God of Israel is among us, and ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies. The Lord will make our name a praise and glory, so that men shall say of succeeding plantations: "The Lord make it like that of New England.

the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us and be revenged on such a perjured people, and He will make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

As a result of the enclosure of traditional common lands, which were increasingly used to raise sheep, many rural laborers were thrown off the land, producing a vast floating population.

the Puritan had made a covenant with God to establish a truly Christian community, in which the wealthy were to show charity and avoid exploiting their neighbors while the poor were to work diligently.

All social relationships--between God and man, ministers and congregations, magistrates and members of their community, and men and their families--were envisioned in terms of a covenant or contract which rested on consent and mutual responsibilities.

may now by right of war, and law of nations, invade the country, and destroy them who sought to destroy us;

not sparing either age or sex, man, women or child; so sudden in their cruel execution that few or none discerned the weapon or blow that brought them to destruction....

they came unarmed into our houses, without bows or arrows, or other weapons, with deer, turkeys, fish, furs, and other provisions to sell and truck with us for glass, beads, and other trifles;

the colonists discovered that Virginia was an ideal place to cultivate tobacco, which had been recently introduced into Europe.

An island nation, England depended upon a robust navy for trade and territorial expansion.

Many cited spiritual concerns and argued that colonization would glorify God, England, and Protestantism by Christianizing the New World’s pagan peoples. Advocates such as Richard Hakluyt the Younger and John Dee, for instance, drew upon The History of the Kings of Britain, written by the twelfth century monk Geoffrey of Monmouth, and its mythical account of King Arthur’s conquest and Christianization of pagan lands to justify American conquest.

The island’s population increased from fewer than three million in 1500 to over five million by the middle of the seventeenth century.

Spain had a one-hundred year head start on New World colonization and a jealous England eyed the enormous wealth that Spain gleaned from the new World.

Missionaries, most of whom were members of the Franciscan religious order, provided Spain with an advance guard in North America

Apalachee farmers grew an abundance of corn and other crops

e found between 150,000 and 300,000 Native Americans. But then two-and-a-half centuries of contact with European and African peoples–whether through war, slave raids, or, most dramtically, foreign disease–decimated Florida’s indigenous population.

Spaniards, often single, young, and male, emigrated for the various promises of land, wealth, and social advancement. Laborers, craftsmen, soldiers, clerks, and priests all crossed the Atlantic in large numbers.

The Spanish not only built Mexico City atop Tenochtitlán, but food, language, and families spilled across racial barriers. In 1531, a poor Indian named Juan Diego reported that he was visited by the Virgin Mary, who came as a dark-skinned Nahuatl-speaking Indian. Reports of miracles spread across Mexico and the Virgen de Guadalupe became a national icon for a new mestizo society.

Militaristic migrants from northern Mexico, the Aztecs moved south into the Valley of Mexico, conquered their way to dominance, and built the largest empire in the New World. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico they found a sprawling civilization centered around Tenochtitlan, an awe-inspiring city built on a series of natural and man-made islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco, located today within modern-day Mexico City.

Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the human and material wealth of the New World.

In the encomienda, the Spanish crown granted a person not only land but a specified number of natives as well.

Some groups used shifting cultivation where farmers cut the forest, burned the undergrowth and then planted seeds in the nutrient rich ashes of what remained. When crop yields began to decline, farmers would simply move to another field and allow the land to recover and the forest to regrow before they would again cut the forest, burn the undergrowth, and restart the cycle.

And as paleo-Indians populated mountains, prairies, deserts, and forests, cultures and ways of life as arose as varied as the geography.

Nomadic hunter-gatherers, they traveled in small bands following megafauna–enormous mammals that included mastodons and giant horses and bison–into the frozen Beringian tundra at the edge of North America.

