Hello everyone. My name is Professor George Pabis. Our subject for today is the Northern Colonies to 1700. To understand what happens at Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Puritans, we need to go back in history just a little bit, and give a little review of the Reformation in England. The Reformation started with a man named Martin Luther in the German States in Central Europe when he basically said that salvation does not come through the church, but through a relationship with God directly and that faith alone brings salvation. Not the practicing of certain rituals, not even what you do in your daily life-- faith, the belief in Jesus, is what brings salvation. This idea started a revolution and about a third of Europe turned Protestant In various denominations. In England, the Reformation had a political overtone. Henry VIII wanted a divorce. He had gotten special permission from the pope to marry his dead brother's wife. Now he wanted to divorce her because she didn't supply him with a male son to succeed him so he wanted divorce. And when the pope said no, Henry VIII said that we're breaking away. The king is now the leader of the English church, and there were Catholics who disagreed with them and they remain a minority within England. Basically, England had an official church. But for many Protestants outside of England and some within England, when they looked at that Anglican Church-- It wasn't very different from the Catholic Church. It still had bishops, the ritual, the very service the mass was pretty much the Catholic mass. There were these people in England who were called Puritans--they wanted to purify the Anglican church and make it more Protestant. In their mind, Christian. The Anglican Church said--we're fine the way we are. Thank you. And so there is conflict between the two. One of the things about the Anglican Church is that it is the official Church of England, and so if you know you don't support the official Church of England, you're actually not supporting the king because remember the king is the leader of the Anglican Church. So you are actually committing treason. So the Puritans were being persecuted. The group of people we know as pilgrims were separatists--they had had enough of the Anglican Church, and the only way they could survive and be true to what it means to be Christian is to break away from the Anglican Church totally, and actually leave England. First they move to the Netherlands. That didn't work out too well--the Netherlands were very open minded about religion, and the separatists did not like that. So they finally decided--listen we need to go to the colonies. They get permission from England. They hire a crew and a ship called the Mayflower and after some delay, they set sail to the New World. Not all the people on the Mayflower were separatist. There were actually all kinds of people because they needed money to finance this voyage. Due to the delays, the Mayflower and its passengers did not arrive on the shores of North America until November. Before they landed, people on the Mayflower decided to write a Mayflower Compact--basically they wrote out how they could organize their society. Think about that: they're starting a new kind of local government. This is very important--they sat together, talked, discussed and tried to figure out what kind of world did they want to create. What kind of world did they want to live in. The people of the Mayflower saw themselves as quite independent of England. When the Mayflower arrives along the coast of North America, they are looking for a place to settle. After exploring the coast,on one place they actually find a supply of corn that had been hidden away by the Native Americans. They took that supply. They finally settle near a big rock, and there they founded Plymouth colony. William Bradford was elected their leader. Unfortunately winter was setting in. And they were running out of food. The leadership of the pilgrims decided to make peace with the natives that lived near the colony as we saw in Jamestown. The natives who lived near the pilgrims needed allies and the pilgrims needed food. On one occasion the leaders of the Native Americans and pilgrims met and shared a meal. Most of the food was supplied by the Native Americans, but they saw this as a chance to create an alliance and so too did the Pilgrims. Unlike Jamestown and Virginia, which found tobacco as their cash crop, the pilgrims really never create a very prosperous economy. They're just getting by. And they remain one of the poorer colonies amongst the English colonies of North America. However, the separatists did come for religious reasons. Fortunately they were able to practice their faith the way they wanted to without interference from England. From a religious perspective, their colony was a success. Let's now turn our attention to the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony further up north. The founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony by the Puritans was unlike any other colony in the Americas The Puritans were well funded, they were organized, well led, and they knew exactly what they wanted to do to create a community of Christians in the English colonies. They moved not as individuals, but as entire communities to the New World. Their leader John Winthrop wrote a very famous sermon called the "City Upon a Hill". The Puritans were creating a Christian community. A city upon a hill that would be a beacon and example for all the world to see. Unlike Plymouth, and surely unlike Virginia, you have a massive influx of people between 1630 and 1640. For the first ten