Thirteen Colonies

The thirteen colonies were the original colonies of the United States. They were: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. On July 4, 1776, they became states and formed a new nation, the United States of America.

New England Colonies

Colony	Year Founded	Founded By	Chief Crops or Trade	Government	Religion
Massachusetts	1620	Pilgrims, led by William Bradford	Shipbuilding, fish, lumber	Governor appointed by king	established Puritan Church (after 1700 called Congregationalist);
Rhode Island	1636	Roger Williams, for religious reasons left Massachusetts	Lumber, fish.	Elected by colonists.	Complete religious freedom for all- Anglican (Episcopalian), Baptist, Quakers and other Protestants
Connecticut	1636	Thomas Hooker, who led a group from Massachusetts who wanted less government	Shipbuilding, lumber, fish	Elected by colonists	Congregationalist Church was established
New Hampshire	1623	Colonists who left Massachusetts for political and religious reasons	Molasses, fish	Governor appointed by king	Congregationalist

New England

For a more detailed treatment, see New England.
The Plymouth Colony, now part of Massachusetts, was founded by the Pilgrims, a small Puritan sect based in England and the Netherlands. One group sailed on the Mayflower. They drew up the Mayflower Compact by which they gave themselves broad powers of self-governance and introduced democracy into America. They established the small Plymouth Colony in 1620 and later merged with the Massachusetts Bay colony. William Bradford (1590-1657) was the main leader.

Puritans

For a more detailed treatment, see Puritans.
The Puritans, a much larger group than the Pilgrims, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. This group was the Puritans who sought to reform the Church of England by creating a new, pure church in the New World. Within two years, an additional 2,000 arrived. The Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit and politically innovative culture that still lingers on in the modern United States. They hoped this new land would serve as a "redeemer nation." Seeking the true religion, they fled England and in America created a "nation of saints" or the "City upon a Hill," an intensely religious, thoroughly righteous community designed to be an example for all of Europe. Roger Williams, who preached religious toleration, separation of Church and State, and a complete break with the Church of England, was banished and founded Rhode Island Colony, which became a haven for other religious refugees from the Puritan community. Anne Hutchinson, a preacher of Antinomianism likewise was exiled to Rhode Island.

Economically, Puritan New England fulfilled the expectations of its founders. Unlike the cash-crop oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of individual farmers, who harvested enough crops to feed themselves and their families and to trade for goods they could not produce themselves. There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake. On the other hand, town leaders in New England could literally rent out the town's impoverished families for a year to anyone who could afford to board them, as a form of alms and as a form of cheap labor. Along with farming growth, New England became an important mercantile and shipbuilding center, often serving as the hub for trading between the South and Europe.

Middle Colonies

Colony	Year Founded	Founded By	Chief Crops or Trade	Government	Religion
New York	1626	Dutch; English in 1664	Shipbuilding and trade	Governor appointed by king	Dutch Reformed, and other Protestants
New Jersey	1664	Swedish and Dutch; In 1664 Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley were given the land by the English Duke of York	Oats, wheat, rye	Governor appointed by king	Dutch Reformed, Quaker, others
Pennsylvania	1681	William Penn as a safe place for Quakers	Trade and Shipbuilding	Proprietor selected the governor	Quaker Lutheran, and other Protestant
Delaware	1682	William Penn	Tobacco	Proprietor selected the governor	Protestant

The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity—religious, political, economic, and ethnic. Many Dutch and Protestant Irish immigrants settled in these areas, as well as in Long Island and Connecticut. The Germans, called "Pennsylvania Dutch," were included in this emigration.

Southern Colonies

Colony	Year Founded	Founded By	Chief Crops or Trade	Government	Religion
Virginia	1607	John Smith, settlers from Virginia Company of London	Tobacco	Governor appointed by king	Anglican Church was established
Maryland	1634	Lord Baltimore as a safe place for Catholics	Tobacco	Proprietor selected by governor	Protestant and Catholic
North Carolina	1654	Virginia settlers	Tar from pine trees, tobacco, pitch, and rice	Governor appointed by king	Protestant
South Carolina	1663	English and other Europeans	Tar from pine trees, tobacco, pitch, and rice	Governor appointed by king	Protestant
Georgia	1732	James Oglethorpe, brought English debtors to protect Georgia from the Spanish	Indigo, tobacco	Governor appointed by king	Protestant

Lower South

The colonial South included the plantation colonies of the Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland) and the lower South (Carolina, which eventually split into North and South Carolina, and Georgia).