And to avoid such a great evil we passed a law so that any white man living inour Kingdoms and wanting to purchase goods in any way should first informthree of our noblemen and officials of our court whom we rely upon in this mat-ter

very often it happens thatthey kidnap even noblemen and the sons of noblemen, and our relatives, andtake them to be sold to the white men who are in our Kingdoms

He dug into the sand and soon found clay with which to mould figures like himself

Wherever the sand landed it formed dry land, the bigger piles becoming hills and the smaller piles valleys.

gold chain long enough to reach below, a snail's shell filled with sand, a white hen, a black cat, and a palm nut, all of which he was to carry in a bag.

three crops in particular–corn, beans, and squash, the so-called “three sisters”–provided nutritional needs necessary to sustain cities and civilizations.

In the Pacific Northwest, Indian peoples including the Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingits, and Haidas took advantage of the lush forests and many rivers. The abundance of large forest mammals including deer, elk, moose, and caribou, as well as waters filled with salmon, halibut, sturgeon and others created a tremendous surplus of food

It was found that he had made the country all rocks and full of ledges, and also a mosquito which was very large.

and the fruit of the sycamore to become small and useless

How did human beings arrive in the world? • How were animals helpful? • What did twins do to create the world?

I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

he made the stars also

God called the firmament Heaven

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth

Racial systems of violence and domination were wielded with crushing intensity for generations, all in the name of keeping white womanhood as pure as the cotton that anchored southern society.

Soldiers were forbidden to interfere with slavery or assist runaways, but many soldiers found such a policy unchristian

Yet the end of legal slavery did not mean the end of racial injustice.

Finally, white Confederates did not see African Americans as their equals, much less as soldiers. There was never any doubt that black laborers and camp servants were property.

Gooding argued that, because he and his brethren were born in the United States and selflessly left their private lives and to enter the army, they should be treated “as American SOLDIERS, not as menial hirelings.

The language describing black enlistment indicated Lincoln’s implicit desire to segregate African American troops from the main campaigning armies of white soldiers.

Land-Grant College Act (a.k.a. Morrill Act)

Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in areas under Confederate control.

Lincoln, who initially waged a conservative, limited war, believed that the presence of African American troops would threaten the loyalty of slaveholding border states, and white volunteers who might refuse to serve alongside black men

Union troops evacuated. In response to the attack, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve three months to suppress the rebellion

“Crittenden’s Compromise,”

Lincoln, who initially waged a conservative, limited war, believed that the presence of African American troops would threaten the loyalty of slaveholding border states, and white volunteers who might refuse to serve alongside black men.

the Union adopted General-in-Chief Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan to suppress the rebellion.

Some southerners couched their defense of slavery as a preservation of states rights. But in order to protect slavery, the Confederate nation created a central government that ruled over the states even more than what the constitution called for—an irony not lost on many.

The Committee of Thirteen ultimately voted down the measure and it likewise failed in the full Senate vote (25-23).

The Confederacy even veered from the American constitution by explicitly invoking Christianity in their founding document.

Abraham Lincoln’s nomination proved a great windfall for the Republican Party. Lincoln carried all free states with the exception of New Jersey (which he split with Douglas)

The parties leaders refusal to include a pro-slavery platform resulted in Southern delegates walking out of the convention

The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths

foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery… is his natural and normal condition.

 Confederate nationalism was based on several ideals, foremost among these being slavery. 

On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina convention voted unanimously 169-0 to dissolve their Union with the United States.

all future Confederate states, with the exception of Virginia, excluded Lincoln’s name from their ballots.2

but the war ultimately transformed into a struggle to eradicate slavery.

The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths

The American Civil War

while in the process shattering the longstanding assumption that African slaves could not also be rulers.

Southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery

While Northerners appealed to their states’ rights to refuse capturing runaway slaves, Southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery.

Slavery had long divided the politics of the United States.

The acquisition of so much land made it imperative to antislavery leaders that these lands not be opened to slavery.

South had become known as “Doughfaces

The Democratic Party tried to avoid the issue of slavery and instead sought to unite Americans around shared racial anxieties and desires to expand the nation.