years, twenty thousand people come to Massachusetts Bay unlike the southern counties. Most of these people are coming as a community. Men, women, and children and these men women and children are going to live in families. They are mostly middle class. This is going to be a thriving community almost from the beginning. the Puritans embraced a form of Christianity called Calvinism. John Calvin had preached in Geneva, Switzerland. Calvin believed in predestination: God since the beginning of time knows who's going to heaven and who's going to hell. So you as a human being, you need to find out if you're going to heaven or hell. And how do you know that--by the way you live. Calvinists believe in a very strict moral code. Christian rules from the Bible should be applied to everyday life. The Puritans were building a city upon a hill based on Christian principles. Government which was officially separated from the church was going to be used to enforce Christian morality. The Chosen live a certain way, and we want to make sure everybody else lives that way too. The Puritans do not live in little homesteads and plantations, but lived in towns. If you look at a map of Massachusetts, you'll see that every few miles there's another town, another town, another town. These were founded by the Puritans. They basically set out the rules who can be members of the town and who couldn't. The Puritans came here to create a Christian community. But this was not going to be a community which would be tolerant of other Christians who disagreed with them. What about the people within their own community, can they disagree? Over time, the Puritan community fractured. There were people in the community who disagreed with the leaders of the community or certain ideas that the community embraced. Anne Hutchinson is one of the most famous of those dissenters. She was a woman who had a family, and she was very active in the religious life of her family and increasingly the community, The community leaders were unhappy that she was giving lectures at home and Hutchinson was becoming ever more vocal in her criticism of Puritan leaders. The leaders of the Puritan community, she argued, were preaching that good works could influence God's plan. John Winthrop clearly saw her as subversive. Women were not supposed to speak out. Anne Hutchinson was arrested and brought to trial. She was accused of pretending to directly speak with God, and this led her to be excommunicated from the church and expelled from the community. Anne Hutchinson, her family, and a few of her supporters were later massacred by Native Americans. Roger Williams also disagreed with the Puritans. He believed that Massachusetts Bay Colony was treating Native Americans unfairly. He believed that they were human. They deserved to become Christian and saved. Roger Williams was also unhappy about how the Puritan leadership treated dissenters. Roger Williams was more open to different ways in which Christians could worship God. Remember the Puritans believed that their way was the only way. With a few hundred followers, Roger Williams left the Massachusetts Bay Colony to found a new colony, Rhode Island, that practiced religious tolerance. Another dissenter in the Puritan community was Thomas ****. Governor Winthrop believed that only members of a church should vote politically in the community and hold office. How do you become a member of a Puritan church? Well, you're born into it. No no. You basically have to, some time in your life, go in front of the church and explain why you believe you are saved--not only your conversion experience but actually prove that you are one of the Chosen. This was not an easy thing to do. The members of the church then voted to admit you or not. If you were not a member of the church, you still had to pay government taxes that went towards supporting the Puritan church. And you were forced by the government to actually attend church. You would be punished by law enforcement for not attending church. even though you are not a member. Thomas **** said that all property owners have the right to vote, even though you're not a member of the church. The Puritans said absolutely not. Thomas **** broke off and with eight hundred other Puritans founded a town called Hartford, which would become the colony of Connecticut. They created something called the Orders of Connecticut. We call it an early form of a constitution. They're writing it down. New England traded with England, and they're dependent on that trade for economic success. So what did they trade? Well in the beginning, it was timber and fish. Later they added various crops that they sold to the Caribbean, which did not produce its own food. The economy of New England, which consist of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut was thriving. The seasonal climate of New England was conducive to a healthy life. From the 1640s onwards the population doubled every twenty years. New England was a total success. The lifespans of people were greater in New England than anywhere in the colonies. And in this prosperity. things were changing. Young people are not even bothering to become church members anymore. Church membership decreased. The numbers of people who are giving their testimonies before the church decreased as well. The very tight knit community that was there in the first twenty years was unraveling. So much so that in 1662, the Puritans passed a document called the Halfway Covenant, which permitted the unconverted children of saints to become halfway church members. But kids and surely the grand kids didn't care anymore about tha.t and this