello, Panama, which, after a bombardment, surrendered on November 22, 1739. Meanwhile Spain provoked tension and violence in the American colonies by sending word that any slaves who escaped would be greeted with freedom in Florida. In November 1739, a hundred slaves murdered twenty whites at Stono, South Carolina, then headed south to Florida. Georgia Governor James Oglethorpe led an expedition of 1,620 men against St. Augustine, whose Fort San Carlos was defended by 750 troops. Oglethorpe’s soldiers were divided among the forty-second regulars and provincial regiments from Georgia and Carolina. Spanish gunboats impeded the expedition’s approach in April 1740. Oglethorpe landed his men down the coast then marched them to seize the abandoned town and besiege Fort San Marcos packed with soldiers and refugees. The expedition’s cannons were not powerful enough to do more than chip away at the fortress’s walls. On the night of June 15, Governor Manuel de Montiano ordered an attack that killed or wounded 122 of Oglethorpe’s men. On another night seven Spanish vessels slipped through the blockade to bring the defenders critical supplies and manpower. With the expedition short of supplies and no prospect of taking the fort, on July 5 Oglethorpe reluctantly ordered his troops to march back to Savannah. The war’s largest British expedition sailed against the fortress city of Cartagena, Columbia in March 1741. Among the 9,000 troops that disembarked were 4,183 American volunteers organized into regiments from various colonies. As Admiral Edward Vernon and General Thomas Wentworth bickered over how properly to besiege the city, yellow fever, malaria, typhoid, and dysentery sickened and killed thousands of their men. Eventually half of the invading force died before Vernon and Wentworth agreed to sail away; only 1,124 Americans ever returned to their homes.9 Among the survivors was Lawrence Washington who would name his Virginia estate Mount Vernon and leave it to his younger half-brother, George. Governor Montiano led 1,900 troops and militia north against Georgia in 1742. The invaders captured Saint Simon’s Island. A mixed force of British regulars, Georgians, and Indians ambushed the advanced guard, slaughtered over 200 Spaniards, and routed the rest at Bloody Marsh and Gully Hole Creek. Montiano withdrew his army to St. Augustine. Oglethorpe followed

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up this victory with a raid of several hundred Indians and a score of Georgians against Florida. The Spanish sought to roll back the American frontier. In May 1742, a Spanish armada packed with 3,000 troops arrived at St. Augustine as a staging port to invade Georgia. The army was split between 2,400 troops under General Antonio Arredondo from Cuba and 600 troops under Governor Montiano from St. Augustine. After spies brought word of the expedition, Oglethorpe mustered 650 militiamen and a flotilla of small warships, and called on Carolina for help. Although rebuffed by Carolina’s government, Oglethorpe and his soldiers sailed to reinforce Fort William Henry’s garrison on Cumberland Island, the Spanish armada’s mostly likely preliminary target. Oglethorpe’s flotilla drove off the first Spanish ships. The armada then sailed to Saint Simons Island defended by Fort Fredericka, but Oglethorpe’s flotilla got there first and blocked the way. The Spanish army disembarked four miles up the coast. Oglethorpe led his men along the trail toward the enemy and about halfway there deployed them in the forest. The Spanish advanced guard walked right into the ambush. Oglethorpe gave the command to fire then charge. The Georgians killed or captured around 150 of the enemy and pursued the remnants. The Georgians collided with 300 Spaniards coming to rescue the first. This time the Georgians gave way and retreated. Rather than follow up their victory, the Spaniards waited for the rest of their army to catch up. Oglethorpe led his troops back to rout those troops, killing 167. The survivors fell back to the landing site. Even with those losses the Spanish still outgunned the Georgians by four to one. Oglethorpe evened the odds with a ruse. He had disinformation spread to the Spanish lines about “hidden batteries,” 2,000 reinforcements arriving from Charleston, and Admiral Vernon sailing with a fleet to attack St. Augustine. That did the trick. Montiano and Arredondo packed their troops aboard the armada and sailed away. Oglethorpe’s brilliant leadership won a decisive victory against odds that should have been overwhelming. Oglethorpe followed up his victory with an expedition against St. Augustine in March 1743. Without heavy cannons, he could merely repeat his previous strategy of driving the inhabitants into Fort San Carlos and burning the town and outlying villages. In doing so he hoped to deprive the Spanish of the provisions and will to conduct another attack on Georgia. The strategy worked. In September Oglethorpe sailed for London both to lobby parliament for aid to Georgia and answer unfounded charges of impropriety. He never returned to America. George II declared Georgia a crown colony on 1752. Britain’s war against Spain bled into a war against France. The War of the Austrian Succession was ostensibly over the rightful heir to that throne.10 Maria Theresa became the queen after her father Charles VI died on October 20, 1740. Austrian law forbade a woman from ruling. Several male Hapsburgs

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claimed the throne. That squabble, however, did not cause the war, Prussian imperialism did. King Frederick II, who would soon be known as “the Great,” took advantage of Austria’s disunity to invade its province of Silesia. France, Spain, Bavaria, and Saxony eventually allied with Prussia, and Britain and the Netherlands with Austria. Although Britain and France were on opposite sides, they did not directly war against each other for three years. Fighting between Britain and France erupted in 1743. George II led an army to the Low Countries to join allied Dutch and Austrian forces. Not to be outdone, Louis XV accompanied his army’s invasion of the Austrian Netherlands. On June 27, 1743, the armies collided at Dettingen, where Louis had the exhilaration and George the humiliation of watching the French rout the British and their allies. Formal war declarations from London and Versailles followed. In North America, the French struck the first blow in May 1744, with a 600 man expedition launched from Louisbourg and led by Captain François Duvivier that captured Canso, Nova Scotia, with its 80 man garrison in May 1744. Duvivier then sailed against Annapolis Royal in July. Although only about 100 men defended the crumbling fort, Major Paul Mascarens, its commander, rejected Duvivier’s surrender demand. Duvivier ordered probing attacks against weak points of the fort but the defenders repelled them. Finally, he gave up, reembarked his men, and sailed back to Louisbourg. The only significant British victory against France during this war occurred in 1745 when an expedition organized by Massachusetts Governor William Shirley captured Louisbourg. Shirley was prodded to do so by Lieutenant John Bradstreet, who was captured at Canso, transported to Louisbourg, and then paroled back to Boston. Bradstreet reported that the fortress was in disrepair and defended by only 600 regulars and around 2,000 militia. He then detailed the ways whereby an invading army could reduce first Louisbourg’s outlying defenses and then the citadel itself. This intelligence report and plan were Bradstreet’s first notable initiatives in what would be a brilliant military career.11 Shirley asserted vigorous leadership in implementing the idea. After prolonged lobbying he finally talked Massachusetts’s government into secretly approving and partly underwriting the expedition. He got Whitehall’s permission to use Admiral Peter Warren’s squadron which was then in the Caribbean. He requested contributions from other colonies. Eventually New Hampshire and Connecticut provided troops, Rhode Island vessels, New York cannons, and New Jersey and Pennsylvania provisions. He appointed William Pepperell, the Massachusetts Council president, to command the 3,800 troops. He promoted Bradstreet to colonel. The expedition set sail on March 24, 1745, lingered at Canso to resupply that town and await reinforcements, and then dropped anchor within sight of

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Louisbourg on May 1. Pepperell led the troops ashore at Gabarus Bay three miles south of Louisbourg, brushed aside a handful of defenders, and then advanced a mile toward the citadel. The citadel was on the south arm of a bay with the Lighthouse Point Battery on the north arm, another battery on a small island between those points, and the Grand Battery on the shore opposite the bay’s entrance. Bradstreet advised Pepperell and Warren that Louisbourg’s defense would be doomed if the New Englanders seized the Grand and Lighthouse Batteries and pointed their cannons directly at the citadel. The New Englanders captured the Grand Battery on May 2 and the Lighthouse Battery on May 26. Meanwhile, Warren’s warships captured an approaching sixtyfour-gun French warship. Despite the increasingly destructive bombardment, Louis du Pont Duchambon, the French commander, did not surrender until June 17. In all, the French lost 53 men killed, 80 wounded, and 300 who died from disease, while 1,400 became prisoners. The New Englanders suffered about 137 killed, 30 who died of disease, and several hundred wounded.12 The New England troops grumbled that the surrender terms prevented them from sacking the town. Warren meanwhile amassed more prize money for himself and his crews with the ruse of keeping the French flag flying for weeks after the surrender; his warships bagged several French vessels carrying over £1 million in cargo and cash that sailed innocently into the trap. Pepperell and Warren sailed away to Boston with one-third of the troops aboard most of the vessels. They left Bradstreet to command the 2,700 man garrison of whom disease killed 890 during the winter. The survivors would probably not have resisted long had a French expedition survived the Atlantic crossing intact. With orders to recapture Louisbourg then sail on to take Annapolis Royal, Admiral Jean-Baptiste duc d’Anville’s armada of ten ships-of-the-line, three frigates, and sixty transports packed with 3,500 troops sailed from Rochefort in June 1746. What followed was a hellish three month voyage just to cross the Atlantic as storms repeatedly battered the fleet and blew it far off course. Only about half the fleet gathered at Chibouctou Bay, Nova Scotia by midSeptember. Diseases and starvation killed over 800 troops and 1,500 sailors while a heart attack ended Anville’s life. The new commander, Constant Louis Estourmelles, committed suicide when a council of his captains rejected his plea to attack Annapolis Royal. Pierre Jacques, marquis de la Jonquière, led the fleet’s remnants back to Brest, France.13 Throughout the war the French and Indians raided the northern frontier, killing and capturing hundreds of settlers. The first wave of attacks came in July 1745 at Great Meadow Fort in today’s Putney Vermont, Keene, New Hampshire, and Fort St. George in today’s Thomaston Maine. New York initially was spared attacks because the Iroquois remained neutral thanks to two councils convened by Governor George Clinton in which he dispersed

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generous amounts of gifts. But that did not prevent 300 Canadian militia and 200 Indians from attacking Saratoga in November 1745, and killing a score of settlers and capturing over a hundred. From April through June 1746, Fort Number 4, the northernmost post on the Connecticut River, repelled a series of attacks. The war’s largest raid came in August 1746, with 700 French and Indians led by Pierre Francis de Rigaud de Vaudreuil. The raiders bypassed Fort Number 4 and invested Fort Massachusetts lower down the Connecticut valley. Captain John Hawks commanded a garrison of only twenty-two men, of whom eight were too sick to fight, along with three women and two children. Nonetheless, he continued to resist until eleven of his men were killed, two were wounded, and nearly all his ammunition was expended. Hawks surrendered on August 20. Vaudreuil had the fort burned and withdrew with his prisoners and loot. Shirley received approval from London to organize an expedition to capture Québec in 1746. Whitehall promised to send 5,000 troops under General James Saint Clair to Louisbourg to join an American contingent that the crown would underwrite. By July, excited by hope of scoring a victory similar to Louisbourg, Massachusetts raised 3,500 troops, New York 1,600, Connecticut 1,000, New Hampshire 500, Rhode Island 300, Maryland 300, and Virginia 100. Then word arrived that Whitehall had diverted Saint Clair’s troops for what became an unsuccessful raid on the French coast. That decision constitutes the war’s great “what if?” Of course, even had the forces united and sailed to Quèbec, the expedition may well have failed like previous ones. Yet, had Québec surrendered, would Whitehall have returned it along with Louisbourg? Conceivably Britain could have conquered Canada at a relatively modest cost in 1746 rather than after an exorbitant cost in 1760, and that would have dramatically shifted the course of American and world history. Instead, the Americans and British came to blows. Commodore Charles Knowles’ fleet anchored in Boston bay in the autumn of 1747. On November 1747, he sent press gangs ashore to scour the waterfronts of sailors to replenish his depleted crews before the fleet sailed to the West Indies. The gangs rounded up around forty victims and took them to the ships. As they did so, ever more enraged Bostonians gathered and protested. They then apprehend naval officers ashore and issued a demand to Knowles to swap the pressed men for the officers. They also smashed the windows of the houses of Governor Shirley and other officials whom they believed had sanctioned the impressments. Shirley and his underlings fled to Castle William Island in Boston bay. Knowles threatened to bombard the town to rubble if the Bostonians did not release the officers. Shirley eventually secured the exchange and the fleet sailed away. This was the first time that Bostonians had rallied against the abuses of British power. It would not be the last.

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The largest French victory in North America came in January 1747, when Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers led 500 French and Indians against Grand Pre, Nova Scotia. The initial surprise attack overran most of the town and killed Colonel Arthur Noble, the British commander and a score of his men. Three hundred redcoats defended their stone barracks for three days before finally surrendering with honors of war and parole. The French and British suffered around forty and eighty dead, respectively. Villiers burned the town before withdrawing. The next large French raid that year was as humiliating a failure as Villiers’s raid was a dazzling success. In the Connecticut valley, Fort Number 4’s garrison fought off the latest French and Indian attack in April. Captain Phineas Stevens commanded only thirty men when Ensign Boucher de Niverville and several hundred men deployed around the fort and demanded his surrender. For three days the French and Indians peppered the fort with musket balls but dared not attack. The guns fell silent on the third day. The French and Indians had not only expended their ammunition but most of their provisions as well. Niverville sheepishly promised Stevens that he would lead his men away after they purchased enough food to get home. Stevens offered to trade five bushels of corn for each prisoner they released. They had none to give. After a last volley, Niverville led his men back to Canada. That spring the Mohawks joined the British and launched raids against Canada’s frontier that brought back thirty captives, but that was a sliver of what the French and Indians had plucked from the American frontier. The latest French and Indian raid against Saratoga struck on June 30, killing fifteen and capturing forty-nine settlers. Meanwhile, New York Governor Clinton massed over 3,000 men from New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey at Albany in May 1747 for a march against Canada. A lack of money and supplies forced him to cancel the expedition in July. On the southern frontier, the Spanish raided Beaufort, Carolina in August. Starting in August 1747, the French and British began freeing more prisoners than they took. A French vessel from Québec reached Boston to release 271 captives and report that seventy Americans had died in captivity and 130 remained in Indian hands. A Massachusetts vessel carried sixty-three French captives back to Canada and received sixteen American captives in return.14 The last fighting on the northern frontier took place in May and June 1748. French and Indians ambushed a patrol out of Fort Dummer and killed six men. Two weeks later an ambush killed three troops and captured seven. A scouting party from Fort Number 4 lost four killed and three wounded in an ambush. Elsewhere French and Indians killed a dozen settlers near Schenectady. The Spanish overran and destroyed Brunswick, on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. Despite the violence, like the preceding year,

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more prisoners were released than taken. A boat reached Boston with 175 prisoners and word that as many had died in captivity. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle signed on October 18, 1748. With its retention of Silesia, Prussia was the only clear victor. Frederick the Great did recognize Maria Theresa as Austria’s rightful queen. The settlement reflected the military stalemate between Britain and France. British returned Louisbourg to France, which returned Madras, India, to Britain. The French and British agreed to form a joint commission to determine the exact boundaries between their North America empires. In five years of war, the French repeatedly trounced the British on land. The most humiliating British defeats were at Dettingen in 1743, and Fontenoy and Leffedt in 1744 in the Low Countries. The only success was the American capture of Louisbourg in 1745. The war in North America was the bloodiest yet. Around 500 American troops died in the fighting and disease killed another 1,100. That latter figure soars if it includes the 3,000 Americans who died in Vernon’s disastrous Cartagena campaign. Although far more British than American troops died during the war, British civilians were spared the death, maiming, emotional trauma, brutal captivity, and destruction of their homes and communities inflicted on thousands of Americans on the frontier.15 The Americans could take more pride than the British in how they fought the war. They endured horrors along the frontier and occasionally launched retaliatory raids that bloodied the enemy. Not just New Englanders but all Americans celebrated the capture of Louisbourg, the British Empire’s only significant land victory. Howard Peckham vividly expressed that campaign’s “distinctly American touches”: “Planned by a lawyer, executed by a merchant commanding undisciplined farmers, fishermen, and mechanics, it was successful because of initial luck (which the Yankees quickly forgot), followed up by enthusiastic action. There was a festival air about the whole proceeding. . . . The victors developed supreme self-confidence and a corresponding contempt for, or at least indifference to, professional armies and military engineers. Louisbourg . . . emerged from the war as a symbol of American prowess, as if a new military power had appeared in the New World.”16 The Americans could take even greater pride in how they fought the next war whose outbreak was just four years away. NOTES 1. Saliha Belessous, ed., Native Claims: Indian Law against Empire, 1500–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 113.

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2. James Faulkner, Marlborough’s War Machine, 1702–1711 (London: Pen and Sword, 2015); James Faulkner, The War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1714 (London: Pen and Sword, 2016). 3. Charles W. Arnade, The Siege of St. Augustine in 1702 (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 1959); John Jay Tepaske, The Governorship of Spanish Florida, 1701–1763 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1964), 110–13. 4. For an overview of frontier Deerfield, see: Richard I. Melvoin, New England Outpost: War and Society in Colonial Deerfield (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989); For the classic account of Eunice and her families, see: John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Vintage, 1994). 5. Peckham, Colonial Wars, 74. 6. David La Vere, The Tuscarora War: Indians, Settlers, and the Fight for the Carolina Colonies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013). 7. Saliha Belessous, ed., Native Claims: Indian Law against Empire, 1500–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 113. 8. Richard Harding, The Emergence of Britain’s Global Naval Supremacy: The War of 1739–1748 (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2010). 9. Stephen Saunders Webb, Marlborough’s America (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2013), 403. 10. Reed Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995). 11. William G. Godfrey, John Bradstreet’s Quest: The Pursuit of Profit and Preferment in Colonial North America (Waterloo, Ontario: William Laurier University Press, 1983). 12. J.S. McLennan, Louisbourg: From Its Foundation to its Fall (Halifax: The Book Room Limited, 1979); G.A. Rawlyk, Yankees at Louisbourg: The Story of the First Siege, 1745 (Orono, Maine: Breton Books, 1999); John Robert McNeil, The Atlantic Empires of France and Spain: Louisbourg and Havana, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 13. Michel Verge-Franceschi, La Marine Francaise au XVIIIe Siecle (Paris: Sedes, 1996), 99. 14. Peckham, Colonial Wars, 114. 15. Ibid, 117. 16. Ibid, 118.

Part IV

TURNING POINTS

Chapter 9

Conquests

“I heard the bullets whistle, and believe me there is something charming in the sound.” (George Washington)1 “The volley fired by a young man in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.” (Sir Horace Walpole)2

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle led not to peace but to a four year ceasefire. Yet the collapse of that truce into war was not inevitable. Although critical issues remained unresolved, different decisions in Whitehall and Versailles could have alleviated rather than exacerbated them. Instead, the British and French governments trapped themselves in a classic security dilemma whereby each insisted that its own measures to bolster its imperial defenses were merely reactions to the other’s aggressive acts. Whitehall and Versailles eventually got around to appointing two delegates each to a joint boundary commission. From 1750 to 1754, the commission met periodically but failed to agree where to draw the line. The French asserted a watershed boundary whereby their empire lay west and the British Empire east of the Appalachian Mountains. The British demanded that the French empire recede to the Saint Lawrence valley, southern shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, the west banks of the Maumee and Wabash Rivers, and then the Ohio River’s north bank to the Mississippi River. That infuriated the French who asserted sovereignty over the Ohio valley by right of discovery. The British pointed out that no French settlements existed east of the Wabash, while the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster with the upper Ohio valley tribes granted 215

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Britain sovereignty over that region. As the delegates bickered, scores of enterprising Americans acted. Although King George’s War ended in a stalemate, it had enormous consequences. Relations between the French and British empires and the Indian tribes shifted drastically. During the war the Royal Navy’s blockade of Québec prevented vital supplies from reaching Canada, including gifts and trade goods that nurtured relations with the Indians. American entrepreneurs eagerly filled that void. Indians in the Ohio valley, Great Lakes, and Gulf coast watershed east of the Mississippi River welcomed American traders with their lower priced, better made, more abundant products. Indeed some tribes so valued the influx that they were willing to fight to preserve it. The Choctaw revolted against Louisiana from 1746 to 1749, when colonial officials tried to suppress trade with the Americans, and the other tribes simply ignored French demands to desist. Nova Scotia was the only frontier region where loyalties could not be easily bought with trade goods. Nova Scotia was Britain’s most vulnerable North American province. Britain took title to that region with the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ended Queen Anne’s War. That proved to be a worrisome acquisition. The French retained Cape Breton Island, just north of Nova Scotia, and in 1720 began building Fortress Louisbourg on the east coast. Britain’s first capital of Nova Scotia was at Annapolis Royal but was transferred to Halifax after that fortress was begun in 1749. Halifax had two advantages over Annapolis Royal—its bay was deeper and closer to England. Halifax was also only 300 sea miles from Louisbourg, which made it more vulnerable to a French attack but also the natural staging area for campaigns against Louisbourg or far more distant Québec. The twentyfour mile wide Chignecto isthmus links Nova Scotia to the mainland; the Missaguash River flows from its headwaters near the isthmus’s north side south into Cumberland Bay. Chignecto was the only place along several thousand miles of frontier where French and British flags flew nearly in sight of each other. After learning that the British had founded Halifax, the French built Forts Beausejour and Gaspereau west of the Missaguash. That in turn prompted the British to construct Forts Lawrence and Cumberland on the east side. By 1755, Nova Scotia’s original French settlers, known as Acadians, had expanded to over 9,000 while British immigrants numbered only 2,500. Although the British forced Acadians to swear loyalty to the crown, they naturally worried about the sincerity of those commitments. Beyond Nova Scotia the Abenaki and Micmac sought to contain the British population swelling in Nova Scotia and New Englanders advancing north up the Atlantic coastline. Their zeal was heightened by the fiery exhortations of Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, one of New France’s warrior-priests, who often led war parties.

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The Ohio valley was the most contentious area between the two empires. Throughout the 1740s ever more intrepid Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and others in search of fortune and adventure journeyed over the Appalachian divide, down the Ohio valley, and across to the Great Lakes, trading with the Indians. The war’s end inspired two groups of Virginia investors to petition the crown for huge land grants in that region, the Loyal Land Company in 1749 and the Ohio Company in 1750. King George II issued the Ohio Company an initial grant of 200,000 acres along a stretch of the upper Ohio River’s south bank, with an additional 300,000 promised after the investors settled a hundred families there, and established a fort where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers mingle to form the Ohio River. He granted the Loyal Company 800,000 acres further down the Ohio valley. New France’s power to react to these challenges was crimped by the turnover of four governors from 1747 to 1755. Nonetheless, each did the best he could with what time he had. In 1749, Governor Roland Michel Barrin de la Galissonière sent Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville with 263 marines, militia, and Indians into the region to conduct diplomacy with the tribes, expel any American traders, and nail on trees at prominent river junctions lead plates inscribed with the proclamation of French sovereignty. The expedition reached modern Eire, Pennsylvania where it headed south over the low divide and down French Creek, the Allegheny River, and the Ohio River all the way to the Great Miami River’s mouth, then north up it, over the low divide to the Maumee River and down it to Lake Erie, then eastward back to Montreal. Along the way Celoron faced hostility at each council with the Seneca, Mingo, Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami Indians. The worst reception came at Pickawillany on the upper Great Miami River where Miami Chief Memeskia, also known as Old Briton, had a British flag flying on a pole above his lodge and ordered the French to leave his territory. Several American traders triumphantly observed the French humiliation. It took three years before the French avenged themselves against Memeskia. In June 1752, Captain Charles Langlade led 240 Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors to overrun Pickawillany, kill Memeskia and fifteen other warriors, and capture two American traders. The invaders boiled and ate the hearts and other body parts of Memeskia and one of the Americans. Thus did the French present a bloody lesson for all the region’s tribes on the consequences of trading with the British. The contest for the Ohio River country was not just between Britain and France but also between Virginia and Pennsylvania. Traders from those colonies competed fiercely for the region’s Indian trade, with the most renowned Pennsylvanian George Croghan and Virginian Christopher Gist. Yet, despite all that, Gist and Croghan cooperated during a council with the upper Ohio valley tribes at Logstown in May 1752. With the Treaty of Logstown, the

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Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo partly satisfied both colonies. The tribes reaffirmed the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster that opened their territory for trade to Pennsylvania traders and granted Virginia’s Ohio Company permission to construct a trading post at the strategic point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River. Governor Ange Duquesne de Menneville, marquis de Duquesne acted decisively in 1753 against the swelling British influence in the Ohio valley. He dispatched 1,500 marines and militiamen under Captain Joseph Marin de la Malgue to build three forts between Lake Erie and the upper Ohio valley, with Fort Presque Isle where a peninsula juts into Lake Erie, Fort Le Boeuf over the divide on French Creek, and Fort Machault or Venango where French creek flows into the Allegheny River. After learning of that expedition, King George II and his ministers agreed that they could not tolerate those French forts on territory claimed by Britain. Robert Darcy, Earl Holderness, the secretary of the Southern Department charged with colonial affairs, sent the following message to Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie: “You are warranted by the king’s instructions to repel any hostile attempt by force of arms . . . you should defend to the utmost of your power all his possessions within your government against any invader. But at the same time, as it is the king’s resolution not to be the aggressor, I . . . strictly enjoin you not to make use of the force under your command, excepting within the undoubted limits of his majesty’s province.”3 That message put Dinwiddie in the intended bind. He had nothing but militia with which to repel a French invasion, although just where the British Empire ended and the French Empire began was disputed and being negotiated. So he alone would be blamed if he mustered the militia and those men somehow fought the French on territory that ended up being recognized as French. Whitehall, however, would share the credit if Virginia’s militia actually repelled an invasion on land that turned out to be British. Dinwiddie decided that the first sensible step was to send a polite warning to the French that they were trespassing on the British Empire and should evacuate those forts. And he knew exactly whom to entrust with that mission. George Washington was then a twenty-one-year-old militia captain.4 Although born into Virginia’s planter elite, he was no effete man of leisure. He was an expert hunter, horseman, and frontiersmen, having spent months in the wilderness with a surveying party. With his six foot height, he literally looked down on most people. But he was much more than just a physically imposing and well-connected young man. From an early age, he tried to exemplify a gentleman of virtue—rational, wise, civil, disciplined, dedicated to the public good, courageous, and, above all, honorable. Most of those virtues came easily to him, especially courage and honor. But passions raged

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beneath his stern façade. He had a quick fuse that he struggled to quench before it ignited. Washington began and ended his mission in Williamsburg, setting forth on October 31 and returning on January 16. For the Ohio valley stretch of that grueling eleven hundred mile round early winter trip, he engaged Christopher Gist and several Indian guides. He found working with Indians a challenge because they “are mercenary—every service of theirs must be purchased—and they are easily offended, being thoroughly sensible of their own importance.”5 He and his men reached Fort Venango on December 4. Captain Philippe de Joncaire cordially greeted them, tried to entice Washington’s Indians to desert with gifts and alcohol, and then sent the party on to his superior officer at Fort Le Boeuf up French Creek. Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint Pierre was just as hospitable and wily. He promised to forward the letter to the governor but warned Washington that it was the Americans who were trespassing. Diplomacy was actually the easiest part of Washington’s mission. The weather alternated between snow and freezing rain. On the way back, an Indian guide shot at them; Washington restrained Gist from killing him. A makeshift raft that the two frontiersmen constructed tipped over while they were crossing the Allegheny River and they nearly froze to death on an island. Fortunately they were able to start a fire and dry out then gingerly cross the now frozen river the next day. Upon reaching Williamsburg, Washington submitted a full report along with his journal to Dinwiddie. The governor was so impressed that he promoted Washington to major and had his journal published. He then got the House of Burgesses to underwrite Virginia’s military preparations with £10,000 and accelerated the implementation of the Ohio Company’s plan to build a fort at the Ohio forks. Ensign Edward Ward and 41 men reached the forks in early April and got to work. The British had beat the French to that strategic junction. Their stay was brief. Captain Claude Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecoeur and 1,000 marines and militia packed in a fleet of watercraft arrived on April 17. Contrecoeur swiftly received Ward’s surrender then released him and his men to return to Virginia with a warning to stay out of French territory. Contrecoeur set his men to work building a massive fort that he would name after Governor Duquesne. Meanwhile, Dinwiddie promoted Washington to lieutenant colonel and made him second in command of the Virginia regiment forming under Colonel Joshua Fry. Washington advanced with the regiment’s existing 160 men toward the Ohio forks while Fry remained at his headquarters in Winchester where he recruited more men. Dinwiddie instructed Washington “to act on the defensive, but in Case any Attempts are made to obstruct or interrupt our Settle[men]ts by any Persons whatsoever, You are to restrain

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all such Offenders, & in Case of resistance to make Prisoners of or kill & destroy them.”6 Upon reaching Great Meadows on May 24, Washington had his men erect a small circular stockade that he called Fort Necessity. Mingo Chief Tanacharison, also known as Half King, sent a runner that he and his twelve warriors had spied a French force encamped several miles ahead on the trail to the forks. Washington picked 40 of his best men then, guided by the Mingoes, they advanced up the trail several hours before dawn on May 28. Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville and his 35 troops were encamped in a sunken glen several hundred yards off the trail. Washington split his men to creep through the forest and encircle them. Someone fired a shot, but whether it was a French sentry or one of Washington’s men is lost to history. The result, however, is clear. Washington ordered his men to fire at will. The musket balls killed or wounded thirteen French before the rest surrendered. The Virginians suffered one dead and two wounded. The Mingoes swarmed among the wounded French and murdered them. As Washington hurried toward Jumonville, Tanacharison strode over and buried his hatchet in the Frenchman’s skull. Washington had his men protect the twenty-one survivors then led everyone back to Fort Necessity. At some point a French soldier escaped and headed back to Fort Duquesne. With reinforcements including a company of 100 regular troops under Captain James Mackay, Washington had over 400 men by early July. He did not enjoy, however, unity of command as Mackay refused to take orders from a provincial lieutenant colonel, the first of countless insults from haughty British officers that would rankle Washington over the years. Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers was Jumonville’s brother. Upon learning what happened, he volunteered to lead over 600 French and Indians against the enemy. Scouts brought word of their approach to Washington and he readied his men for battle. The French and Indians did not emerge into the meadow to fight as Washington expected but instead kept to the woods, encircled Fort Necessity, and opened fire. Unfortunately, the fort suffered two severe handicaps, it was too small and within musket shot of the forest. That let the French and Indians hide behind the trees, pop out to shoot, then take cover to reload, while Washington and most of his men were exposed to the relentless fire with only fleeting targets to shoot back at. A steady rain began to fall which fouled ever more muskets. After night fell, Villiers issued a demand to surrender. Washington had suffered thirteen men dead and fiftyfour wounded, and was running short of munitions and provisions. He and the other officers agreed that they had fought long and valiantly enough to be able to surrender with their honor intact. Washington asked for terms. Villiers sent a document for him to sign. An interpreter explained that once signed, the document released Washington

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and his men to return to Virginia; what he failed to note was that the document identified Washington as Jumonville’s “assassin.” Washington unwittingly signed what he thought was a generous deal under the circumstances. He would later learn to his rage and humiliation that he had confessed to murder. Meanwhile, he gloried in the combats he had fought, writing: “I heard the bullets whistle, and believe me there is something charming in the sound.”7 The fighting at Jumonville’s Glen and Fort Necessity were the first battles in what became the first global war.8 Those battles if not the war were sparked by a series of decisions made by George Washington, then a hotheaded twentytwo-year-old military novice. Each made sense to him at the time, which of course was why he made them. Yet he eventually came to rue those decisions which provide striking examples of unintended consequences caused by assertions of power. As Sir Horace Walpole colorfully put it: “The volley fired by a young man in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.”9 Washington, however, did not cause the subsequent war. That came from decisions made mostly in Whitehall. Although fighting had erupted, each government could have found some face-saving way for both sides to stand down. But that did not happen. Instead King George II and his ministers devised a grand strategy for 1755 that included four separate campaigns designed to punch New France back to the boundary demanded by Britain’s commissioners. Meanwhile Louis XV and his ministers sought to bolster their existing defenses with massive reinforcements. The British enjoyed four critical advantages that proved to be decisive in that war. The most important was the Royal Navy whose warships outgunned and outnumbered the French by two to one. Another was that with twenty times more people, the American colonies could not be conquered by the French, while New France could be conquered by the British. Third, the Americans were not just more numerous but richer. Canada’s only significant sources of income were furs and fish while Louisiana was confined to rice. In contrast, the American colonies produced a wide array of products for themselves and for export to Britain. Relatively easily the Americans could mobilize and transport by land and water the provisions that they needed for campaigns, along with British arms and munitions; somehow the Canadians would have to import virtually everything needed to wage war including food for thousands of soldiers through the British navy’s gauntlet. Finally, winter began earlier and lingered later in Canada than the American colonies, which let the British begin mobilizing and moving their forces weeks sooner and stay in the field weeks longer than the French. Nonetheless the French enjoyed several military advantages. Strategically they were on the defensive which meant the British had to come to fight them on their own fortified turf. By using interior lines the French could shift their

