3.3 The Commercial North

OBJECTIVE: Understand the economic changes in the northern colonies.

Understand the intellectual and religious changes in the colonies.

COMPARE/CONTRASTNORTHERN MIDDLE SOUTHERN

PuritanReligious FreedomFarm & IndustrySmall FarmsSlow, but Growing Conflict w/IndiansGood Climate

QuakerRel. TolerationFarm & IndustryFarmsDemocraticTolerantGood Rel.w/IndianMalaria in Chesap.

Catholic/Misc.Economic Cash CropsPlantationsSlaveryBuffer StatePunitive WarsMalarial

Northern Colonies• In northern colonies, religion, not profit, drives

colonization• Northern colonies’ economy grows more than

England’s• VERY diverse economy• Growing merchant class• More urbanized than other colonies• Increasing number if immigrants coming• More and more diverse, less “Puritan”

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF HAVING A DIVERSIFIED ECONOMY?

New England Culture

• Harsh climate (no malaria)• 1636 Harvard founded –first university in colonies

– 50% literacy better than England or the South (WHY?)• Town Meetings in New England – early democracy• Biblically based religion, “people of the book”• Puritans “city” in decline “jeremiad” preaching • “Great Awakening”

Idealism, Industry & Self-Sufficiency

Salem Witchcraft Trials -1692 • New England Town

– Puritan• Tituba

– African slave– Accused of witchcraft

• Caused a hysteria– The accused would accuse

others • Driven by economics?• 19 people were hung

– 5 others were killed– 2 dogs executed– 150 “witches” spent time in jail

HOW does this map show that the Salem Witchcraft trialswere a symptom of social stratification and division?

EXAMINATION OF A WITCH

The Enlightenment • Use of Science and Reason

– Scientific method – Looking beyond religion– Mathematical laws now applied to human

behavior as well• Developed in Europe• Typified by Benjamin Franklin (at left)

– Famous in America and Europe for his Experiments with Electricity

– Had many practical inventions• Glasses (bifocal)• Franklin Stove• Lightning Rods

• Spreading of ideas– Books and pamphlets – Franklin’s Poor Richards Almanac

• Effect on Politics– Thomas Jefferson– Idea of Natural rights (John Locke,

Montesquieu)

The Great Awakening • A call for Puritans to return

back to religious roots• Led by Jonathan Edwards

(at right)– Intense preacher– Brilliant thinker– Famous for his Sermons,

known as “jeremiads”

Effects:• Brought many people into

church for 1st time, incl. N. Americans

• Challenged authority of state-run churches. WHY?

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) Enfield, Connecticut - July 8, 1741

Their foot shall slide in due time.-- Deuteronomy 32:35 (EXCERPT)The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O 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, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

GREAT AWAKENING LEADERS

• George Whitfield Jonathan Edwards

Why did the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment

lead people to question British authority?

Essay

• In a well organized essay please address the following question.

• Explain the differences that developed in in England's’ northern and southern colonies from 1650-1750 (Rel, Pol, Cultural, Econ)– In a second paragraph be sure to explain how

climate and geography impacted this development .