Introduction

In chapter 4 we return to the theme of diversity. As the title indicates, eighteenth century America may be best understood as a mosaic, one image made of many pieces. The American mosaic was characterized by diversity on several levels; ethnic, racial, and demographic. New patterns of settlement into the western backcountry increased sectional tensions that led to social conflicts such as the Regulators in the Carolinas and the Paxton Boys.  Seaports, the nerve centers of British North America, were another piece of the mosaic. As city populations rose, seaports, like Boston harbor pictured below, became hubs of political and commercial life. In the slave societies of the South events that led to the establishment of a distinctive African American culture fostered further disunity. Religious conflict intensified divisions as well. Enlightenment ideas contrasted with the spread of the popular religious fervor associated with the first Great Awakening. British colonials had become such a diverse and fractious lot that any hope for a political union seemed remote.

The chapter 4 Web activities explore these topics, while additional research links focus on the eighteenth century Atlantic world, the web of imperial trade, and the rivalry along the frontier, as events move toward the Seven Years' War. 

Web Activities

1. Compare the above image of Boston with that of Port Royal, Jamaica (magnify the image)." How do the artists depict the cities? What do their portrayals have in common? What do the flags in each suggest? What virtues were these images designed to promote? Do they imply prosperity or hard times?

2. Read the account of "The Paxton boys" and "The Regulators" in Nation of Nations Concise, 3e, page 96, and "Eighteenth-Century Seaports," pages 97-99. 

• Go to the early "Short History of the City of Philadelphia," chapter 5. Skim the first few paragraphs describing the city in mid-century. Read the last eight paragraphs relating the lawless conditions in the city. How did these events reflect changes in attitudes to Indians and other tensions associated with the era? What were the "The Paxton boys" assumptions?
• Go to The Regulators and The Battle of Alamance archives. Read the first seven paragraphs. Next, scroll past the biographies and go to page two. Resume reading the last section below the commemorative image. Were the North Carolina Regulators' grievances similar to the Paxton boys? Were these actions backcountry complaints against an unresponsive east, or did events suggest more serious disunity? Defend your answer.

3. As you have noted, tensions between the seaports and the frontier increased as the line of settlement moved west. Evidence of the new pattern of settlement is found in the development of colonial mapping. The Fry-Jefferson map (1751) of the Virginia colony was the first map to show the correct orientation of the Appalachian range. View the map at Mapping Virginia: Visions of Empire. Read the site text and study each of the maps. What differences do you see in the 18th century maps and those you analyzed in chapter 1? Click on the cartouche (lower right) to bring up the Fry-Jefferson map. What purpose did the map serve for the British Board of Trade and Plantations? 

4. The decades from 1700-1740 marked the heaviest years of slave importation into the Southern colonies. The subsequent development of large communities of peoples of African descent led to the establishment of slave societies in the South (see the map in your text page 103). Although divisions between newly arrived and native born slaves continued to exist, as native born populations became larger, family networks formed and black communities gained stability and homogeneity. 

• In chapter 2 you studied the early Atlantic slave trade. Review the cultural consequences by reading Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation. Go to the narrative, The Growth of Slavery in North America. Be sure and follow all links, reading carefully the Stono Rebellion and the Report from William Bull re. Stono Rebellion. How did Crown officials and local white colonists react? What impact do you think resistance and rebellion had on the institution of slavery? What does Cornell University Professor Margaret Washington suggest were the long-term consequences of the rebellion? How did it transform ideas about slavery?
• Go to Plantation America: The Work of Slaves of the exhibition of documents pertaining to slavery at the Special Collections Library of Duke University. Note items 11, 12 and 13 on slave work.  What activities did slaves engage in besides field work? Examine the original documents relating to the case of Caesar. What change in status did he attempt to negotiate with his master? Do you think he was successful?

5. Enlightenment ideas contrasted with the spread of the popular religious piety associated with the first Great Awakening. Evangelical Christianity preaced by revivalist enjoyed success among the many unchurched men and women of the backcountry. Examine the European roots of the Enlightenment by going to European Enlightenment. What evidence do you find that suggests that the ideas of the leading figures of enlightened Europe, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot were transferred to America?

• Read the introduction and the segment on Deism at the Library of Congress Religion in Eighteenth-Century America. Scroll down to the section The Emergence of American Evangelicalism: The Great Awakening. Describe George Whitefield's mission in the colonies. Why was he so effective in reaching his audience? How did that audience differ from Jonathan Edward's ? Be sure to continue to the bottom of the page examining the various images.
• Next go to The First Great Awakening. Read the first seven paragraphs. Review the connection between revivalism in Europe and the various regions of the colonies. What accounts for the appeal of Evangelical Christianity to men and women in the Atlantic world?

Additional Research Links

The Anglo-American Worlds of the Eighteenth Century

• The Spartacus Educational site offers a good explanation of the English political practices, such as the notorious "rotten boroughs," that so troubled Americans like John Dickinson. 
• To obtain information about two institutions with colonial era origins still in existence today, visit The Bank of England and its Museum, and the history page of the East India Company. 

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The Consumer Revolution

• Trade with the Americas ~ The Trade Index from the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, England, offers links to images in their collection that illuminate the English perspective of colonial trade.  See the Map of the Atlantic ~ West India Company Possessions, which illustrates the extensive trading networks supplying consumer goods to colonists. Images may be magnified or viewed as thumbnails.
• Linda Baumgarten's essay "Looking at Eighteenth Century Clothing," at the Colonial Williamsburg Web site gives examples of the way clothing and accessories worn in eighteenth-century America were selected from sources all over the world. Consumer goods were shipped in a vast network of trade from their places of origin to a shop or warehouse in London, where they were selected by a merchant and sent to Virginia.

Toward the Seven Years' War

• Read the full text of Franklin's Albany Plan of Union 1754, discussed in the chapter 4 opening narrative.
• While Benjamin Franlklin met at Albany, George Washngton was surrendering to the French at Fort Necessity.  On this National Park Service National Battlefied site you may follow the Ft. Necessity Campaign.