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forces among fronts quicker than the British. According to military theory, three attackers were considered the minimum for overrunning one defender. Of course, that ratio varied among battlefields and commanders. Regardless, the British would bear the burden of mustering and paying for far more troops, supplies, and transport than the French. Another French advantage was that they generally enjoyed better relations with more tribes and could more easily rally those warriors for war. A third advantage was that the average Canadian was more experienced with wilderness survival than the average American. The American colonies had no equivalent of French marine companies of professional soldiers deployed mostly on the frontier. Instead nine of ten American militiamen lived within fifty miles of the Atlantic Ocean and would be skittish novices in the wilderness. Disunity was the worst American political weakness. Most colonies competed against each other for territory, trade, arms, and reimbursements of their military expenses from the crown. Washington pleaded for Americans to unite in common purpose: “Nothing I more sincerely wish than a union to the colonies in this time of eminent danger.”10 New Jersey Governor William Livingston deplored colonial divisions and called for union In a book on the war published in 1757: “The strength of our colonies . . . is divided . . . [over] the concurrences of all necessities both for supplies of men and men. Jealous are they of each other—some ill-considered—others shaken with intestine divisions—and . . . parsimonious even to prodigality. Our assemblies are diffident of their governors, governors despise their assemblies, and both mutually misrepresent each other to the Court of Great Britain. . . . Without a general constitution for warlike operations, we can neither plan nor execute. We have a common interest and must have a common council, one head and one purse.”11 As bad were relations between Americans and Britons.12 Colonial officers resented that regular officers a rank below them outranked them according to a royal decree issued on November 12, 1754. Thus was a British colonel superior to an American brigadier general, a British lieutenant colonel superior to an American colonel, and so on. This blatant discrimination rankled Washington who protested to Governor Dinwiddie that: “We can’t conceive that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British subjects, not lessen our claim. . . . And we are very certain that no body of regular troops ever before served in a bloody campaign without attracting royal notice. As to those idle arguments which are often times used—namely, ‘You are defending your own properties,’—I look upon to be whimsical and absurd. We are defending the King’s dominions.”13 British incompetence exacerbated these animosities. The French and Indian War became the symbolic and sometimes literal graveyard for some utterly inept British generals and countless officers. Worst of all were

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Generals Edward Braddock and James Abercromby who blundered their armies into devastating defeats. Yet most redcoat officers seared images of not just ineptness but arrogance into the minds of proud Americans forced to serve beneath them. They maliciously scapegoated the Americans, projecting their own worst failings onto a despised other. General James Wolfe’s slanderous sneer exemplified their attitude: “Americans are in general the dirtiest and most contemptible cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending on them. They fall down dead in their own dirt and desert by battalions, officers and all. Such rascals as these are rather an encumbrance than any real strength to an army.”14 The Americans amply returned that contempt. Nonetheless the British did have some grounds for complaint, most notably that American “Officers and Men with very few Exceptions are not only Strangers to Military Life but show an averseness to Discipline and Regularity.”15 With their aversion to “standing armies,” American soldiers, especially New Englanders, viewed their relationship with the military legalistically. One volunteered for a limited period of time for a wage whose terms were sealed in a signed contract. In most regiments that contract also let enlisted men elect their officers. Americans believed that they were entitled to go home when their legal duties expired or their legal rights were violated. Washington explained that American principle: “When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen.”16 All soldiers, regular and provincial alike, who served in the military were governed by the Articles of War that inflicted harsh penalties like hundreds of lashes or even execution for various crimes. Americans viewed those punishments as excessively cruel. On paper New France appeared far more unified. In contrast to Britain’s fourteen American colonies, New France had only two, Canada and Louisiana, each with a governor general, intendant or deputy, marine companies, and militia companies. But jurisdictional differences fostered French disunity. The governor general commanded the colony’s marines and militia and was directed by the Marine Ministry. The generals that Versailles dispatched to Canada commanded the army troops and were directed by the War Ministry. Throughout the war the governor general and generals, and the war and marine ministers squabbled over what to do and how to do it. The worst relations were between Canada’s Governor General Pierre François de Rigaud de Vaudreuil de Cavagnal, marquis de Vaudreuil and General Louis Joseph de Montcalm, who commanded the army in Canada from 1756 to 1759. Benjamin Franklin was the driving force behind an effort to forge colonial unity on defense and Indian relations. It was Franklin’s Gazette that published the cartoon of a writhing snake severed into parts with the name of a colony printed on each below the command “Join or Die!” Twenty-three delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York,

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Pennsylvania, and Maryland convened in a congress at Albany in June 1754. A week of discussions resulted in a resolution for the colonies to adopt the “Albany Plan of Union,” with a “general council” of delegates from each colony led by “a president general” appointed by the king and empowered to raise taxes and troops, build forts, regulate trade, license privateers, conduct Indian diplomacy, and wage war if diplomacy failed; excise taxes would underwrite expenses. The Albany Plan died in the government of every colony that sent delegates. Each jealously guarded its existing power and had no intention of rendering any to a higher power. Yet circumstances, interests, and attitudes change. Just two decades later a version of that plan would come to fruition. For the war’s first few years, Whitehall and Versailles had limited and symmetrical goals. Each sought either to take or defend frontier forts in the upper Ohio valley, Acadia, Lake Ontario, and Lake Champlain regions. Whitehall’s plan for 1755 was for four armies respectively to capture Forts Duquesne, Niagara, Saint Frederic, and Beausejour. General Edward Braddock would serve as both commander-in-chief for His Majesty’s forces in North America and lead the campaign against Fort Duquesne. Massachusetts Governor William Shirley would serve as his deputy and receive a major general’s commission to lead the campaign against Fort Niagara. Charles Lawrence was a brigadier general and Nova Scotia’s lieutenant governor; he would oversee the campaign against Fort Beausejour. William Johnson was New York’s agent to the Iroquois and a militia colonel; he would receive a major general’s commission and lead the Fort Saint Frederic campaign. The opening shots of 1755, however, echoed at sea rather than land. On June 8, Admiral Edward Boscawen’s thirteen ships-of-the-line caught up to Admiral Emmanuel Dubois de la Motte’s fleet heading toward Canada. The British captured two transports packed with 400 troops. The French vessels scattered into fog and eventually dropped anchor either at Louisbourg or Québec. That was a significant British victory. Those captured troops could have turned a French defeat into a triumph had they been present on the Plains of Abraham four years later. Nonetheless 2,600 French troops did disembark in Canada. On one of the vessels that dropped anchor at Québec on June 26, were Governor Vaudreuil and General Jean Armand, baron Dieskau, the army commander. On land the first campaign opened in Nova Scotia. That was hardly surprising since British Forts Lawrence and Charles and French Forts Beausejour and Gaspereau were on opposite sides of the Missaguash River from each other. The problem for Governor Charles Lawrence was not distance but manpower. He had only 270 redcoats and the militiamen were unreliable since most were French Acadians. That problem was alleviated in spring 1755, when Massachusetts Governor Shirley sent him 2,000 New England

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volunteers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Winslow. Lawrence gave the campaign’s command to Colonel Robert Monkton. British cannons opened fire against Fort Beausejour on June 14. After two days of bombardment, Fort Beausejour’s commander, Captain Louis de Vergor, surrendered after a cannon ball killed half a dozen men near him. Monkton then marched his troops to Fort Gaspereau, whose commander, capitulated without firing a shot. Nova Scotia’s frontier was now secure, at least from enemies west beyond the isthmus. What Lawrence and most other British feared was “the enemy” within, the thousands of Acadians living in their midst. On August 10, Lawrence issued a deportation order for all Acadians. Eventually British redcoats drove over 6,000 Acadians from their homes, packed them on vessels, and sailed them elsewhere; hundreds died from disease, starvation, and abuse.17 For Braddock’s Fort Duquesne campaign, Whitehall sent two understrength regiments to be recruited to full strength in the colonies.18 Among the first things Braddock did after disembarking at Norfolk, Virginia on February 20, 1755, was summon key colonial leaders to a council of war at Alexandria. On April 15, he met with governors Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia, William Shirley of Massachusetts, Horatio Sharpe of Maryland, James De Lancey of New York, and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, along with such distinguished provincials as Benjamin Franklin and William Johnson. It was almost immediately evident to those assembled that Braddock was grossly ill-suited for his command. The worst problem was not that he lacked experience with wilderness warfare, Indians, or Americans, since that was true of nearly all British officers. What was critical was his arrogant refusal to listen to advice on appropriate ways to handle any of those forces. Franklin observed that Braddock was “a brave man and might probably have made a figure as a good officer in some European war. But he had too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops, and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians.” When Franklin and other colonial leaders tried to explain the nature of wilderness warfare, the general haughtily replied: “These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.”19 Whitehall compounded its tragic pick of Braddock with the man it chose to be his quartermaster general. John Saint Clair rivaled Braddock in arrogance, ignorance, and fiery temper. At one point he became so enraged at Pennsylvania’s mingled unwillingness and inability to fulfill his demands that he threatened “to march his Army . . . to cut the Roads, press Horses, Wagons . . . that he would not suffer a Soldier to handle an Axe but by Fire and Sword oblige the Inhabitants to do it . . . that he would kill all kind of Cattle and

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carry away the Horses, burn the Houses . . . and that if the French defeated them by the delays of this Province that he would with his Sword drawn pass through the Prince and treat the inhabitants as a parcel of Traitors.”20 And this was from not just an ally but a general dispatched by the king of one’s mother country. By such attitudes and behaviors the British alienated countless American hearts and minds. Franklin resolved the impasse with a promise and a warning to recalcitrant wagon owners; he offered a daily wage to any driver who supplied the army with a wagon drawn by four horses and observed that Braddock would commandeer any holdouts. Eventually around 150 drovers showed up with their wagons and teams. Washington had resigned as the Virginia regiment’s lieutenant colonel after Governor Dinwiddie broke it up into companies and assigned them to far-flung frontier posts. Yet he was determined to get back into the fight. He volunteered to serve on Braddock’s staff and the general welcomed him. Washington would provide Braddock with critical advice and leadership. Braddock’s 2,100 man expedition marched from Fort Cumberland toward Fort Duquesne on May 29. The army advanced only about two miles a day because the rugged trail had to be laboriously hacked wider and flattened into a road for the supply wagons to proceed. Washington grew increasingly restless at the slow pace. On June 20, he talked Braddock into splitting his forces into an elite advanced force of 1,300 British and American troops with packhorses trailed by 800 troops guarding the wagons. Braddock and Washington were with the advanced force that was a mere nine miles from Fort Duquesne by midday on July 9. All along Indian scouts kept the French at Fort Duquesne well informed of the enemy’s slow, steady progress. Fort Duquesne’s commander, Captain Pierre Claude de Contrecoeur, leaned toward blowing up the fort and withdrawing up the Allegheny River to Fort Venango. Captain Daniel de Beaujeu talked him into letting him lead an attack on the British column. On the morning of July 9, Beaujeu, 254 French, and 637 Indians strode from Fort Duquesne.21 For inexplicable reasons, neither side had scouts more than a hundred yards at the head of its column and each was startled suddenly to see the enemy just ahead on the trail. Muskets were lowered and fired. A ball killed Beaujeu. Lieutenant Jean Dumas assumed command and spread the French and Indians into the woods on each side of the trail to catch the British in a cross fire. When Braddock and Washington heard the shots, they hurried to the front. What they found was chaos as officers and sergeants shouted parade ground commands to their men that were impossible to execute in the thick forest. Screaming war cries, the French and Indian fired incessantly into the recoats thrashing through the undergrowth, killing or wounding ever more of them. The survivors milled about dazed or terrified, fired blindly into the trees and even each other; some panicked and tried to dash back through the

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trees toward the rear. A ball struck down Braddock. Washington had two horses killed beneath him as he rode about trying to rally the troops. He later reported that “the Virginians behaved like men and died like soldiers” in stark contrast to “the dastardly behavior of the English soldiers . . . [who] broke and ran as sheep before the hounds.”22 After three hours of fighting, the remnants of Braddock’s army retreated down the trail and did not stop until they reached the rear body. The French and Indians had won a stunningly decisive victory by routing the enemy and killing 456 British and wounding 520, while suffering only nine and twenty deaths, respectively.23 Braddock was among the mortally wounded. On July 13, he died muttering these parting words, “Who would have thought it?”24 That pretty much sums up the clueless British attitude toward not just the Indians but the Americans who fought beside the redcoats. Mingo Chief Scarouady bitterly expressed the feelings of both peoples toward Braddock and his ilk: “He was a bad man when he was alive; he looked upon us as dogs, and would never hear anything what was said to him. We often endeavored to advise him of the danger he was in with his Soldiers, but he never appeared pleased with us and that was the reason that a great many of our Warriors left him and would not be under his Command.”25 The general was buried in the road so that the troops trampled any trace of his grave to fool scalp hunters. Colonel Thomas Dunbar ordered the wagons burned and the army’s remnants to retreat to the settlements. There he detached the two redcoat regiments and marched them all the way to Philadelphia where they would be safe as he awaited orders from Whitehall. Most upper Ohio valley Indians who had scorned the French changed their minds after learning that an outnumbered French and Indian force had slaughtered and routed a British army at the Monongahela. Eager for their own loot and scalps, hundreds of warriors swarmed against the American frontier to kill, capture, rob, and burn. William Johnson was an excellent choice to lead the Lake Champlain campaign.26 Although he lacked significant military experience, he was naturally gifted as a leader, diplomat, and strategist. He spent his first twenty-three years in County Meath, Ireland, until 1738, when he migrated to New York after being summoned by his uncle, Admiral Peter Warren, to manage the tenants on his extensive lands on the Mohawk River’s south side. Once ensconced there, Johnson swiftly mastered life in two overlapping worlds, American and Iroquois. At once quick-witted, strong-willed, flexible, honest, and sensitive, he was welcomed in either society. He had a sharp eye for a good deal but knew how to realize it in ways that won trust rather than resentment from most people. He dutifully sent most of the rent to his uncle while he steadily enriched himself by trading with the Indians. In 1739, he purchased land north of the river and there built a house, trading post, and sawmill, an estate that he called

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Mount Johnson. During his frequent trading trips through the Six Nations he learned Iroquois. The Mohawks rewarded his fair dealing by electing him one of their sachems with the name Warraghiyagey which means “Doer of Great Things.” During King George’s War, Johnson was instrumental in ensuring that the Six Nations rejected French enticements to ally with them while inducing scores of Iroquois warriors to join forces with the Americans. He conducted his diplomacy both at his home, at Iroquois villages, and at the Six Nation Council at Onondaga where he sat as a sachem. Chief Hendrick explained why the Mohawks so trusted Johnson: “He has large ears and heareth a great deal and what he hears he tells to us; he also has large eyes, and sees a great way, and conceals nothing from us. . . . We had him in wartime when he was like a tree that grew for our use. . . . His knowledge of our affairs made us think him one of us.”27 Johnson was a lady’s man as well as a man’s man. For different prolonged periods he had a common law wife from either side of the ethnic divide and children with them and apparently many other women. His swelling related business and diplomatic successes angered prominent fur traders at Albany and their backers in New York City. Nonetheless, New York Governor George Clinton recognized his brilliance by naming him a militia colonel and Indian agent in 1748, and a member of the governing council in 1750. Clinton tried to talk the assembly into approving a £5,000 payment to Johnson for years of accumulated Indian diplomacy expenses but his rival, Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey, mobilized his faction to block the proposal. After that rebuff Johnson swore he was done representing New York with the Iroquois. He did attend the 1754 Albany Congress during which he met Benjamin Franklin, William Shirley, and other prominent American leaders. It was then that De Lancey finally agreed to get the assembly to reimburse Johnson for a portion of his past expenses. In return Johnson agreed to resume his post as New York’s Indian agent. Shirley was so impressed with Johnson that he assigned him command of the Lake Champlain campaign. In April 1755, Johnson attended the Alexandria conference in which Braddock gave supply and marching orders to the American leaders. He then hurried north to organize his own campaign. The Six Nations were the fulcrum of power on the New York frontier. Whichever side they took would enjoy an enormous advantage. Johnson convened a council at his mansion from June 24 to July 4, 1755 during which he asserted all his diplomatic skills to convince them to ally with Britain against France. Despite his efforts, Johnson “found all the Nations except the Mohawks extremely averse to taking part with us. This Arose from two Principal Sources: the Most prevalent was their Fear of the French, owing to our long passiveness & their Activity, & the shameful hand we have always made of our former Expeditions. The other was from a real attachment in many of their most leading Men to the French Interest.”28

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Johnson then went to Albany where he mobilized his army. The first step was to send General Phineas Lyman with 1,400 troops north along the Hudson River’s east bank forty-three miles to the great bend where those waters flow down from the Adirondack Plateau. There Lyman deployed his men either to work constructing Fort Lyman (later renamed Edward) or widening two trails into roads, one that ran northwest fourteen miles to Lake George’s south end and the other due north twenty miles to Lake Champlain’s south end. In late August, Johnson arrived at Fort Edward with 1,500 troops and 200 Mohawks under Chief Hendrick. After discussions with Lyman, Johnson led his men to Lake George on August 26 and put them to work fortifying their encampment. From there it was thirty-two miles north down the lake to La Chute River that curls for two and a half miles north and east to flow into Lake Champlain. From that point it is fourteen miles north on a trail to Fort Saint Frederic. There were trails on either side of Lake George but they were too rugged and narrow for wagons. Somehow Johnson’s men had to construct enough boats to convey themselves and their supplies to Lake George’s north end and construct a fort there before marching against Fort Saint Frederic. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the French were approaching. General Jean Dieskau led 1,400 troops to Fort Saint Frederic, left some to reinforce the garrison, and then headed south. Fourteen miles south of Fort Saint Frederic on Lake Champlain’s west bank is a headland that the Indians call Ticonderoga, roughly translated as “land between two waters.” That can mean either the ground between Lake Champlain and the La Chute River or between Lake Champlain and Lake George which is two and a half miles up the La Chute River. Dieskau put most of his men to work building Fort Carillon on a bluff facing south over the lake and southeast of the La Chute River mouth. He then embarked with 216 grenadiers, 684 militia, and 600 Indians.29 Indian chiefs on both sides powerfully influenced the course of events on September 8. Early that morning Dieskau and his men reached roughly the midway point on the road between Lake George and Fort Edward. Dieskau wanted to march southeast to Fort Edward. His Indian chiefs insisted that they advance northwest against Johnson and his men at Lake George. A scout brought word to Johnson of Dieskau’s approach. Johnson initially considered sending 500 troops to destroy the French bateaux on Lake Champlain and another 500 troops directly against Dieskau. Hendrick disagreed and convinced Johnson to send 1,000 troops and Indians toward Dieskau. A scout brought word to Dieskau of the approaching Americans. Dieskau deployed his troops and Indians in the forest on both sides of the road. The Americans marched into the ambush. The French and Indians killed, wounded, or captured more than a hundred Americans as the rest fled down the road; Hendrick was among the dead.

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Dieskau led his troops and Indians to Lake George where Johnson and his men defended a makeshift barrier of wagons, barrels, and fallen trees. Two cannons pointed down the road. Dieskau tried to talk his Indian chiefs into joining a French attack on the Americans but they refused. He then led his troops forward. The American cannons and muskets cut down scores of French troops, including Dieskau who was shot in the side and captured. A ball slammed into Johnson’s hip and he was carried to his tent. The French and Indians withdrew. Lyman at Fort Edward sent 500 troops up the road. Those troops collided with the retreating French and Indians and routed them. In all three engagements the Americans lost 154 killed, 103 wounded, and sixty-seven missing, and the French 149 dead, 163 wounded, and twentyseven prisoners.30 Although the Americans won two of the three engagements, the ferocity of the French and Indian attacks convinced Johnson and his officers to delay an offensive against Fort Saint Frederic until 1756. Massachusetts Governor William Shirley was an experienced war if not battle leader. He had been governor during King George’s War and had organized the campaign that took Louisbourg in 1745. As he mobilized troops and supplies for his campaign against Fort Niagara, he received doubly crushing news of the disaster at the Monongahela and the death of his own son in that battle. With Braddock’s demise, Shirley was now the commander-in-chief. Despite his grief and added burden by August he persevered and led 2,000 American troops to Oswego where he had them construct two forts to protect approaches to the small existing palisade. But that was as far as his expedition got. Two French forts stood at opposite ends of Lake Ontario. Fort Niagara was at the southwest corner on the east bank where the Niagara River flows north into the lake. Fort Frontenac was at the northeast corner above where Lake Ontario drains into the Saint Lawrence River. Shirley’s excuse for inaction was the fear that if he besieged one of those forts he would be exposed to an attack on his rear by troops from the other fort. So he left half his troops at Oswego, sent the rest to their respective homes for the winter, and returned to Boston. That prompted Whitehall to replace Shirley with General John Campbell, lord Loudoun as the commander-in-chief. Loudoun would be as pigheaded and contemptuous of Americans as Braddock, but timid rather than bold. The war spread from North America to Europe and beyond in 1756. After two years of fighting Whitehall and Versailles finally got around formally to declaring war against each other in May. Each scrambled for allies. Louis XV first allied with Austria’s Queen Maria Theresa then they enticed Russia’s Tsarina Catherine the Great to join them. That prompted an alliance between George II and Prussian King Frederick II, “the Great.” The fighting in Europe would last from 1756 to 1763 and be called the Seven Years’ War after the

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Peace of Paris ended it. Most fighting took place in central Europe where Frederick and other brilliant Prussian generals annually defeated the Austrian, French, and Russian armies that marched against them. Britain’s campaigns on the continent would mostly end as humiliating defeats, culminating with the capitulation of William Augustus, Duke Cumberland, the king’s second son, and his 35,000 troops at Kloster Zeven on August 10, 1757.31 Preoccupied with the unfolding war on the continent, Whitehall’s orders for 1756 to Loudoun and the American governors were simply to hold the line. The French inflicted two defeats on the British in North America in 1756, one stinging, the other disastrous. The first came in March. Two palisades guarded the low divide between the Wood Creek and Mohawk River valleys, Fort Bull and Fort Williams a mile apart on each respective stream. About a hundred and fifty men garrisoned each fort. Captain Gaspard de Léry led 362 men, 251 French and 103 Indians on the 173 mile trek from La Presentation on the Saint Lawrence River to Fort Bull. On the morning of March 27, they charged the palisade, chopped open the gate, and swarmed inside. Caught by surprise, few of the defenders resisted. The attackers slaughtered seventy men and captured thirty-five at the cost of one soldier and two Indians killed. The French and Indians killed another five Americans when they repelled a sortie from Fort William. They looted then torched Fort Bull which blew up when flames reached the gunpowder magazine.32 To replace Dieskau, Louis XV tapped Louis Joseph, marquis Montcalm, a veteran of numerous battles during the Wars of the Polish and Austrian successions. The general and two battalions of 1,200 troops disembarked at Québec on May 13, 1756. After consulting with Governor Vaudreuil, Montcalm journeyed to Lake Champlain where he inspected Forts Saint Frederic and Carillon. Satisfied that the Lake Champlain front was secure, he proceeded to remove a troublesome thorn in Canada’s side. Oswego was the most isolated and vulnerable British position, being 175 trail and water miles from Albany. Three forts protected Oswego, with one on the Oswego River’s east bank and two on the west bank. Lieutenant Colonel James Mercer commanded the 1,350 troops garrisoning those forts. Montcalm and 1,300 soldiers, 1,500 marines, and 250 Indian warriors packed into boats and began the long grueling row from Montreal up the Saint Lawrence River on July 21. They disembarked a few miles east of Oswego then marched forward to besiege the east bank fort on August 10. Mercer ordered that fort evacuated during the night. The French took over the fort and fired its cannons against the other two forts across the river. A ball decapitated Mercer right beside his horrified deputy commander Lieutenant Colonel John Littlehales. When Montcalm later sent a demand to surrender, Littlehales hastily complied. The French won a critical victory. They not only captured nearly 1,300 troops but also dozens of cannons and bateaux, and tons of provisions and

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munitions. Oswego’s fall punched the New York frontier back to Fort William on the divide guarding the approach to the upper Mohawk valley. Indians raided swaths of the American frontier. In upper New England, Abenaki and Micmac attacked settlements in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Canadian Iroquois along with Mississauga, Ojibwa, Nipissing, Huron, Ottawa, Miami, and Pottawatomi attacked settlements in New York’s Mohawk valley. Largely supplied by Fort Duquesne, Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo attacked the frontier settlements of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Finally, largely supplied by Fort Toulouse in today’s Alabama, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and eventually Cherokee attacked the Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina frontiers. Those attacks obscured divisions within each village which had varying portions of pro-French, pro-British, and neutral factions. Most strongly leaned French. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Indian Superintendent William Johnson, the Iroquois League was officiously neutral, although the easternmost Mohawk tribe largely backed Britain and the westernmost Seneca tribe largely backed France. The Cherokee stayed neutral until 1762, when British diplomatic blunders provoked them to war. The Delaware split between eastern villages that remained neutral, solidified by the Treaty of Easton signed on October 25, 1758, and western villages whose war parties strode against the American frontier. Whitehall’s plan for North America in 1757 was to capture Louisbourg and hold the line elsewhere. Loudoun ineptly carried out that order by alienating the colonial assemblies with his harsh demands and condemnations. Indeed he actually threatened to send redcoat regiments against any colony that failed to fulfill its quota of troops, provisions, boats, wagons, and draft animals. He also strictly enforced the command system whereby British officers were senior to American officers of the same rank even those with more combat experience. American officers deeply resented this discrimination. The year began with a British victory. In mid-March 1757, Francois Pierre Rigaud de Vaudreuil, the governor’s brother, led 1,500 French, Canadians, and Indians from Fort Carillon up the thirty-two miles of icebound Lake George to Fort William Henry at the south end. Without artillery, the French forces could only snipe at the defenders and burn the bateaux on shore. The commander rejected Rigaud’s demand to surrender. After four days of desultory firing Riguad led his men back to Fort Carillon. Then came a huge disappointment. With Loudoun in command, transports packed with 6,000 troops sailed from New York on June 20. Ten days later that flotilla rendezvoused at Halifax with seventeen ships-of-the-line and fourteen frigates commanded by Admiral Francis Holburne. The armada was set to sail on August 4, when a report reached Halifax that Louisbourg

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had 4,000 troops defending it. That spooked Loudoun who disembarked his troops, but it did not deter Holburne who sailed his warships to Louisbourg, arriving on August 24. The British fleet remained there until September 24, when a hurricane wrecked one warship ashore and demasted nine. Admiral Emanuel Dubois de la Motte commanded the French fleet of fourteen ships-of-the-line and three frigates, which rode out the storm and suffered little damage within Louisbourg’s sheltered Bay. Thus did nature provide a possibility for history to shift dramatically from what actually happened. La Motte could have scored a decisive naval victory had he sailed against Holburne’s devastated fleet. That would have tipped the naval balance in North American waters toward the French and delayed for years and perhaps indefinitely the British campaigns that finally conquered Canada. But that did not happen because of the cautious character of the man with the most power to capitalize on the opportunity. Holburne reunited his fleet at Halifax where his warships would be repaired for the campaign that captured Louisbourg the following year. Lieutenant Colonel George Monro commanded 2,372 regular and provincial troops split between Fort William Henry on a bluff above Lake George’s south end and a fortified camp atop a small plateau several hundred yards eastward.33 Just fourteen miles southeast on the Hudson River was Fort Edward, where British General Daniel Webb commanded 4,000 troops. In mid-July Monro sent five companies of Colonel John Parker’s New Jersey Regiment, known as the Blues for the color of their uniforms, in bateaux down Lake George to scout for the enemy. Sabbath Day Point juts from the west shore about twenty miles from Fort William Henry. Parker ordered his men to disembark there where they would spend the night. Several hundred Indians lay waiting with their canoes in the forest. As Parker and his men neared the shore, the Indians opened fire then carried their canoes into the lake and pursued. In all the New Jersey Blues lost 100 hundred men killed and 160 captured.34 Montcalm massed 7,626 soldiers, marines, militiamen, and Indians at Lake George’s north end on July 31. He sent one third of them along the trail on the west bank while the rest crammed with the supplies and ordnance onto several hundred bateaux and canoes and went up the lake. On August 3, they reunited just beyond cannon shot of Fort William Henry. Montcalm sent his Indians and marines to block the road leading to Fort Edward, while his soldiers began erecting a battery of siege guns on a low plateau. When the French appeared Monro sent a courier dashing toward Fort Edward. That courier evaded the prowling Indians. Other couriers would not be so lucky. Rather than leave a skeleton force at Fort Edward and march to relieve Fort William Henry, Webb refused to budge from his relative safety. After four days of bombardment, nearly all of Fort William Henry’s guns had either been knocked out or had burst from overheating by repeatedly

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firing back. Several hundred defenders were dead or wounded. There was no sign of Webb’s army trying to break through. On August 9, when Montcalm issued a demand to surrender, Monro agreed. Under the capitulation, Monro could march his troops away with the promise not to fight again unless an equal number of French troops were released from captivity. Tragically, as Monro led his men toward Fort Edward, Indians swarmed over the fort and murdered around a hundred wounded or sick men in the hospital and captured another couple hundred stragglers. Montcalm and his officers tried but failed to stop the atrocities. Montcalm then made a critical decision. He was content to withdraw with a limited victory rather than march on to win a decisive victory. He had the captured supplies loaded on bateaux for the row down Lake George then ordered Fort William Henry and the fortified camp razed. Had he besieged Fort Edward, Webb most likely would have capitulated before the superior French and Indian forces. And had that happened, Montcalm could have led his army on to undefended Albany just forty-five miles south. That would have cut off the Mohawk River valley settlements and forts, which would have capitulated as French and Indians appeared before them. He could have wintered most of his troops around Albany, then reinforced them in the spring to fight and possibly defeat the inevitable British and American army coming up the Hudson from New York City. And all that might have been enough to bring the British to the negotiating table for a peace treaty with a different victor and result from what actually happened. Here again the cautious character of the most powerful man determined the course of history. That winter, when George II appointed William Pitt the secretary for the southern department, he unofficially made him the prime minister. Pitt devised a winning strategy. He would give minimal support to Frederick in Europe while concentrating British power to conquer New France. Meanwhile, he would send small expeditions to capture French colonies in the West Indies, West Africa, and India. For 1758, he called for simultaneous offensives against Fortress Louisbourg, Fort Carillon, and Fort Duquesne with armies commanded by Generals Jeffrey Amherst, James Abercromby, and John Forbes. Abercromby would also command all British forces in North America after Loudoun was recalled to London. Pitt not only recognized the critical importance of American participation in North America’s campaigns but ensured that the colonial governments received large infusions of cash and credit to help them mobilize their resources of men, wagons, vessels, and provisions. That year’s most decisive British campaign was against Louisbourg.35 By June, Amherst had amassed a vast armada with 13,239 troops, including 529 American rangers, aboard 150 transports protected by twenty-four shipsof-the-line and nineteen smaller warships bristling with 3,548 cannons and

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manned by 27,275 sailors.36 The siege took six weeks from the landing to the capitulation. The operations unfolded methodically. The fleet blockaded the narrow entrance to Louisbourg bay to prevent any French warships from sailing out. Several miles south down the coast, a thousand troops clambered down the sides of transports into whaleboats then rowed hard for the beach where they splashed ashore to scatter the several score defenders. The troops secured a perimeter several hundred yards inland as the rest of the army disembarked behind them. It took days to get all the supplies ashore. Most regiments then advanced up the peninsula with Louisbourg at the tip and began the first of three parallel lines of entrenchments toward the fortress. Cannons were dragged up and placed in redoubts along each parallel to systematically pound Louisbourg. Other regiments marched clockwise around the bay, capturing a battery directly west across the bay from the citadel, then another battery on the north peninsula’s tip directly across the narrow strait from Louisbourg. The relentless bombardment destroyed much of the city and the anchored fleet. The French troops suffered ninety-three killed and 237 wounded, while disease afflicted another 1,300 men. Governor Augustin de Drucour surrendered Louisbourg along with 3,031 soldiers and 2,606 sailors who would be taken as prisoners to Britain, while the 4,000 civilians would be returned to France; two ships-of-the line and two smaller warships were captured. Amherst won that decisive victory at the relatively light cost of 229 dead and 371 wounded.37 The British staging area for the Fort Carillon campaign was Fort William Henry’s ruins at Lake George’s south end.38 It took a week to pack General James Abercromby’s army of 17,600, including 5,825 British and 11,775 American troops along with the ordnance and supplies into over 800 bateaux and ninety whaleboats for the thirty-two mile row down Lake George. Although Abercromby officially commanded, General George Augustus, Viscount Howe actually led the army. Howe was a highly intelligent, dynamic officer who tried to adapt British troops for wilderness warfare by trimming their uniforms and equipment so that they were more mobile, training them in light infantry tactics, and urging them carefully to aim at the enemy before pulling the trigger. Montcalm had only 4,200 troops but held a potentially highly defensive series of positions starting at Lake George’s north end then along a two and a half mile road that arched northeast parallel to the La Chute River to Fort Carillon on a bluff overlooking Lake Champlain. Montcalm failed to make the most of those positions. Ideally, he would have constructed a powerful fort whose massed cannons dominated Lake George’s north end. He did not do so. Instead just a redoubt defended that most critical position. About a mile down the road, earthworks defended a sawmill. That too would have a good position to expand into a fort since dense forest engulfed the road leading

