Colonial America
Page 54
Book-collecting, like education, had been motivated largely by religion in its early stages. At the turn of the eighteenth century Dr Thomas Bray, one of the founders of the SPG, established several libraries, primarily for the benefit of the Anglican clergy. Among the most notable were those at Annapolis, Maryland and at Charleston, South Carolina.
As the century progressed men from the merchant and planter classes began to demand more secular collections, leading to the founding of private subscription libraries. The first of these was the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731, in which development the indefatigable Franklin played a prominent role. It was funded by a subscription of 40 shillings and prominent among its early purchases were various works on science. The scheme proved sufficiently successful for Charleston to establish a similar library in 1748, followed by New York City in 1754. The joining fee for the latter was £5, with an annual subscription thereafter of 10 shillings. The New York Society Library, as it was called, inherited a collection of books originally donated by Bray, but it quickly set about expanding its selection to meet the changing tastes. A new form of literature, the novel, proved popular, especially works by Richardson and Smollett. By 1760 some 20 such libraries had been established. All were private libraries created for the use of the subscribers; none were public libraries in the modern sense of being open to ordinary people.
Outside the main towns, people had to buy their own books. As they were relatively expensive, purchasers were generally members of the clergy, lawyers, and the small but increasing number of well-educated people who affected to believe in the enlightened mind, not least the Virginia plantocracy. Among the more notable collections were those of Robert Carter, who had 1,200 volumes at his death in 1732, and Cotton Mather, whose collection amounted to some 3,000 volumes when he died in 1727.
The content of library collections by mid-century provides good evidence that men who aspired to be part of the colonial elite were expected to have read, or at least to be aware of, the major European poets, philosophers, and scientific thinkers, along with some of the classics. A good subscription library would contain the poetry of Pope, Dryden, Milton, and Spenser; the plays of Shakespeare, Molière, Congreve, and Addison; the novels of Smollett, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne; and the political and philosophical works of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Locke, Sidney, Swift, Bolingbroke, and Hume. Also indispensable were a good selection of the classics: Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, Seneca, Aristotle, Terence, Virgil, and Homer; the historical works of Robertson, Hume, and Clarendon; and the scientific works of Buffon and Newton. Finally, no library was considered complete without some sermons and the legal works of Coke, Bracton, and Fortescue.
Few of these books were published in the colonies, though an increasing number of printing presses were being established. The first press opened in Boston in 1638, but it was mainly for official business. Most of its other publications were of a religious nature, for example, the Bay Psalm Book in 1640. The literary output of this as well as of later local presses gives a good idea of the types of books that ordinary colonists were likely to read. Religious tracts and essays were always popular. A perennial bestseller was Foxe's Book of Martyrs, an account of the sufferings of Protestants who had been executed during Queen Mary's reign. Another literary genre to attain popularity in New England was the narratives of those captured by Indians during the various wars with the Indians and the French, the most notable being that of Mary Rowlandson, which first appeared in 1682.
Outside of New England the development of printing was considerably slower. Nevertheless, by the eighteenth century nearly all the colonies had at least one press for producing official documents, while the larger provinces had several. In 1738 the first non-English press appeared in Pennsylvania to cater to the colony's German community.
Relatively few books were written by colonial British North Americans before 1760, and even fewer of these were actually published there, though the number was growing. In 1702 Cotton Mather produced his Magnalia Christi Americana in Boston. This work consisted of a history of New England, supposedly from the ecclesiastical point of view of explaining divine providence, although it included most of the key events concerning the colony's settlement and expansion. Three years later Robert Beverley, Jr. produced his History and Present State of Virginia, a more secular account. This work was the first to be written in the mainland British colonies from a consciously American point of view. The newfound pride of the Virginian elite led the Reverend Hugh Jones to produce a similar volume in 1726, entitled the Present State of Virginia. Elsewhere the desire to understand the North American environment stimulated John Lawson to write his New Voyage to Carolina in 1707 and Cadwallader Colden to produce his History of the Five Indian Nations in 1727, while in 1757 William Smith published his History of the Province of New York. By then most provinces had seen some work published about their history or physical environment.
Apart from works of a religious, historical, or topographical nature, the most regularly printed work was the almanac. This useful compendium of information about the political and physical world was an indispensable tool for upwardly mobile urban artisans and merchants. Since almanacs were cheaper and more widely distributed than books, there is reason to think they were read by a broader cross-section of the population as well, along with the Bible and locally published religious tracts. The most famous almanac was Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, which first appeared in 1732, though there were a number of competing publications.
The first weekly newspaper in the colonies was the Boston News-Letter, founded in 1704. The second was the Boston Gazette, established in 1719. That same year marked the appearance of Philadelphia's first newspaper, the American Mercury, on which the youthful Franklin was employed. New York followed in 1725 with the New York Gazette, while Charlestonians saw the appearance of the South Carolina Gazette in 1732. By 1760 Boston had four newspapers and five other printing establishments, Philadelphia two newspapers and three other presses, New York three newspapers, and Charleston two. Other newspapers were published in Williamsburg, Annapolis, Germantown, New Haven, New London, Newport, and Portsmouth. The distribution, if not the sale, of newspapers was assisted by the establishment of a post office in 1710, which had a network of some 65 offices by 1770, serving all 13 continental colonies.
