GIVE ME
LIBERTY!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
SEAGULL FIFTH EDITION
Volume 1: To 1877
★
ERIC FONER
★
Bn
W . W . N O R T O N & C O M PA N Y
NEW YORK . LONDON
Saskatoon
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200 400 kilometers
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400 miles
Ca
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200
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R
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Alaska
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Santa Fe
Albuquerque
NEW MEXICO
Phoenix
R.
A
Ber
Kuskokwim
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CANADA
E
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J
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Fairbanks
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ra
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San Diego
North Slope
ra
C
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lo
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100 kilometers
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R Moab
C
100 miles
0
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Glenwood
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CO LO R A D O
Lake
Mead
Lancaster
Santa Barbara
+ Mauna Loa
R.
Lake
Powell
Las Vegas
DESERT
Po i n t
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St. George
tt l e
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le
+
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UTAH
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y
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C
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Calgary
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n
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PHYSICAL/POLITICAL MAP
OF THE
UNITED STATES
0
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L
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LOUISIANA
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Atlantic City
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Richmond
H
Ca p e
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Hartford
Trenton
Philadelphia
Harrisburg
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I
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KENTUCKY
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Tulsa
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Louisville
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ak
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Boston
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INDIANA
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M
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E
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S
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C
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a
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pe
C
Ap
gina
b
Al
Nassau
BAHAMAS
in
e
POLITICAL MAP
of the WORLD
Arctic O cea n
Scale at equator
750
1,500 miles
0
0
El l esmere
Isl an d
Queen Elizabeth
Islands
750 1,500 kilometers
Greenland
(Denmark)
Baffin
Bay
Banks
I sland
Beaufort Sea
Am
Chukchi
Sea
unds
Ba
Vi ctori a
I sland
en Gulf
RUSSIA
ffin
an
Jan May e n
(N or way)
d
Foxe
Basin
D
Alaska
(U.S.)
Hu
Bering
Sea
slan
ian I
ds
en
m
ar
k
ra
St
it
Norw
S
ICELAND
Reykjavik
on
St r
Fa roe Islands
(D e nm ar k)
ait
Hudson
Bay
Gulf of
Alaska
Aleut
Isl
Labrador
Sea
CANADA
Nor
Sea
UNITED N
KINGDOM
IRELAND
ds
Ottawa Montréal
London
Celtic
Sea
nel
han
hC
lis
No rt h Atl a n t i c
O c e an
g
En
P
FRAN
Toronto
Chicago
San Francisco
Lisbon
Azor e s
(Por. )
Los Angeles
Nort h Pac i f i c
O c e an
Dallas
Hawaii
(U.S.)
Mexico City
BAHAMAS
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Pue r to R i co (U. S . )
Quito
ST. KITTS AND NEVIS
DOMINICA
ST. LUCIA
ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
BARBADOS
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Nouakchott
CAPE
VERDE
GUINEA-BISSAU
GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE
GUYANA
LIBERIA
French
Guiana (Fr.)
OR
OC
CO
ALGER
MAURITANIA
SENEGAL
GAMBIA
MALI
BURKINA
CÔTE
D’IVOIRE
(Ivory
Coast)
Gulf of Gui
EQUATOR
SURINAME
ECUADOR
M
BEN IN
TO GO
A
GH AN
Galapagos
I sland s
(Ecuador)
SÃO TOMÉ AND PR
KIRIBATI
Marquesas
I sland s
(Fr.)
Asce nsion (U. K. )
PERU
SAMOA
Apia
HAITI
CUBA
BELIZE
JAMAICA
Caribbean Sea
GUATEMALA
EL SALVADOR
HONDURAS
Caracas
NICARAGUA
VENEZUELA
COSTA RICA
Bogotá
PANAMA
COLOMBIA
Kiritimat i
(Kiribati)
Ph oe nix
I s l a nd s
Ca nar y Island s
(S p.)
Western
Sahara
(Mor.)
Nassau
Havana
B
Algier
Rabat
Made ira Islands
(Por. )
Be r m uda (U. K. )
Gulf of
Mexico
MEXICO
SPAIN
Madrid
PORTUGAL
New York
Washington, D.C.
UNITED STATES
S ou th Paci f i c
O cea n
Pago Pago
Co
FIJI
ok
Nuku’alofa
TONGA
Papeete
Isl
an
ds
French Polynesia (Fr.)
BRAZIL
Lima
Brasília
La Paz
Sucre
PARAGUAY
P i tcai rn Islands (U.K.)