The Dred Scott decision signaled that the federal government was now fully committed to extending slavery as far and as wide as it might want.

The Dred Scott decision, Scott v. Sandford, ruled that black Americans could not be citizens of the United States

The conclusion of the Mexican War gave rise to the 1848 Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. The treaty infuriated antislavery leaders in the United States.

Slavery briefly receded from the nation’s attention in the early 1820s,

Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,”

Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,”

Missouri’s admission to the Union in 1821 exposed deep fault lines in American society

 Debates over slavery in the American West proved especially important

Northerners and Southerners came to disagree sharply on the role of the federal government in capturing and returning these freedom seekers

13. The Sectional Crisis

Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,”

French visionaries issued the “Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen”

A new transatlantic antislavery movement began to argue that freedom was the natural condition of man was freedom.

They no longer shared the bonds of their trade but were subsumed under a new class-based relationships: employers and employees, bosses and workers, capitalists and laborers.

Soon ten thousand workers labored in Lowell alone.

Many Americans distrusted these new, impersonal business organizations whose officers lacked personal responsibility while nevertheless carrying legal rights.

Income became the measure of economic worth

By the 1830s, for instance, New England was losing its competitive advantage as new sources and locations of power opened up in other regions.

The protection of child laborers gained more middle-class support, especially in New England, than the protection of adult workers.

In England, an economic slump prompted Parliament to modernize British agriculture by revoking common land rights for Irish farmers.

But a new system, “piece work,” divided much of production into discrete steps performed by different workers. In this new system, merchants or investors sent or “put-out” materials to individuals and families to complete at home. These independent laborers then turned over the partially finished goods to the owner to be given to another laborer to finish.

Counterfeit bills were endemic during this early period of banking, as some individuals sought their own way to capitalize on the nation’s quest for wealth

Economic growth, however, proceeded unevenly. Depressions devastated the economy in 1819, 1837, and 1857.

In 1816, for instance, $9 could move one ton of goods across the Atlantic Ocean, but only 30 miles across land.

Class conflict, child labor, accelerated immigration, and the expansion of slavery followed.

In the 1840s, labor activists organized to limit working hours and protect children in factories.

More than five million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1820 and 1860

These independent laborers then turned over the partially finished goods to the owner to be given to another laborer to finish

The market revolution shook other industries as well.

By 1860 Americans laid more than 30,000 miles of railroads

The cotton boom fueled speculation in slavery

Masters-turned-employers now not only had fewer obligations to their workers, they had a lesser attachment.

Factories slowly replaced shops.

he modern American factory was born. Soon ten thousand workers labored in Lowell alone. Sarah Rice, who worked at the nearby Millbury factory, found it “a noisy place” that was “more confined than I like to be.”21 Working conditions were harsh for the many desperate “mill girls” who operated the factories relentlessly from sun-up to sun-down.

II. Early Republic Economic Development

As early as the 1790s, however, merchants in New England began experimenting with machines to replace the “putting-out” system.

But a new system, “piece work,” divided much of production into discrete steps performed by different workers. In this new system, merchants or investors sent or “put-out” materials to individuals and families to complete at home.

Robert Fulton established the first commercial steam boat service up and down the Hudson River in New York in 1807

The so-called “Transportation Revolution” opened for Americans the vast lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. In 1810, for instance, before the rapid explosion of American infrastructure, Margaret Dwight left New Haven, Connecticut, in a wagon headed for Ohio Territory.

With so many fake bills circulating, Americans were constantly on the lookout for the “confidence man” and other deceptive characters in the urban landscape.