Newspapers were aimed squarely towards an audience of merchants and their relatively well-to-do customers. Most contained advertisements for the sale of goods and the arrival and departure times of ships. The news they reported was almost entirely news of European events, reflecting the increasing interest of merchants and the rural gentry in metropolitan culture. When Franklin and his partner David Hall took over Pennsylvania's second newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, in 1729, they announced that they would provide more coverage of public events, history, diplomatic affairs, and matters of cultural and scientific interest. Their model was the London Spectator, which was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. It does not seem to have bothered readers that the news and information found in the newspapers rarely touched upon local events. Their identities were becoming increasingly bound up with their self-concept as educated and sophisticated Britons. Moreover their livelihoods were increasingly dependent on transatlantic trading, so it made sense for them to stay informed about international diplomacy and war. Awareness of European affairs helped them to assess their investment risks.
5 Science and the Arts
The eighteenth century was an age of science, and upper-class British North Americans were keen students. They were loath to think of themselves as unsophisticated provincials; they wanted to stay up to date with most important new ideas. Moreover, living in a new world, many of them were genuinely eager to understand their environment, and found many of the traditional religious explanations no longer convincing. In this context the Enlightenment in Europe, with its stress on understanding the universe through analysis and observation, proved an important influence.
Philadelphia was perhaps the most important center of science and technology, its position reflecting the Quaker belief in reason and the notion that God had given man his intellect to understand his environment. Equally, it was no coincidence that from 1743 Philadelphia was the home of the American Philosophical Society, the first colonial institution dedicated to scientific enquiry. Five of its first nine trustees were Quakers or had been members of the Society of Friends.
The most famous of the trustees was Benjamin Franklin, though of course he was not a Quaker. He was a New Englander by birth but had left Boston when still a youth. It was Franklin who was instrumental in getting the society started. He conducted numerous experiments himself, notably those in which he identified electricity's positive and negative qualities. Out of his observations came the lightning conductor, a useful invention which reduced the risk of fire. This was one of the attractions of science: the production of useful gadgets which would improve the quality of life. Later, Franklin helped devise a stove which required less air, burned more slowly, and gave out greater heat, thus making homes less draughty and easier to keep warm.15
Another Philadelphia Quaker interested in science was James Logan, who helped classify the flora and fauna of North America. Also resident in the city was John Bartram, who in 1728 established the first botanical garden and later traveled throughout the known portions of the continent collecting plants. It was in Philadelphia, too, that David Rittenhouse, a clockmaker, subsequently built the first orrery, or model for explaining the planetary system.
Of course scientific inquiry was not restricted to Philadelphia. Paradoxically, Boston, the home of Puritanism, was not without its cognoscenti. We have seen that many ministers accepted the new scientific revolution to keep their theology relevant, and some even engaged in scientific inquiry themselves. Increase Mather, in cooperation with Dr Zabdiel Boylston, experimented with inoculation after learning of its use in Africa from his slave Onesimus, persuading some inhabitants of Boston to adopt the practice during a smallpox epidemic in 1721.16 In general New Englanders excelled in the more theoretical sciences. Thomas Robie identified the nature of a meteor. John Winthrop IV, the Harvard professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, worked on sunspots, the transit of Venus, the lunar eclipse, and Halley's comet.
Figure 24 Portrait of Benjamin Franklin at the age of 54. Engraving by James McArdell after Benjamin Wilson. Benjamin Franklin Collection, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University Library.
All these individuals recognized the desirability of a forum in which to exchange their ideas. One such was of course the Royal Society in London, to which no fewer than 18 British Americans belonged during the colonial period. Colonials contributed substantially to the society's published transactions, and the establishment of a British North American post office in 1710 facilitated the dissemination of its ideas. Traveling across the Atlantic, however, was not feasible on a regular basis.
Accordingly, in 1727 Franklin and several others established the Junto Club in Philadelphia. This group, which helped John Bartram to continue his observations about the botanical nature of the North American continent, later expanded to become the American Philosophical Society. Elsewhere, several New Yorkers attempted to establish a similar project in 1748 with their Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge. Despite its title it was designed to complement the activities of the Royal Society, though its name exhibited that later American tendency to view all knowledge as potentially useful. In any event it failed to survive. So too did the American Philosophical Society. Before 1760 colonial science was not yet ready to stand on its own feet. Its practitioners remained essentially field workers for scientists in Europe, on whom they depended for the manufacture of accurate instruments and the publication of learned materials. The American Philosophical Society was re-established on a permanent basis only in 1768.