direct Christian life of their fathers and grandparents wasn't that important to them anymore. This was creating a crisis in the community. The Puritans came here with a religious mission. That city upon a hill that they firmly believed, but within thirty forty years their vision wasn't really a reality anymore. The Puritans were changing. In this environment the Salem Witch Trials occurred. A group of young women accused another woman of being a witch. The persecution of witches had been going on for over a century in Europe, but now it came to New England. Most of these were female. Most of these women were single or widows. Religion was vital to these people's existence in Massachusetts, but they really believed in Heaven and Hell. They really believed that they were chosen and everybody else was going to hell, and they believed in people called witches who worked closely with Satan. Witches were seeking to harm the Christian community. The young girls who were accusing another woman of being a witch lived away from the coast. The coast was very prosperous. They were poor. The poor folk were pointing fingers at the richer folk. It didn't help matters that Cotton Mather the new leader of the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay was very ambitious and used this witch crisis to further his career. So authorities allowed this to spread. Dozens of people are accusing dozens of other people of being witches. People are dying, being murdered by the authorities for being witches. Dozens of others were awaiting execution. It is tearing up families. It is tearing up the community. The witch hunt officially ends when a leading judge stops it because his own wife has been accused of being a witch. Quickly the leaders of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay are suddenly saying this is wrong and later apologized. Especially when the three original women who accused others of being a witch admit that they actually made it all up. The intensity of the Puritan vision, the purity of that Puritan vision is gone. They had turned on their own community and now they realized those people were actually innocent. The religious experiment had gone wrong. Puritanism survives but its intensity is diminished. Please look into your text book for information about the founding of New York and New Jersey. Let's focus on Pennsylvania which was founded by the Quakers. Unlike the Puritans who believe that there are only a few Christians who are chosen by God to go to heaven, the Quakers believed in a generous loving God who welcomed all to the Christian faith. They're very egalitarian, meaning that anybody can join. Both men and women play a role. A Quaker service is a meeting of equals. There are no priest or ministers. There is silence until someone feels inspired and says something. This radical egalitarianism was condemned by the Puritans and the Anglican Church. The Quakers were persecuted. Quakers were also pacifists. They do not believe in war. A wealthy Quaker in England by the name of William Penn got permission to found the colony of Pennsylvania. William Penn ran his colony as his own personal property, but the openness of the Quakers encouraged people of all kinds of Christian denominations to move to Pennsylvania. The Quakers sought to treat Native Americans fairly and bought their land and had peace treaties with them and did everything possible to keep those peace treaties intact. The Quakers had good business connections with England so trade flourished over the years. Tensions developed between the frontier regions and the Quakers settled regions around Philadelphia. As we saw in other colonies, the people in the frontier regions wanted land and that land was controlled by Native Americans. So push the Native Americans out, but the Quakers wanted peace with the Native Americans. So there's always that tension, and basically the frontier people do get Native American land. Before we end the screencast, let's just bring up one more point. After 1650, the English government wants greater control over their colonies. especially greater control over trade. The English Government and English merchants want to make sure they get a percentage of the profits coming from the colonies. They want all goods leaving the colonies to be shipped on English ships with in English sailors. At this point, the colonists are fine--there's enough money to go around. Another war that really changes the northern colonies is the King Phillip's War. In the Plymouth colony,the first generation Native Americans and the colonists had lived in peace. This second generation of Native Americans and colonists went to war. What were the problems? Well the same ones we've seen in other colonies. The colonists wanted more land, as more and more immigrants came to the Americas. The Native Americans wanted to protect their land. Instead of diplomacy, it came to war. The Native Americans attacked and several hundred colonists were killed. In terms of percentages killed and wounded in a war, the King Phillip's War was one of the bloodiest wars in American history. The reaction from England was to assert its control over Plymouth. But thankfully for the colonists, after the Glorious Revolution overthrew the king of England, Plymouth's charter, which gave it autonomy from England was restored. The King Philip's War shows us once again that the colonists want to expand and the Native Americans are struggling to maintain the territory they held. In the long run, time and time again, the colonists win out. OK, everyone. Thank you very much for listening to the screencast. Have a good day and bye bye.