8. Racial restrictions on marriage and sexual relations had a profound effect on the lives of African American women and men, whose experiences will be discussed more fully in Chapter 14. Since the 1990s, much scholarship has examined the racial dimensions of colonial gender ideology and sexual regulation, reflecting historians' perception that scholarship on American women's history had been distorted by its insufficient focus on the experiences of women of color. Consideration of racial restrictions on marriage and sexual relations in the British mainland colonies may be found in Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches; Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, 2002); and Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore, 2002).
9. Legal penalties for fornication and other courtship-related transgressions are discussed in Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar. On marriage regulation in the colonies, see Ruth H. Bloch, Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650–1800 (Berkeley, 2003), ch. 4.
10. For the life expectancies of women in New England, see Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations (Ithaca, 1970), 61; for the law of divorce and the anglicization of the legal system, see Dayton, Women Before the Bar, ch. 3.
11. For a discussion of options for single white women, see Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 2000).
12. Studies of women in colonial New York include Linda Briggs Biemer, Women and Property in Colonial New York: The Transition from Dutch to English Law, 1643–1727 (Ann Arbor, 1983); David Narrett, Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City (Ithaca, 1992).
13. Historical studies of masculinity and male gender ideology are relatively recent. British American manhood and masculinity are explored in Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches; Lisa Wilson, Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in Colonial New England (New Haven, 1999); Anne Lombard, Making Manhood: Growing Up Male in Colonial New England (Cambridge, Mass., 2003); and Thomas A. Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America (Boston, 2006). Brown and Foster explore the growing connection between ideal manhood and whiteness.
14. The development of architectural and furnishing styles as an aspect of refinement and gentility in the colonial upper classes is discussed in Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992).
15. Eighteenth-century expectations for upper-class women are discussed in Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, chs 8 and 9.
16. Consumption patterns have been the subject of considerable historical scholarship. See, for example, Carole Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990) and Cary Carson, Ron Hoffman, and Peter Albert, eds, Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1994).
17. Karin Wulf discusses the reasons for the small but growing population of single women in Philadelphia in Not All Wives.
18. Rising expectations of romantic love are dealt with in Ruth Bloch, “Changing Conceptions of Sexuality and Romance in Eighteenth-Century America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 60 (2003), 13–42, and Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution.
19. These same tensions may help to explain why urban colonial men and women in North America so enthusiastically participated in boycotts of imported British consumer goods during the 1760s. Demonstrating self-control and producing homespun instead of using imported cloth was a way to prove to themselves and others that colonial men were more manly, and colonial women more industrious, than the men and women of the British empire who were trying to impose new imperial controls on them.
20. Log cabins were easy and cheap to construct, making them attractive to young white men eager to start households before having saved much money. Carole Shammas, “The Housing Stock of the Early United States: Refinement Meets Migration,” Willam and Mary Quarterly, 64 (2007), 549–90. No record of how these men's wives felt about living in log cabins has been found.
21. Changes in eighteenth-century colonial women's work and women's contributions to a changing material culture are explored by various authors, particularly Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York, 2001).
Chapter 13
British North American Religion, Education, and Culture, 1689–1760
1689 Parliament passes the Toleration Act.
1693 The College of William and Mary is chartered. John Locke publishes his Thoughts Concerning Education.
1701 The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) is founded.
Yale is founded to train a more orthodox New England ministry.
1704 The Boston News-Letter begins publication.
1706 The Anglican Church is established in South Carolina. Francis Makemie forms the first presbytery in Philadelphia.
1708 The Connecticut churches adopt the Saybrook Platform.
1722 The first Anglican church in Connecticut is established.
1726 William Tennent's Log College is founded at Neshaminy.
1727 The Junto Club (later the American Philosophical Society) is founded by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia.
1729 Jonathan Edwards is appointed minister at Northampton.
1731 The Library Company of Philadelphia is created.
The first public music concert is given in Boston.
1739 George Whitefield arrives in America.
1746 The Presbyterian College of New Jersey is established at Elizabethtown (and moved to Princeton in 1754).
1751 Franklin's Academy of Philadelphia is established.
1752–4 Lewis Hallam's theater company tours the colonies.
1754 King's College, New York (later Columbia College) is chartered.
1 Religion
THE RAPIDLY INCREASING flow of information, news, and consumer goods between the colonies and Great Britain would not only change consumer behavior and gender ideology but also affect religious ideas, educational expectations, manners, literary tastes, and even perceptions of national identity among ordinary colonists. Colonial culture changed so rapidly during the eighteenth century that its disparate strands can be difficult to make sense of. At times it seemed that colonial culture was becoming more rational, influenced by the Enlightenment and the scientific ideal. At other times it appeared that colonial culture was becoming more emotional with the growing popularity of evangelical Protestantism. Much like cultural change in the modern era, these trends can seem contradictory and impossible to reconcile. Yet one common thread runs through the many manifestations of cultural change during the era. Over time, colonial societies were becoming more integrated into the larger British empire. Their inhabitants were growing more aware of British religious movements, intellectual debates, politics, and wars. As time went on they were coming to think of themselves as Britons.