Carolinas

The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina. It was a private venture, financed by a group of English businessmen calling themselves the "Lords Proprietors," who obtained a Royal Charter to the Carolinas in 1663, hoping that a new colony in the south would become profitable like that of Jamestown. Carolina was not settled until 1670, and even then the first attempt failed because there was no incentive for emigration to the south. However, eventually the Lords combined their remaining capital and financed a settlement mission to the area led by John West. The expedition located fertile and defensible ground at what was to become Charleston (originally Charles Town for Charles II of England), thus beginning the English colonization of the mainland. The original settlers in South Carolina established a lucrative trade in provisions, deerskins and Indian captives with the Caribbean islands. They came mainly from the English colony of Barbados and brought African slaves with them. Barbados, as a wealthy sugarcane plantation island, was one of the early English colonies to large numbers of Africans in plantation style agriculture. The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690s via Africans from the rice-growing regions of West Africa. North Carolina remained a frontier through the early colonial period.

At first, South Carolina was politically divided. Its ethnic makeup included the original settlers, a group of rich, slave-owning English settlers from the island of Barbados; and Huguenots, a French-speaking community of Protestants. Nearly continuous frontier warfare during the era of King William's War and Queen Anne's War drove economic and political wedges between merchants and planters. The disaster of the Yamasee War, in 1715, set off a decade of political turmoil. By 1729, the proprietary government had collapsed, and the Proprietors sold both colonies back to the British crown.

Georgia

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Savannah, Georgia Colony, Early 1700's

James Oglethorpe, an 18th century British Member of Parliament, established Georgia Colony as a common solution to two problems. At that time, tension between Spain and Great Britain was high, and the British feared that Spanish Florida was threatening the British Carolinas. Oglethorpe decided to establish a colony in the contested border region of Georgia and populate it with debtors who would otherwise have been imprisoned according to standard British practice. This plan would both rid Great Britain of its undesirable elements and provide her with a base from which to attack Florida. The first colonists arrived in 1733.

Georgia was established on strict moralistic principles. Slavery was forbidden, as was alcohol and other forms of supposed immorality. However, the reality of the colony was far from ideal. The colonists were unhappy about the puritanical lifestyle and complained that their colony could not compete economically with the Carolina rice plantations. Georgia initially failed to prosper, but eventually the restrictions were lifted, slavery was allowed, and it became as prosperous as the Carolinas.

Unification of the 13 colonies

A common defense

One event that reminded colonists of their shared identity as British subjects was the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in Europe. This conflict spilled over into the colonies, where it was known as "King George's War"; most of the fighting took place in Europe, British colonial troops attacked French Canada.

At the Albany Congress of 1754, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the colonies be united by a Grand Council overseeing a common policy for defense, expansion, and Indian affairs. While the plan was thwarted by colonial legislatures and King George II, it was an early indication that the British colonies of North America were headed towards unification. This enabled former Whigs in Britain to become Tories and former Tories in the colonies to become Whigs.

Great Awakening

For a more detailed treatment, see First Great Awakening.
One event that began to unify the religious background of the colonies was the First Great Awakening, a Protestant revival movement that took place in the 1730s and 1740s. It began with Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts preacher who sought to return to the Pilgrims' strict Calvinist roots and to reawaken the "Fear of God". Edwards was a powerful speaker and attracted a large following with sermons such as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". English preacher George Whitefield and other itinerant preachers continued the movement, traveling across the colonies and preaching in a dramatic and emotional style.

