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Main articles: History of education in the United States § Colonial Era and Education in Colonial America Education was primarily the responsibility of families, but numerous religious groups, especially the Puritans in New England, established tax-supported elementary schools so their children could read the Bible. Nearly all the religious denominations set up their own schools and colleges to train ministers. Each city, and most towns, had private academies for the children of affluent families.[65] Massachusetts Hall, oldest surviving building at Harvard University, built 1718–1720 as a dormitory The practical sciences were of great interest to colonial Americans, who were engaged in the process of taming and settling a wild frontier country. While science could eventually be applied to political problems, the mainstream of intellectual activity in the colonies was on technological and engineering developments rather than more abstract topics such as politics or metaphysics. American scientific activity was symbolized by David Rittenhouse, who constructed the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, New York lieutenant governor Cadawaller Colden, botanist and anthropologist, and Dr. Benjamin Rush, the celebrated physician and social reformer and member of the American Philosophical Society founded by Benjamin Franklin, who had contributed important discoveries to physics such as electricity, but was more successful in his practical inventions such as stoves and lightning rods. The arts in colonial America were not as successful as the sciences. Literature in the European sense was nearly nonexistent, with histories being far more noteworthy. These included The History and present State of Virginia (1705) by Robert Beverly and History of the Dividing Line (1728–29) by William Byrd, which however was not published until a century later. Instead, the newspaper was the principle form of reading material in the colonies. Since printing was expensive, most publications focused on purely practical matters such as major news, advertisements, and business reports. Aside from newspapers, almanacs were very popular, Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac being the most famous. Literary magazines appeared at mid-century, but few were profitable and most went out of business after only a few years. While American publications never approached the intellectual quality of European writers, they were much more widespread and achieved a greater readership than anything produced by Voltaire, Locke, or Rousseau. New Englanders wrote journals, pamphlets, books and especially sermons—more than all of the other colonies combined. Cotton Mather, a Boston minister published Magnalia Christi Americana (The Great Works of Christ in America, 1702), while revivalist Jonathan Edwards wrote his philosophical work, A Careful and Strict Enquiry Into...Notions of...Freedom of Will... (1754). Most music had a religious theme as well and was mainly the singing of Psalms. Because of New England's deep religious beliefs, artistic works that were insufficiently religious or too "worldly" were banned, especially the theater. The leading theologian and philosopher of the colonial era was Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts, an interpreter of Calvinism, and the leader of the First Great Awakening. Art and drama were somewhat more successful than literature. Benjamin West was a noteworthy painter of historical subjects and two first-rate portrait painters emerged in John Copley and Gilbert Stuart, yet all three men spent much of their lives in London. Theater was more developed in the Southern colonies, especially South Carolina, but nowhere did stage works attain the level of Europe. Puritans in New England and Quakers in Pennsylvania opposed theatrical performances as immoral and ungodly. Elementary education was widespread in New England. Early Puritan settlers believed it was necessary to study the Bible, so children were taught to read at an early age. It was also required that each town pay for a primary school. About 10 percent enjoyed secondary schooling and funded grammar schools in larger towns. Most boys learned skills from their fathers on the farm or as apprentices to artisans. Few girls attended formal schools, but most were able to get some education at home or at so-called "Dame schools" where women taught basic reading and writing skills in their own houses. By 1750, nearly 90% of New England's women and almost all of its men could read and write. Puritans founded Harvard College in 1636 and Yale College in 1701. Later, Baptists founded Rhode Island College (now Brown University) in 1764 and Congregationalists established Dartmouth College in 1769. Virginia founded schools the College of William and Mary in 1693; it was primarily Anglican. The colleges were designed for aspiring ministers, lawyers or doctors. There were no departments or majors, as every student shared the same curriculum, which focused on Latin and Greek, mathematics, and history, philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, oratory, and a little basic science. There were no sports or fraternities and few extracurricular activities apart from literary societies. There were no separate seminaries, law schools, or divinity schools. The first medical schools were founded late in the colonial era in Philadelphia and New York.[66] Religion Some migrants who came to Colonial America were in search of religious freedom. London did not make the Church of England official in the colonies—it never sent a bishop—so religious practice became diverse.[67] The Great Awakening was a major religious revival movement that took place in most colonies in the 1730s and 1740s.[68] The movement began with Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts preacher who sought to return to the Pilgrims' strict Calvinist roots and to reawaken the "Fear of 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.[69] A similar pietistic revival movement took place among some German and Dutch settlers, leading to more divisions. 