Clearly religion remained the most important aspect of colonial life, even in the South. Although sectarian differences generally became less divisive after 1689, religion was still a crucial element in people's lives, and provided one of the main lenses through which ordinary colonists viewed their world.
Many characteristics of seventeenth-century religions persisted in the eighteenth century. God was still seen as a vengeful deity who punished the wicked by sending them to hell. Only a minority would go to heaven. Nevertheless, important developments had taken place. In New England the need to expand the elect had led some ministers to extend the communion. The first tentative steps in this direction had been taken by Thomas Hooker in seventeenth-century Connecticut. Towards the end of his ministry, Hooker had opened communion at Hartford to all adults of good behavior, believing that only God could judge whether someone was of the elect. At the same time he urged everyone to prepare for salvation. Hooker argued that God had not necessarily made up his mind about every individual. Grace might still be achieved if the covenant were observed.
Hooker's ideas were later adopted at Northampton,
further up the Connecticut Valley, where Solomon Stoddard was the minister. Opponents like Cotton Mather understandably argued that Hooker and Stoddard were preaching a covenant of works, meaning that salvation could be achieved by doing good works rather than through faith or God's grace. Nevertheless, Stoddard was not prevented from continuing these practices when the Massachusetts synod of ministers was convened in 1679 to discuss the issue of church declension. Increasingly others followed his lead, notably the Brattle Street Church in Boston. After 1740 most churches began offering communion to all who appeared of a godly disposition, effectively ending the distinction between the elect and the rest of the congregation. All that was now required in most places to take communion was a satisfactory preparatory examination before a minister.1
Other philosophical influences were also at work. By the start of the eighteenth century the European intelligentsia were moving towards a more rational, less theological explanation of the world, based on the scientific work of Galileo and Newton and the deductive philosophy of Locke. An intellectual revolution was in progress which even the churches could not escape. Especially important was the view that man was not the product of original sin. A benign deity had given humanity reason so that it could understand the environment and benefit therefrom. Opinion, in other words, was shifting towards those who believed in free will rather than predestination as the answer to salvation. Among those affected by these intellectual currents were the two Mathers. Although they continued to believe in an elect chosen through grace, they now sought to reconcile theological explanations of the world with the new insights of the natural sciences. Hence the elder Mather accepted the scientific explanation for the periodic appearance of comets, but also affirmed that they were God's way of indicating his divine purposes. Cotton Mather argued similarly for the workings of providence when he published his views on the natural world in The Christian Philosopher in 1721.
This intellectual approach helped narrow the gap between the Congregational and Presbyterian churches, since both subscribed to many of the new ideas. One sign of this rapprochement was the readiness of the two Mathers to attend the consecration of a Presbyterian church in Boston. Clearly the Massachusetts establishment had come a long way since the time of Robert Child. Exclusivity was now less important than standing together against the growing irreligion of the population at large.
The most dramatic closing of the gap between these two churches occurred at the Connecticut synod of 1708, when the Congregational ministry adopted the Saybrook Platform, which effectively instituted a Presbyterian form of discipline. Another sign of the retreat from Congregationalism was that the ordination of the clergy was now done entirely by the laying on of ministerial hands rather than those of the laity. The ministers felt that their congregations contained too many unregenerate elements for the old practice to continue, though another reason may have been the disproportionate number of women now comprising most congregations. The result was a further distancing of the ministers from their flock.2 The drift towards clericalism caused considerable disquiet and may have been one cause of the subsequent Great Awakening.
Officially or unofficially, most colonies continued to have an established church. In most of New England it remained the Congregational Church. The Massachusetts charter of 1691 stated that “there shall be a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, except papists.” This provision was interpreted to mean that each town could levy tithes for the support of a Congregational minister. Liberty of conscience did not mean the right to equal treatment. Not until 1727 and 1728 were laws passed exempting Anglicans, Baptists, and Quakers from the payment of tithes for the support of the Congregational ministry. Even then it was a case of applying for an exemption rather than an automatic right.
