3.3 The Commercial North

OBJECTIVE: Understand the economic changes in the

northern colonies.

Understand the intellectual and religious changes in the colonies.

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 of immigrants coming• More and more diverse, less “Puritan”

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF HAVING A DIVERSIFIED ECONOMY?

What resources did the Northern Colonies produce?

Diversified Economy• Grinding wheat, harvesting

fish, sawing lumber became thriving industries

• Boston, NY, Phil.

• PROBLEMS:• Fires• Diseases• Garbage• Human waste

Diverse North • More Urbanized

• Early immigration • Mainly Indentured servants, most came from England

• German and Scots-Irish are next wave of immigrants• Settle on the frontier = more conflict with the natives

• Diversity leads to clashes b/w ethnic groups • “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English,

become a colony of aliens?”• Ben Franklin

• Diversity changes original “Puritan” character of NE

• Slavery

• Existed, but not on the same level• Farming in the north is less labor intensive • Prejudice was still common, though.

• NE colonists tend to be healthy, but not as wealthy as Southern, slave owning planters

• Women • Have clear roles and responsibilities, but few legal rights • Could not:

• Vote, buy or sell property, keep their own wages, enter into contracts

• Only widows or single women could run their own business

Salem Witchcraft Trials -1692

• New England Town• Puritan

• Tituba• African slave• Accused of witchcraftWHY WAS SHE THE FIRST?

• Caused a hysteria• The accused would accuse others

• Driven by economics?

19 people were hung

5 others were killed2 dogs executed150 “witches” spent time in jail

Petition for bail from accused witches, 1692

This is a copy of the actual petition signed by the accused witches of the Salem witchcraft trials. (Library of Congress)

Petition for bail from accused witches, 1692

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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

The Enlightenment • Use of Science and Reason

• Scientific method • Looking beyond religion• Mathematical laws

• Developed in Europe• An effect of the Renaissance

• 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- Second Treatise of Government -1689Sec. 202. Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.

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.

Why did the Great Awakening and the

Enlightenment lead people to question British

authority?