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

Southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery

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.

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.

[“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?

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Some even sent their own agents to purchase cheap land at auction for the express purpose of selling it, sometimes the very next day, at double and triple the original value—a process known as “speculation.”

Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, the federal government implemented several forced migrations of Native Americans, establishing a system of reservations west of the Mississippi River upon which all eastern peoples were required to relocate and settle.

Perhaps most importantly, though, it came up at a time when land in the Southwest—southern Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and northern Louisiana—became readily available for anyone with a few dollars and big dreams.

How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions!

now occupied by a few savage hunters.

It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments on account of the Indians.

Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress,

Article VII and the resolutions adopted by the Federal Convention required that the proposed Constitution be adopted not by the state legislatures but by specially-elected ratifying conventions that would represent the people of each state.

The pro-ratification “Federalists,” on the other hand, argued that including a bill of rights was not only redundant but dangerous; it could limit future citizens from adding new rights.

The Constitution itself had been a controversial document adopted to strengthen the government so that it could withstand internal conflicts.

we know better than to repeal our masculine systems.

The moderates worried that supporting the Massachusetts militia would be akin to declaring war.

ollowing the Association, a number of these colonists began to worry that the resistance was too radical and aimed at independence.

At the same time, British goods and luxuries previously desired now became symbols of tyranny.

Hence, many authors asked: once the colonists assented to a tax in any form, what would stop the British from imposing ever more and greater taxes on the colonists?

These acts increased the presence of the British government in the colonies and circumscribed the authority of the colonial assemblies, since paying the governor’s salary had long given the assemblies significant power over them.

But to save face and to try to avoid this kind of problem in the future, Parliament also passed the Declaratory Act, asserting that Parliament had the “full power and authority to make laws . . . to bind the colonies and people of America . . . in all cases whatsoever.”

With no one to distribute the stamps, the Act became unenforceable.

some colonists began to fear a pattern of increased taxation and restricted liberties.

These factors led Britain in the 1760s to attempt to consolidate control over its North American colonies, which, in turn, led to resistance.

These political, intellectual, cultural, and economic developments built tensions that rose to the surface when, after the Seven Years’ War, Britain finally began to implement a program of imperial reform that conflicted with colonists’ understanding of the empire and their place in it.

Only a small fringe in Britain held these ideas, but in the colonies, they were widely accepted.

n both Britain and the colonies, land was the key to political participation

They sought to eliminate Britain’s growing national debt by raising taxes and cutting spending on the colonies.

The revolution created politicians eager to foster republican selflessness and protect the public good but also encouraged individual self-interest and personal gain.

it is true the Land belonged chiefly to those who have given it away

Parliament started legislating over all the colonies in a way rarely done before. As a result, the colonies began seeing themselves as a collective group, rather than just distinct entities.

During the war, the British Crown issued the Royal Proclamation Line of 1763, which marked the Appalachian Mountains as the boundary between Indian country and the British colonies.

However, the British General Jeffrey Amherst discouraged this practice and regulated the trade or sale of firearms and ammunition to Indians.

This gave the British a larger empire than they could control, which contributed to tensions leading to revolution.

These victories were often the result of alliances with Native Americans.

In 1754 a force of British colonists and Native American allies, led by young George Washington, attacked and killed a French diplomat. This incident led to a war

Leaders like Edwards and Whitefield encouraged individuals to question the world around them.

The spasms first appeared amongst known sinners in the community

for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy

However, all the colonies dealt with threats of censorship and control from imperial supervision

While in practice elites controlled colonial politics, in theory many colonists believed in the notion of equality before the law and opposed special treatment for any members of colonial society.

The assembly was composed of elected, property-owning men whose official goal was to ensure that colonial law conformed to English law.

Political structures in the colonies fell under one of three main categories: provincial, proprietary, and charter.

were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no need of any other, no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community

make them take sanctuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek the preservation of their property.

Such resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently destructive to those who attempt it.

The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property

During many voyages, however, the enslaved rebelled and attacked their captors.

working from dawn to dusk in groups with close supervision by a white overseer or enslaved “driver” who could use physical force to compel labor.

Virginians used the law to protect the interests of slaveholders.

it was a violent reminder to South Carolina planters that their slaves would fight for freedom.

South Carolina also banned the freeing of slaves unless the freed slave left the colony.

By 1750 there were approximately 100,000 African slaves in Virginia, at least 40% of the colony’s total population

The presence of Africans who bore arms and served in the Spanish militia testifies to the different conceptions of race among the English and Spanish in America

Dysentery, known as “the bloody flux,” left captives lying in pools of excrement

Some were not wars at all, but merely illegal raids performed by slave traders.

Seventeenth-century European legal thought held that enslaving prisoners of war was not only legal, but more merciful than killing the captives outright.

For Phillips, the profitability of slavery was the only justification he needed

“I can’t think there is any intrinsic value in one color more than another, nor that white is better than black, only we think it so because we are so.”

While Penn never doubted that the English would appropriate Native lands, he demanded his colonists obtain Indian territories through purchase rather than violence.

with Indians and English alike struggling for supremacy and survival.

Building contracts for the forts went to Berkeley’s wealthy friends, who conveniently decided that their own plantations were the most strategically vital.

The war’s brutality also encouraged a growing hatred of all Indians among many New England colonists.

The English compounded their problems by attacking the powerful and neutral Narragansetts of Rhode Island in December 1675.

As Pequot men, women, and children tried to escape the blaze, other soldiers waited with swords and guns.

Referring to themselves as the “Sword of the Lord,” this military force intended to attack “that insolent and barbarous Nation, called the Pequots.”

This left the colony vulnerable to English attack during the 1650s and 1660s, resulting in the hand-over of New Netherland to England in 1664.

The Dominion’s governor, Sir Edmund Andros, did little to assuage fears of arbitrary power when he forced colonists into military service for a campaign against Maine Indians in early 1687.

Parliament sought to bind the colonies more closely to England, and deny other European nations, especially the Dutch, from interfering with its American possessions.

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

Even marriage itself was regarded as a covenant. Connecticut granted nearly a thousand divorces between 1670 and 1799.

so that we, who hitherto have had possession of no more ground than their waste and our purchase at a valuable consideration to their contentment gained, may now by right of war, and law of nations, invade the country, and destroy them who sought to destroy us

The population spread and grew more diverse as New England prospered.

Previously forbidden holidays like Christmas were not only celebrated in Church.

It saved Virginia from ruin, incentivized further colonization, and laid the groundwork for what would become the United States.

“He that will not work shall not eat.”

Moreover, promoters promised that the conversion of New World Indians would satisfy God and glorify England’s “Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth I, who was verging on a near-divine image among the English

High mortality rates on sugar plantations required a steady influx of new slaves

above.

When the Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they sent a ship to find them, and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those who had escaped being slaughtered

But disease was deadlier than any weapon in the European arsenal. It unleashed death on a scale never before seen in human history.

They were not quite Indios, or Indians, but their lack of limpieza de sangre, or “pure blood,” removed them from the privileges of full-blooded Spaniards

Motives were plain: said one soldier, “we came here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.”

The Indian population collapsed. Within a few generations a whole island had been depopulated and a whole people exterminated.

But Columbus underestimated the size of the globe by a full two-thirds and therefore believed it was possible.

Culturally and geographically isolated, some combination of limited resources, inhospitable weather, food shortages, and native resistance drove the Norse back into the sea.

Elites maintained power through kinship, gift-giving, and by controlled access to the spiritual world.

She had not been consulted by Obatala, and grew angry that he had usurped so much of her kingdom.