In 1816, for instance, $9 could move one ton of goods across the Atlantic Ocean, but only 30 miles across land

larger exchange network connected by improved transportations,

Waltham-Lowell System, created the textile mill that defined antebellum New England and American industrialism before the Civil War

Robert Fulton established the first commercial steam boat service up and down the Hudson River in New York in 1807

Depressions devastated the economy in 1819, 1837, and 1857

The consequences of the transportation and communication revolutions reshaped the lives of Americans.

e WILL not longer submit to that arbitrary power which has for the last ten years been so abundantly exercised over us.

she must still continue to toil on, long after Nature’s lamp has ceased to lend its aid—nor will even this suffice to satisfy the grasping avarice of her employer;

Inspired by a strategy known as “moral suasion,” these young abolitionists believed they could convince slaveholders to voluntarily release their slaves by appealing to the their sense of Christian conscience.

In order to accomplish their goals, abolitionists employed every method of outreach and agitation used in the social reform projects of the benevolent empire.

They argued that if women were to take charge of the education of their children, they needed to be well educated themselves.

Additionally, women could not initiate divorce, make wills, sign contracts, or vote.

Women were expected to be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic, and to pass these virtues on to their children.

Among these were issues including married women’s right to property, access to the professions, and, most controversially, the right to vote.

. As a result, women actually became more visible and active in the public sphere than ever before

Alcohol consumption became a significant social issue after the American Revolution

The prominence of African Americans in abolitionist organizations offered a powerful, if imperfect, model of interracial coexistence.

Moral suasionists, led most prominently by William Lloyd Garrison, felt that the United States Constitution was a fundamentally pro-slavery document, and that the present political system was irredeemable.

colonization was an inherently racist project and that African Americans possessed a hard-won right to the fruits of American liberty.

Abolitionists fought to save slaves and their nation’s soul.

This effort was ultimately unsuccessful, but was significant for its introduction of the kinds of arguments that would pave the way for women’s political activism for abolitionism and women’s rights.

In the 1830s, Americans drank half of what they had in the 1820s, and per capita consumption continued to decline over the next two decades.

As alcoholism became an increasingly visible issue in towns and cities, most reformers escalated their efforts from advocating moderation in liquor consumption to full abstinence from all alcohol.

hard liquor became a staple beverage in many lower- and middle-class households.

cheap whiskey that was frequently more affordable than milk or beer and safer than water,

In Congress, Whigs and Democrats joined forces in 1836 to pass an unprecedented restriction on freedom of political expression known as the “gag rule,” prohibiting all discussion of abolitionist petitions in the House of Representatives.

Anti-removal activism was also notable for the entry of ordinary American women into political discourse. The first major petition campaign by American women focused on opposition to removal and was led (anonymously) by Catharine Beecher.

It supported lecture campaigns, produced temperance literature, and organized revivals specifically aimed at encouraging worshippers to give up the drink.

They built orphanages and free medical dispensaries, and developed programs to provide professional services like social work, job placement, and day camps for children in the slums.

Consumption among adults skyrocketed in the early nineteenth century, and alcoholism had become an endemic problem across the United States by the 1820s.

Commercial distilleries produced readily available, cheap whiskey that was frequently more affordable than milk

nder the leadership of preachers and ministers, reform societies attacked many social problems.

their leadership signaled a dramatic departure from previous generations when such prominent roles for ordinary women would have been unthinkable.

alcoholism became an increasingly visible issue in towns and cities

IV. The Benevolent Empire

I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again

[“Intellect,” whispered someone near.] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negro rights?

I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And aren’t I a woman?

I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And arn’t I a woman?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him….

I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And arn’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And aren’t I a woman?

Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And arn’t I a woman?

she dedicated her life to abolition and equal rights for women and men.

but they had souls large enough to feel the wrongs of others, without being scarified in their own flesh.

This call, without signature, was issued by Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mary Ann McClintock

but they had souls large enough to feel the wrongs of others, without being scarified in their own flesh.

The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were examined, but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration of a rebellion such as the world had never before seen.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

These four ladies, sitting round the tea-table of Richard Hunt, a prominent Friend near Waterloo, decided to put their long-talked-of resolution into action, and before the twilight deepened into night, the call was written, and sent to the Seneca County Courter

e Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with much spirit and emphasis, and it was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight changes such as substituting "all men" for "King George.