The fine arts meanwhile were in their infancy, with only a tiny leisured class to patronize aspiring artists. Although portraiture became increasingly popular during the eighteenth century as middle- and upper middle-class people commissioned portraits of themselves and their families, most of the work was done by amateur artists. Generally they were engravers or house painters who practiced portraiture to enhance their incomes. No painters developed the artistry and skill necessary for critical recognition among Europeans until after 1760. However, several artists emerged in the 1760s who were to win recognition at the highest level, notably John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, and Charles Willson Peale. All had to travel to Europe to complete their training.
Classical music was also embryonic. During the seventeenth century the Puritans had been opposed to elaborate music and the use of musical instruments in church, which they considered to be relics of Catholicism within the church. Therefore people sang psalms entirely without musical accompaniment (and usually with no melody or harmony either). However, by the eighteenth century there was a movement to improve church music by teaching people how to sing by note. Organs began to appear in some Anglican churches early in the century, although no Congregationalist church allowed one before 1770. Upwardly mobile urban people began to patronize music and dancing schools, and planters hired music and dancing teachers for themselves and their children. Concerts began to be arranged in the principal towns, where there were sufficient violinists, cellists, flautists, and other instrumentalists to perform the works of composers such as Handel, Bach, and Vivaldi. The first formal concert of classical music took place in Boston, in 1731. By the 1750s New York had a regular series of subscription concerts. The performers were almost all amateurs, there being as yet no professional class of musicians.
The theater was a greater challenge. Until the 1700s going to a play was considered the equivalent of visiting a brothel and most colonies banned both forms of entertainment. Even in the eighteenth century many (especially in New England) considered theater immoral, but the colonial upper classes' growing aspirations for sophistication and refinement induced some desire to see the works of great dramatists performed. The first permanent theater was established in Williamsburg in 1716 when two dancers, Charles and Mary Stagg, obtained permission to erect a stage. Here they produced a number of plays for several years. Slowly other groups emerged, mostly of a private or amateur nature. The most popular productions were George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer and Joseph Addison's Cato. By the 1730s all the major cities had hosted some kind of theater. Several theatrical groups toured the colonies in the late 1740s and early 1750s, by which time Shakespeare had become the most popular playwright. No play, however, had yet been written or performed by a colonial author.
6 Popular Culture
Buying books, attending college, joining learned societies, and going to classical concerts were activities reserved for those who aspired to be part of the colonial elite. Most colonists had neither the money nor the inclination for these activities. It was not that they lacked time for entertainment – there were only rare periods in a year when work could not be interrupted, and farmers had a great deal of time on their hands during the winter. However, their main types of entertainment were different – less “refined,” but just as important to their sense of who they were.
Colonial British North Americans, like early modern people throughout the Western world, were sociable people, and their amusements mostly involved spending time with family and neighbors. There was little privacy. Family members spent much of their time together in a central room within their houses; neighbors often stopped by to share work and gossip. Socializing was routine. In the South, visitors stopped in and stayed to be entertained. Communal work activities like barn-raisings, corn-huskings, and quilting bees were opportunities for parties with food, drink, and other entertainment. Singing was popular and often accompanied by instruments such as the fiddle or the cittern, a stringed instrument resembling a mandolin or a banjo. When space allowed dancing was popular.
Despite the fact that most colonial people worked in or ar
ound their own houses, they had fairly frequent occasions for leaving home and socializing outside their neighborhoods as well. The most frequent opportunity for socializing was the weekly Sabbath. During the seventeenth century, dissenting Protestants had warned against treating Sundays as occasions for recreation – they were supposed to be devoted to family religious instruction, edifying sermons, and prayers. But even for the strictest seventeenth-century Puritans, Sundays offered a chance to socialize. And in the South, the visiting and chatting that took place before and after religious services sometimes seemed to be more important to the participants than the service itself.
In summer other occasions for social activity arose at markets, fairs, and meetings of the county court. In the South these three events were often combined. The courts gave planters a chance to discuss business and traders to exhibit their goods, while those wishing to see an attorney could do so at the same time. Inevitably such occasions also attracted traveling showmen. Bear-baiting and cock-fighting were common, drinking at the local tavern more so. Local groups of musicians invariably gathered, and those who wished to could dance. Some of the gentry might also arrange a horse race on which bystanders could bet.
Northern court meetings tended to be more decorous, though entertainments were customary at ceremonies like the installation of a governor or celebration of the king's birthday. Here again fringe activities would be organized so that those attending could combine business with pleasure.
Men had more opportunities to socialize than women. One major event for young men was the militia training day, which in some colonies took place every couple of months. By the eighteenth century the threat of Indian attack was no longer imminent in long-settled areas of the east coast, and militia training days involved only a few hours of drills, a few times a year. During the rest of the day young men partied and took part in athletic contests, devoting so little attention to their military drills that one observer in 1704 sarcastically referred to militia training in New England towns as the “Olympiack games.” Election days were similarly occasions for men to gather and socialize, although since the men attending these events tended to be older and more established, they were not as rowdy.17