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to it, thus funneling advancing troops into a slaughter zone. But Montcalm did not do that either. Instead, he had his men construct a horseshoe shaped breastwork on a low plateau a quarter mile north of Fort Carillon. Beyond the breastwork trees were felled forward so that their limbs and branches bristled toward advancing infantry. That position had two critical weaknesses. Both flanks lower down the slopes toward the La Chute River southwestward and Lake Champlain eastward were undefended and could be marched around. Even worse, if the British army merely massed north of the breastworks they would sever the road leading to Fort Saint Frederic fourteen miles down Lake Champlain, thus blocking a French retreat by land. And if the British massed some of their siege guns on Lake Champlain’s shore they could blast to splinters any attempt by the French to escape by boat. A siege would inevitably force Montcalm to surrender. Fortunately for Montcalm, he faced a commander far more inept than himself. As the flotilla neared the landing on the morning of July 6, the hundred French troops defending the redoubt hastily withdrew. With Major Robert Rogers and General Howe leading them, rangers and light infantry spearheaded the British army’s unopposed landing. The rangers and light infantry spread out in the forest and on the road as the rest of the army disembarked behind them. Meanwhile 350 French troops stationed on a hill westward began bushwhacking through the forest to rejoin their comrades. After most of the troops were ashore, Howe received Abercromby’s permission to lead them inland along the road and several parallel trails. The rangers and light infantry collided with and routed those French troops that were trying to rejoin their army, and killed or captured around 180 of them. Tragically during the firefight, a bullet smashed into Howe’s forehead, instantly killing him. That death of such a popular, courageous, and decisive leader depressed Abercromby and the rest of the army. During July 7, Abercromby marched his troops down the road then deployed it in an arc facing the French breastworks southward. Had he simply had his men construct their own parallel breastworks studded with redoubts for cannons, including some batteries commanding Lake Champlain, he would have eventually forced Montcalm to surrender. His cannons would have blasted the breastworks to splinters, devastated any French attacks on the British line, and ripped apart any vessels trying to escape north down the lake. Instead, on July 8, Abercromby ordered his army to attack the breastwork without even trying to get around the enemy’s vulnerable flanks. The result was slaughter. Each time the French decimated one assault, Abercromby ordered another. Massachusetts Private David Perry described the holocaust where the troops were ordered: “`to run to the breastwork and get in if we could.’ But their lines were full and they killed our men so fast, that we could not gain it. We got behind trees, logs, and stumps, and covered ourselves as

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we could from the enemy’s fire. The ground was strewed with the dead and dying.”39 Abercromby finally called off the attacks toward evening after nearly 2,000 British and American troops were killed or wounded. In contrast, the French suffered altogether only about 520 casualties that day and in the forest two days earlier. The following day, Abercromby compounded the sacrifice of his troops by ordering his army hastily to withdraw to the landing, pack into the boats, and row back up Lake George to the south end. This was despite the reality that his army still outgunned the French by more than three to one, had a score of heavy siege cannons and ample munitions, and had nearly four months of campaign weather before the first snow flurries flew. Abercromby surely ranks among the most inept generals of all time. Yet he was only relatively worse than General Edward Braddock, whose arrogance and incompetence led to merely a thousand British and American casualties at the Monongahela. For countless Americans, the sneering faces of Abercromby, Braddock, and other redcoat officers became symbols for everything they hated about the British Empire. Colonel John Bradstreet was the American version of Lord Howe, charismatic, enterprising, hard-driving, and steel-nerved.40 He was the mastermind behind the 1745 campaign that captured Louisbourg. More recently he revealed his gift for combat command during the battle on the Oswego River on July 3, 1756, when he rallied his 300 men first to repel an attack by 700 French and Indians on their supply boats then rout them in a counterattack. He commanded the boat flotilla during the Fort Carillon campaign. He was among those enraged by Abercromby’s series of catastrophic decisions. Unlike them, the American refused to bite his tongue. He urged the general and his minions to rally the army for another offensive against Fort Carillon. When his superiors sternly rebuked him, he then proposed to lead an expedition against faraway Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario’s northeast shore. Mostly to get rid of him, Abercromby allocated 5,600 troops, supplies, and transport for the campaign, although for its command he tapped British General John Stanwix, with Bradstreet his deputy. Bradstreet actually organized and led the campaign. The first stage was to head down the Hudson valley then up the Mohawk valley to the divide where Fort Bull’s ruins stood. There Stanwix and a third of the army deployed to rebuild the fort, named after the general. Bradstreet and 3,100 troops headed westward down Wood Creek across Lake Oneida, down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario then across to Fort Frontenac. On August 26, Bradstreet led most of the men ashore and deployed them around the fort just beyond cannon shot. As those troops constructed breastworks, the rest of the army unloaded cannons, munitions, and provisions from the bateaux. After a short bombardment, Fort Frontenac’s commander, Major Pierre Payen de Noyan,

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capitulated his 110 troops on August 28. Bradstreet had his men strip the fort of its sixty cannons, munitions, and provisions that could be squeezed into the boats along with own army. Whatever could not be taken was blown up along with the fort. By September 8, he and his army, prisoners, and spoils were safely back at Fort Stanwix. The American had conducted a brilliant campaign, a shining example of what soldiers were capable of doing with intrepid, farsighted leadership. The campaign against Fort Duquesne unfolded slowly over the summer. General John Forbes was a competent enough officer, but was debilitated by the dysentery that would kill him on the cusp of reaching the Ohio forks. His deputy, British Colonel Henry Bouquet, actually organized and led the campaign. Provincial politics delayed the kickoff. Virginia’s leaders insisted that the campaign follow Braddock’s road to Fort Duquesne. Pennsylvania’s leaders countered that heading west along the road from Philadelphia to Fort Raytown (Bedford) then widening the trail to Fort Duquesne would be quicker. Forbes finally chose the Pennsylvania route. Although angry at that decision, Colonel George Washington led one of the two Virginia regiments that joined the army. Raiding French and Indian parties harassed the advance but could not stop it. On September 11, Bouquet authorized a request by Major James Grant to led 800 elite redcoat grenadiers and highlanders on a lightning strike against Fort Duquesne. Three days later they stumbled into an ambush in which the French and Indians slaughtered or captured around a third of the force and routed the rest; Grant was among the prisoners. On November 12, Bouquet sent the two Virginia regiments out by separate paths to cut off a lurking French and Indian force. At dusk the two jittery regiments collided in the forest and opened fire on each other, each believing the enemy was attacking. Washington galloped between the lines and shouted for them to cease fire; miraculously no bullet struck him, although the gunfire killed or wounded thirty-eight men. By November 21, the army was just a dozen miles from Fort Duquesne. That day the men heard a series of explosions westward. French commander Captain François Le Marchand de Lignery had Fort Duquesne blown up after withdrawing with his several hundred troops northward up the Allegheny River to Fort Machault; although a hundred or so Indians accompanied him, most dispersed to their distant village. The advanced guard of Forbes’ army reached the smoldering ruins the next day. Bouquet put the troops to work rebuilding what would be called Fort Pitt. The year 1758 was the war’s turning point in North America. Campaigns captured Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne, and destroyed Fort Frontenac. Only Abercromby’s debacle before Fort Carillon darkened that record. The victories elated Prime Minister William Pitt but the defeat enraged him. He recalled Abercromby and replaced him with Amherst. For 1759, he

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authorized three campaigns that he hoped would finally crush New France, with Generals James Wolfe leading that against Québec, Amherst that against Montreal, and John Prideaux that against Fort Niagara. Amherst’s campaign against Fort Carillon was a reprise of Abercromby’s but with one critical difference. When General Francois Charles Bourlamaque, who commanded 2,300 troops at Fort Carillon, learned on July 21, that Abercromby and 11,300 troops were disembarking at Lake George’s north end, he withdrew with most of his men to Fort Saint Frederic, leaving behind a 400 man garrison under Captain Louis Philippe d’Hebecourt. The following day Amherst deployed his army around Fort Carillon and his cannons opened fire. On the night of July 26, Hebecourt and his men escaped in bateaux down Lake Champlain after leaving a fuse burning to the gunpowder magazine. The explosion partly destroyed Fort Carillon. On July 31, Bourlamaque abandoned Fort Saint Frederic and withdrew a hundred miles north to Fort Isle aux Noix in the Richelieu River just a few miles below where it flows from Lake Champlain. Amherst had his troops occupy Forts Carillon and Saint Frederic, which he renamed Ticonderoga and Crown Point, respectively. It was mid-summer with four months of good campaign weather ahead. He had more than enough troops, boats, munitions, and provisions to fight his way to Montreal. Had he done so the fighting in North America would have ended that year and saved all the lives and treasure that were expended the following year. Instead, Amherst, like Abercromby the previous year, chose to end his campaign prematurely. Then in early October he learned of Québec’s fall and received an order to advance. His army besieged Fort Isle aux Noix from October 11 until November 1, when he withdrew to Crown Point for the winter. Fort Niagara stood at one of North America’s most strategic sites.41 Built atop the bluff on the Niagara River’s east bank as it flows north into Lake Ontario, Fort Niagara guarded the route that ran to Lake Erie’s east coast just twenty-five miles due south and from there westward toward the upper Great Lakes. In the summer of 1759, Captain Pierre Pouchot commanded the 650 man garrison. Bolstering the fort’s defense were two ten-gun warships and a couple of hundred Seneca and other Indians. Fort Niagara was the keystone in an arch of forts that guarded approaches to the Great Lakes. The previous year, the British captured Fort Duquesne on the Ohio forks and destroyed Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario’s northeastern shore. The French still held a north-south line of three forts, Presqu’ile on Lake Erie, Machault on the Allegheny River, and Le Boeuf between the two; Captain Francois Le Marchand Lignery was in overall command of the 700 troops and several hundred Indians guarding those forts. Colonel John Prideaux commanded the 5,000 man expedition, half redcoats and half greencoated New York provincials, along with several hundred Iroquois, whose mission was to capture Fort Niagara. The staging area was

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Albany. By late June the army had reached Oswego’s ruins on Lake Ontario. There Prideaux split his force, left half to guard that site then with the other half packed in bateaux headed westward along the lake’s south shore. To the expedition’s relief, the two French warships were not patrolling that stretch of lake. On July 6, the troops began disembarking four miles east of Fort Niagara. It took days to bring ashore all the cannons and mortars, munitions, and supplies. Upon learning of the British army’s arrival, Pouchot sent a message to Lignery to muster as many troops and Indians as possible from the three forts and hurry to Fort Niagara, leaving behind skeleton forces. What followed was a classic siege. By July 9, Prideaux had transferred most of his troops, ordinance, and supplies just beyond cannon shot of the fort and had his men begin digging a wide trench that angled forward so that the defenders could not see or shoot within it. Over the next two weeks, with regiments taking turns, the trench advanced steadily, with three parallel trenches dug studded with batteries that opened fire on the fort as soon as they were finished. Meanwhile, Prideaux posted 150 light infantry behind barricades they constructed at La Belle Famille a mile south to guard that approach. A double tragedy struck the British army on July 20. A French cannon ball killed Colonel John Johnston, who led the New York regiment. Then Prideaux stepped before a mortar just as it fired and the ball shattered his skull. William Johnson was Prideaux’s deputy and immediately assumed command. The army’s takeover by a provincial like Johnson provoked jealousy and resentment among most redcoat officers. Indians were the fickle wild card of frontier warfare. Johnson’s diplomatic skills could not prevent the Iroquois on both sides from agreeing to withdraw into neutrality. That loss of fighters compounded the alarm on July 24, when Johnson learned of Lignery’s approach. Johnson quick-marched another 300 troops under Lieutenant Colonel Eyre Massy to bolster the Belle Famille position, while the Iroquois sent runners to encourage Lignery’s Indians to stay on the sidelines. Lignery ordered his men to halt when he saw the breastwork defended by 450 redcoats and greencoats straddling the road before him. But rather than dispatch scouts to look for a way to outflank that position, he led a frontal assault. British volleys shredded the French ranks, then Massey ordered a counterattack that routed them. The French lost 344 men, dead or captured; Lignery was wounded and taken. The following day, Johnson sent Pouchot a demand to surrender. With the hope of relief dashed and his garrison depleted by bombardment and sickness, Pouchot did so on July 25. The French had suffered a heavy defeat. Altogether they lost around a thousand troops, with several hundred dead between the fort and the battle, and over 700 captured at both sites. Now the easier of two routes to the upper Great Lakes was severed so that communications and supplies had to take the long, laborious Ottawa

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River route. The British had won a great victory with the relatively light cost of around sixty dead and eighty wounded. Johnson garrisoned Fort Niagara then withdrew to the Hudson valley with the rest of his army, prisoners, and supplies. Québec stands at the triangle where the Charles River runs east into the Saint Lawrence River that flows from southwest to northeast.42 The city is split between the walled upper town atop the several hundred foot plateau and the lower town on the narrow shelf between the foot of the bluffs and the two rivers. Those bluffs undulate westward a dozen or so miles broken by a few steep ravines leading down to the Saint Lawrence. From the Charles River eastward the ground slopes gently eight miles to where the Montmorency River falls spectacularly into the Saint Lawrence; Beauport village is around midway between the two tributaries. Bluffs line much of the Saint Lawrence’s south bank, with the most prominent at Point Levy three miles east of Québec. The Isle d’Orleans is an immense island over fifty miles long whose western tip lies about six miles east of Québec. General Montcalm commanded 3,685 regular troops, 1,000 armed sailors, and several thousand militiamen defending positions around Québec, with roughly a third deployed in the city, half stretched thin along the entrenchments known as the Beauport line atop the plateau between the tributaries, and the remainder south of the Saint Lawrence with most around Point Levy.43 He would skillfully stave off every thrust that Wolfe launched against him except the last. Wolfe faced a time constraint. Somehow he had to take Québec before the Saint Lawrence iced over. His 8,498 troops included 7,929 redcoats and Major George Scott’s 569 American rangers. Admiral Charles Saunders commanded the twenty-one ships-of-the-line, nineteen smaller warships, and 119 transports manned by 13,500 sailors.44 The British armada dropped anchor beyond cannon shot of Québec City on June 27. Wolfe’s first step was to disembark his army on the Isle d’Orleans’ west tip on June 29. Next he sent part of his army to take French positions on the south shore, culminating with Point Levy’s capture on June 30. There he erected a battery to bombard Québec. On July 26, he landed troops east of the Montmorency River and had them march on the trail upstream looking for a ford; the French blocked every crossing place. On July 31, he launched 3,000 troops in an ill-conceived assault against the Beauport Line. The troops disembarked as the tide receded and had to slog across mud flats under enemy cannon and musket fire. Wolfe finally ordered the troops to withdraw, having suffered 443 casualties. The defeat would have been decisive had Montcalm ordered his troops to charge the surviving stranded, exhausted troops before they reembarked. A stalemate ensued for the next five weeks as British batteries reduced Québec to rubble, rangers looted and burned villages for a dozen or so miles

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along the Saint Lawrence’s south shore, and frigates sailed past Québec to destroy French vessels anchored a score or so miles upstream. Wolfe fell into a depression. He had lost 183 dead and 646 wounded since his army had arrived but Québec’s capture remained as elusive as ever. His three brigadier generals and Admiral Saunders pressed him either to attack or withdraw. A spy report about a seemingly undefended path leading from the Saint Lawrence to the bluff and the Plains of Abraham a couple of miles west of the city inspired Wolfe. On the night of September 13, he led 3,300 troops ashore then up to the top of the bluffs, where the advance guard surprised and routed a hundred French troops. By dawn, Wolfe had deployed his troops across the Plains of Abraham facing Québec. Montcalm massed around 1,960 regulars and 1,500 militiamen and led them against the British. The redcoats poured volleys into the French, then charged, routing them. The French and British each suffered around 650 casualties; musket balls killed Wolfe and mortally wounded Montcalm. General Robert Monkton took command of the British army. As reinforcements swelled the British force on the Plains of Abraham, Governor Vaudreuil turned over command of Québec to Colonel Jean-Baptiste de Ramezay, then arched most of the French army around the enemy and headed toward Montreal. With food nearly exhausted and the city devastated by the bombardment, Ramezay surrendered Québec on September 17. Monkton left Colonel James Murray and several thousand troops to defend Québec then sailed away with the rest aboard the armada. The British massed overwhelming forces against Canada in early 1760. Pitt’s plan was for three armies to unite at Montreal after defeating the French forces before them, with General James Murray commanding the army launched from Québec, General William Haviland that from Crown Point, and General Amherst that from Oswego. His commanders systematically fulfilled his plan. The most important and vulnerable of those armies was Murray’s. In April, General François-Gaston de Lévis marched with 3,889 regulars and 3,000 militiamen against Québec. Rather than sit tight within the city’s walls, Murray led 3,866 troops against the French six miles westward at Saint Foy on April 26. The French repelled the British assault then routed them with a double envelopment; the French lost 193 killed and 640 wounded compared to 259 British dead and 829 wounded.45 Besieged in Québec, the fate of Murray’s army depended on whether a French or British supply fleet reached Québec first after spring melted the ice. The Royal Navy won when its first vessels dropped anchor before Québec on May 12. Levis reluctantly broke off his siege and withdrew to Trois Rivieres. Murray needed two months before his army, now reinforced and resupplied, was ready to advance on July 12. Levis slowly withdrew before

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Murray’s slow steady advance. Although occasionally the British advanced guard skirmished with the French rear guard, neither commander wanted to risk a battle. By early September Levis had retreated into Montreal itself. Haviland launched his 3,500 troops packed with cannons, munitions, and supplies on hundreds of boats north down Lake Champlain in early August. General Louis Bougainville blocked his way at Isle aux Noix. Haviland deployed his army on either shore of the Richelieu River on August 19. Bougainville extracted his army on August 22 and withdrew a score of miles to Montreal on the Saint Lawrence River’s north shore. After occupying Isle aux Noix, the British descended the Richelieu River to take Fort Chambly, then downstream to the Saint Lawrence and up it to join forces with Murray before Montreal. Amherst massed the lion’s share of available troops, 11,000 men, for the least important and defended campaign. In late July, his flotilla departed Oswego for the Saint Lawrence then down its perilous stretches of rapids to La Presentation, midway to Montreal. There Captain Pierre Pouchot, who had been exchanged, commanded Fort Levis on an island. Although severely outgunned and outmanned, Pouchot and his 300 men valiantly held out for a week before surrendering on August 24. Amherst then descended to join Murray and Haviland before Montreal. The combined British army numbered 18,000 troops, including 11,000 redcoats, 6,500 Americans, and 500 Indians. To defend Montreal, Levis had only about 4,000 troops with half sick and all on half rations. Nonetheless Levis refused to give up. Honor demanded that, at the very least, he and his men endure the bombardment until it breached the city’s walls. Governor Vaudreuil refused to sacrifice the lives that would be lost before that event. He overruled Levis and surrendered not just Montreal but Canada on September 8. Amherst proved to be a mean-spirited rather than chivalrous victor. In the treaty, he denied the French army the standard “honors of war” whereby they marched out with their regimental flags and one cannon. He wanted their flags as trophies. Levis and his colonels bitterly burned their flags rather than yield them. George II lived long enough to learn of that extraordinary event. When he died on October 25, 1760, his twenty-two-year-old grandson took the throne as George III. Despite their common bloodlines, the contrast between the monarchs was striking. George III was thoroughly British in outlook and culture compared to George II who, as a second generation Briton, retained his ethnic German sentiments. New York City would erect an equestrian statue of George III in August 1770. Six years later American patriots joyfully reacted to news of the Declaration of Independence by demolishing that statue and melting the 4,000 pounds of lead into bullets to fire at their British oppressors.

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Yet, for now the war was over in North America, at least between the British and French. Amherst dispatched British troops to occupy French forts throughout the Great Lakes and Ohio valley regions; American traders and hunters swarmed over the conquered territory. Elsewhere Britain continued to pick off French colonies, including Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Saint Vincent in the West Indies along with Senegal and Newfoundland. A desperate Louis XV enticed Spanish King Charles III into forming a Bourbon “family compact” or alliance against Britain in January 1762. Whitehall promptly reacted by organizing an expedition of 8,000 British and 4,000 American troops that took Havana, Cuba; diseases killed nearly half of both contingents. Solely redcoat campaigns captured Buenos Aires and Manila. Meanwhile, a naval offensive scoured the seas of Spanish merchant ships. A Spanish army invaded Britain’s ally Portugal, but the Portuguese army, bolstered by British regiments and advisors, repelled it. Two treaties ended the first global war. Under the Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763, Britain took from France all of New France except New Orleans east of the Mississippi River, along with the Caribbean islands of Grenada, Dominica, Saint Vincent, Tobago, and the Grenadines, Senegal, and all territory in India that France had acquired since 1748; Britain had to return Belle Isle off Brittany’s south coast, the sugar islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, and the tiny fish drying islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon in Saint Lawrence Bay that its forces had taken from France; France had to return Minorca and two East India Company forts in Sumatra that its forces had taken from Britain. From Spain, Britain took East and West Florida, and its subjects were allowed to cut hardwood in eastern Honduras; Britain had to return Havana, Buenos Aires, and Manila. Louis XV compensated Charles III for joining such a disastrous alliance by giving him all of French Louisiana west of the Mississippi along with New Orleans east of that river. Under the Treaty of Hubertusberg, signed on February 15, 1763, Prussia and Austria agreed to a peace grounded on turning back the clock to what each held before the war; the other belligerents—Russia, France, Britain, and the Holy Roman Empire—similarly got nothing for all the blood and treasure they had sacrificed on Europe’s killing fields. In all, only the British Empire emerged from the world’s first global war with more than it lost.46 The British Empire expanded significantly after the French and Indian War. In North America, in addition to the thirteen colonies that would become the United States, there were Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Québec to the north and West Florida and East Florida to the south. British colonies in the Caribbean and western Atlantic now included Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Leeward Islands of Nevis, Monserrat, Antigua, and Saint Kitts, the Windward Islands of Barbados, Saint Vincent, Dominique, and Tobago,

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and Bermuda. In the Mediterranean, the British had Gibraltar and Minorca. In India, the British owned Bombay, much of Bengal, and stretches of the east and west coasts. Whitehall struggled to finance, administer, and defend its hodgepodge empire. Britain’s conquest of New France profoundly disturbed all the Indian tribes, even those ostensibly allied with the Great Father in London. For a century and a half Indians had made the most of their limited power by playing off the European powers against each other. In war most tribes sided with the weaker French against the more numerous, aggressive British. In trade Indians certainly preferred the more abundant, better made, less expensive British goods than the French versions. As for neighbors, Canadians and Louisianans were mostly respectful while the increasingly numerous and westward spreading Americans were greedy for their land and scornful of their customs. Indians feared the worst now that the British Empire appeared to have engulfed the continent east of the Mississippi River and throughout the Great Lakes. The Cherokee were the first to rebel against the British Great Father and burned with a lengthening list of reasons to do so.47 They were located in three clusters of villages, with the Lower Towns in the Carolina piedmont, the Middle Towns in Appalachian mountain valleys, and the Overhill Towns on the west side of the mountains. During the French and Indian War, South Carolina Governor Henry Lyttelton was stingy in distributing gifts in council with the Cherokee and other southeast tribes. Nonetheless, at his urging several hundred warriors had strode north to join Forbes’ campaign across Pennsylvania in 1758. Forbes and his officers viewed the Cherokee contingent as a larcenous burden rather than ally and treated them as such. When those warriors stalked home in anger, many looted homes, slaughtered livestock, and even murdered stray Americans along the way. In retaliation the Virginia and North Carolina governments mustered the militia and offered rewards for Cherokee scalps. In sporadic clashes, some thirty Cherokee and perhaps as many Americans lost their lives before the warriors reached their distant villages. The violence reached South Carolina’s backcountry in December 1759, when Cherokees killed several South Carolinians. To deter further depredations, Lyttelton had several envoys sent by Chief Attakullakulla, also known as Little Carpenter, seized and held as hostages at Fort Prince George in the Lower Towns. That prompted the Cherokee to besiege the fort and demand that the hostages be released. The siege severed the supply and communication trail to Fort Loudoun in the Overhill Towns. Lyttelton sent an urgent message to the governors of Virginia and North Carolina, asking them to send expeditions to relieve Fort Loudon, which the Cherokee also besieged. He asked General Amherst to send regiments that he could wield against the Cherokee. Meanwhile, the Cherokee turned for arms and munitions to the

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French garrison that still occupied Fort Toulouse and sent envoys to other tribes in the southeast and even the Ohio valley to fight with them against the Americans. Colonel Archibald Montgomery led 1,300 regular and provincial troops against the Lower Towns in May 1760, and burned half a dozen villages and killed or captured several hundred Cherokees. The troops marched on to attack the Middle Towns in June. The Cherokee repelled the soldiers and forced Montgomery to retreat to Fort Prince George. The garrison at Fort Loudon capitulated and most of the soldiers and civilians were massacred as they trudged back to South Carolina. William Bull, the new governor, agreed to a six-month truce while envoys tried to negotiate a peace treaty. Mostly Bull played for time while he massed reinforcements. Colonel James Grant led 2,800 redcoat and provincial troops into the Cherokee country in the spring of 1761. They chased away the warriors besieging Fort Prince George then marched into the Middle Towns, where they killed or captured several hundred Cherokees, burned most of the towns, and destroyed the crops. Meanwhile Colonel William Byrd slowly led 1,000 Virginians against the Overhill Towns, building a series of forts along the way. Southern Indian Superintendent Edmund Atkin dispensed generous amounts of gifts to entice traditional enemies of the Cherokee like the Choctaw and Creeks to war against them. Assailed from all sides and facing the extinction of his people, Attakullallah sent word that he was ready to discuss peace. With the treaty of Fort Prince George, the Cherokees agreed to move their eastern boundary twenty-five miles west, release all prisoners, and return all stolen property. The war had been costly for both sides, with several hundred soldiers and settlers, and more than a thousand Cherokees killed. The Cherokees had fought skillfully but ultimately suffered devastating losses of their people, property, and territory. Word of that tragedy swiftly spread through the tribal network, but would not inhibit the outbreak of the next Indian war. The war commonly known as Pontiac’s had many causes, of which General Jeffrey Amherst’s inept diplomacy was most critical.48 Against the advice of his northern and southern Indian Superintendents, William Johnson and Edmund Atkin, he refused to allocate appropriate amounts of gifts, especially munitions, to placate the tribes and fulfill the Great Father role that Britain had inherited from France after conquering Canada. Amherst despised Indians and wanted nothing to do with them. A Delaware Indian prophet named Neolin began preaching for all Indians to rid themselves of their dependence on European goods, especially alcohol, then for the tribes to ally and eliminate the whites from the continent. A version of that vision resonated in tribal councils in the upper Ohio River

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Valley and Great Lake regions. They sought to eliminate the British west of the Appalachian Mountains and call on the French king to be their Great Father once again. Envoys journeyed among the tribes to forge a consensus first on launching a revolt against the British Empire then just when and how to do so. No one contributed more to knitting the Indian alliance than Ottawa chief Pontiac. William Johnson, his deputy George Croghan, and other Indian agents and traders got wind of the conspiracy and tersely informed Amherst, but he dismissed the warnings. The war erupted in May 1763 with a series of surprise attacks by tribes against the nearest British fort in their territory, with the Wyandot capturing Fort Sandusky; Potawatomi Fort Joseph; Miami Fort Miami; Mascouten, Wea, and Kickapoo Fort Ouiatenon; Ottawa and Ojibwa Fort Michilimackinac; Menominee Fort Edward Augustus; and Seneca Fort Venango, Le Boeuf, and Presque Isle. Although the British garrisons at Forts Detroit and Pitt repelled respective attacks by the Ottawa, Huron, Pottawatomi, and Wyandot led by Pontiac, and by the Shawnee, Mingo, and Delaware, they were cut off and besieged. War parties raided the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York frontiers throughout the summer and fall. In all the Indians overran nine forts and slaughtered hundreds of soldiers and civilians. Amherst then had only enough troops to attempt a relief expedition for Detroit, the farthest surviving frontier settlement and fort. He gave Captain James Dalyell command of 260 redcoats and an American ranger company led by Major Robert Rogers. In mid-July those troops reached Fort Erie where the Niagara River flows from Lake Erie toward Lake Ontario twenty miles away. There they packed themselves and supplies into twenty bateaux and began rowing westward until they reached Detroit on July 28. Against Rogers’s advice, Dalyell led a night attack with 247 troops and rangers against the main camp of the besieging Indians. The result was the disaster that Rogers had foreseen. During the battle of Bloody Run, Pontiac and his warriors killed, wounded, or captured half of the attackers; although Rogers escaped, Dalyell was among the dead. During the autumn the Indians largely abandoned their sieges of Forts Detroit and Pitt as they and their families dispersed to hunt. The Indians were short of gunpowder, shot, and serviceable muskets. Captured stores were soon exhausted. They tried to fill those needs by trading with French in the Wabash and Mississippi River valleys, but those settlements suffered their own shortages. The British government reacted to news of the Indian revolt in two critical ways. First, the king and his ministers agreed to recall Amherst and replace him with Thomas Gage as North America’s commander-in-chief. Then, on October 7, 1763, George III issued a proclamation that forbad Americans from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains and any purchases of Indian land without

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crown approval. That provoked outrage across the colonies, especially among the businesses, communities, traders, hunters, and settlers that depended on the frontier for their livelihood. Of course, no one wanted to venture there now but anticipated that this latest Indian war would end like all others before it, with the tribes crushed and forced to cede land and rights to the Americans. Throughout American history, groups of extremists have vented their pathologies by scapegoating and attacking innocent others. Local governments have either been unable to prevent those atrocities or outright collaborated with them. Hatred by many Americans against all Indians soared during Pontiac’s War as they did during any Indian war. Unable to retaliate against the enemy warriors who committed mass murder and destruction along the frontier, a group called the Paxton Boys targeted the neighboring peaceful Conestoga Indians who lived in the Susquehanna River valley near Lancaster. The Conestoga had assimilated to American culture in clothing, housing, business, and Christianity.49 In two separate attackers the Paxton Boys murdered twenty Conestogas in December 1763. The 140 survivors fled to Philadelphia and sought protection from its government. In February 1764, over 500 Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia to exterminate the remaining Conestogas. More than anyone, Benjamin Franklin was responsible for saving them. He mustered several hundred militiamen to defend the city and formed a committee of Philadelphia’s leaders that negotiated with the Paxton Boys at Germantown, just half a dozen miles away. In return for the Paxton Boys agreeing to disperse to their homes, the committee promised to grant them immunity from prosecution for the murders they had committed and to investigate the group’s complaints that Pennsylvania’s government had neglected frontier defense and underrepresented frontier communities in the colony’s assembly. Throughout early 1764, Gage organized expeditions designed first to relieve Forts Pitt and Detroit, then crush the nearby rebellious tribes. Gage tapped British Colonel Henry Bouquet and American Colonel John Bradstreet to head the Detroit and Pitt campaigns, respectively. Starting in late June Bouquet led 400 British troops and American rangers in a slow advance toward Fort Pitt. Learning of their approach, most warriors around Fort Pitt strode east thirty miles and attacked Bouquet and his men at Bushy Run on August 2. The troops fought off the Indians that day then routed them the next; that victory was costly with a hundred troops killed or wounded. They reached Fort Pitt several days later. Bouquet would need another two months to mass enough supplies and men for the next stage of his campaign, an invasion of the Ohio country. In October Bouquet’s 1,100 man expedition slowly marched toward the cluster of Indian villages on the Muskingum River. The Shawnee,

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Delaware, and Mingo Indians there agreed to peace. Over 200 former captives of the Indians accompanied Bouquet and his men back to Fort Pitt. Meanwhile the effort to relieve Fort Detroit suffered several disasters along the way. Seneca wiped out a column of eighty troops at Devil’s Hole on the road from Fort Niagara to Lake Erie. Ottawa, Huron, and Ojibwa slaughtered seventy troops that landed at the tip of the Pelee Peninsula on Lake Erie’s northwest shore. Another seventy troops drowned during a storm on Lake Erie. From the first horrific reports of the uprising, Indian Superintendent William Johnson sought to split the Indians by inviting those interested to a peace council. Amherst, however, fouled that assertion of soft power by demanding that the Indians be crushed before any peace talks occurred. Amherst was obtuse to Johnson’s arguments that it would be easier to defeat the Indians if they were divided rather than united. So it was only in July 1764, after Amherst had departed, that Johnson was able to convene a peace council at Fort Niagara. The key result was convincing most of the local Seneca to bury the hatchet beneath a generous pile of gifts. That in turn freed troops to move against the succession of hostile Indian villages forming the gauntlet on the way to Detroit. By early August, General Bradstreet massed 300 regular and 1,100 provincial troops at Lake Erie’s east shore above the Niagara River. As the expedition rowed west, delegations of Indians from nearby villages appeared to ask for peace. At Presque Isle and Sandusky, Bradstreet signed treaties with chiefs whereby they agreed to cease hostilities and free captives in return for gifts and promises that they could retain their lands. Bradstreet dispatched Captain Thomas Morris westward up the Maumee River to the Miami territory. Learning of Morris’s approach, Pontiac met him and promised to stop fighting if the British government guaranteed the protection of Indian lands and annually dispensed enough munitions so that Indians could hunt as much as they needed. Bradstreet and his men finally reached Detroit on October 18. There and along the way he had forged agreements with villages of an array of tribes including Delaware, Wyandot, Ojibwa, Shawnee, Huron, Potawatomi, and Ottawa. Diminishing supplies forced him to lead his expedition back to Fort Niagara before he could codify these deals in a treaty with all the belligerent Indians of the Great Lakes. It remained to be seen whether distant affiliated villages of those tribes would accept the treaties and stop fighting. The war sputtered to a halt with neither decisive battles nor treaties. The Indians agreed to stop fighting in return for promises by Bradstreet and Bouquet that American hunters and settlers would stay out of their territory, while the British government and traders supplied the array of goods that they had become dependent upon. After Philip’s War, Pontiac’s War was the bloodiest Indian war in American history. Around 400 soldiers and 2,000 civilians died as well as hundreds of Indians from combat and disease.50

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During 1765, British officials tried to solidify and expand the existing agreements, with the most important goal to get firm Indian acceptance that British troops could reoccupy forts in their territory ostensibly to help keep the peace. Starting at New Orleans, Major Robert Farmar and a contingent of redcoats slowly ascended the Mississippi River to placate the tribes and occupy Fort de Chartres in western Illinois. Bouquet sent Lieutenant Alexander Fraser to the Wabash River valley tribes. William Johnson dispatched George Croghan to negotiate a more durable treaty with the upper Ohio valley Indians at Fort Pitt. After doing so, Croghan descended the Ohio River with a half dozen others including three Shawnee chiefs to carry diplomacy to distant tribes. A war party of Mascouten and Kickapoo attacked them, killed the three chiefs and two of Croghan’s men, and knocked him flat with a tomahawk. Fortunately, the warriors recognized that they had attacked a peace delegation and escorted Croghan to Ouiatenon where he concluded a treaty with the Miami, Piankashaw, Wea, Mascouten, and Kickapoo tribes. Croghan then headed up to Detroit where he negotiated similar treaties with the surrounding tribes. Pontiac and the other war chiefs formally agreed to bury the hatchet. The British government would have trouble fulfilling the promises made in all those treaties over the short and long terms. In March 1765, an outlaw group called the Black Boys actually halted at gun point the teamsters of an eighty horse pack train carrying Indian gifts, including munitions, to Fort Pitt. The Black Boys either destroyed or stole all of those goods.51 King George III’s Proclamation of 1763 that forbad Americans from settling west of the Appalachians was soon a dead letter. Northern Superintendent William Johnson negotiated eleven treaties with various tribes from 1764 to 1766, then the comprehensive Treaty of Fort Stanwix in November 1768. The Fort Stanwix line started just west of the fort and went south far enough to reserve the upper Delaware valley for the Indians then westward to the Susquehanna River just north of the Wyoming valley then southwest to Kittanning on the Allegheny River then down to the Ohio River and along its course all the way to the Tennessee River mouth. The Indians retained everything north and west of that zigzag line, the Americans everything east and south. Starting with the Treaty of Augusta in November 1763, Southern Superintendent John Stuart negotiated eight treaties culminating with that of Hard Labor in October 1768. He got the Cherokee to recognize the British Empire’s spread westward as far as the Kanawha River mouth on the Ohio River which rendered moot the Stanwix Treaty’s extension to the Tennessee River mouth. When they learned of the Stanwix and Hard Labor Treaty cessions, the Ohio valley tribes adamantly rejected them. Thus was the stage set for the next frontier war. Ambitious Americans swiftly acted to exploit the opportunities opened by those treaties. Speculators formed the Vandalia, Mississippi, and Illinois

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Companies to join the Ohio Company in lobbying Whitehall to grant them huge swaths of land in Indian country. Traders, hunters, and squatters swarmed down the Ohio valley, across the Great Lake region, and through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and Tennessee. Meanwhile the British government sharply reduced its annual amounts of Indian gifts and abandoned most of the western forts, including Fort Pitt. Once again tensions soared between the Indians and the invaders. The next vicious devastating frontier war was just a matter of time. But this latest one would bleed into the outbreak of America’s war of independence against Britain.