Followers of Edwards and other preachers of similar religiosity called themselves the "New Lights," as contrasted with the "Old Lights", who disapproved of their movement. To promote their viewpoints, the two sides established academies and colleges including Princeton and Williams College. The Great Awakening has been called the first truly "American" event, and as such represented at least a small step towards the unification of the colonies.

A similar pietistic movement took place among some of the German and Dutch Lutherans, leading to internal dvisions. By the 1770s the Baptists were growing rapidly both in the north (where they founded Brown University, and in the South where they challenged the previously unquestioned moral authority of the Anglican establishment.

French and Indian War

File:WashingtonFIwar.jpg

George Washington during the French and Indian War

For a more detailed treatment, see French and Indian War.
The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years' War.

The war is called the French and Indian because the Iroquois confederacy—which had been playing the British and the French against each other successfully for decades fought on both sides. The French were defeated and in the Treaty of Paris (1763), France surrendered its vast North American empire to Britain.

The French and Indian war took on a new significance for the North American colonists in Great Britain when William Pitt the elder decided that it was necessary to win the war against France at all costs. For the first time, North America was one of the main theatres of what could be termed a "world war". During the war, the status of all the British Colonies (including the thirteen colonies) as part of the British Empire was made truly apparent, as British military and civilian officials took on an increased presence in the lives of Americans. The war also increased a sense of American unity in other ways. It caused men, who might normally have never left their colonies, to travel across the continent, fighting alongside men from decidedly different, yet still "American," backgrounds. Throughout the course of the war, British officers trained American ones (most notably George Washington) for battle which would later benefit the American Revolution. Also, state legislatures and officials had to cooperate intensively, for arguably the first time, in pursuit of the continent-wide military effort.

The British and colonists triumphed jointly over a common foe. The colonists' loyalty to the mother country was stronger than ever before. However, a disunity was beginning to form. British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder had decided to wage the war in the colonies with the use of troops from the colonies and tax funds from Britain itself. This was a successful wartime strategy, but after the war was over, each side believed that it had borne a greater burden than the other. The British populace, the most heavily taxed of any in Europe, pointed out angrily that the colonists paid little to the royal coffers. The colonists replied that their sons had fought and died in a war that served European interests more than their own. The British answered that the colonists' poor discipline made them inferior soldiers anyway. This dispute was a link in the chain of events that soon brought about the American Revolution.

Ties to the British Empire

Although the colonies were very different from one another, they were still a part of the British empire in more than just name.

Socially, the colonial elite of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia saw their identity as British. Although many had never been to England, they imitated British styles of luxurious consumption, dress, dance, and etiquette. This social upper echelon built its mansions in the Georgian style (named after King George), copied the furniture designs of Thomas Chippendale, and participated in the intellectual currents of Europe, such as Enlightenment. To many of their inhabitants, the seaport cities of colonial America were truly British cities.

All of the [political structures of the colonies drew upon various English political traditions, most notably the republicanism and the Whig traditions. Many Americans at the time saw the colonies' systems of governance as modeled after the British constitution of the time, with the king corresponding to the governor, the House of Commons to the colonial assembly, and the House of Lords to the governor's council. The codes of law of the colonies were often drawn directly from English law (Scotland had a different legal system which did not carry over to the colonies); indeed, English common law survives not only in Canada, but also in the modern United States. Eventually, it was a dispute over the meaning of some of these political ideals, especially political representation, and a growing unity among the new generations that led to the American Revolution.

Another point on which the colonies found themselves more similar than different was the booming import of British goods by international merchants based in American seaports. The British economy had begun to grow rapidly at the end of the 17th century, and by the mid-18th century, small factories in Britain were producing much more than the nation could consume. Finding a market for their goods in the British colonies of North America, Britain increased her exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770. Because British merchants offered generous credit to their customers, Americans began buying staggering amounts of English goods. From Nova Scotia to Florida, including all thre 13 colonies, all British subjects bought similar products, creating and Anglicanizing a sort of common identity.

From unity to revolution

Royal Proclamation

The general sentiment of inequity that arose soon after the Treaty of Paris of 1763 was solidified by the Proclamation of 1763, which temporarily prohibited settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists resented the measure, and it was never enforced.