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). Mid-Atlantic Region Unlike New England, the Mid-Atlantic Region gained much of its population from new immigration, and by 1750, the combined populations of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had reached nearly 300,000 people. By 1750, about 60,000 Irish and 50,000 Germans came to live in British North America, many of them settling in the Mid-Atlantic Region. William Penn, the man who founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1682, attracted an influx of British Quakers with his policies of religious liberty and freehold ownership. ("Freehold" meant owning land free and clear, with the right to resell it to anyone.) The first major influx of settlers were the Scotch Irish, who headed to the frontier. Many Germans came to escape the religious conflicts and declining economic opportunities in Germany and Switzerland. Ways of life Much of the architecture of the Middle Colonies reflects the diversity of its peoples. In Albany and New York City, a majority of the buildings were Dutch style with brick exteriors and high gables at each end while many Dutch churches were shaped liked an octagon. Using cut stone to build their houses, German and Welsh settlers in Pennsylvania followed the way of their homeland and completely ignored the plethora of timber in the area. An example of this would be Germantown, Pennsylvania where 80 percent of the buildings in the town were made entirely of stone. On the other hand, settlers from Ireland took advantage of America's ample supply of timber and constructed sturdy log cabins. Ethnic cultures also affected the styles of furniture. Rural Quakers preferred simple designs in furnishings such as tables, chairs, chests and shunned elaborate decorations. However, some urban Quakers had much more elaborate furniture. The city of Philadelphia became a major center of furniture-making because of its massive wealth from Quaker and British merchants. Philadelphian cabinet makers built elegant desks and highboys. German artisans created intricate carved designs on their chests and other furniture with painted scenes of flowers and birds. German potters also crafted a large array of jugs, pots, and plates, of both elegant and traditional design. There were ethnic differences in the treatment of women. Among Puritan settlers in New England, wives almost never worked in the fields with their husbands. In German communities in Pennsylvania, however, many women worked in fields and stables. German and Dutch immigrants granted women more control over property, which was not permitted in the local English law. Unlike English colonial wives, German and Dutch wives owned their own clothes and other items and were also given the ability to write wills disposing of the property brought into the marriage. By the time of the Revolutionary War, approximately 85 percent of white Americans were of English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish descent. Approximately 8.8 percent of whites were of German ancestry, and 3.5 percent were of Dutch origin. Farming Ethnicity made a difference in agricultural practice. As an example, German farmers generally preferred oxen rather than horses to pull their plows and Scots-Irish made a farming economy based on hogs and corn. In Ireland, people farmed intensively, working small pieces of land trying to get the largest possible production-rate from their crops. In the American colonies, settlers from northern Ireland focused on mixed-farming. Using this technique, they grew corn for human consumption and as feed for hogs and other livestock. Many improvement-minded farmers of all different backgrounds began using new agricultural practices to raise their output. During the 1750s, these agricultural innovators replaced the hand sickles and scythes used to harvest hay, wheat, and barley with the cradle scythe, a tool with wooden fingers that arranged the stalks of grain for easy collection. This tool was able to triple the amount of work done by farmers in one day. Farmers also began fertilizing their fields with dung and lime and rotating their crops to keep the soil fertile. By 1700, Philadelphia was exporting 350,000 bushels of wheat and 18,000 tons of flour annually. The Southern colonies in particular relied on cash crops such as tobacco and cotton. South Carolina produced rice and indigo. North Carolina was somewhat less involved in the plantation economy, but because a major producer of naval stores. Virginia and Maryland came to be almost totally dependent on tobacco, which would ultimately prove fatal at the end of the 18th century thanks to exhausted soil and collapsing prices, but for most of the century, the soil remained good and a single-crop economy profitable. Before 1720, most colonists in the mid-Atlantic region worked with small-scale farming and paid for imported manufactures by supplying the West Indies with corn and flour. In New York, a fur-pelt export trade to Europe flourished adding additional wealth to the region. After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming stimulated with the international demand for wheat. A massive population explosion in Europe brought wheat prices up. By 1770, a bushel of wheat cost twice as much as it did in 1720. Farmers also expanded their production of flax seed and corn since flax was a high demand in the Irish linen industry and a demand for corn existed in the West Indies. Thus, by mid-century, most colonial farming was a commercial venture, although subsistence agriculture continued to exist in New England and the middle colonies. Some immigrants who just arrived purchased farms and shared in this export wealth, but many poor German and Irish immigrants were forced to work as agricultural wage laborers. Merchants and artisans also hired these homeless workers for a domestic system for the manufacture of cloth and other goods. Merchants often bought wool and flax from farmers and employed newly arrived immigrants, who had been textile workers in Ireland and Germany, to work in their homes spinning the materials into yarn and cloth. Large farmers and merchants became wealthy, while farmers with smaller farms and artisans only made enough for subsistence. The Mid-Atlantic region, by 