NOTES 1. George Washington to John Washington, May 31, 1754, Washington Writings, 48. 2. Peter R. Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006). 3. Holdernesse to Dinwiddie, August 28, 1753, in Kenneth P. Bailey, The Ohio Company of Virginia and the Westward Movement, 1748–1792: A Chapter in the History of the Colonial Frontier (Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1939), 202–3, n 408. 4. For the best biographies of numerous on Washington, see: Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Peter R. Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006); Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2010). 5. George Washington to John Stanwix, April 10, 1758, Washington Papers, vol. 5,117. 6. “Instructions to Washington,” [January 1754], Washington Papers, vol. 1, 65. 7. George Washington to John Washington, May 31, 1754, Washington Writings, 48. 8. For the most comprehensive and systematic overview, see: William R. Nester, The Great Frontier War: Britain, France, and the Imperial Struggle for North America, 1607–1755 (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000); William R. Nester, The First Global War: Britain, France, and the Fate of North America, 1756–1775 (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000). For French strategy in the last war, see: William R. Nester, The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). See also: Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Vintage, 2001). 9. Henriques, Realistic Visionary, 6. 10. George Washington to Robert Morris, April 9, 1756, Washington Papers, vol. 2, 345. 11. William Livingston, Review of Military Operations in North America: from the commencement of the French hostilities on the frontiers of Virginia in 1753, to the surrender of Oswego, on the 14th of August 1756 (Dublin: printed for P. Wilson and J. Exshaw, 1757), 187.

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12. For good books on British and American military culture, see: Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and the Society in the Seven Years’ War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985); Stephen Brumwell, Redcoats: The British Soldier and the War in the Americas 1755–1763 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 13. George Washington to Robert Dinwiddie, March 10, 1757, Washington Writings, 86. 14. Beckles Willson, ed., The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (London: Heineman, 1909), 392. 15. Johnson Papers, vol. 9, 206. 16. Chernow, Washington, 193. 17. John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from their American Homeland (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006); Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth Century History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 18. Paul E. Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1977); Norman L. Baker, Braddock’s Road: Mapping the British Expedition from Alexandria to the Monongahela (New York: History Press, 2013); David L. Preston, Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 19. Franklin Reader, 173–74. 20. Douglas R. Cubbison, On Campaign against Fort Duquesne: The Braddock and Forbes Expeditions, 1755–1758 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2015), 63. 21. Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 30. 22. George Washington to Robert Dinwiddie, July 18, 1755, Washington Writings, 58. 23. Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 211. 24. Franklin Reader, 175. 25. Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, & Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 152. 26. Milton W. Hamilton, William Johnson: Colonial American, 1715–1763 (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1976); James Thomas Flexner, Mohawk Baronet: A Biography of Sir William Johnson (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1979); Finian O’Toole, White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005). 27. Flexner, Mohawk Baronet, 107. 28. Wilbur R. Jacobs, Diplomacy and Indian Gifts: Anglo-French Rivalry along the Ohio and Northwest Frontiers, 1748–1763 (Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 1950), 149–50. 29. Ben Hughes, The Siege of Fort William Henry: A Year on the Northern Frontier (Yardley, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing, 2011), 25. 30. Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 53. 31. For the best overview, see: Franz J. Szabo, The Seven Years’ War in Europe, 1756–1763 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2008).

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32. Gilbert Hagerty, Massacre at Fort Bull: The de Lery Expedition against Oneida Carry, 1756 (Providence, Rhode Island: Mowbray Company, 1971). 33. For the best books on this campaign, see: Steele, Betrayals; Hughes, Siege of Fort William Henry. 34. Hughes, Siege of Fort William Henry, 138. 35. For the best books on this campaign, see: J.S. McLennan, Louisbourg: From its Foundation to its Fall (Halifax: Book Room Limited, 1994); A.J.B. Johnston, Endgame 1758: The Promise, the Glory, and the Despair of the Louisbourg Campaign (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). 36. Johnston, Endgame, 292–93, 295–96. 37. Ibid, 272, 273, 291. 38. For the most comprehensive book on Abercromby’s campaign, see: William R. Nester, The Epic Battles for Ticonderoga, 1758 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). See also Rene Chartrand, Ticonderoga 1758 (London: Osprey, 2000). Unless otherwise indicated all statistics come from the former. 39. “Life of David Perry,” Bulletin of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, vol. 14, no. 1, Summer (1981), 6. 40. William G. Godfrey, The Pursuit of Profit and Preferment in Colonial America: John Bradstreet’s Quest (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1982). 41. For the best study see: Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Siege—1759: The Campaign against Niagara (Youngstown, New York: Old Fort Niagara Association, 1996). Unless otherwise indicated all campaign information comes from this book. 42. For the best books on the campaign, see: Stuart Reid, Quebec 1759: The Battle that Won Canada (London: Osprey, 2003); Dan Snow, Death or Victory: The Battle of Quebec and the Birth of Empire (London: Harper Press, 2009); C.P. Stacey, Quebec 1759: The Siege and the Battle (New York: Robin Brass, 2014). Unless otherwise noted, all statistics come from Reid. 43. For all statistics see Reid, Quebec 1759, 17–20. 44. Ibid, 13–17, 26. 45. For numbers of troops engaged, see Reid, Quebec 1759, 84–85. For casualties, see: Nester, First Global War, 180. 46. Colin G. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 47. For the Cherokee war, see: David Corkran, The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival, 1740–1762 (Norman: University of North Carolina Press, 1962); Gary C. Goodwin, The Cherokees in Transition: A Study of the Changing Culture and Environment Prior to 1775 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Tom Hatley, The Dividing Path: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Duane H. King, ed., The Memoirs of Lt. Henry Timberlake: The Story of Soldier, Adventurer, and Emissary to the Cherokee, 1756–1765 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); David J. Tortona, Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 48. For the most comprehensive analysis, see: William R. Nester, “Haughty Conquerors”: Amherst and the Great Indian Uprising of 1763 (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000). See also, Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the

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Indians Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Richard Middleton, Pontiac’s war: Its Cause, Course, and Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2007); David Dixon, Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac’s Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). 49. Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 50. Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 446. 51. Dan Guzy, The Black Boy Uprising of 1765: Traders, Troops, and “Rioters” during Pontiac’s War (Mercerburg, Pennsylvania: Conococheague Institute, 2014).

Chapter 10

Resistance

“What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.” (John Adams)1

The results of the French and Indian War benefited both France and the American colonies. The French lost a money-draining colony. With New France’s conquest, Americans no longer faced a powerful European enemy along their northern and western frontier. Britain’s ruling elite feared that without an enemy, the Americans would no longer need the British Empire for protection and would eventually declare independence. As John Russell, Duke Bedford and Southern Department Secretary put it: “I don’t know whether the neighborhood of the French to our Northern American colonies was not the greatest security of their dependence on their Mother Country, who I fear will be slighted by them when their apprehensions of the French are removed.”2 Benjamin Franklin was among the first Americans to recognize this possibility: “If the visionary Danger of Independence in our Colonies is to be feared, nothing is more likely to render it substantial than the Neighborhood of Foreigners at Enmity with the Sovereign Government, capable of giving either Aid or Asylum as the Event shall require.”3 So Whitehall embarked on a series of policies that its perpetrators sincerely believed would forestall that.4 In reality those measures actually hastened the revolution’s onset by alienating ever more Americans. Whitehall kept thousands of troops in the colonies, something that it had never done during the preceding century and a half when the French, Spanish, and Indian threat 255

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loamed over the frontier. Then, to help underwrite the occupation costs of those troops, Whitehall imposed a series of onerous taxes and restrictions on the colonists from 1763 to 1774. Animosities steadily worsened until fighting erupted between British redcoats and American militiamen at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. In May 1771, Franklin foresaw the results of the vicious cycle in which Britain’s leaders had unwittingly trapped their North American empire: “The more the people are dissatisfied, the more rigor will be thought necessary, severe punishments will be inflicted to terrify; rights and privileges will be abolished; great force will then be required to secure execution and submission; the expense will be enormous; it will then be thought proper . . . to make the people defray it; thence the British nation and government will become odious; the subjection to it will be deemed no longer tolerable, war ensues.”5 For a dozen years, politics between Britain’s government and American patriots followed a predictable pattern. For several months following each New Year, Parliament’s Commons and Lords debated and eventually approved with overwhelming majorities cabinet proposals for the latest extractive or repressive laws and policies. When word reached the colonies in late spring, Americans reacted in three ways: loyalists dutifully accepted the measure, moderates peacefully protested, and radicals violently resisted. By late summer, the British government grew increasingly alarmed at reports of the array of demonstrations, boycotts, petitions, window-smashing, and tar and featherings. Although King George III nearly always favored a harsh response, his ministers split over how to react, with some demanding a crackdown and others conciliation. The usual result was some mixture that Parliament eventually approved the following year. In all, Britain’s policymakers made a series of colossal and ultimately devastating related political, financial, and strategic miscalculations. For instance, Whitehall estimated that the annual cost of stationing 7,500 troops in the colonies would be £225,000. The actual average cost from 1763 to 1775 turned out to be £384,000, a sum that did not include the cost of providing the troops housing, firewood, and alcoholic libations, all of which the colonists were forced to donate.6 Ironies abound. Had Whitehall simply left the Americans alone, Britain would likely have retained its thirteen colonies for generations thereafter, while avoiding the heavy financial burden of a military occupation for a dozen years followed by the skyrocketing debilitating costs of fighting a losing war in America and elsewhere from 1775 to 1783. Instead, the British government provoked what it most feared. Yet, all along, the king, his cabinet, Parliamentary majorities, and most Britons zealously believed that it was the Americans who were behaving selfishly and unreasonably. They argued that the Americans should pay their fair share of the costs for Britain’s conquest of New France. Here they did have a point.

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Victory in the first global war did not come cheap. In purely monetary terms, Whitehall’s bill for nine years of war came to £82,000,000. That caused Britain’s national debt nearly to double from £74,600,000 in 1754 to £122,603,336 in 1763. When the war began, Whitehall’s revenues actually exceeded costs by £6.8 million to £6 million; by the war’s end costs exceeded revenues by £14.2 million to £9.8 million. Although Whitehall financed most of that soaring debt with loans, it sharply raised taxes in the British Isles. By 1763, taxes amounted to an average twenty-six shillings for each Briton, a rate twenty-six times more onerous than the average one shilling each American paid.7 Whitehall was actually quite generous to the Americans during the war by underwriting about half their military expenses with £1,544,830.8 British complaints about the Americans were hardly confined to how lightly taxed they were compared to the mother country. Americans blatantly violated the king’s trade laws by massive smuggling. During the 1760s, Americans annually bought £700,000 worth of illegal foreign products, an amount greater than what they bought legally via mandatory British merchant intermediaries. For tea alone, the Americans consumed 1,200,000 pounds, of which only 275,000 pounds came from British companies.9 By cutting out the officious middlemen and taxmen, Americans saved an enormous amount of money. Whitehall was deadset to make the Americans pay their “fair share.” The king that ever more Americans condemned as a tyrant was not guilty as charged by most measures.10 First of all, George III was a constitutional monarch in a political system where parliament jealously upheld the lion’s share of power. Yet he was no figurehead. He worked closely with his key ministers to make and assert policies that reflected his own conception of his royal duties and British imperial interests. He was highly intelligent, spoke fluent French and German, loved music, and was fascinated by astronomy, watchmaking, and architecture. His obsession with order, form, and place largely explains why he insisted on a series of policies that provoked the Americans to war for their independence. George III had trouble keeping a government together during the tumultuous dozen years from 1763 to 1775. Five prime ministers and a score of other ministers bowed in and out of his cabinet. He finally retained Frederick, Lord North from January 1770 until March 1782, and only reluctantly accepted the resignation of the man who had become his alter-ego as someone as unyielding as himself. Yet, despite the turnovers, the king always enjoyed overwhelming parliamentary majorities in both houses for whatever taxes and other restrictions that he and his cabinet wanted to impose on the colonies. And that was the trouble. A siege mentality gripped George, his ministers, and most members of parliament to the point where they automatically rejected any reform proposals that might have defused rather than exacerbated the crises with the provincials.

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The Americans had articulate and prominent supporters in Parliament including William Pitt, Edmund Burke, Isaac Barre, and John Wilkes. For instance, in a celebrated 1765 speech, Barre refuted Prime Minister Charles Townsend’s insistence that the Americans were ungrateful for all the alleged protection and other benefits they enjoyed within the British Empire: “No! Your Oppression planted them in America. They fled from your Tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable Country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human Nature is liable, and among others to the Cruelties of a Savage foe . . . they grew by your neglect of em. . . . They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up Arms in your Defense.”11 America’s defenders included numerous merchants who lost money from the Patriot boycott against British goods. They lobbied the Board of Trade and American Department to rescind the policies but to no avail. Then there were the American agents, most prominently Franklin, in London lobbying ministers and parliamentarians. The Americans asserted that parliament’s laws violated their rights as British subjects, especially the principle of “no taxation without representation.” In making their legal case, they cited dozens of laws over five and a half centuries that defined the rights of Englishmen, starting with the 1215 Magna Carta. The 1287 tax statute was the first explicitly to guarantee that taxes could only be imposed with the consent of those who paid them. But “no taxation without representation” was only the most prominent right that patriots blasted parliament for violating. Others included trials by an impartial jury of one’s peers, no standing army, and no quartering of troops in private homes. From 1763 to 1775, the Americans and British engaged in a classic dialogue of the deaf. Britons condemned the American insistence on “no taxation without representation” and scorned the distinction between “internal” and “external” taxes as meaningless. Americans dismissed Whitehall’s insistence that they were “virtually represented” in parliament as insulting nonsense. This conflict over principles was grounded in concrete American economic interests that British officials and policies grossly violated. The worst were Britain’s navigation laws that restricted what Americans could manufacture and with whom Americans could directly trade. Franklin expressed the American complaint that “in our trade with foreign nations and where we could be supplied with any manufacture cheapest from them, but must buy the same dearer from Britain; the difference of price is a clear tax to Britain.”12 Washington strongly argued for economic freedom: “Britain may then load her exports with as heavy taxes as she pleases but where will the consumption be? I am apt to think no law or usage can compel us to barter our money or staple commodities for their manufactures if we can be supplied within ourselves upon better terms.”13

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As if the navigation laws did not extract enough wealth from Americans, massive, blatant corruption and conflicts of interest characterized the British Empire’s administration in North America and elsewhere. Franklin observed that “governors often come to the colonies merely to make fortunes, with which they intend to return to Britain; are not always men of the best abilities or integrity; have many of them no estates here, nor any natural connections with us that should make them heartily concerned for our welfare; and might possible possibly be fond of raising and keeping up more forces than necessary from the profits accruing to themselves, and to make provisions for their friends and dependents.”14 His Majesty’s officials whispered to ship-owners that they could finesse the bureaucratic red-tape including licenses with surreptitious payments for services, with the speed of approvals related to the size of the fees; under the table payments were atop already onerous official fees. Customs officials and naval officers alike threatened ship owners with the seizure of their vessels for alleged smuggling, then released them after pocketing huge bribes. Naval captains had an incentive to seize as many vessels as possible on smuggling charges because convictions won them half the value of the auctioned ship and cargo as “prize money.” Such blatant abuses of power provoked rising American contempt and loathing for British officials and officers. The Americans derived their principles from their own experiences bolstered by political philosophy.15 They were either acquainted or well versed with the ideas and arguments of classic political philosophers, historians, playwrights, and epic poets like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Caesar, Horace, Virgil, Tacitus, Sallust, and Plutarch along with early modern ones from the continent like Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Samuel Pufendorf, and Hugo Grotius, and recent Enlightenment thinkers like Cesare Beccaria, Charles de Secondat, baron Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. No English thinker was more vital to America’s cause than Locke whose Two Treatises on Government (1690) developed notions of natural rights and laws including those of life, liberty, and property, and the social contract whereby people devise governments to protect those rights, and the right of the people to revolt against tyrannical governments. Two other works by Locke were also influential, his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and Some Thoughts on Education (1693). After Locke, a succession of other progressive British thinkers influenced America’s patriots. Among these the earliest were Robert Viscount Molesworth’s An Account of Denmark (1694) and John Trenchard’s Arguments Showing that a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government (1697), and Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (1698) which justified political revolution under conditions that the Americans were suffering. Then came the libertarians Trenchard and Thomas Gordon whose weekly newspaper Independent Whig and book Cato’s Letters

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exposed and lambasted the corruption pervading political, economic, and social life. Then there was the Anglican Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, who essentially advocated democracy in his The Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrates Considered (1705) and The Original and Institution of Civil Government Discussed (1710), then boldly questioned the claims of the Church of England and thus the king to spiritual and worldly supremacy in his Bangorian Controversy (1720). Henry Saint John, Viscount Bolingbroke, expressed similar views in his weekly or biweekly “Craftsman” from 1726 to 1736. James Burgh launched a withering assault on the pervasive corruption in his Britain’s Remembrancer or the Danger Not Over (1746), echoed by Jonathan Mayhew in his Discourse (1750). In his Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth (1752), David Hume espoused a government whose executive, legislative, and judicial branches were separate and whose leaders were guided by reason and virtue. Overall, the most influential work was probably a play rather than a tome. Joseph Addison’s “Cato” expressed republican ideals and behaviors that never failed to move Washington and other patriot leaders no matter how many performances that they attended. The American position received a powerful boost from a renowned contemporary British thinker. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England whose four volumes appeared from 1765 to 1769, William Blackstone reiterated what Americans had insisted for a century and a half, that English rights followed English subjects wherever the English flag flew: “For as the law is the birthright of every subject, so wherever they go they carry their laws with them. But in conquered or ceded countries that have already laws of their own, the king may indeed alter and change those laws. . . . Our American plantations are principally of this latter sort, being obtained in the last century either by right of conquest and driving out the natives . . . or by treaties. And therefore the common law of England as such has no allowances or authority there; they being no part of the mother country but distinct (though dependent) dominions.”16 Americans made their own remarkable contributions to liberal political theory in widely circulated pamphlets. The most notable early work was Andrew Hamilton’s Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger (1736). Whitehall’s provocative series of laws in the dozen years before Lexington and Concord provoked an outpouring, most notably James Otis’s Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Approved (1764), Brief Remarks on the Defense of the Halifax Libel on the British-American Colonies (1765), and A Vindication of the British Colonies against the Aspersions of the Halifax Gentleman (1765); Benjamin Franklin’s Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs (1764), Rule by which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small one (1773), and An Edict by the King of Prussia (1773); Daniel Dulany’s Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the

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British Colonies for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue by Act of Parliament (1765); John Adams’ Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765); Stephen Hopkins’ The Rights of the Colonies Examined (1765); John Dickinson’s The Late Regulations Respecting the British Colonies (1765) and Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768); Richard Bland’s An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies (1766); Sam Adams’ Appeal to the World (1769); John Allen’s Oration on the Beauties of Liberty (1773); James Wilson’s Considerations on the Nature and the Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (1774); Alexander Hamilton’s A Full Vindication (1774); Samuel Seabury’s Free Thoughts: The Congress Canvassed; A View of the Controversy (1774); Thomas Jefferson’s A Summary View of British America (1774); and John Adams’ Thoughts on Government (1776). Of these writings, two stand out. None were more influential than Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania” which the Pennsylvania Gazette published and then were copied by nineteen of the twenty-three colonial newspapers elsewhere in the colonies. Dickinson offered this ringing definition of natural rights: “They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us, exist within us, and cannot be taken away from us by any human power.”17 None was more radical than Jefferson’s A Summary View of The Rights of British America. He argued that natural rights let Americans govern and tax themselves and trade with whomever they pleased. He denounced Britain’s government for its “deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.” Indeed he went so far as to deny that the British monarch had any sovereignty over the colonies; the colonies belonged to the people who settled and developed them. In America the king was “no more than the chief officer of the people” and “has no right to land a single armed man on our shores, and those whom he sends here are liable to our laws.”18 For America’s patriot leaders, the most vital philosophical takeaway was the interrelated concepts of natural law, the state of nature, and the social contract. Americans rightly believed that they exemplified these principles, having established their own self-governing societies and transformed wilderness into civilization. People established governments to represent and protect their natural rights. Another critical idea was the organization of government into separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches with overlapping powers that forced them to cooperate and prevented despotism from arising. Then there was the question of where sovereignty or ultimate power lay; Americans insisted that sovereignty was grounded in the people rather than some monarch who at most might symbolically represent the nation over whom he presided. Americans believed that they had surpassed the British in epitomizing the realm’s venerable rights and representative institutions, and deeply resented

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Whitehall’s attempt to subject them to what they viewed as a corrupt, inept, despotic system. Patriots hooted at British insistence that they enjoyed “virtual representation” in parliament. Indeed they condemned parliament for not even representing Britons, of whom only around one in ten men could vote and around one in a hundred could afford to run for a seat. But what most inspired the patriots were virtuous men of action rather than thought, and for that they partly turned to the ancient world. They thrilled at examples set by Roman republicans like Cincinnatus, Cato, and Cicero, whose patriotism, courage, morality, and civility epitomized public virtue. But then Americans took enormous pride at the courage and resilience that most of their own soldiers and civilians had displayed in every war that they had fought, especially the most recent. Veterans bristled at memories of the contempt and loathing that British officers had heaped upon them, often to obscure their own incompetence. Civilians got just as angry recalling the rapacious, brutal acts of British redcoats or requisition officials in their midst.19 The American cause was bolstered by the dynamic among articulate patriot writers, scores of printing presses, and a million or so literate colonists. Americans were informed and enflamed by a vigorous press that by 1775 numbered twenty-three newspapers spread across all the colonies except Delaware. Politically the most consistently influential newspaper was Boston’s “Gazette” which published essays by the patriotic Caucus Club including James Otis, Samuel Cooper, John Hancock, Sam Adams, and John Adams. The Pennsylvania Chronicle published Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” Political pamphlets competed with newspapers for hearts and minds. Hundreds of copies of hundreds of pamphlets circulated until eager hands wore them to pieces.20 By one count over 400 political pamphlets appeared from 1750 and 1776 and over 1,500 by 1783.21 Then there was the pulpit. The conflicts over the British government’s series of provocative acts split many congregations as bitterly the general public. During the decade preceding the outbreak of fighting, Anglican Church ministers naturally tended to back the controversial policies of the king, cabinet, and parliament while Congregational and Presbyterian Church ministers either subtlety or loudly denounced them. The war bitterly divided Anglican ministers and their congregations between patriots and loyalists with 114 of 286 supporting American independence in 1776, while 160,000 parishioners were patriots and 110,000 were loyalists.22 America’s patriot leaders were liberals in the classical sense of being dedicated to individual rights, duties, and development. They derived their revolutionary philosophy mostly from life experiences and reflections on literary sources, from practice and theory. All were worldly, hardworking, problem-solving men with careers as planters, merchants, lawyers, or doctors. A strong sense of civic responsibility mingled with ambition led them

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to set aside their practices and run for public office. The patriots, however, were split between two groups, reformers and radicals. Most patriots were reformers who sought to pressure the crown to revoke its measures by such legal means as protests, petitions, pamphlets, boycotts, and lobbying by the colonial assemblies individually or collectively, colonial agents in London, and colonials peacefully expressing themselves in the squares and streets. The radicals, exemplified by Sons of Liberty groups, wielded the threat or assertion of violence, in other words terrorism, to intimidate crown officials either into not enforcing the acts or resigning. The first British act that outraged Americans directly concerned land rather than taxes. George III’s Proclamation of October 7, 1763 forbade Americans from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, permitted land purchases from Indians only with crown approval, and established three new crown colonies, Québec, West Florida, and East Florida, all populated mostly by Catholics. By drawing clear lines among different peoples with a history of wars among them, Whitehall hoped to prevent future conflicts. Unfortunately, in trying to alleviate one problem, Whitehall exacerbated another. The 1763 Proclamation violated many colonial charters that granted land far beyond that barrier, with some that promised territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Those governments reaped revenues from selling land to pioneers. With that potential revenue now denied them, the colonial governments protested. Powerful interest groups like the Ohio Company had already taken title to lands beyond that boundary; they too protested. More broadly the act violated the now deeply rooted American cultural belief that Americans had a right to head west and settle where they pleased.23 The Currency Act of 1764 forbade colonies from issuing paper money and required those with circulating issues to eliminate them with new taxes by September 1, 1764.24 This policy represented the all too typical triumph of fiscal and imperial theory over practical needs for the king, his ministers, and a parliamentary majority. Unlike the 1751 Currency Act that imposed restrictions on the four New England colonies which had been fiscally irresponsible during the previous war, the 1764 Act targeted all colonies no matter how responsible or reckless each was with its issuances. The Currency Act provoked protests from each colonial government that relied on fiat currencies to pay bills, service debt, provide mortgages for purchases of public lands, and accept as payments for taxes. Issuances had soared during the French and Indian War to purchase supplies and pay wages to soldiers and workers mobilized for campaigns. Virginia was the exception for fiscal irresponsibility. Most colonial governments could boast that they had carefully managed their issuances to facilitate an array of vital transactions for the war effort while avoiding inflationary discounts. When

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Whitehall refused to rescind the law, the colonies simply ignored it and defiantly continued to issue paper money as need be. After all, the four New England colonies had done just that without penalty even though the 1751 Currency Act had required them to stop issuances and retire what existed. Whitehall finally relented and in 1773, agreed to lift the restriction, thereby legalizing an ongoing vigorous and necessary business. That sensible concession did not ease tensions. By then the Americans had plenty of other unwitting self-destructive crown policies to protest. Directly or indirectly, most Americans regularly violated the king’s laws. Smuggling was rampant because it was so profitable. American ship captains bought cargoes of molasses, wine, and other products at French and Dutch West Indian colonies then a month or so later had their crews land the goods at deserted American coves after dark. Middlemen then dispersed the goods to local markets. Every American who bought a smuggled good because it was cheaper than its legally imported version was a lawbreaker. Prosecuting violations of trade laws was the responsibility of eleven admiralty courts in the thirteen colonies that were established in 1696, with cases decided by a judge rather than jury. That would seem to stack the legal deck in the crown’s favor, but most judges were prominent local gentlemen who tended to turn a blind eye to the offenses of suspects who might be their relatives, neighbors, or business associates. Not surprisingly, prosecutors won few convictions in these courts. Smuggling was enormously expensive to the crown both from lost revenue and high enforcement costs. As for smugglers, even though the odds of being convicted were slim, the costs of getting caught were crushing. A ship, its cargo, and its crew could be sequestered for months when it could be making money. Admiralty courts often imposed court costs even on dismissed cases. British naval captains and crews had an incentive to apprehend as many vessels as possible because they split part of the prize money from the auction sales of any ship and its cargo condemned for smuggling. The 1733 Molasses Act annually garnered only around £1,800 in revenues but cost £7,600 to administer and should have reaped £200,000 in revenues given the estimated eight million gallons traded.25 Whitehall could have saved money by simply rescinding that law and allowing free trade in molasses. It did not do that. Instead, the American Duties Act of 1764, better known as the Sugar Act, sought to smother colonial smuggling with a set of related measures. The first measure was to halve the 1733 Molasses Act’s existing tax from six pence a gallon to three pence. The logic behind this cut was that the higher a tax on a good, the higher the price of that good, and thus the greater the reward for smugglers who slightly undercut that price; likewise, the lower the tax, the fewer the rewards until none existed. To that “carrot,” Whitehall added a potentially powerful “stick,” although typically it ended up hurting those who attempted to wield it more than its intended victims. To prevent sympathetic