Connecticut and New Hampshire similarly tried to exclude other religious groups. Connecticut did grant the Baptists the right to worship in 1708, but they still had to pay tithes and obtain permission from the county court to hold their services. In this hostile climate the Anglicans did not manage to form their first church there until 1722. Between 1727 and 1729 the tithe requirement was finally abated for most denominations, including Quakers, though the exemption was still hedged by various restrictions and Connecticut was far from accepting genuine toleration. The presumption remained that minority religious groups undermined the established order and ought to be discouraged.
The only province in New England not to have an established church was Rhode Island. Here the legacy of Roger Williams prevailed: all churches had to be supported by their congregations without the aid of a tithe. The result, as Cotton Mather sarcastically observed, was that Rhode Island had “Antinomians, Familists, Anabaptists, Antisabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters – everything in the world but Roman Catholics and real Christians.”
Elsewhere, except for Pennsylvania and Delaware, the Anglican Church superficially reigned supreme. It had prospered in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, securing establishment in the Carolinas, Maryland, and part of New York. One sign of its growing confidence was the founding in 1701 of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the SPG, which dispatched numerous missionaries, books, and pamphlets to the colonies. The Anglicans were also helped by the desire of several groups to ingratiate themselves with the British authorities. By 1750 many Dutch in New York City had joined Trinity Church, and Huguenots acted similarly in South Carolina. By the end of the colonial period the Anglicans had built over 400 churches, including 70 in New England. The Dutch Reformed Church in contrast had barely 60 congregations, concentrated in New York and New Jersey.
The newfound confidence of the Anglicans was reflected in the building of Christ Church, otherwise known as the Old North Church in Boston in 1723. Its steeple dominated the Puritan capital, compelling the Congregational community to respond with a similar adornment for the Old South Church in 1729. Other churches were given steeples also in an attempt to dominate the skyline. But perhaps most shocking to Congregationalists was the defection to Anglicanism in 1722 of the rector of Yale, Timothy Cutler, and another leading minister, the Reverend Samuel Johnson.
Despite these successes, the Anglican Church suffered from a number of weaknesses. In the South it tended to remain the religion of the planter class, who seemingly adopted it for reasons of social snobbery rather than conviction. Conversation among the congregation after the service was usually about tobacco prices and social matters rather than the content of the sermon. Among the backcountry farmers it was unable to compete with the Baptists and Presbyterians. Although the South structured its local government around the parish vestry, the arrangement did not usually benefit the Anglican Church, since many vestries contained persons belonging to other denominations.3
One fundamental weakness of Anglicanism was its lack of locally trained clergy. The failure to create an American bishopric contrasted sharply with the position of the other major denominations, which had no such problems in the ordination of their ministers. The decision to place the colonies under the episcopal authority of the bishop of London in 1691 did not help, since he was too remote to exert effective leadership. Hence the church, like other institutions of the English establishment, was starved of local input and later withered like the proverbial seed in stony ground on the outbreak of the Revolution in 1776.
In addition to Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware were by the eighteenth century two other provinces not to have an established church. The Quaker conviction that religion was a matter for the individual meant that uniformity was not sought there. Only Catholics were excluded from full toleration, at the insistence of the authorities in the mother country.
Three churches – Presbyterian, Lutheran, and German Reformed – enjoyed major growth during the eighteenth century. There had been Presbyterians in America since the time of Robert Child, but they remained an insignificant group. Indeed, the church was not properly organized until 1706 when Franci
s Makemie, an Edinburgh-trained Scots-Irishman, succeeded in bringing the various English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish congregations together under a presbytery in Philadelphia. The subsequent arrival of more Scots following the Act of Union in 1707 and, more important, of the Scots-Irish from northern Ireland after 1717, led to such remarkable growth that by the end of the colonial period Presbyterians made up the largest denomination in the middle colonies and had significant support in Virginia and the Carolinas. By then they comprised nearly 400 congregations.
The Lutheran and German Reformed churches also flourished because of immigration, in this case from Germany. Most of the new immigrants went to Pennsylvania, though some later took the great road down the Shenandoah into the backcountry of North and South Carolina. The Lutherans, like the Church of England, subscribed to salvation through faith and similarly retained much of the former Roman liturgy. The Reformed churches, on the other hand, were strictly Calvinist and believed in purging their worship of all traces of Catholicism. By 1760 the Lutherans had around 200 churches and the German Reformed 150.
Finally, mention should be made of the German Pietist sects, the Mennonites, Amish, Dunkers, and Moravians. The Mennonites and Amish believed in the supremacy of the laity, reliance on the gospel, and the need for personal religious experience. They were in many respects close to the Quakers. The Dunkers, on the other hand, were the German equivalent of the Baptists, believing in the need for adult immersion. All three were inward-looking, concerned about their own salvation, and were limited to a few scattered communities in eastern Pennsylvania.
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