Africans brought to the Americas the greatly varied cultures of their homelands, including folklore, language, music, and foodways.

Christmas traditions of John Canoe, or “Jonkanoo,” took different forms in African diaspora communities in the Caribbean, Bahamas, and southern United States.

Folklore often conveyed religious worldviews and beliefs while relating the more mundane routines of everyday life-from the way families functioned through the rituals of birth and death, to simple routines of cooking and clothing, and the local calendar of celebrations.

Fearing the use of loud instruments to communicate rebellions, Europeans created laws in the Americas to prohibit large numbers of enslaved people from gathering on their own time for funerals or other events.

In this way, those belonging to distinct groups, lineages, and ethnicities tended to view others as “foreigners.”

Similarly, the folklore which evolved, normally in the adopted language of the Americas, was itself shaped by contact with other, non-African peoples of the Americas.

folklore of Africans and their descendants in the Americas was crucially fashioned not simply by an African past, but by the complex ways African cultures interacted with European and American peoples and cultures in the New World.

Each one receives, as his weekly allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all- - no tea, coffee, sugar, and with the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt....

They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver.

Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest....

Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day's toil.

they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see

Over the course of the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, slavery became so endemic to the “Cotton Belt” that travelers, writers, and statisticians began referring to the area as the “Black Belt,” not only to describe the color of the rich land, but also to describe the skin color of those forced to work its fields, line its docks, and move the products of others’ lands.

Although slavery arrived in the Americas long before cotton became a profitable commodity, the use and purchase of slaves, the moralistic and economic justifications for the continuation of slavery, even the urgency to protect the practice from extinction before the Civil War all received new life from the rise of cotton and the economic, social, and culture growth spurt that accompanied its success.

“Prime field hands,” as they were called by merchants and traders, averaged $1,600 at market by 1850, a figure that fell in line with the rising prices of the cotton they picked.

Here was capitalism with its most colonial, violent, and exploitative face.

First, and most immediate, was the fear and risk of rebellion.

In many cases, cotton growers, especially planters with large lots and enslaved workforces, put up slaves as collateral for funds dedicated to buying more land.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Southern slavery during this so-called “Cotton Revolution” was the value placed upon both the work and the body of the slaves themselves.

The free population of the South also nearly doubled over that period—from around 1.3 million in 1790 to more than 2.3 million in 1810.

Although slavery arrived in the Americas long before cotton became a profitable commodity, the use and purchase of slaves, the moralistic and economic justifications for the continuation of slavery, even the urgency to protect the practice from extinction before the Civil War all received new life from the rise of cotton and the economic, social, and culture growth spurt that accompanied its success.

The most tragic, indeed horrifying, aspect of slavery was its inhumanity. All slaves had memories, emotions, experiences, and thoughts. They saw their experiences in full color, felt the pain of the lash, the heat of the sun, and the heartbreak of loss, whether through death, betrayal, or sale.

A single bad crop could cost even most wealthy, landed planter his or her entire life,

Cotton had become the foundation of the Southern economy

Prices for slaves varied drastically, depending on skin color, sex, age, and location, both of purchase and birth.

Knowing then they would betray me

began to direct my attention to this great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended.

when the white people would not let us be baptized by the church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptized by the Spirit

And the Negroes found fault, and murmured against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world.

I began to direct my attention to this great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended.

But the reason of my return was, that the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world

But Falconbridge also reports that African women faced other hardships, especially sexual abuse and rape:

In 1740 a new law stated that killing a rebellious slave was not a crime and even the murder of a slave was treated as a minor misdemeanor.

Recent estimates count between 11 and 12 million Africans forced across the Atlantic between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, with about 2 million deaths at sea as well as an additional several million dying in the trade’s overland African leg or during seasoning. Conditions in all three legs of the slave trade were horrible, but the first abolitionists focused especially on the abuses of the Middle Passage.

Skin color became more than superficial difference; it became the marker of a transcendent, all-encompassing division between two distinct peoples, two races, white and black.