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judges from letting their friend off scot-free, a Vice Admiralty Court for All America was established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where prosecutors were empowered to send the accused there instead of the eleven lower admiralty courts in the colonies. At the Halifax tribunal, suspects had to prove that the charges were false, then had to pay court costs even if they won their case; in the likely event that they lost, they suffered huge penalties and long prison terms. The Sugar Act also imposed a £7 tax on a ton or 252 gallons of Madeira, the most popular wine in the colonies, if Americans imported it directly from the source but only ten shillings a ton if it was imported via British wholesalers. The Sugar Act hit rum makers the hardest. Of 127 rum distilleries then in the colonies, Massachusetts had nearly half with sixty-four and the rest were scattered across usually port towns in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.26 Just that one common interest in protecting the rum industry united seven of the thirteen colonies. The governments of those colonies and five others submitted to Whitehall official protests against the Sugar Act. The Sons of Liberty threatened violence against any customs officials who sent captured smugglers to Halifax. That intimidated most officials from fulfilling the law. Two acts of resistance against Whitehall’s anti-smuggling campaign involved Rhode Island. The first came in 1764 when an officer and armed sailors from the H.M.S. St. John, a schooner, tried to board a suspected smuggling vessel in Newport. Fighting broke out. The crew shoved several boarders into the water. The British captain grievously wounded an attacker with his sword while his sailors subdued the crew. As a crowd swelled on the dock and angrily protested, the British pressed into service some of the crew and confiscated some goods before setting sail. Patriot officials actually ordered the gunners manning the cannons in Newport’s fort to fire at the warship as it passed. The second incident came in 1765 when John Robinson, the chief customs official, rejected attempts by local merchants to bribe him into turning a blind eye to the pervasive smuggling. When the sloop Polly was caught smuggling in a nearby cove, a mob prevented the vessel from being sailed to Newport, the sheriff arrested Robinson when he tried to enforce the law, and the Polly’s owner sued him for damages. These two incidents either outraged or inspired countless people on both sides of the Atlantic. The Sugar Act failed spectacularly to fulfill its promises. Smuggling persisted since profits still remained high at three pence a gallon. The Treasury predicted that the tax would annually reap £78,000 for its coffers. The harsh reality was that the tax yielded only £5,200 in 1764 and even less, £4,100, in 1765. In 1766, Whitehall lowered the tax to a penny a gallon. That finally ended molasses smuggling although practitioners still made fortunes by supplying colonial demand for an array of other goods. Revenues did rise to

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fluctuate between £30,000 and £40,000 annually, although that covered only about ten percent of the costs of keeping troops and warships in the colonies.27 Meanwhile, King George and his cabinet were more determined than ever to bring the colonists to their knees in accepting anything the crown imposed upon them.28 The 1765 Stamp Act extended to the colonies taxes that had existed in the British Isles since the seventeenth century. Now Americans would pay fees for a list of items that must be stamped with the royal seal including legal documents like business licenses, marriage certificates, property deeds, shipping clearance papers, and university degrees along with newspapers, pamphlets, books, broadsides, and even playing cards. After passing both houses by huge majorities, George III signed the act on March 22, then began appointing officials to administer the law after it took effect on November 1, 1765. Word of the Stamp Act provoked outrage among most Americans. Moderates limited their resistance to legally accepted expressions like protests and boycotts. Radical Sons of Liberty groups committed acts of intimidation and even violence against crown officials; Boston had two Sons of Liberty groups, one each from the city’s rival north and south sides. The most prominent early protest came on May 29, when Patrick Henry gave an impassioned speech in Virginia’s House of Burgesses against the Stamp Act, culminating with his cry, “No taxation without Representation.” Henry introduced five “resolves”: 1. that the colonists who settled Virginia carried their rights as Englishmen with them; 2. which were confirmed by the charter; 3. which included the right of the colonial assembly’s elected representatives to impose taxes on Virginians; 4. a right that had been repeatedly acknowledged by the king and parliament; and 5. that any attempts by others to violate the General Assembly’s “sole exclusive Right and Power to lay Taxes and Impositions upon the Inhabitants of this Colony . . . has a Manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom.” As Henry presented his case, a conservative shouted, “Treason!” To that Henry replied, “If this be treason, make the most of it!”29 The House of Burgesses voted for all five resolves on May 30. Governor Francis Fauquier promptly dissolved the House of Burgesses. Newspaper accounts of Virginia’s Resolves and the governor’s dismissal spread to the other colonies. Eight other colonial assemblies issued their own resolutions in support of Virginia’s. The boycott movement did not arise until October 31, when 200 prominent New York merchants promised not to order any more British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. That inspired 400 Philadelphians and 200 Bostonians to make their pledge on November 14 and December 9, respectively. Elsewhere across the colonies groups signed similar boycott pledges. That boycott was a potentially powerful weapon. Not only did British merchants, manufacturers, and financiers stand to lose vast profits but they feared that the

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Americans might stop servicing the £4,450,000 they collectively owed British creditors. If that happened, Britain’s economy would collapse.30 Perhaps the most striking anti-Stamp Act protest came from the Pennsylvania Journal, a weekly newspaper. The front page of the October 31 edition displayed a tombstone with this notice below: “I am sorry to be obliged to acquaint my Readers, that as the Stamp Act is . . . obligatory upon us after the First of November ensuring. . . . The Publisher of this paper unable to bear the Burthen, has thought it expedient to stop a while, in order to deliberate whether any Methods can be found to elude the chains forged for us, and escape the insupportable Slavery.”31 The first anti-Stamp Act riot erupted in Boston on August 14, 1765, when a mob hanged an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the colony’s stamp distributor, on a limb of a massive ancient elm known as the Liberty Tree in the Commons or central park. That evening the mob first burned the building designated to house the colonial stamp administration then surged on to smash the windows of Oliver’s home. Oliver resigned the next morning. The mob pillaged the homes of two other officials then rampaged through Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s home, smashing furniture and china, and ripping up or burning documents. Word of that violence inspired riots elsewhere. In Rhode Island, a mob trashed the homes of three prominent officials. In New York, a mob reacted to a rumor that the British intended to enforce the Stamp Act with redcoats by smashing the windows of Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden’s coach and Major Thomas James’s home. Sons of Liberty groups harassed officials throughout the colonies. By November all Stamp Act officials then in the colonies had resigned; the final official did so after arriving in Georgia two months later. The Massachusetts assembly wrote the other colonial assemblies, asking them to send delegates to a Congress to discuss what to do about the Stamp Act and other officious British policies. Rounds of letters forged a consensus about where and when to meet. Twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies— New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina—joined in New York City for the Stamp Act Congress from October 7 to 25, 1765. Delegates from other colonies might well have attended had not the governors of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia forbade anyone from attending, although undoubtedly distance was also an inhibiting factor. The delegates from nearby Delaware and New Jersey defied similar restrictions by their respective governors. The Stamp Act Congress debated and signed fourteen resolutions protesting the Stamp Act for violating American rights as British subjects and calling for its remission, and issued a Declaration of Rights. “No taxation without representation” was the key underlying argument. Only colonial assemblies could

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impose taxes on their respective inhabitants. They sent their petitions to King George and both houses of parliament. When Parliament convened on January 15, 1766, the members were well aware of the protests, boycotts, and violence against the Stamp Act, culminating with the petitions of the Stamp Act Congress. Atop that American resistance came twenty-four petitions by groups of prominent British merchants, financiers, and ports calling on parliament for repeal. That only stiffened the will to resist of George Grenville, who had sponsored the Stamp Act. In a speech in the House of Commons, he insisted that the Americans enjoyed “virtual representation” in parliament, and dismissed any distinction between “internal” and “external” taxes. He then argued: “That this kingdom has the sovereign, the supreme legislative power over America, is granted. It cannot be denied, and taxation is a part of that sovereign power. . . . Protection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience.”32 Countless Americans and many Britons begged to differ with Grenville’s assertions. William Pitt was among Parliament’s leading dissidents who called for ending all efforts to repress the Americans. He retorted to Grenville that: “I rejoice that America has resisted. . . . The gentlemen asks, when were the colonies emancipated? But I desire to know when they were made slaves. . . . The Americans have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice . . . the Stamp Act should be repealed absolutely.” Nonetheless, he did acknowledge that “parliament has a right to bind, to restrain America. Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme.”33 Benjamin Franklin’s finest political hours unrolled as he was interrogated in the House of Commons in mid-February 1766. He parried each thrust then struck back hard. When asked why Britain should protect America if Americans did not help pay for their own defense, he asserted that Americans protected themselves; during the last war they raised 25,000 troops and underwrote them by raising millions of pounds sterling in revenues. When asked how Americans could do without British manufactured goods, he explained that within a few years Americans would manufacture anything they now imported from Britain. When asked whether Americans would resist the imposition of British troops, he replied curtly: “Suppose a military force is sent into America. They will find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion. They may make one.” When asked the likely results if the Stamp Act was not repealed, he predicted that Americans would lose their remaining respect and affection for the mother country. When asked whether the Americans would acknowledge parliament’s right to tax the colonies if the Stamp act were repealed, he replied “never.”34 The House of Commons voted to repeal the Stamp Act on February 21, with 274 in favor and 167 opposed. On March 4, the government packaged

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the repeal in a Declaratory Act whereby Parliament asserted “full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the Colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever.”35 The Declaratory Act passed by 250 to 122 votes. The House of Lord agreed by acclamation on March 17. The following day King George signed the Declaratory Act into law. The American Mutiny Act of 1765, also called the Quartering Act, forced local governments to supply housing and provisions for any troops in their midst. That meant turning over places like meeting halls, barns, taverns, warehouses, and stables for the redcoats to inhabit; private homes, however, could only be requisitioned with compensation and if the owner agreed. Local people also had to supply firewood, candles, straw, bedding, salt, vinegar cooking utensils, cured meats, and beer, rum, or hard cider to the soldiers. Essentially the 1765 Quartering Act codified practices that the crown had imposed amidst protests during the French and Indian War. However odious these requirements were, contrary to popular belief, examples of British officers forcing Americans to lodge soldiers in their homes were rare. Yet even if most officers followed the rules, conflicts between civilians and soldiers were common. Civilians complained that soldiers were often drunk, loud, lewd, and larcenous. Although discipline varied among regiments, the number of assaults, robberies, rapes, and even murders rose with the number of troops billeted among a population. Soldiers voiced their own complaints that most civilians either denied or overcharged them for goods and services, while scorning their presence. And that points to a literal as well as figurative silver lining in the presence of troops. The annual pay for a regiment amounted to around £6,000 of which most was spent locally, a significant boost to the economy.36 Merchants naturally wanted to pocket that pay without paying a farthing for upkeep. General Thomas Gage was His Majesty’s commander-in-chief for North America, with his headquarters at Fort George in New York City. In May 1766, he asked New York’s assembly to provide housing and supplies for recently arrived reinforcements in conformity with the Quartering Act. The assembly refused to underwrite troops blatantly deployed to intimidate and repress the populace. They pointed to an array of parliamentary laws and crown decrees that declared unconstitutional “a standing army” and thus freed them from compliance. In alliance with Gage, Governor Henry Moore dismissed the assembly and called for new elections. But when the new assembly convened in November, most members had won reelection. The assembly rejected Gage’s latest request.37 George III, his ministers, and most members of parliament were incensed to learn about New York’s defiance. In June 1767, the king signed into law the New York Restraining Act that outlawed the assembly until the members

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agreed to underwrite the costs of the occupying British troops. The act was scheduled to take effect on October 1, 1767. The assemblymen found a facesaving way to get the sanctions lifted without yielding on principle. In June 1767, they voted to give £3,000 to the governor to spend at his discretion, an amount equal to the bill that Gage had presented them. Charles Townsend was the treasury secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer who devised the Revenue Act of July 1767, better known as the Townsend Act. That law imposed varying taxes on an array of goods including glass, paper, paint, lead, china, and tea. To help enforce this law, the Townsend Act also empowered customs officials to search premises without a warrant. The hope was annually to generate £20,000 from the non-tea items and another £20,000 from the three pence tax on tea. As usual, reality fell far short of hope. The Townsend Act failed because of widespread resistance. Once again, American moderates protested with petitions, pamphlets, and boycotts, while radicals bullied crown officials. The most influential arguments against the Townsend and other acts came from John Dickinson’s dozen essays called Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania that appeared in 1767 and 1768, and were published as a book in 1769. However, the most effective actions changed the minds of powerful people by lightening their profits. In December 1767, the Massachusetts assembly pledged to boycott British imports and sent a circular letter to the other colonial assemblies, calling on them to do the same. Every colony eventually formed “nonimportation associations” and “nonconsumption agreements” against taxable goods, although to give parliament a chance to repeal its latest imposition, delayed implementing the boycott until January 1, 1769. Trade plummeted from around £2 million in 1767 and 1768 to £1,360,000 in 1769 after the boycott took full effect. Whitehall exacerbated animosities in March 1768, when it established vice-admiralty courts with judges sent from Britain at Philadelphia, New York, and Boston as appeal courts to the existing eleven admiralty courts in the thirteen colonies, and dispatched more warships to enforce anti-smuggling laws. The hope was that superior court judges would be less pervious to intimidation and bribes than lower court judges who were mostly Americans. Meanwhile an unlikely hero for American emerged on the other side of the Atlantic. John Wilkes would not ordinarily have been the sort of character that America’s patriotic elite openly embraced. Wilkes was a chronic libertine, gambler, alcoholic, blasphemer, and charter member of the Hellfire Club notorious for its drunken orgies and possibly satanic rites. But he was also an outspoken libertarian who espoused democracy for both Britain and America. His district repeatedly reelected him to parliament even when he was jailed on libel and sedition charges for lampooning the king in issue 45 of his newspaper “The North Briton.” Then, on May 10, 1768, troops fired

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on Wilkes protestors in London, killing eleven and wounding a dozen others. After learning of the “London massacre,” Americans celebrated Wilkes and his followers as natural allies in the struggle to resist oppression and assert rights. In America sporadic violence erupted against British attempts to enforce the law. The epicenter was Boston with a series of incidents in 1767 and 1768. The captain of the H.M.S. Romney provoked a riot when he had a press gang force a local man into his crew; patriots freed the captive. John Hancock was the richest man in Massachusetts and possibly the colonies.38 Trade, both legal and illegal, was the source of his wealth. He had his sailors forcibly remove a customs official who was snooping around one of these vessels. Then, in June 1768, his vessel the Liberty dropped anchor. Customs officials inspected the vessel, claimed to have found smuggled wine, and had the Romney tow it under the guns of Castle William in the bay. A mob stoned the houses of customs officials. That did not stop the case from going to the admiralty court, where Hancock faced penalties as much as a £50,000 fine and years in prison. The case dragged on until 1769 when the prosecutor finally cut a deal by dropping charges against Hancock but confiscating the Liberty for court costs. Hancock’s vessel was transformed into the H.M.S. Liberty, manned, captained by William Reid, and dispatched to Narragansett Bay to pursue smugglers. There the Liberty met an appropriate fate, at least from an American viewpoint. On July 19, 1769 the Liberty seized two vessels because their captains did not have proper licenses. Joseph Packwood, who owned those vessels, rallied outraged Americans who rowed to the Liberty, boarded, subdued the crew, chopped down the mast, bore holes in the hull, set the vessel adrift, and finally burned it after it ground ashore on an island. Meanwhile, Whitehall decided to make an example of Boston. On October 1, 1768, a British flotilla dropped anchor in Boston Bay. Two regiments packed into longboats, rowed to the docks, and disembarked. One regiment marched to Boston Common where they set up a camp of rows of white wedge-tents. The other regiment occupied the Manufactory House and Faneuil Hall. The redcoats were supposed to intimidate the Bostonians into compliance. Instead their presence had the opposite effect. The daily experience of those redcoats and their crude behavior enraged and radicalized Bostonians. The first deadly clash between Sons of Liberty and redcoats happened in New York rather than Boston. Hatreds between the two groups had festered for years with the epicenter the Liberty Pole that the Sons of Liberty kept erecting on Golden Hill and British soldiers kept chopping down at night. On January 19, 1770, a huge crowd gathered to restore the pole that had been toppled the previous night when redcoats armed with clubs attacked

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the Americans, killing one and badly beating numerous others. Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden rejected patriot demands to bring the murderers to justice. Tensions between Bostonians and soldiers were just as hair-triggered as they were in New York. A fight broke out between a redcoat and a worker on March 2, 1770, followed by brawls between others over the next three days as each side sought vengeance. On the evening of March 5, a crowd gathered outside the customs house and taunted the sentry on duty. When the sentry called for help, Captain Thomas Preston ordered seven soldiers to load their muskets, fix bayonets, and follow him to reinforce him. Snowballs along with taunts burst from the crowd. Someone began tolling the bell in a nearby church. A soldier hit by a snowball slipped and fell; he fired his musket as he struggled to his feet. Other soldiers lowered their muskets and fired into the crowd. The balls struck eleven men, killing three instantly and mortally wounding two others in what was decried throughout the colonies as the “Boston Massacre.” Governor Thomas Hutchison ordered Preston and his men jailed on murder charges and withdrew all redcoats to Castle William Island. John Adams agreed to defend the accused during the trial which was deliberately delayed until October as passions cooled. Preston was tried separately from his men. Juries acquitted Preston and five soldiers, but found two guilty of manslaughter and had them branded on their hands and released. The removal of the British regulars and the due process of the trials capped by relatively light punishments satisfied most Americans and Britons alike. Ironically, Prime Minister Frederick North issued in the House of Commons a resolution to repeal the Townsend Act on March 5, 1770, the same day as the Boston Massacre. On April 12, King George signed into law the repeal of all the Townsend taxes except the three pence tax on a pound of tea; that at once removed virtually all practical reasons for Americans to complain while asserting parliament’s right to tax the colonists. News of the repeal prompted virtually all Americans to end their boycotts of British goods except for tea. A relative calm settled over the colonies that would be marred by one stunning incident before Whitehall committed an act that provoked the latest worsening cycle of rage, protest, violence, and repression. Lieutenant William Dudingston commanded the H.M.S. Gaspee, a schooner deployed to catch smugglers in Narragansett Bay. Dudingston personified the arrogant, condescending English lord. After arriving he refused to show Governor Joseph Wanton his orders authorizing his mission, even though he was legally required to do so. Over several months he ordered his crew to seize a dozen or so vessels in hope of winning prize money if the captains were convicted of smuggling. Rage soared among Rhode Islanders against Dudingston. On June 3, 1772, the Gaspee was pursuing a suspected smuggling vessel when the warship ran aground. The suspected vessel was owned

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by John Brown, one of Rhode Island’s richest and most influential men. That night Brown and several score armed followers disguised as Indians packed into eight longboats, rowed to the Gaspee, and swarmed aboard. When Dudingston fought back, he was shot in the thigh and arm. After evacuating the crew, the raiders torched the Gaspee. Adding insult to injury, a sheriff arrested Dudingston for illegally seizing cargos during previous incidents. Word that a group of Americans had attacked and burned another of His Majesty’s warships provoked diametrically opposed reactions on both sides of the Atlantic, anger or disbelief for most, and jubilation for many Americans and some British sympathizers. An enraged King George ordered Admiral John Montagu, who commanded the Royal Navy’s North American fleet, to investigate the crime and bring the guilty to trial in London. But when Montagu appeared aboard his warship at Newport, the city officials refused to let him dock. After being rowed ashore, Montagu launched an investigation but found no witnesses willing to testify. All he could do was pay Dudingson’s fine and spring him from jail. The East India Company teetered at bankruptcy’s brink by early 1773.39 Costs, corruption, incompetence, and competition mostly explain why that was so. The charter that the East India Company’s stockholders received in 1600 licensed them to establish and run an empire by whatever possible means. Unfortunately during the course of around 170 years the Company’s profits fell increasingly behind the operating costs of running and defending its growing empire in India and the network of forts, ships, warehouses, merchants, sailors, soldiers, bookkeepers, and laborers to sustain it while delivering the goods to and from there, China, the East Indies, the West Indies, North America, and the British Isles. Just the French and Indian War cost the Company £75,000 to fight in India and elsewhere. Compounding these problems was the American boycott on tea which normally comprised 90 percent of the East India Company’s profits. The East India Company had warehouses and ships packed with £9 million worth of tea that was dryrotting for want of purchasers. The directors papered over soaring expenses, soothed the nerves of jittery stockholders, and paid interest to creditors with ever more borrowed money, including from the Bank of England.40 Whitehall reckoned that the East India Company was too big to fail. With virtually all major and minor businesses in debt to one another, the East India Company’s bankruptcy would cause a domino effect of other bankruptcies that devastated Britain’s economy. The Tea Act of May 1773 at once tried to assert Parliament’s right to tax, undercut smuggling, and save the East India Company from bankruptcy. The act granted the East India Company a monopoly over selling tea to the colonies and let vessels sail directly from India to North America to avoid the hefty costs of transshipping cargoes

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through the British Isles. Patriots in all the colonies reacted to news of the Tea Act by calling for boycotts. In autumn 1773, the East India Company sent around 600 tea chests split among vessels bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charlestown. Of three vessels targeted for Boston, the Dartmouth arrived on November 28. The captain had twenty days to pay the duty on the tea and land it or else customs officials would seize the cargo. Patriot leaders like Sam Adams called for a meeting at Old South Church to debate what to do.41 A consensus swiftly arose to demand that the Dartmouth’s captain sail back to England. The captain refused, arguing that he would be ruined financially and professionally if he did so. The captains of the other two vessels made the same arguments after they arrived in early December. None of the shipments that reached Boston or the other three ports were sold in the local market. The “Boston Tea Party” took place on the night of December 16, when several hundred men disguised as “Mohawks” swarmed aboard the three vessels and under torch light hauled all the tea chests above deck, pried open the lids, and dumped the tea into the water. In all they destroyed 340 chests of tea worth £9,659. Elsewhere, South Carolina Governor William Bull found a way to finesse the dilemma after the ship arrived at Charleston on December 2. Sons of Liberty demanded that the captain sail away with his tea. Twenty days later Bull ordered the tea confiscated for nonpayment of the duty but then never sold it. At Philadelphia a mass demonstration on the dock convinced the tea ship’s captain to return to England. A storm blew the ship bound for New York all the way to Antigua where the captain learned of the fate of the other shipments. Prudently, he headed back to England. In March 1774, another ship with a tea cargo dropped anchor in Boston; on March 9, “Mohawks” forced their way aboard and destroyed all thirty-two chests. Word of the Boston Tea Party reached London in January 1774 just as parliament was convening. Virtually all members, even those sympathetic to the Americans, reacted with outrage. The result was four laws that passed parliament with overwhelming majorities between late March and late May 1774. The laws were designed to punish Boston, pressure its taxpayers to compensate the East India Company for its lost fortune in tea, bring those who destroyed it to justice, and intimidate the other colonies into complying with British law.42 Patriots dubbed those laws the Coercive or Intolerable Acts. The Boston Port Act severed Boston’s land and sea trade except for imports of food and firewood, beginning on June 1, 1774. The Massachusetts Government Act suspended that colony’s charter, dismissed the assembly, empowered the king to appoint the council’s members, empowered the governor to hire and fire all colonial officials, and forbade town councils from convening more than once after each yearly election. The Impartial Administrative of Justice Act let any

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crown official accused of a crime in the colonies be sent to Britain or another colony for trial. The Quartering Act empowered a governor to quarter troops wherever he thought best including private homes. To enforce these laws, King George recalled Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, replaced him with General Thomas Gage, and sent two more regiments to Boston. On April 19, by a vote of 182 to forty-nine, a majority in the House of Commons rejected a liberal motion to eliminate the tea tax; America’s war of independence would erupt exactly a year later. Although the Quebec Act was not devised to be among the Coercive Acts, American patriots immediately linked them. The Quebec Act granted religious freedom to French Canadians, letting them practice Catholicism without denying them any rights including holding public offices. That in itself would not have caused a stir in the thirteen colonies but Whitehall included two provisions that alienated countless numbers of people and provoked loud outcries. Québec’s boundaries were extended southward to rest on the Ohio River’s north bank. In doing so, Whitehall violated the colonial charters of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia that granted them land in that territory. Québec’s boundaries were also extended to engulf the Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries, thus potentially excluding New Englanders and New Yorkers from those waters. Typically, the king, his ministers, and his parliamentary majorities completely miscalculated the effects of their latest laws. Whitehall intended the Intolerable Acts to intimidate the other colonies into compliance. Instead, the Intolerable Acts had exactly the opposite effect. There was an outpouring of protests and pamphlets. George Washington expressed the prevailing view with these words: “the cause of Boston . . . now is and ever will be considered as the cause of America.”43 After learning of the Intolerable Acts, Virginia’s House of Burgesses met on May 27 and declared that June 1 would be a day of “Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer” in solidarity with Massachusetts. Governor James Murray, Earl Dunmore angrily responded by dismissing the House of Burgesses. The members strode out of the capitol to Raleigh Tavern where eighty-nine of them signed a declaration calling for the establishment of a provisional government and boycott of British products. To this Dunmore could only rage. The burgesses then dispersed to their homes. George Washington and George Mason led the effort in their county to issue on July 18, the Fairfax Resolves which asserted American political rights, rejected Parliament’s claims of authority over the colonies, boycotted British goods, condemned the importation of slaves into the colonies, and called for a Congress of all the colonies to convene to present a united front to Britain. Massachusetts’ assembly issued on September 10, what began known as the Suffolk Resolves, named after the county in which Boston was located.

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Drafted by Joseph Warren, the Suffolk Resolves called for disobeying the Coercive Acts; for militia companies to train weekly, and equip and supply themselves for possible war; and for all Americans to sever all trade with the British Isles until parliament revoked its repressive laws. Fifty-five delegates from every colony except Georgia convened at the First Continental Congress at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia on September 5 and adjourned on October 26, 1774. The debates and decisions swirled around defining what rights Americans deserved and how best to defend them. On September 27, Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves. On October 20, Congress called for a “Continental Association” of all the colonies to boycott trade with the British Isles, with that on tea starting immediately, on all other imports starting on December 1, 1774, and on exports starting on September 10, 1775. To ensure compliance, Committees of Inspection would be established. On October 21, Congress recommended that each colony ensure that its militia was trained, equipped, and ready to fight, with oversight by Committees of Safety. To coordinate policies among the colonies, each would setup a Committee of Correspondance. On October 25, Congress issued a “Declaration of Rights and Resolves” and sent a letter to Québec’s assembly asking its members to join the American colonies in common cause. Joseph Galloway proposed a “Plan of Union” whereby a permanent Congress would be established with its members elected by the colonial assemblies. Although the proposal excited widespread enthusiasm, the delegates agreed to postpone the issue until the next Congress, to convene on May 10, 1775. Before dismissing, Congress sent copies of the resolutions to Benjamin Franklin and other colonial agents in London so that the king, his ministers, and parliament would be fully apprised of American resolve. Those were a stunning series of achievements. However, Charles Thomson, the man who was elected to chair Congress, found the process that led to them less than edifying. To the sorrow of historians ever since, he destroyed his records of the Congress because: “I could not tell the truth without giving great offense. Let the world admire our patriots and heroes. Their supposed talents and virtues (where they were so) by commanding imitation will serve the cause of patriotism and our country.”44 Thomson understood the importance of soft power. Amidst the high stakes conflict between the American patriots and the British government, the latest Indian war erupted for perennial causes. American hunters and settlers were trespassing on Indian land, this time mostly in the upper Ohio River valley. The intruders, most notably representatives of the Ohio, Indiana, and Vandalia land companies, insisted that the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty granted them the right to take land on the Ohio River’s south bank all the way down to the Kanawha River mouth. Ohio valley tribes like the

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Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware protested that they had not signed that treaty and would not cede that land. An escalating series of murders led to war. The worst atrocity occurred on April 30, when frontiersmen led by Daniel Greathouse slaughtered three relatives of Mingo Chief Logan, his brother and two women of whom one was pregnant. Logan led his warriors on the warpath that killed dozens of frontier settlers. Shawnee Chief Cornstalk mobilized his people to defend themselves against the inevitable American counterattack. As a leading investor in the land companies, Virginia Governor John Murray, Earl Dunmore, had a vested interest in the war’s outcome. He organized a two pronged offensive to crush the tribes and deprive them of the contested territory. He led 1,700 men from Fort Pitt down the Ohio River while Colonel Andrew Lewis led 800 men down the Kanawha River to the Ohio River where they would join forces. On October 10, Lewis and men were encamped at Point Pleasant where the Kanawha River drains into the Ohio River. That day Cornstalk and his warriors attacked and nearly overran the Virginians. In all, the Indians killed seventy-five and wounded 140 Virginians while suffering around forty dead. They withdrew across the Ohio after exhausting their ammunition. Dunmore’s army penetrated deep into southeastern Ohio not far from clusters of Indian villages on the Scioto and Muskingham rivers. Cornstalk and other chiefs agreed to accept peace before the Virginians destroyed their homes. Under the treaty of Camp Charlotte, signed on October 19, 1774, they accepted the Stanwix treaty’s land cession. Logan did not attend the treaty but promised to uphold it with these heartbreaking words: “There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of my women and children. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. . . . Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”45 Benjamin Franklin learned of Congress’s resolutions in early December. He drew up “Hints for Conversation on the Terms of Accommodation” and, accompanied by Massachusetts’ agents Arthur Lee and William Bollah, presented them to William Legge, Lord Dartmouth, the American Department Secretary on December 2. Whitehall would revoke the Tea Act, the Coercive Acts, and the Quebec Act; give all duties collected in America to the colony that generated them; accept the right of each colony alone to tax itself; and let colonists make and sell anything to anyone anywhere. In return the Americans would pay for the destroyed tea; defend themselves; contribute to Britain’s defense in war; pay the salaries of the governors; and swear allegiance to the king. Dartmouth promised to forward Franklin’s proposals to George III. On December 24, Dartmouth informed Franklin that the king read the proposals with interest and would forward them to parliament after it met early the next year.

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Had parliament accepted the proposals, Britain might have indefinitely retained the American colonies as associates within its empire. Instead, Prime Minister Frederick, lord North and other conservatives convinced the king and a majority in parliament to reject any compromise. On February 9, Parliament declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and condemned the other colonies for aiding it. Parliament passed the New England Restraining Act that suspended the fishing and trade rights of those five colonies; it later amended the act to extend to all the colonies. Once again the British government had unwittingly asserted policies that made what it most feared more likely. On March 20, 1775 Franklin sailed for Philadelphia filled with trepidation for America’s future. NOTES 1. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1. 2. Thomas P. Slaughter, Independence The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014), 125. 3. David M. Kennedy and Thomas A. Bailey, eds, The American Spirit: United States History as Seen by Contemporaries (Boston: Centage, 2016), 75. 4. For good overviews of the critical events from 1763 to 1775, see: Lawrence Henry Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution, 1763–1775 (New York: Harper and Row, 1954); Merrell Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); Ian R. Christie and Benjamin W. Labaree, Empire or Independence, 1760–1776 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976); Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992); Jon Butler, Becoming American: The Revolution before 1776 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000); Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Thomas P. Slaughter, Independence The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014). For good overviews on British administration, trade, and tax policies, see: Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967); Dora M. Clark, The Rise of the British Treasury: Colonial Administration in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Archon Books, 1969); Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974); Robert A. Becker, Revolution, Reform, and the Politics of American Taxation, 1763–1783 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980). For good books on American class divisions and their broader economic, social, and political dynamics, see: Marcus W. Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Class in Colonial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931); Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America

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(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965); Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979); Alice Hanson Jones, The Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). 5. Franklin Reader, 616–17. 6. Peter D.G. Thomas, “The Reorganization of Empire: British,” Encyclopedia, 3: 689. 7. Colin G. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12. 8. Julian Gymn, “British Government Spending and the North American Colonies,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 8 (1980): 74–84; Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 55. For an excellent book that puts these financial problems in perspective, see: John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). 9. Christie and Labaree, Empire or Independence, 28–29. 10. For the best biographies, see: Christopher Hibbet, George III: A Personal History (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Jeremy Black, George III: America’s Last King (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2006); Jance Hadlow, A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of George III (New York: Henry Holt, 2014). 11. Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act: Prologue to Revolution (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute, 1995, 3. 12. Franklin Reader, 571–72. 13. George Washington to Robert Casey, September 20, 1765, Washington Papers, vol. 7, 400–1. 14. Franklin Reader, 569. 15. For the best books on the development of America’s revolutionary movement, see: Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967); Morton White, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985); Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1991); Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014). 16. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: William Young and Abraham Small, 1803), 1, 107–8. 17. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 187. 18. Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” (1774), Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Letters of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Modern Library, 1998), 273–89. 19. For studies on how the British military provoked American nationalism, see: John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the

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American Revolution (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965); Douglas Edward Leach, Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial Americas, 1677–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Sylvia R. Frey, The British Soldier in America: A Social History of Military Life in the Revolutionary Period (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012). 20. Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., The Press and the American Revolution (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1980). 21. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 8. 22. John Frederick Woolverton, “Anglicanism,” Encyclopedia, 3: 572. 23. For the best overviews, see: Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial Policy, 1760–1775 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 24. For good overviews on the currency issue, see: Joseph Albert Ernest, Money and Politics in America, 1755–1775: A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1973); John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978). 25. Christie and Labaree, Empire or Independence, 32; Peter D.G. Thomas, “The Grenville Program, 1763–1765,” Blackwell Encyclopedia, 108. 26. Peter D.G. Thomas, “The Stamp Act Crisis and Its Repercussions Including the Quartering Act Controversy,” Blackwell Encyclopedia, 113. 27. Peter D.G. Thomas, “The Reorganization of Empire: British,” Encyclopedia, 3: 693. 28. Peter D.G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763–1767 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); John L. Bullion, A Great and Necessary Measure: George Grenville and the Genesis of the Stamp Act, 1763–1765 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982); Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act. 29. George Morrow, The Greatest Lawyer that Ever Lived Patrick Henry at the Bar of History (Williamsburg, Virginia: Tetford Publications, 2011), 11. For another good biography, see: Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Revolution (New York: Grove Press, 1991). 30. Thomas, “Stamp Act Crisis,” Blackwell Encyclopedia, 121. 31. Everett Emerson, ed., American Literature: The Revolutionary Years, 1764– 1789 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 7. 32. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution. vol. 10. The Triumphant Empire: Thunder Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 10, 378. 33. Pitt reply to Grenville, January 14, 1766, William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle, eds., The Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2, 369–73. 34. Franklin Reader, 575–602. 35. Slaughter, Independence, 248. 36. Thomas, “Stamp Act Crisis,” Blackwell Encyclopedia, 125.