1750, was divided by both ethnic background and wealth. Seaports Seaports, which expanded from wheat trade, had more social classes than anywhere else in the Middle Colonies. By 1750, the population of Philadelphia had reached 25,000, New York 15,000, and the port of Baltimore 7,000. Merchants dominated seaport society and about 40 merchants controlled half of Philadelphia's trade. Wealthy merchants in Philadelphia and New York, like their counterparts in New England, built elegant Georgian-style mansions. Shopkeepers, artisans, shipwrights, butchers, coopers, seamstresses, cobblers, bakers, carpenters, masons, and many other specialized professions, made up the middle class of seaport society. Wives and husbands often worked as a team and taught their children their crafts to pass it on through the family. Many of these artisans and traders made enough money to create a modest life. Laborers stood at the bottom of seaport society. These poor people worked on the docks unloading inbound vessels and loading outbound vessels with wheat, corn, and flaxseed. Many of these were African American; some were free while others were enslaved. In 1750, blacks made up about 10 percent of the population of New York and Philadelphia. Hundreds of seamen, some who were African American, worked as sailors on merchant ships. Southern Colonies The Southern Colonies were mainly dominated by the wealthy planters in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. They owned increasingly large plantations that were worked by African slaves. Of the 650,000 inhabitants of the South in 1750, about 250,000 or 40 percent, were slaves. The plantations grew tobacco, indigo and rice for export, and raised most of their own food supplies.[70] In addition, many small subsistence farms were family owned and operated by yeoman. Most white men owned some land, and therefore could vote.[71] Women in the South Since the social history revolution in the 1970s historians have paid special attention to the role of women, family and gender in the colonial South.[72][73][74] In the early Chesapeake colonies, very few women were present. In 1650, estimates put Maryland's total population near six hundred with fewer than two hundred women present.[75] Much of the population consisted of young, single, white indentured servants, and as such the colonies, to a large degree, lacked any social cohesiveness. African women entered the colony as early as 1619, although their status: free, slave or indentured servant remains a historical debate. In the 17th century high mortality rates for newcomers and a very high ratio of men to women made family life either impossible or unstable for most colonists. These factors, along with dispersed settlements and a reluctance to live in villages, together with a growing immigration of white indentured servants and black slaves made families and communities in the Virginia-Maryland region before 1700 fundamentally different from their counterparts in Europe and New England. These extreme conditions both demeaned and empowered women. Lacking male protectors, women, especially teenage girls who were indentured servants, often were vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. On the other hand, without parental oversight, young women had much more freedom in choosing spouses, and the shortage of eligible women enabled them to use marriage as an avenue to upward mobility. The high death rates meant that Chesapeake wives generally became widows who inherited property; many widows increased their property by remarrying as soon as possible. The population began to stabilize around 1700, with a 1704 census listing 30,437 white people present with 7,163 of those being women.[75] Women married younger, remained wed longer, bore more children, and lost influence within the family polity.[76] Slaves Main article: Slavery in Colonial America Slaves imported to American colonies[77] 1620-1700.....21,000 1701-1760....189,000 1761-1770.....63,000 1771-1790.....56,000 1791-1800.....79,000 1801-1810....124,000[78] 1810-1865.....51,000 Total ..........597,000 About 600,000 slaves were imported into the U.S., or 5% of the 12 million slaves brought across from Africa. The great majority went to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. Life expectancy was much higher in the U.S. (because of better food, less disease, lighter work loads, and better medical care) so the numbers grew rapidly by excesses of births over deaths, reaching 4 million by the 1860 Census. From 1770 until 1860, the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and was nearly twice as rapid as that of England.[79] The enslaved African (known as African slaves, although they were not considered slaves until they were officially purchased by a planter or plantation owner) who worked on the indigo, tobacco, and rice fields in the South came from mainly western and central Africa. Slavery in Colonial America was very oppressive as it passed on from generation to generation, and slaves had no legal rights. The colonies that had the most specialization in production of goods, such as sugar and coffee, relied most on slaves and consequently, had the highest per capita (including slaves) income in the New World. However, the slaves did not accrue wages or receive rights and provided free labor to those who purchased them and received just enough to live. They were considered in Chattel slavery. Between 1500 and 1700, over 60% of the 6 million people who were brought or traveled to the New World were involuntary slaves. In 1700, there were about 9,600 slaves in the Chesapeake region and a few hundred in the Carolinas. About 170,000 more Africans were forcibly brought over the next five decades. By 1750, there were more than 250,000 slaves in British America; and, in the Carolinas, they made up about 60 percent of the total population. The first post-colonial Census found 697,681 slaves and 59,527 free blacks, who together made up about 20% of the country's population. Most slaves in South Carolina were born in Africa, while half the slaves in Virginia and Maryland were born in the colonies.[citation needed] |
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