Acts of Parliament

Parliament had generally been preoccupied with affairs in Europe and let the colonies govern themselves. It was no longer willing to do so. A series of measures resulting from this policy change, while affecting the New England colonies most directly would continue to arouse opposition in the 'thirteen colonies' over the next thirteen years:

• Sugar Act (1764)
• Stamp Act 1765
• First Quartering Act (1765)
• Declaratory Act (1766)
• Townshend Revenue Act (1767)
• Tea Act (1773)
• The Intolerable Acts, also called the Coercive or Punitive Acts
  • Second Quartering Act (1774)
  • Quebec Act (1774)
  • Massachusetts Government Act (1774)
  • Administration of Justice Act (1774)
  • Boston Port Act (1774)
• Prohibitory Act (1776)

Bibliography

Reference

• Cooke, Jacob Ernest, ed. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies (3 vol 1993), comprehensive coverage with Spanish, French and Dutch receiving equal attention with British

Scholarly secondary sources

• Adams, James Truslow. The Founding of New England, (1921)online edition
• Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2005) excerpt and text search
• Andrews, Charles M. "Colonial Commerce," American Historical Review, 20#1 (October 1914) pp. 43-63 online
• Andrews, Charles M. Our Earliest Colonial Settlements: Their Diversities of Origin and Later Characteristics (1933) briefly discusses Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland) online edition
• Andrews, Charles M. Colonial Self-Government, 1652-1689.. (1904) online edition
• Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History, (1934-38) (the standard overview in four volumes) online at ACLS e-books
• Bailyn, Bernard. Voyagers to the West: a passage in the peopling of America on the eve of the Revolution (1986), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History
• Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the discovery of the American continent. 10 vol (1860) online editions
• Beer, George Louis. "British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765," Political Science Quarterly, vol 22 (March 1907) pp 1-48; online edition
• Beeman, Richard R. "The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (2006) excerpt and text search
• Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America (1997) 276pp excerpt and text search
• Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (1988) (online at ACLS History e-book project)
• Bonomi, Patricia U. A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York, (1971) online edition
• Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (1996) 512pp excerpt and text search
• Bruce, Philip A. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records. (1896), very old fashioned history online edition
• Carr, Lois Green and Philip D. Morgan. Colonial Chesapeake Society (1991), 524pp excerpt and text search
• Crane, Verner W. The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732, (1920), online edition
• Crane, Verner W. "The Southern Frontier in Queen Anne’s War," American Historical Review vol 24, (April 1919) pp 379-95. online edition
• Gipson, Lawrence. The British Empire Before the American Revolution (15 volumes) (1936-1970), Pulitzer Prize; highly detailed discussion of every British colony in the New World
• Greene, Evarts Boutelle. Provincial America, 1690-1740, (1935) survey by scholar online edition
• Hatfield, April Lee. Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (2007) excerpt and text search
• Illick, Joseph E. Colonial Pennsylvania: A History, (1976) online edition
• Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History, (2003)
• Labaree, Benjamin Woods. Colonial Massachusetts: A History, (1979)
• Kulikoff, Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000) online edition
• Middleton, Richard. Colonial America: A History, 1565-1776 (3rd ed 2002), 576pp excerpt and text search
• Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975) Pulitzer Prizeonline edition
• Osgood, Herbert L. The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century. 3 vol (1904-07) online edition
• Tate, Thad W. Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century (1980) excerpt and text search
• Taylor, Alan. American Colonies, (2001) survey by leading scholar excerpt and text search
• Vickers, Daniel, ed. A Companion to Colonial America. 2003. 576 pp.

Primary sources

• Kavenagh, W. Keith, ed. Foundations of Colonial America: A Documentary History (1973) 4 vol.
• Miller, Kerby A., et al eds. Irish immigrants in the land of Canaan: letters and memoirs from colonial and revolutionary America, 1675-1815 (2004) online at ACLS e-books

Online sources

• Colonial America 1600-1775, K12 Resources
• Archiving Early America
• Classics of American Colonial History complete text of older scholarly articles