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37. For an excellent account of New York City from 1753 to 1775, see: Richard M. Ketchum, Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York (New York: Henry Holt, 2002). For an excellent account of New York City from 1765 to 1783, see: Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2002). 38. Harlow Giles Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000). 39. For the best book on the Tea Act and its consequences, see: Nick Bunker, An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America (New York: Vintage, 2014). 40. Thomas P. Slaughter, Independence The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014), 108; Bunker, Empire on the Edge, 156–57. 41. Ira Stoll, Samuel Adams: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2008). 42. David Ammerman, In the Common Cause: The American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 (Richmond: University Press of Virginia, 1974). 43. George Washington to George Fairfax, June 10, 1774, Washington Papers, vol. 10, 96. 44. Francis Jennings, The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 151. 45. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 63.

Chapter 11

Liberty

“Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon! But if they want to have a war let it begin here. ” (Captain John Parker)1 “Yes, we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” (Benjamin Franklin)2 “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. . . . We have the power to begin the world over again.” (Thomas Paine)3 “We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled do, and in the name & by the authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & . . . we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us & the parliament or people of Great Britain.” (Declaration of Independence)4

General Thomas Gage arrived in Boston from New York and assumed his duties as governor on May 13, 1774. By then he had spent nineteen years in the colonies, having first arrived as an aide to General Edward Braddock in April 1755. He was an administrative rather than combat officer. His experiences under fire during the French and Indian War were limited to two battles, the Monongahela and Fort Carillon, in which his whereabouts were vague and 283

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anything but heroic. Nonetheless, he rose through the ranks to become North America’s commander-in-chief in 1765, a post he held for a decade. His wife, Margaret Kemble, a New Jersey beauty linked to the wealthy Schulyer clan, apparently spied for the Americans.5 Given all that, Gage should have understood America and Americans. Instead, he displayed willful ignorance about the people he struggled mightily to control, including his wife. For Gage, being the Massachusetts governor was endlessly frustrating, humiliating, and infuriating. He tried threats, bribes, and kindness to convince the defiant populace to comply with the crown’s laws. Nothing worked. No matter what he did, relations worsened. By this point the only thing that could have bettered relations would have been for the British army to pack up and leave and for the Coercive Acts to expire. But that exceeded Gage’s powers. The Coercive Acts that shut Boston to any trade except food and firewood severely punished loyalists and patriots alike, and thus brutally pushed ever more of the former into the latter’s ranks. Even when Gage won, he lost. For instance, on September 1, 1774, he had 260 troops march half a dozen miles to a gunpowder magazine in Cambridge, seize the 250 barrels stored there, and cart them to Boston where they were secured on Castle William Island. The colonists reacted by tolling bells and mustering the militia. A crowd of 4,000 protesters massed on Cambridge’s Common. Sons of Liberty smashed the windows of prominent loyalists. On September 21, patriot leaders from across Massachusetts met in Worcester and resolved that one of three members of every militia company would be “minute men” prepared to march and fight at the first alarm; ideally the minutemen were the youngest, fittest, bravest, and best shots of the able-bodied men from age sixteen to sixty that served in a militia company. In October, the former Massachusetts assembly illegally reconvened, declared itself the First Provincial Congress, and setup Committees of Correspondence, Safety, and Supply that coordinated the massing of war supplies, established networks of spies and couriers, and organized each county’s militia companies into a regiment. That rebel government and army cast a long dark shadow on Gage’s own. On two occasions, militia bested Gage’s troops. In mid-December 1774, he sent several hundred marines aboard several warships to reinforce a munitions depot at Fort William and Mary at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Before the marines arrived, four hundred local militiamen learned of the expedition, disarmed the half dozen redcoat guards, seized the one hundred gunpowder kegs, and carted them to safety. Then, on February 26, 1775, Gage sailed 240 troops to Marblehead, where they disembarked and marched five miles to seize a munitions depot in Salem. Salem’s militiamen mustered and, as the redcoats approached, simply raised the drawbridge across the North River. The British could only sputter in rage as they endured the catcalls of the

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Americans on the far side. Finally, the British commander ordered his troops to about-face and march back to the transports. Gage was dead set that his next operation would triumph. The spur to do so came on April 14, when Gage received instructions from William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, the American Department secretary of state, to arrest the Massachusetts rebel leaders. Spies informed Gage of rebel arsenals at Concord and Worcester. Two reasons compelled him to target Concord. It was only sixteen miles from Boston to Concord compared to forty miles to Worcester. Concord was where the Massachusetts Congress had met from March 22 until April 15. For the operation, Gage designated the grenadier and light infantry companies of his regiments, and gave command of those 909 troops to Colonel Francis Smith, with Major John Pitcairn heading the advanced guard. After nightfall on April 18, those troops would row from Boston across the bay to Cambridge, then march to Concord, where they should arrive just before dawn. Ideally, they would surprise any lingering rebel leaders and seize them and the supplies before they could be dispersed.6 Learning of this pending operation, Joseph Warren sent Paul Revere to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Sam Adams on the morning of April 16. Those leaders then sent word to patriots at Concord to convey the supplies to a safe place. After Revere returned, Warren sent him to Charlestown where he would await a signal from the tower of the North Church, one lamp if the redcoats marched over Boston neck and two lamps if they rowed across to the mainland. After Revere spotted two lamps in the tower, he galloped off. Meanwhile, another courier named William Dawes rode from Boston to spread the alarm along a different route. At each village, each courier pounded on the door of the local militia captain and shouted that the regulars were coming. As the militiamen assembled, designated riders galloped off to carry word to other villages in an expanding network. At Lexington, Revere roused Hancock and Adams along with the militia from their sleep. The patriot leaders slipped away as Captain John Parker gathered his seventy or so men on the village green just before dawn on April 19. An hour later Major Pitcairn and the advanced guard marched up in the early light. Parker tersely spoke these words to his nervous men: “Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon! But if they want to have a war let it begin here!”7 After Pitcairn deployed his troops to face the militia, he shouted, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels, and disperse!” A shot was fired. A British officer cried, “Fire, by God, fire!” The redcoat volley torn through the American ranks, killing seven men and wounding nine, then the redcoats charged and routed the rest. The British had drawn the first blood. Pitcairn reassembled his troops and they marched to Concord, followed by Smith and the rest of the force. At Concord, Smith had most of his men search

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the buildings while he deployed companies to secure the north and south bridges over the stream that meandered west of town. The soldiers hauled whatever supplies they found and piled them in the center of the town then torched them. With Colonel James Bartlett in command, Concord’s militia company and companies from four nearby villages assembled at Punkatasset Hill a mile northwest of town and overlooking the north bridge. The militiamen watched as several redcoat companies marched up, crossed the bridge, and deployed into line just as black acrid smoke rose from Concord’s center. “Will you let them burn the town?” someone shouted. Bartlett ordered his men to advance down the hill toward the bridge. As they approached, the British officer hastily withdrew his men back across the bridge, redeployed them in line, and ordered them to fire. The balls killed two men and wounded another. Bartlett yelled fire. The American volley killed three redcoats and wounded nine more. Bartlett and his men charged across the bridge. The British fled before them back to Concord. Smith ordered his men to withdraw on the long road to Boston. The redcoats faced the first resistance at Merriam’s Corner a mile away. In a short firefight, the British scattered the Americans then resumed their march. From there the redcoats faced a nearly constant gauntlet of gunfire from militia companies that either lay in wait, marched against a flank, or pursued from the rear. The Americans might have eventually killed or captured all of them had Gage not dispatched a relief column of 1,000 troops led by Colonel Hugh Percy. In all, the British suffered 272 casualties including sixty-five dead, 180 wounded, and twenty-seven missing, and the Americans ninety-four including fifty dead, thirty-nine wounded, and five missing in a running battle that only ended after the last redcoats straggled across Boston neck into city.8 What the Americans did next was even more astonishing. They besieged the British in Boston. Reinforcements streamed into the lines, swelling the American army to over 10,000 men within a few weeks. Massachusetts’s Congress appointed General Artemas Ward, a distinguished French and Indian War veteran, to command those men. Gage expressed to Whitehall his own astonishment at the series of defeats the Americans had inflicted on his troops: “These people show a spirit and conduct against us that they never showed against the French, and everybody judged them from their former appearance and behavior . . . which has led many into great mistakes.”9 Two enterprising men simultaneously thought of two vulnerable British garrisons that most likely had not yet heard of the fighting. Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point stood fourteen miles from each other on lower Lake Champlain’s western shore. Benedict Arnold was an enterprising merchant and militia captain from New Haven, Connecticut.10 Ethan Allen was the colonel of the Green Mountain Boys, militiamen who lived in settlements between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River, a land they called

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Vermont and wanted to be a colony independent from the overlapping claims of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York.11 Arnold talked the Massachusetts Committee of Safety into granting him a colonel’s commission and orders to muster local settlers to take those forts. On May 9, Arnold ran into Allen and his men who were on their way to accomplish the same mission. After a tense confrontation over who should command the effort, they finally agreed jointly to do so. On the night of May 10, Allen and Arnold led their men up to Fort Ticonderoga’s open main gate. The sentry lowered his musket and pulled the trigger but it misfired. He fled inside to rouse the garrison. The Americans rushed in and deployed to cover the barracks as Allen stomped up the stairs to the commander’s residence, pounded on the door, and demanded that he surrender. The astonished officer did so. The Americans repeated that feat the next day at Crown Point. The day that Fort Ticonderoga surrendered, the Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia. The delegates swiftly agreed to forward all available men, money, munitions, and provisions to the army swelling at Boston. On May 24, Congress elected John Hancock as president with powers only to chair Congressional debates and committee assignments. On June 14, Congress voted to transform the militia army at Boston into a Continental Army to which all the colonies would contribute regiments in proportion to their respective populations; each colony would still control its own militia. In any event George Washington would have stood out among the delegates.12 Although a few other men matched or exceeded his six-foot height, none exuded his austere gravitas that commanded respect. Washington was a man of few but carefully chosen words. Here too he stood out in a garrulous, animated crowd. But atop all that he was the only delegate in uniform, a dark blue swallow-tailed jacket with buff colored cuffs and facings that he had worn during the French and Indian War. A handful of delegates were veterans but none had fought in more battles than Washington nor led more troops. He was then forty-one years old and had spent most of the eighteen years since he hung up his sword managing his beloved Mount Vernon plantation. Washington was highly intelligent but restricted expressing his often profound, articulate thoughts to writing. His dislike of public speaking was compounded by the dentures he wore and the often college-educated company that he kept; he was painfully aware of being toothless and ill-schooled. He hid his natural shyness behind a forbidding countenance that deterred familiar talk or touch. He was an eighteenth-century gentleman who believed in a natural hierarchy where those below deferred to those above. The social equality among New Englanders was especially galling because it bridged the vital gap between officers and men. Yet, ironically, perhaps his closest friend was William Lee, a slave he bought in 1767 and who became his constant

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companion as servant, bodyguard, and alter ego. They probably said little to each other but felt enormous comfort together on horseback or in camp. To make a decision, Washington gathered those most knowledgeable about the issue, listened carefully to their perspectives, asked critical questions, pondered, and then chose. It was John Adams who nominated Washington to command the Continental Army when the issue arose on June 15. In doing so, Adams cited not just Washington’s military experience but the political importance of promoting national unity by having a southerner lead what was then an exclusively New England army. The vote in favor was unanimous. Washington harbored no illusions about the challenges before him. He grimly noted that “the resources of Britain were . . . inexhaustible . . . her fleets covered the ocean and . . . her troops had harvested laurels in every quarter of the globe.” Nonetheless, he was confident that the Americans would eventually prevail given “the unconquerable resolution of our citizens, the conscious rectitude of our cause, and a confident trust that we should not be forsaken by heaven.”13 As Washington prepared to head to Boston, electrifying news of a major battle reached Philadelphia. On the night of June 16, American troops led by Colonel William Prescott had fortified Breed’s Hill above Charlestown and just a quarter mile across the bay from Boston. Bunker Hill lay behind Breed’s Hill. Cannons on those heights could bombard any British warships anchored before them and even redcoats camped on Boston Common a mile away. Upon learning that the Americans had fortified those heights, Gage consulted with three recently arrived brigadier generals, William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. They swiftly agreed to capture those hills and drive off the rebels. Gage assigned Howe to command that mission, with 1,500 light infantry and grenadiers in the assault, supported by a 700-line infantry. Around noon on June 17, the assault troops packed into twentyeight barges, rowed across to Charlestown, disembarked, and formed ranks. Most faced the slope of Breed’s Hill; the light infantry massed in column on the right along the Mystic River. At Howe’s command the redcoats marched forward. The American volleys tore gaps through the advancing British until they broke and ran. Howe and his officers rallied the troops and ordered them to charge again. The American fire decimated the redcoat ranks and the survivors fled. For the third assault, Howe split his forces, with the grenadiers heading straight up the slope littered with their dead, dying, and grievously wounded comrades, and a regiment around the American right flank. The Americans might have repelled that assault but most had exhausted their ammunition and lacked bayonets for their muskets. This time the Americans retreated. The British captured Breed’s Hill in a truly Pyrrhic victory, having suffered more than a thousand casualties, 226 dead and 828 wounded, to American losses of 140 killed and 271 wounded. The high proportion of

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American dead to wounded came from redcoats bayonetting many who still lived. Washington reached Boston on July 2. His priority was to transform a mob of more than 16,000 men into an army.14 The troops had to be trained, provisioned, sheltered, shod, kept from deserting or looting, and cared for when they got sick or lame. After inspecting each regiment, he began issuing a stream of orders concerning camp layouts, sanitation, uniforms, drill, guard duty, discipline, proper relations between officers and enlisted men, hospitals, entrenchments, and countless other issues. Each day quartermaster officers scribbled promissory notes to civilians whose goods and services they requisitioned and endured the sharp questions about just when those checks could be cashed for hard coin. The burden of such endless frustrations lay heavy on Washington who admitted: “No man perhaps since the first Institution of armies ever commanded one under more difficult Circumstances than I have done. To enumerate the particulars would fill a volume—many of my difficulties and distresses were of so peculiar a cast that in order to conceal them from the enemy, I was obliged to conceal them from my friends, indeed from my own army.”15 Having designated an army and a commander for the siege of Boston, the most farsighted members of Congress turned their eyes northward to Canada. The delegates passed a resolution to send a letter to Canada’s inhabitants, asking them to join their struggle. On June 27, Congress ordered General Philip Schuyler to muster and command an army to invade and liberate Canada from British rule. That was the most vital issue they would decide for the next year. Meanwhile they immersed themselves in the minutia of governance. They setup a post office and committees to oversee the war, finance, diplomacy, Indian affairs, loyalists, and trade. Issues were debated and decided by a “Committee of the Whole” or all sixty-five delegates. The voting was by colony with one vote for each regardless of its population’s relative size. Unanimity was required for all critical issues involving the war; a nine vote majority passed relatively minor administrative resolutions. The delegates worked long hours six days a week, resting only on Sunday. The delegates agreed that not just the British people but all nations should understand why the Americans had revolted. On July 6, Congress passed the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms,” which Thomas Jefferson wrote and John Dickinson edited. America’s leaders at once boasted and warned that: “Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable.” Dickinson tried to compensate for the Declaration’s assertiveness by penning what became known as the “Olive Branch Petition” that Congress passed on July 8 and sent to George III. In humble language, Congress asked the king to reconcile with compromises the dispute between

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the colonies and parliament. In doing so, Congress gave the king a facesaving way to end the worsening conflict. With utter disdain, George III read the petition on September 1. Just the previous week, on August 23, he had declared all the colonies in rebellion. Now, with his army besieged in Boston, his only realistic means of actually ending the rebellion was in his hands. As usual, the king and his minions embraced their hardline principles and rejected any notion of conceding anything to the ungrateful Americans. At first he was inclined contemptuously to ignore the petition but his advisors convinced him to issue a statement. That came on October 26, when George III condemned the American rebels and pledged to destroy them and restore his rightful royal rule. The stunning news that the king had rejected the Olive Branch Petition reached the colonies in early January 1776. That convinced most patriots that the only option now before them was independence. All along the British committed other acts that alienated more American hearts and minds. Admiral Samuel Graves ordered his fleet to bombard into rubble Falmouth (Portsmouth), Maine, then part of Massachusetts on October 18, 1775. Like the other royal governors, Virginia’s fled his capital; unlike all of them except Gage, he remained in America. John Murray, Earl Dunmore established his headquarters at Norfolk on Chesapeake Bay’s south side. On November 7, 1775, he issued and distributed a declaration that any slaves or indentured servants who escaped and enlisted in the British army would win their freedom. In late November, Colonel William Woodford led 860 militiamen up to the bridge that crossed the river near Norfolk, and erected breastworks. On December 2, Dunmore ordered 400 troops to charge across the bridge. The American volleys decimated the British ranks, killing or wounding as many as 102 redcoats. As more American militiamen gathered near Norfolk, Dunmore finally abandoned the port on January 1, 1776. As his troops, family, and loyalists sailed away, he had Norfolk burned behind him. Parliament passed the Prohibitory Act that imposed an embargo on the colonies on December 22, 1775. British warships and privateers could seize all American merchant ships along with vessels from other countries trading with the colonies. News of that latest outrageous act prompted Congress to declare on April 6, 1776, that Americans could trade with any country but Britain. In doing so the Americans liberated themselves economically before they liberated themselves politically, although the Royal Navy’s expanding blockade rendered that freedom problematic. To counter that Congress began issuing letters of marque for ship owners to capture British vessels, bring them to port, and sell the vessel and its cargo as lawful spoils of war. Meanwhile news arriving from Canada went from good to disappointing to disastrous. Schuyler got sick so the army command passed to General Richard Montgomery. The 1,500 man expedition headed north down Lake

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Champlain in late August and besieged Fort Saint Johns on the Richelieu River. The invasion became two-pronged after Benedict Arnold, now a general, talked Washington into letting him lead an expedition to Canada via the Kennebec River and Chaudière River route. Each general overcame tough challenges before him. Arnold got half of the 1,100 men he started with to complete the grueling 400-mile trek to Québec, which they reached on November 14. Montgomery’s men captured Fort St. John, Montreal, Sorel, and Trois Rivieres before reaching Québec on December 5. Not only did the Americans lack heavy cannons with which to conduct a proper siege, but the 900 regulars and 300 militia were actually outgunned by the 1,800 redcoats and militia defending the city. Although General Guy Carleton, Canada’s governor, refused the American surrender demand, he also failed to attack the outnumbered and ill-supplied enemy. During a snowstorm on December 31, Montgomery and Arnold led attacks on the city, but were repulsed. Montgomery was among the 50 Americans killed, Arnold among the 34 wounded, while 341 Americans were captured at the cost of merely five British killed and 14 wounded. Carleton failed to follow up his lopsided victory by attacking the American camp. For four and a half months the remnants of the dispirited American army shadowed Québec until a British fleet packed with several thousand troops dropped anchor before the city in May 1776. That forced the Americans on a steady retreat whereby they abandoned all their positions in Canada and returned to Fort Ticonderoga by July 1776. Nearly 5,000 Americans died or were captured in what was the war’s longest and deadliest campaign.16 A deadlock persisted at Boston with neither side powerful enough to defeat the other. The British had fewer troops and no stomach for launching another futile Breed’s Hill assault on the American lines. The Americans lacked heavy artillery capable of battering the British fleet and fortifications. Washington had placed Colonel Henry Knox in charge of the army’s artillery, which then consisted of a score of mostly light field pieces. Knox was a Boston bookseller and autodidact in military affairs.17 He suggested that there were plenty of heavy cannons at Fort Ticonderoga. Washington assigned him the task of bringing those guns to Boston. Knox and his men transported forty-four cannons, fourteen mortars, and a howitzer along with tons of munitions on the 300 mile, fifty-six day mid-winter trudge from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. By March 1776, Washington had around 16,000 troops, 9,000 continentals and 7,000 militiamen. General William Howe now commanded the British army that reinforcements had swollen to 9,000 troops. Dorchester Heights lay a mile south of Boston. Neither side occupied that steep hundred foot plateau that overlooked Boston Bay and the British fleet. It was Washington’s idea to fortify those heights and mass the heavy cannons there. That would force Gage to make a tough choice between trying to

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capture that position or withdraw his fleet from the bay. Washington meticulously planned the operation. The frozen ground would have taken too long to sculpt into trenches and redoubts. Instead, he had his men fill hundreds of barrels with earth and construct abatis or long poles spiked with sharpened stakes. His troops and cannons would mass behind the barrels and shoot at the British as they struggled up the slopes. Those pre-fabricated fortifications were packed onto ox-drawn wagons. Nearby were a dozen heavy artillery pieces and ammunition carts drawn by draft animals. Somehow overnight all that had to be conveyed from the American lines to Dorchester Heights and positioned before daylight. To conduct the operation, Washington tapped General Israel Putnam, who had captained a ranger company during the French and Indian War. Putnam and his men put everything including themselves in place during the long night that stretched between March 4 and 5, as 800 troops protected 1,200 laborers. To mask that operation, Washington ordered the batteries at the villages of Roxbury, Cobble Hill, and Lechmere Point to bombard the British positions before them. After the sun rose the next morning, the British were stunned to see Dorchester Heights bristling with fortifications studded with cannon barrels. Those guns commenced a slow steady, carefully aimed fire at the British fleet. The warships returned fire with over 700 rounds but most shots fell short of that distant plateau. The fleet moved beyond cannon shot. Howe actually organized a force to pack into longboats and attack those heights but a storm forced him to cancel that plan. He then sent word to Washington that if the bombardment persisted, he would abandon Boston and burn it behind him. Washington agreed to silence his guns. That was actually to the American advantage since munitions were running low. Over the next two weeks, Howe packed aboard the transports 9,000 troops and 2,300 loyalists, then, on March 17, the armada sailed away bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Washington had won a stunning bloodless victory. Not a single redcoat remained in the thirteen American colonies. That freedom would not last long. Washington was well aware that a British armada would eventually return with even more troops, warships, and transports and he anticipated its most logical target. He ordered most of his regiments to march two hundred miles down the coast to New York City. Like countless other dimensions of leading an army of amateurs, just that march was a Herculean challenge. Enough draft animals had to be gathered to pull all the cannons and wagons packed with munitions, provisions, and tents. Meanwhile the Americans scored decisive victories in the Carolinas. Howe dispatched General Henry Clinton and 2,200 troops on transports protected by a fleet commanded by Admiral Peter Parker. The mission was to join forces at Wilmington, North Carolina with 1,500 loyal militiamen. On February 27, 1776, Colonel James Moore commanded the 1,000 patriot militia

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that routed the loyalist militia led by Colonel Donald Macdonald at Moore’s Creek, killing around 50 and capturing over 850 that day and the following week. Upon learning of that debacle, Clinton and Parker decided to sail on to Charleston. General Charles Lee commanded the American fortifications at Charleston and at Fort Moultrie on neighboring Sullivan Island. On June 28, after five frigates bombarded Fort Moultrie, redcoats in longboats attempted to land but were repulsed. The British suffered around 220 casualties, one frigate sunk, and four damaged compared to twelve Americans killed and twenty-five wounded. Convinced that Charleston was impregnable, Clinton and Parker agreed to sail the armada to New York. Washington and his staff reached New York City on April 13 and began deploying regiments to fortify heights in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Despite Washington’s constant efforts, his army did not look or act like one. The men wore a mélange of civilian and military clothes, tended to be indifferent to hygiene, carried muskets of varying calibers, had few bayonets, and, most troubling, lacked the precision and unquestioning obedience of professional troops. Literally and figuratively Washington tried to keep them in line with drills, guard duty, and punishments but nothing seemed to work. He redoubled his efforts on June 9, after learning that from Halifax a vast British armada had sailed bound for New York. Washington understood that the island city of New York was indefensible given British naval superiority. The warships could cover the transports as they landed the army virtually anywhere, including behind American lines up the Hudson River or on Long Island Sound. If they did so the American would be cut off in their positions in Manhattan and Brooklyn and would have to surrender. It was imperative to escape before that happened. Washington explained his attrition strategy for winning the war: “Our hopes are not placed in any particular city or spot of ground but in preserving a good army to take advantage of favorable opportunities and waste and defeat the enemy by piece meal.”18 Congress rejected his request to burn New York City and withdraw to the mainland. Washington had two forts, Washington and Lee, constructed on opposite sides a dozen miles up the Hudson River. Ideally the cannons in those forts would defeat an attempt by British warships and transports to sail upriver and land to cutoff his retreat. The first flotilla of the British armada sailed into New York Bay on June 29, 1776. Maryland private Daniel McCurtin described the awe-inspiring sight: “I could not believe my eyes . . . when in about ten minutes the whole bay was full of shipping as ever it could be. I declare that I thought all London was afloat.”19 The redcoats disembarked and secured undefended Staten Island. That was just the first wave of vessels and troops. Within six weeks, over two hundred and fifty ships were anchored in New York Bay and 33,000

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troops, 23,000 British and 10,000 German, were encamped on Staten Island. Washington issued these words to his army: “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves. . . . The fate of unborn millions will now depend . . . on the courage of this army.”20 An outpouring of pamphlets either suggesting or championing American independence had followed Lexington and Concord, including most prominently Samuel Langdon’s Government Corrupted by Vice and Recovered by Righteousness (1775), Alexander Hamilton’s The Farmer Refuted (1775), Charles Ingalls’ The True Interest of America (1776), and John Adams’ Thoughts on Government (1776). Then, in a class of its own was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. The author was thirty-seven years old when he first set foot in America on November 30, 1774. Like countless other immigrants Paine had turned his back on a life of setbacks in his native country. In England he was fired twice as a customs official, his first wife died childless, his second wife left him, and his business failed. He was highly intelligent and self-taught but had no outlet to express his liberal views. He decided to start fresh in America. Before leaving he made a striking impression on Benjamin Franklin who gave him letters of introduction. He presented himself to Franklin’s son-inlaw, Robert Aitken, who owned Philadelphia’s largest bookstore and was about to produce the Pennsylvania Magazine. Aitken hired Paine as an assistant. Paine immediately embraced the American cause after learning of the battles of Lexington and Concord. He began furiously writing Common Sense in November 1775 and Aitken published it on January 8, 1776. Paine’s arguments were electrifying. He castigated the “tyrannical” British monarchy for a long list of crimes against the Americans. He asserted that the time for reconciliation was long past and that Americans must now declare independence and rule themselves because “a government of our own is a natural right.” His most stirring lines read: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. . . . We have the power to begin the world over again.” Common Sense articulated what countless Americans thought. One hundred thousand copies were sold in 1776 alone.21 As a popular consensus for independence congealed, people debated just what powers and purposes a sovereign American nation should embody. In spring 1776, John Adams, a congressional delegate from Massachusetts, and his wife Abigail exchanged bittersweet letters on these critical questions.22 Abigail penned lines that have since become celebrated for their reason and humor: “I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to

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them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to mount a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.” To that John dismissively but affectionately replied: “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colleges were grown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your letter was the first Intimidation that another Tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented—This is a matter too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.”23 Congress essentially declared independence on May 10, by calling on the colonies to form their own free governments.24 In doing so, Congress spurred a process that was already well underway. From April 1 through July 4, around ninety governments, mostly towns but also North Carolina (April 12), Rhode Island (May 4), Virginia (May 15), Connecticut (June 14), New Hampshire (June 15), Delaware (June 15), New Jersey (June 22), Pennsylvania (June 24), and Maryland (June 28) issued their own declarations of independence.25 Congress took another critical step on May 15, when it resolved that King George III was ultimately responsible for all the troubles between America and Britain. That same day, Virginia’s House of Burgesses authorized its congressional delegation to propose that Congress declare these colonies “free and independent.” On June 7, Virginian Richard Henry Lee presented to Congress this resolution: “That these United Colonies are, of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” For four days Congress debated the question before, on June 11, voting to establish a committee to draft a declaration of independence, while each delegation sought permission from its assembly to approve that declaration. The committee included John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. It was Adams who suggested that Jefferson actually write the document because he was the most gifted writer among them as well as a Virginian who gave southern ballast to such a critical defining act. The previous year Jefferson had achieved acclaim among patriots and infamy among loyalists on both sides of the Atlantic for his “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” in which, with elegant prose and relentless logic, he repudiated monarchial rule and declared the American colonies essentially independent states merely associated with the United Kingdom. Now he was asked to compose a declaration that severed that last

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strand of connection with the mother country. In some ways his entire life had been a preparation for this moment.26 He was born on Virginia’s frontier at Shadwell near Charlottesville in 1743. He revealed his genius at five years old by his ability to read adult books. He graduated from William and Mary College in 1762; got his law license in 1767 after a five year apprenticeship with George Wythe; and was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1769, Virginia’s constitutional convention in early 1776, and Congress in May 1776. He was a somewhat gawky six foot two inches tall; dark reddish hair framed a sharp-featured face. He was shy and soft-spoken for being a lawyer and politician. He was at his best presiding over a group of like-minded intimates around a table with delicious foods and wines. He was happily married to Martha Skelton for a decade until 1782, when an undiagnosed disease killed her four months after giving birth to their sixth child; he never remarried. In 1768, he began building what would become the magnificent architectural masterpiece of a mansion he called Monticello atop a mountain with the Blue Ridge Mountains westward and the piedmont stretching in all other directions. Over a hundred slaves worked at that house and the plantation’s croplands below. Philosophically he was a classic liberal of the Enlightenment. The committee scrutinized Jefferson’s draft word by word, made adjustments, and, on June 28, submitted it to Congress. The delegates discussed each line and ended up revising about one quarter of the text. The final draft was ready on July 2, when every delegation except New York’s voted for independence; New York’s delegates would not receive authorization to do so until July 19. At one point in the proceedings, President Hancock called on the delegations to “hang together.” To this Franklin quipped, “Yes, we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”27 Two days later, on July 4, John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence on behalf of Congress. Only after New York gave its approval did Congress open the Declaration for signature by all fifty-six delegates. The Declaration of Independence has three parts. The second and longest part is a list of 28 violations of American rights by the British crown which collectively justified American independence. The first is the most eloquent expression of natural law ever written and the third is the actual assertion of independence: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to this separation. “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that

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among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their happiness and safety.” The final paragraph asserts: “We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled do, and in the name & by the authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & . . . we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us & the parliament or people of Great Britain . . . and that as free & independent states they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” As Jefferson later famously said, the Declaration of Independence was “the expression of the American mind.” That “mind” developed during the preceding seventeenth decades as English subjects morphed into American citizens while their values morphed from communitarianism and theocracy into humanism and individualism. Constant often overlapping struggles for power among the colonists, between the colonists and Indians, between the colonists and foreign powers, and between the colonists and the mother country propelled those inseparable metamorphoses. Then, in the two and a half centuries since July 4, 1776, Americans have transformed themselves into the world’s most powerful nation and most prominent, if flawed liberal democracy. Of America’s astonishing array of hard and soft powers, none are greater than the principles expressed by the Declaration of Independence. NOTES 1. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 189. 2. H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 512. 3. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick, eds., The Thomas Paine Reader, (New York: Penguin, 1987), 92, 65, 109. 4. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of SeventySix: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants, (New York: Bonanza Books, 1983), 319. 5. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 96.

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6. For the best books on the reasons for, events, and results of the Lexington and Concord campaign, see: Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996); David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Arthur Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord: The Beginnings of the War of the American Revolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000); Joseph Andrews, Revolutionary Boston, Lexington, and Concord: The Shots Heard `Round the World (Boston: Commonwealth Editions, 2002); Walter R. Borneman, American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2015). 7. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 189. 8. Ibid, 320–21. 9. Thomas Gage to War Secretary Barrington, June 26, 1775, Clarence E. Carter, ed., The Correspondance of General Thomas Gage, 1763–1775, vol. 2 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1931–33), 686–87. 10. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold: Revolutionary Hero, An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York: Dorset Press, 2001). 11. Willard Sterne Randall, Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012). 12. For the best biographies of numerous on Washington, see: Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Peter R. Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006); Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2010). 13. Chernow, Washington, 177. 14. For books on Washington and the army, see: David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Bruce Chadwick, George Washington’s War: The Forging of a Revolutionary Leader and the American Presidency (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2005); Bruce Chadwick, The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men behind America’s First Fight for Freedom (Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2007); Stephen Brumwell, George Washington: Gentleman Warrior (New York: Quercus, 2010). 15. George Washington to John Washington, March 31, 1776, Washington Papers, vol. 4, 569. 16. Mark R. Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774–1776 (Amherst, Massachusetts: University Press of New England, 2013); Gavin K. Wright, Poisoned by Lies and Hypocrisy: America’s First Attempt to Bring Liberty to Canada, 1775–1776 (Toronto: Dundern Press, 2014). 17. Mark Puls, Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 18. Randall, Washington, 299. 19. Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, 31. 20. General Orders, July 2, 1776, Washington Papers, Revolution, 5:180. 21. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick, eds., The Thomas Paine Reader (New York: Penguin, 1987), 92, 65, 109.

