Key ID Chapter 3 Flashcards
The Unhealthful Chesapeake
Most early settlers in the Virginia and Maryland colonies on Chesapeake Bay were men seeking
their fortune from tobacco. They outnumbered women six to one in 1650, so marriages were
few.
In addition, settlers in these colonies died, on average, ten years sooner than did residents of
England primarily as the result of malaria, typhoid, and other diseases.
As a result, families were fragile as mates often died within a few years, social restrictions were
weaker (many women were already pregnant at the time of marriage), and society was more
individualistic.
Headright System
A system in Virginia and Maryland that encouraged the importation of servant workers, it gave
50 acres of land to anyone who paid for passage of a person to the colony.
This was often used by wealthier landowners who paid for the importation of indentured
servants.
Indentured Servants
These people promised to work for several years in the colonies in exchange for transatlantic
passage and eventual freedom dues—some seed corn, clothes, and, at least in earlier years, a
little land.
Indentured servants accounted for three-quarters of all European immigrants to Virginia and
Maryland in the seventeenth century.
Bacon’s Rebellion
In 1676 led by Nathaniel Bacon, a number of former indentured servants who had come into
conflict with the Indians over land on the western frontier of Virginia rebelled against the rule of
Governor Berkeley.
Berkeley supported the Indians due to his monopoly of the fur trade with them. Bacon’s forces
responded by burning Jamestown. After Bacon’s death by disease, Berkeley crushed the
rebellion by hanging many participants.
Following Bacon’s Rebellion, many planters began to look for a more easily controlled labor
force than indentured servants. Black slavery increased as a result.
The Introduction of Slavery
1619
Dutch traders brought twenty African slaves to Jamestown in 1619 (ironically, the same year
that representative government came to North America with the establishment of Virginia’s
House of Burgesses).
From this beginning slavery spread to all thirteen American colonies.
Eventually approximately 650,000 slaves were imported to the US through the international
slave trade. After 1698, the British monopoly on the American slave trade ended, and American
shippers joined the slave trade.
Middle Passage
This was the slaves’ journey from Africa to the Americas.
Herded upon ships and chained below deck, they suffered death rates as high as 20% on the
journey.
New York City Slave Rebellion
1712
Twenty-three slaves armed with guns, hatchets, and swords set fire to a building. When white
colonists gathered to extinguish the blaze, the slaves attacked. Nine whites were killed. Militia
units captured twenty-seven slaves. Of these, six committed suicide. The rest were executed.
In response, New York slave laws were tightened. Gatherings of more than three slaves were
banned, masters could punish a slave however they wished as long as the slave was not killed or
maimed, and any slave handling a firearm would be whipped.
Nevertheless, another similar arson-based rebellion occurred in New York City a few years later
in 1741.
Stono Rebellion
1739
A group of about fifty slaves on the Stono River of South Carolina rebelled, seized weapons, and
killed about twenty-five whites.
They headed for Spanish Florida where they hoped to find refuge but were intercepted by the
white militia. The slaves were killed in the battle or later executed.
This led to the passage of a harsher slave code that limited the privileges of slaves in order to
eliminate the possibility of a slave revolt in the future. Slaves would no longer be allowed to
grow their own food, assemble in groups, earn their own money, or learn to read.
This was only one among the 250 slave rebellions documented in the South.
Maroon Communities
From the beginnings of slavery in the New World, slaves ran away. When they banded together
in communities, they were known as maroons (from the Spanish for fugitive). In what became
the United States, there were maroon communities in the Florida swamps (hence the desire of
the Stono rebels to reach Spanish Florida), in the bayous of Louisiana, and in the Great Dismal
Swamp of North Carolina.
In some cases, the maroon communities carried on guerrilla war against the white-held
plantations, even siding with the British at times during the Revolutionary War. The significance
of the maroon communities was that they demonstrated the yearning for freedom by the
enslaved.
Healthful New England
Better water and cooler temperatures meant that fewer colonists died of disease in New
England. In fact, New England colonists lived, on average, ten years longer than did residents of
England and twenty years longer than did colonists in the Chesapeake region.
Longer life spans combined with the fact that Puritans tended to arrive in entire families rather
than single individuals led to stronger, more stable families than in the Chesapeake region. For
example, fewer brides were pregnant at the time of marriage. In addition, society was less
individualistic and more focused on the community.
The Halfway Covenant
Relatively few second-generation Puritans were willing to join the church. Doing so meant
subjecting oneself to extensive interrogation about one’s morals. Some of these interrogations
lasted over a year.
Because the Puritan church baptized only the babies born to saints, many first-generation
Puritans faced the prospect that their grandchildren would not be baptized. So the church
developed the Halfway Covenant that baptized the children of all baptized adults, whether or
not the adults were church members. The adults were halfway members of the church who
could not take communion or vote in church affairs. Most adults opted for this halfway status.
This was the end of the Puritan mission to create the shining city on a hill since the first-
generation was not able to produce a second generation with equal religious fervor.
Jeremiads
Sermons preached from Puritan pulpits in the middle of the seventeenth century, named for
Jeremiah, a Biblical prophet who warned of doom.
Puritan preachers noticed a decline in the religious devotion of second-generation settlers; to
combat this decreasing piety, they preached a type of sermon called the jeremiad, scolding
parishioners on their waning piety.
The Salem Witch Trials
1692
Accusations by young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, led to the arrest of hundreds and the
execution of nineteen for witchcraft.
The witchcraft hysteria revealed the conflicts within Salem and the divergence of Salem and
other Puritan communities from their original religious mission.
Leisler’s Rebellion
1689-1691
In New York Jacob Leisler was a prosperous merchant, but he had never been accepted by the
colonial elite. Following the Glorious Revolution that overthrew King James, the Dominion of
New England collapsed. Leisler drove out Sir Edmond Andros’s lieutenant governor and
proclaimed himself the head of the government in New York. Eventually he was executed for his
reluctance in turning over power to William and Mary’s new governor.
Though Leisler’s Rebellion was unsuccessful, it represented the tensions between the middle
class (to which Leisler belonged) and the colonial elite.