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22. John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1992); David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); Nancy Taylor Robinson, A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, a Modern Love Story (New York: Head to Wind Publishing, 2017). 23. Francis D. Cogliano, Revolutionary America, 1763–1815 (New York: Routledge, 2000), 183. 24. For excellent different perspectives, see: Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976); Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1997); Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2015). 25. For a complete list, see: Maier, American Scripture, 217–23. 26. For the best biographies, see: Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010); Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012). 27. H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 512.

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SECONDARY Abrams, Ann. The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origin (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999). Abrams, Jeanne F. Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and Health (New York: New York University Press, 2013). Ackroyd, Peter. Rebellion: The History from James I to the Glorious Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015). Alberts, Robert C. Benjamin West: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971). Allen, Danielle. Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2015). Allen, Paula Gunn. Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). Ammerman, David L. In the Common Cause: The American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 (Richmond: University Press of Virginia, 1974). Ammerman, David L., and Philip D. Morgan. Books about Early America: 2001 Titles, Williamsburg (Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American Life, 1990). Anderson, Fred. A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and the Society in the Seven Year’s War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985). Anderson, Fred. The Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Vintage, 2001). Anderson, Mark R. The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774–1776 (Amherst, Massachusetts: University Press of New England, 2013). Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633 (Boston: New England Historical Genealogical Society, 1995). ———. The Plymouth Migration: Immigration to Plymouth Colony, 1620–1633 (Boston: New England Historical Genealogical Society, 2004).

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Index

Abercromby, James, 223, 234, 235–37, 238, 239 Adair, James, 167 Adams, Abigail, 170, 294–95 Adams, John, 3, 175, 255, 261, 262, 272, 288, 294, 295 Adams, Samuel, 261, 262, 285 Addison, Joseph, 260 Africa, 4, 5, 12, 16, 39, 41, 110, 138, 139, 234, 244 Aitken, Robert, 294 Alexander, Cosmo, 172 Alexander, James, 164 Allen, Ethan, 286, 287 Allen, Joseph, 114 Alsop, George, 117 Amadas, Philip, 47 America/United States (Colonies/States) Connecticut, 9, 26, 90, 92, 94, 99, 104, 115, 135, 143, 145, 149, 170, 175, 206, 208, 223, 265, 267, 295 Charter, 105 Hartford, 99, 105, 145 Hatfield, 99 Moor’s Indian Charity School, 182 New Haven, 92, 99, 184 Sunderland, 99

Wethersfield, 99 Windsor, 99 Delaware, 11, 28, 175, 176, 267, 295 New Swedish Company, 176 Newcastle, 176 Wilmington, 176 Georgia, 5, 13, 26, 163, 175, 177, 180, 184, 204, 232, 267, 276 Augusta, 13 Savannah, 13, 175, 177 Maryland, 5, 11, 99–100, 103, 107, 140, 149, 170, 175, 176, 177, 182, 208, 224, 225, 232, 247, 267, 295 Baltimore, 107 Frederick, 13 General Assembly, 99, 100 Saint Mary’s City, 99 Massachusetts, 9–11, 26, 73–84, 89–94, 98, 104, 107, 109, 111, 116, 135, 142–46, 149, 163, 175, 203, 206, 208, 223, 225. 232, 265, 267, 275, 278, 284, 287 Assembly, 267, 270, 274–75, 275–76 Boston, 13, 14, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 104, 105, 106, 108, 114, 119, 122, 135, 149, 152, 160, 333

334 Index

170, 173, 175, 176, 183, 185, 197, 198, 199, 206, 208, 262, 267, 270, 271, 274, 274–75, 283 Boston Gazette, 262 Boston Massacre, 272 Boston Tea Party, 274 Cambridge, 116, 285 Cape Cod, 43, 45, 49, 56, 77, 78, 132 Casco Bay, 49 Caucus Club, 262 Charleston, 285, 288 Company of Adventurers, 76, 80, 88 Concord, 285 Congress, 283, 285, 286 Deerfield, 99 Enfield, 184 Eastport, 55 General Court/Council, 91–94, 96–97, 114, 115, 116, 117, 134, 135, 151, 165, 206 Ipswich, 122 Lexington, 285 Liberty incident, 271 Marblehead, 284 Massachusetts Bay Company, 90 Mayflower Compact, 73, 77 Merry Mount, 83–64, 89 Northampton, 99, 183, 184 Pilgrims/Separatists, 57, 73–77 Plymouth, 14, 19, 73–84, 92, 83, 99, 104, 131, 143, 144, 149 Puritanism, 91–92 Quincy, 83 Romney incident, 271 Roxbury, 97 Salem, 89, 91, 93, 284 Salem Witch Trials, 121–23, 186 Springfield, 99 Suffolk Resolves, 275–76 Taunton, 143 Thanksgiving, 73–74, 86 Undertakers, 82–83

Virginia Company, 76 Wessagusset, 81 Wethersfield, 135 Worcester, 285 New Hampshire, 13, 23, 24, 25, 26, 84, 92, 99, 104, 175, 196–97, 206, 208, 223, 232, 265, 267, 287, 295 Exeter, 99 Hanover, 182 Portsmouth, 13, 99, 284 New Jersey, 11, 26, 105, 160, 175, 176, 178, 206, 209, 222, 265, 267, 284, 295 Burlington, 176, 178 East Jersey, 105, 176 Perth Amboy, 176, 178 West Jersey, 103, 105, 176 New York, 5, 11, 26, 43, 101, 105, 106, 107, 112, 115, 140, 148, 150, 153, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 183, 184, 198, 206, 208, 209, 224, 225, 228, 231, 232, 247, 265, 267, 275, 287, 292, 295 Albany, 108, 137, 138, 140, 149, 150, 180, 198, 200, 209, 224, 228, 229 Battle of Golden Hill, 271–72 Council and Assembly, 164 Charter of Liberties, 101 Long Island, 138, 182 New York City, 13, 106–8, 171, 175, 182, 185, 186, 228, 232, 243, 267, 269, 270, 274 Mount Johnson, 228 Schenectady, 149, 150 Staten Island, 25 North Carolina, 5, 9, 26, 44, 47, 175, 176–77, 232, 245, 267, 296 Bath, 177 Cape Fear, 55 Eden, 177 New Berne, 177 Pamlico Sound, 47

Index

Roanoke, 47–49 Wilmington, 177, 292 Pennsylvania, 5, 13, 19, 26, 102–4, 163, 175, 176, 177, 179, 181, 183, 206, 208, 209, 217–18, 224, 225, 232, 238, 247, 267, 275, 295 Bethlehem, 179 Black Boys, 250 Charter, 14 Framework of Government, 103 Germantown, 248 Lancaster, 13, 248 Paxton Boys, 248 Pennsbury Manor, 104 Pennsylvania Journal, 267 Philadelphia, viii, 13, 14, 102, 104, 161–62, 164, 173, 175, 179, 185, 248, 265, 270, 274, 276, 287 Philadelphia Chronicle, 262 Vandalia Company, 276 York, 13 Walking Purchase, 181 Rhode Island, 22, 26, 94–95, 97, 98, 104, 115, 149, 175, 176, 183, 206, 208, 223, 266, 267, 295 Gaspee Incident, 272–73 Newport, 175, 182 Narragansett Bay, 43, 135, 143, 271, 272 Providence, 94, 178 South Carolina, 5, 9, 26, 42, 43, 102, 175, 196, 202, 204, 232, 245, 246, 267 Charles Town, 102, 171, 175, 176, 180, 182, 196, 198, 205, 274 Vermont, 286–87 Green Mountain Boys, 286–87 Virginia, 5, 12, 13, 19, 22, 26, 47, 53–69, 81, 100, 111, 116, 136–37, 140–42, 175, 183, 190, 217–18, 227, 232, 238, 245, 247, 263, 267, 275, 295

335

Alexandria Conference, 225, 228 Charles City, 68 Company of Adventurers and Planters, 63 Fairfield Resolves, 275 Harpers Ferry, 13 Henrico, 66, 68, 141 Hog Island, 64 House of Burgesses, 68, 114, 141, 219, 266, 275, 295, 296 Jamestown, viii, 6, 12, 14, 19, 53–69, 110, 116, 131, 136, 141 Kecoughtan, 68 Loyal Company, 217 Nonesuch, 63 Norfolk, 225 Ohio Company, 217, 218, 219, 263 Richmond, 57 Shenandoah Valley, 13, 140, 142 Virginia Company, 48, 55, 56, 58, 62, 63, 67, 69, 93, 276 Virginia Resolves, 266 Williamsburg, 168, 171, 219, 275 America/United States (post-1776 states) Alabama, 44, 200 Illinois, 250 Kansas, 44 Kentucky, 179, 251 Maine, 202 Oregon, 43 Tennessee, 180, 251 America/United States (culture and identity) Architecture, 172 Crafts, 172 Identity, viii, 5, 27–33, 159–60 Literature, 117–21, 166–71 Newspapers, 165 Painting, 172–73 Printing and Publications, 28, 116–17, 262 Theater, 171–72 America/United States (economy, population)

336 Index

agriculture, 8, 9, 14, 31–32, 67, 108, 109, 113 currencies/finance, 10, 11, 109, 150 economy, 6–15, 174–75 fishes and furs, 9, 83, 111 Great Wagon Road, 13 immigration, 29, 55–56, 68, 69, 76–78, 89–90 infrastructure/transportation, 13, 178–79 manufacturing/shipbuilding/mining, 9–11, 31–32, 108, 113, 177–80 music, 174 piracy, 111, 178 population, 6, 7, 8, 11–12, 113, 175 postal System, 13–14 slavery, 8, 11–12, 68, 110–11, 175, 185–86 trade (Indian), 111–13, 134, 180–81, 216 trade/Smuggling (international), 5, 8– 9, 109, 110, 177–78, 257, 264 witches, 92, 121–23, 182–83, 186 America/United States (Education) College of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania, 168 College of New Jersey/Princeton, 170, 181, 184 Dartmouth College, 181, 182 Harvard College, 28, 116, 181 King’s College/Columbia University, 168, 181 Rhode Island College/Brown University, 181 Queen’s College/Rutgers University, 181 Schooling, 115–16 University of Virginia, 172 William and Mary College, 181, 296 Yale College/University, 181, 184 America/United States (government and politics), 25–27 Albany Congress and Plan of Government, 163, 224, 228 Boycotts, 266–67, 270, 274, 276

Colonial Governments, 25–27 Committee of Correspondance, 276 Committee of Inspection, 276 Committee of Safety, 164, 287 Continental Association, 276 Council of New England, 99, 142, 144, 145 Declaration of Independence, viii, 32, 164, 181, 186, 243, 283, 295–97 Declaration of Rights, 267–68 Declaration of Rights and Resolves, 276 Declaration on the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, 289 Dominion of New England, 99, 104–5, 107, 176 Federalist Papers, 181 First Continental Congress, 276 Olive Branch Petition, 289–90 Second Continental Congress, 113, 164, 287, 289, 290, 293, 295, 296 Sons of Liberty, 263, 265, 266, 267, 271–72, 274, 284 Stamp Act Congress, 267–68 State Governments, 295 Zenger Case, 165–66 America/United States (regions) Appalachians, 112, 141, 180, 198, 215, 247 Adirondacks, 229 Carolinas, 112, 176–77, 180, 200, 201, 292 Chesapeake Bay, 9, 48, 56, 60–61, 101, 109, 136, 138, 140 Cumberland Gap, 250 Frontier, 30–32 Great Lakes, 18, 24, 147, 203, 215–17, 239, 244, 245, 247, 249 Great Plains, 24, 43 Lake Champlain, 133, 147, 150, 199, 200, 224, 227, 228, 229, 231, 235–37, 239, 243, 290

Index

Lake Erie, 154, 197, 200, 215, 217, 218, 139, 247, 249 Lake George, 24, 229, 233–34, 235–37 Lake Huron, 154, 197 Lake Oneida, 237 Lake Ontario, 147, 149, 153, 154, 180, 200, 203, 215, 224, 230, 237, 239, 247 Mid-Atlantic Colonies, 7, 10, 12, 174, 175, 177 New England, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18, 27, 57, 83, 101, 107, 112, 114, 115, 134, 138, 142, 145–46, 149, 150, 174, 175, 176, 177, 197, 198, 199, 202, 207, 263, 275 Southern/South Atlantic Colonies, 7, 12, 174, 175 West Coast, 43 America/United States (religion and philosophy) Anglicans, 26, 104, 107, 182, 185, 262 Arminians, 183 Baptists, 182, 183, 184 Catholics, 99–101, 182, 183 Communitarianism, 159, 170–71 Congregationalists, 26, 105, 182, 185, 262 Deism, 32, 160, 184 Dutch Reform, 182 German Reform, 182 Great Awakening/Revival, 183–85 Humanism, 159, 160 Individualism, 159, 170–71 Jews, 101, 102, 182, 183 Liberalism, 115 Lutherans, 101, 182 Materialism, 31–32, 160 Methodists, 183, 184 Moravians, 114 New/Old Lights, 184, 185 Presbyterians, 182, 183, 262 Protestantism, 115, 182

337

Puritanism, 22, 26, 31, 74–76, 98, 108, 114–15, 120–22, 146, 182, 183 Quakers, 98–99, 101–3, 114, 115, 164, 182, 183 Romanticism, 32 Unitarians, 183 America/United States (warfare and institutions) Continental Army, 287, 288, 289 Hybrid, 61 Indian, 17–21, 22 Privateers, 290 Rangers, 22–23 America/United States (works of literature) Adair, James “History of American Indians,” 167 Adams, John “Dissertation on Law,” 261 “Thoughts on Government,” 261, 294 Adams, Samuel “Appeal to the World,” 261 Alsop, George “Province of Maryland,” 117 Ashbridge, Elizabeth “Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge,” 170 Barton, David “New England Primer,” 115 Bartram, John “Observations,” 167 “Travels,” 167 Beverly, Robert “History of Virginia,” 167 Bland, Richard “Rights of the British Colonies,” 261 Bradford, William “Plymouth Plantation,” 117 Bradstreet, Anne “The Tenth Muse,” 119 Bray, Thomas

338 Index

“Present State of Religion in North America,” 166–67 Brereton, John “Discovery of Virginia, 117 Byrd, William “History of the Dividing Line,” 166 “Secret History,” 166 “Secret Diary,” 166 Calef, Robert “More Wonders of the Invisible World,” 121 Catesby, Mark “Natural History,” 167 Chauncey, Charles “Enthusiasm,” 185 “State of Religion in New England,” 185 Church, Benjamin “Entertaining Passages Relating to King Philip’s War,” 22–23, 168 Colden, Cadwallader “History of the Five Nations,” 166 “Cause of Gravitation,” 166 “Yellow Fever,” 167 Cook, Ebenezer “The Sotweed Factor,” 170 Cotton, John “The Bloody Tenet Washed,” 95 “The Way of Life,” 120 “God’s Promise to His Plantations,” 120 Danforth, Samuel “New England’s Errand into the Wilderness,” 120 Dickenson, John “Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer,” 261, 270 Dulany, Daniel “Taxes in the British Colonies,” 260–61 Easton, John “Indian War,” 118 Edwards, Jonathan

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” 32, 184 “Surprising Work of God,” 169 “Personal Narrative,” 169 “A Faithful Narrative,” 183–84 “Distinguishing Marks of the Spirit of God,” 184 Evan, Lewis “Essays,” 167 Franklin, Benjamin “Observations on the Increase of Mankind,” 6 “Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge,” 161 “Experiments and Observations in Electricity,” 161 “Proposal for Education,” 162 “Use of Money,” 162 “Time, Credit, and Money,” 162 “How to Get Rich,” 162 “Necessity of a Paper Currency,” 162 “Plan for Saving,” 162 “Advice for the Choice of a Mistress,” 162 “Constitutions of the Free Masons,” 162 “Regulation of the Junto,” 162 “Plan for the American Philosophical Society,” 162 “Considering the Increase of Mankind,” 162 “Interests of Britain Considered,” 162 “Dissertation on Liberty,” 162 “Silence Dogwood Papers,” 163 “Edict by the King of Prussia,” 163 “Speech of Polly Baker,” 163 “Cool Thought on our Public Affairs,” 260 “Rules by which a Great Empire may be Reduced,” 260 Freneau, Philip, and Henry Brackenridge

Index

“Rising Glory of America,” 170 Godfrey, Thomas “Prince of Parthia,” 171 Hamilton, Andrew “Trial of John Zenger,” 166 Hamilton, Alexander “Full Vindication,” 261 “Farmer Refuted,” 294 Hammon, Jupiter “An Evening Thought,” 169 Hammond, Joseph “Leah and Rachel,” 117 Harriot, Thomas “Land of Virginia,” 117 Hooker, Thomas “Soul’s Preparation,” 120 “Soul’s Humiliation,” 120 “Soul’s Vocation,” 120 “Soul’s Implantation,” 120 Hopkins, Stephen “Rights of the Colonies,” 261 Horsmanden, David “Conspiracy for Burning New York,” 167 Hubbard, William “Troubles with the Indians,” 118 Hunter, Robert “Farce in Three Acts,” 171 Hutchinson, Thomas “History of Massachusetts,” 167 Ingalls, Charles “True Interest of America,” 294 Jefferson, Thomas “Summary of British North America,” 261, 295–96 Johnson, Edward “New England,” 117 Johnson, Samuel “Genius of America,” 167 Joselyn, John “New England’s Rarities,” 117 Keith, George “Travels,” 167 Langdon, Samuel “Government Corrupted,” 294

339

Lawson, John “Voyage to Carolina,” 167 MacSpartan, James “America Dissected,” 167 Mason, John “History of the Pequot War,” 167 Mather, Cotton “History of New England,” 117 “Humiliations followed by Deliverance,” 120 “Witchcraft and Possessions,” 121 “Wonders of the Invisible World,” 121 “Angel of Bethesda,” 167 “Great Works of Christ in America,” 168 “Essay on the Good,” 168 “Christian Philosopher,” 168 Mather, Increase “History of the War,” 118 “Relations of Troubles,” 118 “Illustrious Providences,” 121 “Concerning Evil Spirits,” 121 Mitchell, John/Arthur Young “American Husbandry, 14 Morgan, John “Medical Schools,” 167 Morton, Thomas “New English Canaan,” 117 Neal, David “History of New England,” 167 “History of the Puritans,” 167 Nowell, Samuel “Abraham in Arms,” 118 Otis, James “Rights of the Colonies,” 260 “Defense of the Halifax Libel,” 260 “Vindication of the British Colonies,” 260 Paine, Thomas “Common Sense,” 32, 294 Penn, William “Truth Exalted,” 103 “Province of Pennsylvania,” 117

340 Index

Prince, Thomas “History of New England,” 167 Rogers, Robert “A Concise History of North America,” 23, 168 “Journals of Major Rogers,” 23, 168 “Ponteach or, the Savages of North America,” 23, 171–72 “Rules for Ranging” 23 Rowlandson, Mary “Captivity Narrative,” 118–19 Saltonstall, Nathaniel “Indian War,” 118 Seabury, Samuel “Free Thoughts,” 261 Sewall, Samuel “Apocalyptical Phenomena,” 121 Shepard, Thomas “The Sound Believer,” 120 “The Sincere Convert,” 120 Smith, John “True Relations,” 117 “Map of Virginia,” 117 “Description of New England,” 117 “General History of Virginia,” 117 Smith, William “Pennsylvania,” 167 “Expedition against Ohio Indians,” 167 “Bouquet’s Expedition,” 167 Taylor, Edward “Infinity,” 120 Thompson, Benjamin “New England Crisis,” 120 “New England Tears,” 120 Trumball, Jonathan “Future Glory of America,” 170 “Progress of Dullness,” 170 “M’Fingal,” 170 Underhill, John “News from America,” 117 Wharton, Edward

“New England’s Sufferings,” 118 Wheatley, Phyllis “Poems on Subjects Religious and Moral,” 169 Whitaker, Alexander “News from Virginia,” 117 White, John “A Brief and True Account,” 47 Wigglesworth, Michael “Day of Doom,” 120 Willard, Samuel “Miscellany Observations,” 121 Williams, John “Redeemed Captive,” 168 Williams, Roger “Bloody Tenet of Persecution,” 95 Wilson, James “Legislative Authority in British Parliament,” 361 Winslow, Edward “Good News from New England,” 81 Winthrop, John “City on a Hill,” 29, 32, 120 “A Modell of Christian Charity,” 90–90 “On Liberty,” 120 Witherspoon, John “Letters on Education,” 181 Woolman, John “Journal,” 169 “Keeping of Negroes,” 186 Amherst, Jeffrey, 24–25, 234–35, 238, 239, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249 Anderson, Hugh, 170 Andros, Edmund, 104–6, 148 Arabs, 40 Argall, Samuel, 63, 66 Arnold, Benedict, 286, 287 Arredondo, Antonio, 205 Ashbridge, Elizabeth, 170 Asia, 5, 39, 40 China, 40, 45, 273

Index

India, 16, 138, 234 Japan, 40, 41, 42, 138 Mongolia, 40 Southeast, 41, 138 Atkin, Edmund, 246 Austria/Hapsburg, 43, 137, 148, 195, 205, 210, 230–31, 244 Charles IV, 205 Leopold, 195 Maria Theresa, 205, 210, 230 Silesia, 205, 210 Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, 44 Ayer, Samuel, 198 Ayllon, Lucas, 42 Bacon, Nathaniel, 141–42 Baffin Island, 45 Baltimore, Cecil Calvert, lord, 99, 100 Barlowe, Arthur, 47 Barnwell, John, 202 Barre, Isaac, 258 Bartlett, James, 286 Bartram, John, 161, 167 Basques, 45 battles/raids/massacres/atrocities/sieges/ campaigns Annapolis Royale, 206, 207 Alba Iulia, 54 Beaufort, 209 Bloody Brook, 145 Bloody Marsh, 204 Bloody Morning Scout/Lake George, 229–30 Bloody Run, 247 Boston, 286, 288, 291–92 Brookfield, 144 Brunswick, 209 Buenos Aires, 244 Bunker-Breed Hill, 288–89, 291 Bushy Run, 248 Casco, 197, 206 Cape Elizabeth, 150 Cartagena, 47, 204, 210 Concord, 22, 256, 285–86, 294 Conestoga, 248

341

Deerfield, 144, 197, 203 Deering Oaks, 149 Dettingen, 206, 210 Devil’s Hole, 249 Downs, 138 Dover, 148 Falmouth, 290 Fontenoy, 210 Fort Beausejour, 225 Fort Bull, 231 Fort Casco, 149 Fort Carillon, 235–37, 239, 283 Fort Detroit, 247, 248 Fort Dummer, 209 Fort Duquesne/Pitt, 238, 247, 248, 249 Fort Edward Augustus, 247 Fort Frontenac, 237–38 Fort Independence, 25 Fort Joseph, 247 Fort Loudon, 245–46 Fort Loyal, 149 Fort Massachusetts, 208 Fort Miami, 247 Fort Michilimackinac, 247 Fort Moultrie, 293 Fort Natchez, 201 Fort Necessity, 220–21 Fort Niagara, 239–41 Fort Number Four, 208, 209 Fort Oswego, 231–32 Fort Ouiatenon, 247 Fort Pemaquid, 149 Fort Penobscot, 150 Fort Rosalie, 201 Fort Royal (Nova Scotia), 149–50, 198 Fort Saint George, 207 Fort Saint John, 291 Fort Saint Louis, 148 Fort San Carlos, 47, 204, 205 Fort San Marcos, 196 Fort Sandusky, 247 Fort Venango, 247 Fort William Henry (Georgia), 152

342 Index

Fort William Henry (New York), 232, 233–34 Georgetown, 202 Great Bridge, 290 Great Meadow Fort 207 Great Swamp 145 Gully Hole 204 Havana 244 Haverhill 198 Heathcote Hill 25 Jamestown 58 Jumonville Glen 220, 221 Kecoughtan 65 Kennebunk 148 Kinsale 49 Kloster Zeven 231 La Belle Famille 240 La Prairie 150, 151 La Rochelle 133 Lachine 149 Leffedt 210 Lexington 8, 256, 285, 294 Livermore Falls 150 Louisbourg 22, 206–07, 230, 234–35 Manila 244 Mariam’s Corner 286 Mobile 196 Monongahela 226–27, 230, 237, 283 Moore’s Creek 293 Mystic 135 Nevis 198 New Dartmouth 148 New York City 293–94 Norfolk 290 Norridgewock 203 Northfield 144, 203 Oyster Bay 152 Pelee Peninsula 249 Pensacola 196, 198 Piscataway 140 Plains of Abraham 224, 242 Porto Bello 46, 204 Pre, 209 Rehoboth, 144 Quebec, 150–51, 241–42, 291

Saco, 197 Saint Augustine, 47 Saint Foy, 242 Saint Kitts/Christopher, 198 Salmon Falls, 149 San Simon Island, 205 Saratoga, 207, 209 Schenectady, 149, 209 Spanish Armadas, 48, 49 Springfield, 144 Squakeag, 144 Stono, 204 Swansea, 143–44 Taunton, 144 Turner Falls, 145 Vigo, 47 Wells, 152, 197 Wessagusset, 81–82 Westfield, 203 Winter Harbor, 197 Yarmouth, 148 York, 151–52, 197 Bavaria, 206 Beaubassin, Michel de, 197 Beaumarchais, Pierre, 163 Beccaria, Cesare, 359 Bedford, John Russell, duke, 255 Bellomont, Richard Coote, lord, 178 Benbow, John, 196 Berkeley, William, 136, 137, 140–42 Beaujeu, Daniel de, 226 Beverly, Robert, 167 Bienville, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, 201 Blackstone, William, 260 Blake, Robert, 139 Blainville, Pierre Joseph Celoron de, 217 Blanchard, Joseph, 24 Bland, Richard, 261 Bodin, Jean, 259 Bolingbroke, Henry, 260 Boone, Daniel, viii, 32, 180 Boscawen, Edward, 224 Bougainville, Louis de, 243 Bouquet, Henry, 238, 248, 249, 250

Index

Bourlamaque, Francois Charles, 239 Brackenridge, Hugh, 170 Braddock, Edward, 222–27, 237, 283 Bradford, William, 80, 81, 82, 84, 93, 117, 131, 135–36 Bradstreet, Anne, viii, 119, 170 Bradstreet, John, 21, 206, 207, 237–38, 248, 249 Bradstreet, Simon, 119 Brereton, John, 117 Brewster, William, 76 Bridges, Charles, 172 Britain/England/United Kingdom Acts Boston Port, 274 Coercive/Intolerant, 274–76, 284 Currency, 11, 263–64 Declaratory, 269 Enumeration, 100 Hat, 5 Impartial Administration of Justice, 274–75 Massachusetts Government, 274 Molasses, 264 Ministry, 107 Mutiny, 105, 107, 269 Naval Stores, 10 Navigation, 5, 8, 100, 109–10, 139, 258 Plantation Duty, 100 Proclamation of 1763, 247–48, 250, 263 Prohibitory, 290 Quartering, 269, 275 Quebec, 275, 276 Restraining, 269–70 Stamp, 266–69 Staple, 100 Statute of Monopolies, 108–9 Sugar/American Duties, 264–66 Suppression of Piracy, 178 Supremacy, 45, 74 Tea, 272–74, 276 Townsend, 270, 272 Uniformity, 119

343

White Pine, 10 Woolens, 5 Canada, 244, 245, 246 Annapolis Royale, 199, 216 Halifax, 216, 232, 265, 291, 293 Hudson Bay, 45, 153, 199 Newfoundland, 153, 199, 244, 275 Nova Scotia/Acadia, 199, 207, 216, 225, 244 Montreal, 291 Quebec, 263, 275, 276 Sorel, 291 Trois Rivieres, 291 Church of England/Anglicism, 74, 75, 76, 90 cities in Britain Bristol, 44 Cork, 49 Gravesend, 67 London, 55, 80, 90, 93, 103, 107, 139, 149, 163, 166, 178, 198, 205, 273 Plymouth, 46, 76 Southampton, 76 colonies and cities (other than Canada and America) Antigua, 10, 110, 244 Barbados, 100, 110, 244 Bengal, 244 Bermuda, 64, 100, 136, 245 Bombay, 245 Domingue, 244 East Florida, 244, 263 Gibraltar, 199, 244 Ireland, 4, 6, 227 Jamaica, 110, 111 Minorca, 199, 244 Montserrat, 110 Nevis, 110, 199, 244 Saint Christopher/Kitts, 110, 196, 199, 244 Saint Vincent, 244 Tobago, 244 West Florida, 244, 263

344 Index

companies Anglo-Scot, 134 East India, vii–viii, 138, 273, 274 Royal African, 12, 110 West India, 138 economy and society, 5, 6, 45, 174, 257 Bank of England, 273 population, 6 Renaissance, 131 Royal Society, 163, 166, 173 trade, 4–5, 8 government and politics, 26, 28 Admiralty courts, 178, 264, 265, 270, 271, 273 Bill of Rights 105 Commonwealth, 26, 100, 109, 139 Glorious Revolution, 26, 105, 107 Board of Trade, 101, 142, 258 Magna Carta, 258 Parliament, 26, 105, 111, 173, 203, 256, 268–69, 275, 278, 290 policies, vii, 4–5, 8, 12, 15, 16, 21, 39, 78, 111, 112, 176, 195–96, 198, 206, 208, 215, 224, 230–31, 232, 234, 255–56, 262–63 Privy Council, 142, 164 restoration, 95 Tory Party, 26 Whig Party, 26 monarchs Anne, 176, 195, 196, 198 Charles I, 84, 89, 90, 93, 99, 100, 131–32, 133 Charles II, 10, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 109, 119, 139, 176 Edward IV, 44 Elizabeth I, 45–47, 74, 121, 138 George I, 177 George II, 16, 177, 204, 205, 206, 217, 218, 221, 230–31, 234, 243

George III, 243, 247, 250, 256, 257, 263, 266, 268, 269, 272, 273, 275, 277, 289–90, 295 Henrietta Maria, 133 Henry VII, 44 Henry VIII, 45, 74 James I, 46, 55, 62, 63, 69, 131, 133, 139 James II, 101, 104, 105, 149, 176, 195 Mary I, 74 Mary II, 105, 106, 107 William III, 105, 106, 107, 110, 148, 153, 154, 195 Scotland, 28, 139 Brown, John, 273 Browne, Thomas, 75 Buckingham, George Villiers, duke, 133 Bull, William, 246, 274 Burgh, James, 260 Burgis, William, 173 Burgoyne, John, 288 Burke, Edmund, 258 Byrd, William, viii, 166, 246 Byzantine Empire, 41 Cabot, John, 44–45, 78 Cabot, Sebastian, 45 Cabrillo, Juan, 43 Cadillac, Antoine de la Mothe, 197, 199–200 Calef, Robert, 121 Calliere, Louis Hector, 151, 153 Calvin, John, 32 Carlton, Guy, 291 Cartier, Jacques, 43–44, 132 Cartwright, George, 139 Carver, John, 76, 77, 80 Carver, Jonathan, 24 Catesby, Mark, 167 Cervantes, Miquel, 16 Champlain, Samuel, 78, 132–34 Chancy, Charles, 185 Chaste, Aymar du, 132 Chubb, Pascoe, 152

Index

Church, Benjamin, viii, 17, 22–23, 144–45, 149–53, 168, 197 Church, Thomas, 22, 168 Claypoole, James, 173 Clinton, George, 207, 209, 228 Clinton, Henry, 288, 292 Coddington, William, 97 Coke, Edward, 93 Colden, Cadwallader, 164, 166, 167, 267, 272 Colles, Christopher, 179 Columbus, Christopher, 41–42 Contrecoeur, Claude Pierre Pecaudy de, 219, 226 Condorcet, Antoine Nicolas, 163 Converse, John, 152 Coode, John, 107 Cook, Ebenezer, 170 Cooper, Samuel, 262 Copernicus, Nicolas, 40 Copley, John Singleton, 173 Cornbury, Edward Hyde, lord, 176 Coronado, Francisco, 43 Corte-Real, Gaspar, 45 Corte-Real, Miguel, 45 Cortez, Hernando, 43 Cotton, John, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 120 Croft, Thomas, 44 Croghan, George, 217–18, 247, 250 Crosby, William, 165, 185 Cromwell, Oliver, 100, 139 Cumberland, William Augustus, duke, 231 Cushman, Robert, 76 Dale, Thomas, 66 D’Anville, Jean Baptiste, 207 Dare, Virginia, 48 Dalyell, James, 247 Dartmouth, William Legge, earl, 277, 285 Davis, John, 45 Dawkins, Henry, 173 De La Warr, Thomas West, lord la, 63–66 De Lancey, James, 165, 225, 228

345

Delanoy, Abraham, 172 Denonville, Jacques Rene, 148 Dermer, Thomas, 78 Dias, Bartholomew, 41 Dickenson, John, 261, 270, 289 Dieskau, Jean Armand, 224, 229, 230, 231 Dinwiddie, Robert, 218, 219, 222, 225, 226 Dongan, Thomas, 89, 101, 112, 148 Doolittle, Amos, 173 Donaldson, Arthur, 179 Douglas, David, 170 Drake, Francis, 45–48 Drucour, Augustin de, 235 Du Pont, Francois Grave, 132 Duchambon, Louis du Pont, 207 Dudingston, William, 272–73 Dudley, Joseph, 104, 196–97 Dudley, Thomas, 94, 119 Dulany, Daniel, 261 Dumas, Jean, 226 Dummer, William, 203 Dunbar, Thomas, 227 Dunmore, James Murray, earl, 275, 290 Duquesne, Ange de Menneville de, 218 Durand, John, 172 Dustin, Hannah, 153 Duvivier, Francois, 206 Dyer, Mary, 96 Easton, John, 118 Eaton, Anne, 98 Edwards, Jonathan, 32, 168–69, 183–84 Eliott, John, 116, 146 Emmes, Thomas, 173 Endicott, John, 84, 95, 135 Engelhardt, Justus, 172 Enlightenment, 159, 164 Estevan, 42 Estourmelles, Constant Louis, 207 Farmar, Robert, 250 Fauquier, Francis, 266 Fawkes, Guy, 49

346 Index

Fekes, Robert, 172–73 Fernandez, Simon, 48, 78 Ferelo, Bartolome, 43 Fletcher, Benjamin, 107, 153 Forbes, John, 234, 238, 245 Ford, Philip, 104 Forts and Fortress Cities Fort Algernon, 65 Fort Beausejour, 216, 224 Fort Bull, 231, 237 Fort Carillon/Ticonderoga, 24, 229, 231, 232, 234, 238, 286, 287 Fort Caroline, 44 Fort Casco, 149 Fort Cataraqui, 147 Fort Chambly, 147, 150, 243 Fort Charles, 137 Fort Christiana, 176 Fort Crevecoeur, 147 Fort Cumberland, 226 Fort de Chartres, 250 Fort Denonville/Conti, 200 Fort Duquesne/Pitt, 219, 224, 225, 226, 234, 238, 250, 251 Fort Detroit, 24, 197, 200, 249, 250 Fort Edward, 229, 230, 233 Fort Fredericka, 205 Fort Frontenac, 147, 149, 153, 230, 239 Fort Gaspereau, 218, 224, 225 Fort George, 185, 269 Fort Hill, 105 Fort James, 106, 107 Fort King George, 202 Fort l’Assumption, 201 Fort Isle aux Noix, 239, 243 Fort Lawrence, 216 Fort Le Boeuf, 218, 219, 239 Fort Lee, 293 Fort Loyal, 149 Fort Machault/Venango, 218, 219, 226, 238, 239 Fort Michilimackinac, 24, 25 Fort Moore, 202

Fort Nassau, 137 Fort Natchitoches, 200 Fort Necessity, 220 Fort Niagara, 147, 148, 149, 200, 224, 230, 239, 249 Fort Ouiatenon, 250 Fort Orange, 138, 139, 140 Fort Oswego, 180–81, 203, 230, 231, 240, 242, 243 Fort Pemaquid, 149 Fort Penobscot, 150 Fort Presque Isle, 218, 240 Fort Presentation, 243 Fort Prudhomme, 147 Fort Raytown, 238 Fort Rosalie, 200 Fort Royal (South Carolina), 202 Fort Royal (Virginia), 137 Fort Saint Frederic/Crown Point, 24, 200, 224, 230, 231, 236, 239, 242, 286, 287, 291 Fort Saint Joseph, 147 Fort Saint Therese, 147 Fort Saint Louis, 147 Fort San Carlos, 204 Fort San Luis, 196 Fort San Marcos, 15 Fort Sandusky, 249 Fort Saybrook, 135 Fort Sorel, 147 Fort Stanwix, 238 Fort Toulouse, 200, 246 Fort Washington, 293 Fort William, 231, 232 Fort William and Mary, 284 Fort William Henry (New York), 232 Fort William Henry (Georgia), 205 Fort William Henry (Maine), 152 Fox, George, 98, 103 France/French, 4, 15, 16–18, 21, 39, 43, 45, 104, 110, 111, 112, 123, 131–34, 180, 195, 196, 199, 200–1, 203, 206, 255 cities

Index

Bordeaux, 133 Saint Malo, 43 Canada, 15, 24, 132–34, 146, 147, 148, 180–81, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 209, 216, 221, 223, 233, 244 Acadians, 216, 224, 225 Cape Breton, 200, 216 Cape Rouge, 44 Lachine, 43, 149 Louisbourg, 200, 206, 208, 210, 216, 224, 232, 233, 234 Montreal, 132, 146, 148, 149, 151, 153–54, 180, 199, 200, 239, 243 Newfoundland, 43–46, 197 Nova Scotia, 44, 45, 56, 132, 197, 200 Quebec, 43, 132, 134, 146, 150, 152, 199, 208, 216, 224, 231, 239, 242 Sable Island, 44 Saint Croix, 132 Trois Rivieres, 146 Port Royal, 132, 197 Huguenots, 133 kings Charles IX, 44 Francis I, 43 Henri III, 44 Henri IV, 132 Louis XIII, 133 Louis XIV, 147, 148, 153, 195, 199 Louis XV, 16, 206, 221, 230–31, 244 Louisiana, 16, 147, 180, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 216, 221, 223, 244 Biloxi, 197 Mobile, 196 New Orleans, 200, 244, 250 New France, 16, 112, 146, 216, 221, 223, 245 other colonies

347

Charlesfort, 44 Dominica, 244 Grenada, 244 Guadeloupe, 244 Martinique, 244 Miquelon, 244 Newfoundland, 244 Saint Lucia, 244 Saint Pierre, 244 Saint Vincent, 244 Senegal, 244 Tobago, 244 policies, 21, 43–44, 147, 199–200, 206, 215, 223, 224, 230–31 Franklin, Benjamin, viii, 3, 6, 11, 13, 32, 33, 154–64, 170, 179, 181, 184, 223–26, 228, 248, 255, 259, 260, 268, 276, 277, 278, 283, 294, 295, 296 American Philosophical Society 161, 179 Academy 162 Association 161 Gazette, 161, 223 Insurance Company, 161–62 Junto, 160, 161 Library Company, 161 Poor Richard’s Almanac, 161 Union Fire Company, 161 Franklin, Deborah, 160 Franklin, James, 165, 173 Franklin, William, 160 Fraser, Alexander, 250 Freneau, Philip, 170 Frelinghuysen, Theodore, 183 Frobisher, Martin, 45 Frontenac, Louis, 149, 150, 152, 153 Fry, Josiah, 219, 220 Gage, Margaret Kemble, 284 Gage, Thomas, 247, 248, 269, 270, 275, 283–84, 285, 286, 290–92 Galilei, Galileo, 40 Galissoniere, Roland Michel Barrin de la, 217

348 Index

Galloway, Joseph, 276 Gama, Vasco da, 41 Gates, George, 64, 65 Gates, Thomas, 55 Gilbert, Humphrey, 46 Gilbert, Raleigh, 55, 78 Gist, Christopher, 217–19 Godfrey, Thomas, 171 Gomez, Estevan, 43, 78 Gooch, William, 166 Gordillo, Francisco, 42 Gorges, Fernando, 99 Gordon, Thomas, 259–60 Gorton, Samuel, 97–98 Gosnold, Bartholomew, 55, 57, 78 Grant, James, 238, 246 Graves, Samuel, 290 Greek philosophers Aristotle, vii, 259 Plato, 259 Greenland, 45 Grenville, George, 268 Grenville, Richard, 47, 48 Grotius, Hugo, 359 Gua du Monts, Pierre du, 132 Guttenberg, Johannes, 40, 116 Hakluyt, Richard, 46, 55 Hale, Nathan, 25 Hamilton, Alexander, 261, 294 Hamilton, Andrew, 165–66, 261 Hamilton, James, 159 Hammon, Jupiter, 169–70 Hammond, Joseph, 117 Hancock, John, viii, 262, 271, 285, 287, 296 Hannam, Thomas, 55 Harlow, Edward, 78 Harriot, Thomas, 47, 117, 167 Harvard, John, 116 Haviland, William, 242, 243 Hawkins, John, 45 Hawks, John, 208 Hebecourt, Louis Philippe d’, 139 Hellselius, Gustavas, 172

Hellselius, John, 172 Henry, Patrick, 266 Hill, John, 199 Hoadley, Benjamin, 260 Hobbes, Thomas, 32 Hobday, John, 179 Holburne, Francis, 232–33 Holderness, Robert Darcy, earl, 218 Holy Land, 40, 41` Holy Roman Empire, 244 Hooker, Thomas, 94, 99, 120 Hopkins, Stephen, 261 Horsmanden, David, 167 Howe, George Augustus, 235 Howe, William, 25, 288, 291 Hudson, Henry, 137 Hughson, John, 185 Hume, David, 163, 181, 260 Hunt, John, 55 Hunter, Robert, 33, 171 Hurd, Nathaniel, 173 Hutchinson, Anne, viii, 95–97, 116 Hutchinson, Thomas, 163, 167, 267, 272, 275 Hutchinson, William, 97 Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne d’, 152, 197–98 Iceland, 41 Indians, 12, 42, 47, 56, 57, 64, 73, 77, 78, 83, 84, 93, 104, 109, 110, 111, 116–19, 123, 132–33, 149, 180, 181, 199, 200, 219, 226, 227, 228, 232, 240, 245, 255 language groups Algonkian, 53, 56, 116, 137, 138, 146, 147, 148 Iroquoian, 43, 56, 147, 201 Siouan, 56 leaders Brant, Joseph/Thayendanegea, 182 Grey Lock, 203 Hendrik, 228, 229

Index

Little Carpenter/Attakullakulla, 245 Massasoit, 79, 80, 143 Memeskia/Old Briton, 217 Metacom (Philip), 142–46 Moxus, 151, 197 Nantaquoid, 59 Necotowance, 137 Nemattanew, 68–69 Neolin, 246–47 Ninigret, 145 Occam, Samson, 182 Opechancanough, 59, 63, 68–69, 136–37 Oppussoquionuske, 65–66 Parahunt, 57 Pocahontas (Matoaka, Rebecca), 59–60, 66–67, 112 Pontiac, 247, 248, 249 Powhatan (Wahunsenacah), 48, 56–60, 62, 63, 63, 66–67, 137 Sacagawea, 60 Sassacus, 134, 135, 136 Sassamon, John, 143 Scarouady, 227 Sequin, 135 Squanto, 79 Stonewall John, 143 Tanacharison/Half King, 220 Uncas, 134, 135 Wituwamat, 81 Wowinchopunck, 65, 66 towns: Apokant, 59 Appomattoc, 65, 136 Block Island, 135 Brotherton, 182 Caughnawaga, 148, 149, 197 Chickahominy, 56, 59, 62, 69, 136 Chowanoke, 136 Conestoga, 248 Hancock’s Town, 202 Hochelaga, 43

349

Kecoughtan, 57, 65 Lorette, 148 Mamanahunt, 59 Mystic, 135 Namaset, 143 Nansemond, 62–63, 65, 69, 136 Neponset, 81 Norridgewock, 202 Pamunkey, 59, 63, 69 Paspahegh, 57, 58, 59, 65, 66 Patuxet, 79 Pickawillany, 217 Piscataway, 140 Pokanoket, 79, 143 Praying Towns, 116, 142 Saint Francis, 203 Secotan, 136 Stadacona, 43 Tadoussac, 134 Three Mountain, 148 Werowocomoco, 56, 59, 60, 62, 63 Warraskoyack, 136 Weyanoke, 136 Iroquois/Five Nations/Six Nations, 112, 133, 138, 139, 140, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153–54, 198, 199, 217, 224, 228 Mohawk, 136, 137, 145, 147, 148, 182, 209, 228, 229, 232 Cayuga, 147 Onondaga, 147, 153, 228 Oneida, 147, 182 Seneca, 147, 148, 201–2, 239, 249 Tuscarora, 201–2 tribes/bands Abenaki, 19, 78–79, 82, 133, 148, 149, 151–53, 196–97, 202, 203, 216, 232 Alabama, 232 Apalachee, 196 Aztecs, 57 Catawba, 202 Cherokee, 112, 232, 245–46, 250

350 Index

Creek, 196, 200, 201, 232 Chickasaw, 196, 201, 232 Choctaw, 201, 216, 232 Cusabo, 112 Delaware/Leni Lenape, 19, 181, 217, 218, 232, 247, 249, 276 Doeg, 140–42 Erie, 147 Fox, 148, 200, 201 Gaule, 112, 202 Huron, 147, 148, 200, 201, 232, 247, 249 Illinois, 201 Inuit, 45 Kickapoo, 247, 250 Manahoac, 56 Mascouten, 247, 250 Massachusetts, 81–82 Mahicans, 137 Menominee, 247 Miami, 201, 217, 218, 232, 247, 249, 250 Micmac, 79, 197, 202, 216, 232 Mingo, 217, 218, 220, 227, 232, 247, 248, 276 Mississauga, 232 Mohegan, 134, 135, 142, 144, 182 Monacan, 56, 62 Montagnais, 134 Montauk, 182 Narragansett, 19, 79, 80, 134–36, 142–46 Natchez, 200, 201 Nauset, 79 Neutral, 147 Niantic, 134, 135, 144 Nipissing, 232 Nipmuck, 142, 144 Occaneechee, 141, 142 Ojibwa, 148, 201, 217, 232, 247, 249 Ottawa, 200, 201, 217, 232, 247, 249 Penobscot, 202

Pottawatomi, 200, 201, 232, 247, 249 Pennacock, 148 Pequot, 19, 134–36, 144 Petun, 147 Piankashaw, 250 Pocumtucks, 144 Powhatan, 19, 56–57, 64, 65, 66 Sauk, 201 Shawnee, 217, 232, 247, 248, 249, 250, 276 Susquehannock, 19, 56–57, 61–62, 140–42, 147, 201 Talapoosa, 198 Wabanaki Confederacy, 202 Wampanoag, 19, 79, 80, 134, 142–46 Wea, 247, 250 Westo, 112 Wyandot, 201, 247, 249 Yamasee, 196, 202 Zuni, 42 Ingalls, Charles, 294 Inglis, Charles, 27 Ingoldesby, Richard, 106 James, Thomas, 267 Jefferson, Martha Skelton, 298 Jefferson, Thomas, viii, 14, 32, 172, 261, 289, 295–96, 297 Jenckes, Joseph, 109 Jenkins, Robert, 203 Johnson, Edward, 117 Johnson, Nathaniel, 196 Johnson, William, 21, 24, 224, 225, 227–30, 232, 240, 241, 246, 247, 249, 250 Johnston, John, 240 Johnston, Thomas, 173 Joliet, Louis, 147 Joncaire, Philippe de, 219 Jones, Christopher, 77, 80 Jones, Hugh, 167 Jonquiere, Pierre Jacques, 207 Joselyn, John, 117

Index

Jumonville, Joseph Coulon de, 220, 221 Keith, George, 167 Kendall, George, 55, 58 Kennys, Richard, 173 Kidd, William, 178 Kirke, Gervaise, 133–34 Kneller, Godfrey, 172 Knight, Sarah Kemble, 170 Knowles, Charles, 208 Knox, John, 291 La Barre, Joseph, 148 La Motte, Emmanuel Dubois, 224 Lane, Ralph, 47 Langdon, Samuel, 294 Langlade, Charles, 217 La Salle, Robert, 147 Laud, William, 89 Laudonniere, Rene de, 44 Lawrence, Charles, 224, 225 Lawson, John, 167 Le Loutre, Jean Louis, 216 Lee, Charles, 293 Lee, Richard Henry, 295 Lee, William, 287 Leisler, Jacob, 106–7, 149, 150, 151 Leon, Ponce de, 42 Lery, Gaspard de, 231 Leveret, John, 143 Levy, Francois de, 242–43 Lewis, Richard, 169 Lignery, Francois Le Marchand de, 23–40 Lillburn, Lawrence, 172 Linnaeus, Carl, 167 Littlehales, John, 231–32 Livingston, Robert, 295 Livingston, William, 164, 222 Lloyd, Thomas, 44 Locke, John, 32, 181, 259 Logan, John, 102–3 Loudon, John Campbell (lord), 230–33 Low Countries, 54, 195, 199, 210

Luther, Martin, 32, 74, 138 Lyman, Phineas, 229, 230 Lyttelton, Henry, 245 Mace, Samuel, 49 McCurtain, Daniel, 293 MacDonald, Donald, 293 Machiavelli, Nicolo, 54, 259 Mackay, James, 220 MacIllworth, Thomas, 172 MacSpartan, James, 167 Madison, James, 181 Magellan, Ferdinand, 42 March, John, 198 Marlborough, John Churchill, duke, 195–96 Martin, John, 55, 58 Marquette, Jacques, 147 Mascarens, Paul, 206 Mason, George, 275 Mason, John, 99, 135, 136, 167 Massy, Eyre, 240 Mather, Cotton, 109, 116, 117, 120, 121, 167, 168 Mather, Increase, 107, 118, 121 Mathew, Thomas, 140 Mayhew, Jonathan, 360 Maylem, John, 169 Mercer, James, 231 Mesgouez, Troilus de la Roche, 44 Milborne, Jacob, 107, 150 Molesworth, Robert, 259 Monck, George, 100, 131, 139 Monkton, Robert, 225, 242 Monro, George, 233 Montagu, John, 273 Montcalm, Louis Joseph de, 223, 231–37, 241–42 Montesquieu, Charles de, 32, 259 Montgomery, Archibald, 246 Montgomery, Richard, 290–91 Montiano, Manuel de, 204, 205 Moore, Henry, 269 Moore, James, 196, 202 Moore, James, 292

351

352 Index

Morgan, John, 167 Morris, Robert (admiral), 141, 142 Morris, Robert (governor), 225 Morris, Thomas, 249 Morton, Thomas, viii, 73, 84–84, 89, 117, 167 Motte, Emmanuel Dubois de la, 233 Muir, John, 168 Murray, James, 242–43 Narvaez, Panfilo, 42 Neal, David, 167 Netherlands/Dutch, 4, 39, 68, 74, 75, 77, 110, 111, 112, 123, 133, 134, 137–40, 147, 148, 153, 176, 195, 206 Amsterdam, 137 East India Company, 137, 138 Leiden, 74 Manhattan, 138 New Amsterdam, 101, 115 The Hague, 137–38, 139 New Netherlands, 137–40, 176 New Netherlands Company, 137 West India Company, 137, 138 Newport, Christopher, 55–56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64 Newton, Isaac, 32 Nicolls, Richard, 101, 139 Nicolson, Francis, 106, 198–99 Niverville, Boucher de, 209 Niza, Marcos de, 42 Noble, Arthur, 209 Norman, John, 173 North, Frederick, lord, 257, 272, 278 Northwest Passage, 45, 46 Nowell, Samuel, 118 Noyan, Pierre Payen de, 237–38 Nuttal, Thomas, 161 oceans/seas/bays Atlantic, 26, 41, 44, 90, 137, 178, 207, 244 Black, 40 Caribbean Sea/West Indies, 4, 10, 12, 14, 16, 110, 136, 138, 139,

152, 177, 178, 185, 196, 208, 234, 244, Gulf of California, 42 Gulf of Mexico, 42, 43, 44, 197, 216 Saint Lawrence Bay, 43 Indian, 41, 137 Mediterranean, 40, 41 Pacific, 24, 90, 137 Oldham, John, 135 Oglethorpe, James, 21, 170, 177, 204, 205 Oliver, Andrew, 267 Onate, Juan, 43 Otis, James, 260, 262 Ottoman Empire/Turkey, 21, 41, 54 Paine, Thomas, 283, 294 Palladio, Andrea, 172 Pardo, Juan de, 44 Parker, John, 283, 285 Parker, Peter, 292 Parker, William, 55 Parris, Samuel, 122 Peale, Charles Willson, 173 Pelham, Henry, 173 Pelham, Peter, 173 Penn, Thomas, 181 Penn, William, 102 Penn, William (founder), 14, 102–04, 176 Pepperell, William, 206, 207 Percy, George, 63, 64, 65 Percy, Hugh, 286 Perry, David, 236–37 Phips, Spencer, 19 Phips, William, viii, 122, 149, 150–52 Pineda, Alonzo Alvarez, 42 Pitcairn, John, 285 Pitt, William, 234, 258, 268 Popes Alexander VI, 42 Gregory XIII, 176 Urban II, 40 Popham, George 55, 78

Index

Portugal, 3, 39, 41–42, 45, 244 Azores, 41 Brazil, 42 Cape Verde, 41 Lisbon, 41 Madeira, 41 Royalty Henry I, 44 Prince Henry the Navigator, 41 Pory, John, 116 Potts, John, 19, 69 Pouchot, Pierre, 239–40 Prence, Thomas, 143 Prescott, William, 288 Preston, Thomas, 272 Prideaux, john, 239–40 Prince, Thomas, 167, 184 Pring, Martin, 49, 78 Prior, Matthew, 33 Prussia, 205, 206, 210, 230–31, 244 Frederick II, 205–6, 210, 230–31, 234 Pufendorf, Samuel, 259 Putnam, Israel, 292 Pynchon, John, 99 Queen’s Rangers, 25 Rale, Sebastien, 202, 203 Raleigh, Walter, 3, 4, 46–47 Ramezay, Jean Baptiste de, 242 Rastell, John, 28 Ratcliffe, John, 55, 58 Reformation, 74, 138, 164 Reid, William, 271 religion Calvinism, 74 Catholicism, 74, 133, 138, 176, 197 Islamism, 40, 41, 42 Lutheranism, 74 Protestantism, 133, 137, 138 Renaissance, 83, 159, 164 Revere, Paul, 173, 285 Rhett, William, 1998 Ribault, Jean de, 44

353

Richelieu, Armand Jean, 133 Rittenhouse, David, 161 rivers Allegheny, 217, 218, 226, 238, 250 Apalachee, 196 Apalachicola, 42 Cape Fear, 209 Chaudière, 291 Chickahominy, 57 Colorado/Grand Canyon, 43 Connecticut, 99, 134, 135, 138, 145, 202, 209 Delaware, 103, 138, 176, 178, 250 French Creek, 217, 219 Great Miami, 217 Hudson, 77, 133, 137, 138, 139, 203, 229, 233, 234, 237, 241, 293 James, 56, 57, 63, 64, 68, 136 Kanawha, 250, 276–77 Kennebec, 78, 82, 151, 202, 203, 291 La Chute, 229, 235 Maumee, 215, 217, 249 Missaguash, 216, 224 Mississippi, 43, 147, 180, 197, 200, 201, 215, 216, 245, 250 Mohawk, 137, 138, 147, 227, 231, 234, 237 Monongahela, 217, 218 Montmorency, 241 Muskingham, 248 Mystic, 134, 288 Nansemond, 61 Niagara, 200, 230, 247 Ohio, 154, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 244, 245, 246–47, 248, 249, 250 Oswego, 203, 231, 237 Ottawa, 240 Penobscot, 148 Potomac, 60, 99, 140 Rapidan, 56 Rappahannock, 61 Raritan, 183 Red, 200

354 Index

Richelieu, 147, 239, 243 Rio Grande, 43 Roanoke, 141 Saguenay, 134 Saint Charles, 150, 241 Saint John’s, 44 Saint Lawrence, 43, 132, 146, 147, 148, 150, 153, 199, 203, 225, 230, 231, 241, 242, 243, 244 Savannah, 42, 44, 177, 202 Schuylkill, 103 Susquehanna, 180, 248, 250 Tallapoosa, 200 Tennessee, 250 Wabash, 215, 250 Wood Creek, 231, 237 York, 56, 60, 63, 55, 136, 137 Roberval, Jean Francois de la Rogue, 44 Robinson, John, 74, 75, 82 Rogers, Robert, viii, 17, 23–25, 168, 171, 247 Rolfe, John, 64, 66–67, 112 Roman Empire, 40 Roman philosophers and leaders Caesar, 259 Cato, 262 Cicero, 259, 262 Cincinnatus, 262 Horace, 259 Plutarch, 259 Sallust, 259 Tacitus, 259 Virgil, 259 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 259 Rouville, Jean Baptiste, 197, 198 Rowlandson, Mary, 118–19 Rush, Benjamin, 3, 9, 161, 167 Russia, 54, 230–31, 244 Catherine the Great, 230–31 Saint Castin, Jean Vincent D’Abbadie, 148–49, 152 Saltonstall, Nathaniel, 118 Saint Clair, James, 208

Saint Clair, John, 225–26 Saint Pierre, Jacques Legardeur, 219 Sanders, John, 81 Saunders, Charles, 241, 242 Saxony, 206 Sayre, William, 102 Schuyler, John, 150, 151, 152 Schuyler, Philip, 289 Scott, George, 241 Seabury, Samuel, 261 Sewall, Samuel, 121, 122 Shakespeare, William, 39, 64, 171 Sharpe, Horatio, 225 Shepard, Thomas, 120 Sherman, Roger, 295 Shirley, William, 15, 206, 208, 224, 225, 228, 230 Shute, Samuel, 202–3 Shute, William, 195 Sidney, Algernon, 359 Sloughter, Henry, 106–7, 151 Smibert, John, 172 Smith, Adam, 13 Smith, Francis, 285–86 Smith, John, vii, viii, 17, 21, 29, 53–55, 56, 57–58, 59–63, 64, 67, 78, 83, 117, 167 Smith, William, 167 Smythe, Thomas, 55 Somers, George, 55, 64 Soto, Hernando de, 42–43 Spain/Spaniards, 3, 15, 16–17, 21, 39, 44, 45, 58, 68, 77, 110, 111, 123, 131, 132, 138–39, 177, 195, 196, 199, 202, 203–6, 209, 255 Argentina, 16 Bahama Islands, 42, 149 Baja California, 43 California, 46 Canary, 41, 42 Cuba, 16, 42, 205, 244 Florida, 16, 42, 44, 102, 196, 198, 199, 200, 202, 204, 244 Honduras, 244

Index

Jamaica, 42 Mexico, 42, 55 Monarchs Charles II, 195 Charles III, 244 Ferdinand, 42 Isabella, I 42 Philip II, 44, 45, 47, 49 Philip III, 195 Philip V, 203 New Mexico, 43 Panama, 42, 46, 204 Pensacola, 196 Peru, 42, 55 Philippines, 16 Porto Bello, 46 Puerto Rico, 42 San Augustine, 15, 44, 47, 196, 204, 205 San Felipe, 44 San Francisco, 46 San Mateo, 44 San Miguel de Gualdape, 42 Santa Elena, 44 Santa Fe, 43 Santo Domingo, 42 Seville 42 Tampa Bay 42, 43 Texas, 43 Vera Cruz, 42 Standish, Miles, viii, 17, 21, 77, 80–82, 84 Stark, John, 21 Stevens, Philias, 209 Stone, John, 134–35 Strachey, William, 56, 64 Stuart, John, 250 Stuyvesant Pieter, 101, 139 Sweden, 176 Tailfer, Patrick, 170 Taylor, Edward, 119–20 Tennant, John, 183 Tennant, William, 183 Thomson, Charles, 276

355

Thompson, Benjamin, 120 Thoreau, Henry, 169 Tituba, 122 Townsend, Charles, 258, 270 Treaties Aix-la-Chapelle, 210, 215 Augusta, 250 Casco, 145 Easton, 232 Hard Labour, 250 Hubertusberg, 244 Lancaster, 215–16, 218 Logstown, 217–18 London, 138 Madrid, 111 Middle Plantation, 142 Nonesuch, 138 Paris (1763), 230, 244 Portsmouth, 19–20 Ryswick, 153 Stanwix, 250, 276 Tordesillas, 39, 42 Utrecht, 137, 180, 199, 202, 216 Westminster, 139 Westphalia, 138 Trenchard, John, 259 Tromp, Maarten, 139 Trumball, Jonathan, 170 Tucker, William, 19, 69 Ulloa, Francisco de, 43 Underhill, John, 19, 117, 135, 136 Vaca, Cabeza de, 42 Vane, Henry, 94, 95, 96, 135 Vauban, Sebastien de, 18 Vaudreuil, Philippe Francois de, 24 Vaudreuil, Philippe de Rigaud de, 197 Vaudreuil, Francois de Rigaud de, 208, 232 Vaudreuil de Cavagnal, Pierre de Rigaud, 223, 224, 231, 242, 243 Vaughan, Thomas, 111 Verelst, John, 173

356 Index

Vergor, Louis de, 225 Verrazano, Giovanni, 43, 78, 94 Vernon, Edward, 204, 205, 210 Vetch, Samuel, 197 Villiers, Louis Coulon de, 208–9, 220 Voltaire, Francois Arouet, 163 Waldseemuller, Martin, 28 Walker, Hovenden, 15, 199 Walker, John, 78 Walpole, Horace, 203, 215, 221 Wanton, Joseph, 272–73 Ward, Artemis, 286 Ward, Edward, 219 Warren, Joseph, 276, 285 Warren, Mercy Otis, 170 Warren, Peter, 206, 207, 227 wars American Independence, 183 Anglo-Dutch, 101, 139–40 Bacon’s Rebellion, 141–42 Beaver Wars, 112, 147–48 Cherokee, 23, 245–46 Cromwell’s, 15 Crusades, 40 Dummer’s/Grey Lock’s, 203 Dunmore’s, 276–77 Elizabeth’s, 15 English Civil War, 26, 100, 102 French and Indian/Seven Years’, 15–16, 23, 30, 168, 215–51, 255, 263, 269, 283, 292 Huguenot, 15, 133–34 Jenkin’s Ear, 15, 203–5 King George’s/Austrian Succession, 15, 205–10, 216, 228, 230, 231 King Philips, 12, 22, 117–18, 142–46, 249 King William’s/League of Augsburg, 11, 15, 22, 148–54, 199 Opechancanough, 136–37 Pequot, 134–36 Polish Succession, 231

Pontiac’s, 23, 246–51 Powhatan, 65–66, 68–69, 136 Queen Anne’s/Spanish Succession, 15, 178, 195–99, 216 Susquehannock, 140–42 Thirty Years’, 138 Washington, Lawrence, 204 Washington, George, viii, 14, 21, 25, 164, 168, 169, 171, 173, 204, 215, 218–23, 226–27, 238, 258, 275, 287–89, 291, 292, 293, 294 Waterhouse, Edward, 53 Waymouth, George, 49, 78 Webb, Daniel, 233–34 Wentworth, Benning, 23 Wentworth, Thomas, 204 West, Benjamin, 102, 173 Westbrook, Thomas, 203 Weston, Thomas, 76, 80 Wharton, Edward, 118, 144 Wheatley, Phyllis, 169, 170 Wheeler, Francis, 152 Wheelock, Ezra, 182 Wheelwright, John, 96, 99 Whitaker, Alexander, 117 White, Andrew, 99, 100 White, John, 47–49 Whitefield, George, 184 Wigglesworth, Michael, 120 Wilkes, John, 258, 270–71 Willard, Samuel, 121 Williams, Eunice, 168, 197 Williams, John, 168, 197 Williams, Mary, 93 Williams, Roger, viii, 92–95, 143 Wilson, James, 261 Wingfield, Edward, 55, 57, 58 Winslow, Edward, 76, 80, 81, 82 Winslow, John, 117, 225 Winslow, Josiah, 143, 144 Winthrop, Fitz-John, 150 Winthrop, John, viii, 18–19, 21, 29, 89, 90–92, 93, 95.96, 109, 117, 120

Index

Winthrop, John (junior), 143 Witherspoon, John, 181 Wise, John, 104–5 Wolcott, Roger, 169 Wolfe, James, 173, 223, 239, 241–42 Wollaston, Richard, 83 Wollston, John, 172 Woodford, William, 290

Woolman, John, 169, 186 Worsley, Benjamin, 100 Wythe, George, 296 Yeardley, George, 67, 68 Zenger, John Peter, 165–66 Zuniga, Jose, 196

357

About the Author

William Nester is the award-winning author of thirty-six books on international relations, military history, and the nature of power. He is a professor at St. John’s University in New York.

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