Adamstown
30°
°E
150
180°
0
°
°
120
90°
°W
1,500 miles
Tristan D a Cunh a
Gr oup (U. K. )
Falk land
I slands (U. K. )
S out h
Ge orgi a
EUROPE
Atlantic
Ocean
3
0°
0 1,500 kilometers
Montevideo
CHILE
90°
150
Indian
Ocean
Arctic
Ocean
60°
°
120
Southern
Ocean
90°
Pacific
Ocean
Buenos Aires
ARGENTINA
120
NORTH
AMERICA
30°
0°
So u t h Atl an t i c
O c e an
URUGUAY
Santiago
ASIA
75°N
90°
60°
75°S
ANTARCTICA
°E
60°N
°
120
60°
SOUTH
AMERICA
150
°W
150
Pacific
Ocean
60°S
Southern
Ocean
Juan Fernandez
Archipelago (Chi le)
60°
30°
Atlantic
Ocean
180°
Rio de Janeiro
Asunción
Easter Island
(Chi le)
THE POLES
0°
St. He le na
(U. K. )
BOLIVIA
S out h
S andwic h
I sland s
Scotia Sea
S outh S he tland
I sland s
S outh O r k ne y
I sland s
Sou t h e r n O c e
Arc t i c O c e an
Franz J osef Land
S evernaya
Ze m lya
Sva lba rd
(No rway)
m
N e w S ibe r ian
Island s
lya
Laptev Sea
Kara Sea
va
ya
Ze
East Siberian
Sea
No
Barents Sea
Wrangel
Island
N
wegian
Sea
AY
Oslo
RUSSIA
Bering
Sea
Stockholm
ESTONIA
Baltic
Sea
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
RUS.
Sea of
Okhotsk
Moscow
BELARUS
Berlin
POLAND
GERMANY
BEL.
CZECH
LUX.
REP.
UKRAINE
Paris
SLOVAKIA
AUSTRIA
MOLDOVA
HUNGARY
NCE SWITZ.
SL.
ROMANIA
CROATIA
KAZAKHSTAN
Aral
Sea
Ca
B.H. SERBIA
UZ
sp
Black Sea
ITALY MONT.
BULGARIA
GEORGIA
MAC.
Rome
ALBANIA
ARMENIA
GREECE
TURKEY
Me d i t
AZERBAIJAN
err
an
Tunis
ian
Barcelona
Tripoli
IRAQ
IRAN
e
dS
a
Khartoum
N’Djamena
SUDAN
NIGERIA
CAMEROON
Gul
DJIBOUTI
UGANDA
O
f
fO
Thimphu
BANGLADESH
Dhaka
INDIA
n
KENYA
Andaman
Island s
(Indi a)
SRI
LANKA
MALDIVES
Nairobi
SE
Y
LES
Chagos
Archipelago
(U.K.)
Luanda
Di ego Garcia
COMOROS
Maseru
SOUTH
AFRICA
THAILAND
Gulf
of
Thailand
VIETNAM
CAMBODIA
Guam
(U. S . )
PHILIPPINES
PALAU
BRUNEI
MALAYSIA
SINGAPORE
N or the r n
Mar iana
Islands
(U. S . )
Philippine
Sea
MARSHALL
ISLANDS
FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA
Celebes
Sea
KIRIBATI
NAURU
Born e o
Jakarta Java Sea
Java
INDONESIA
EAST
TIMOR Arafura Sea
PAPUA
NEW GUINEA
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
TUVALU
l
ne
UE
an
biq
Coral
Sea
India n O cea n
Ch
IQ
Pretoria
Johannesburg
South
China
Sea Manila
Tim or
Antananarivo
MADAGASCAR
Mo
Gaborone
zam
MO
ZA
ZIMBABWE
NAMIBIA
BOTSWANA
TAIWAN
LAOS
Timor Sea
MALAWI
MB
ZAMBIA
ue
ANGOLA
Nort h Pac i f i c
O c e an
JAPAN
Tokyo
ra
BURUNDI
TANZANIA Dar es Salaam
EL
CH
Sea of
Japan
SOUTH
KOREA
East
China
Sea
MYANMAR
Bay of
Bengal
(Yemen)
IA
AL
M
S O Mogadishu
Islands
at
NG
Muscat
NEPAL
Arabian
Sea
Socotra
e
Ad
utian
Isl
ril
BHUTAN
Kathmandu
m
CO
RWANDA
DEMOCRATIC
REP. OF
CONGO
Windhoek
New Delhi
Yellow
Sea
Su
ea n
YEMEN
ETHIOPIA
inea
GABON
Islamabad
Adis Ababa
CENTRAL
AFRICAN
REP.
RIAL GUINEA
RÍNCIPE
ERITREA
CHAD
Seoul
CHINA
n
BAHRAIN
G u lf
SAUDI QATAR
ARABIA UNITED
ARAB
EMIRATES
Beijing
TAJIKISTAN
AN
Re
NIGER
N
Ku
NORTH
KOREA
KYRGYZSTAN
PAKISTAN
rs
EGYPT
ia
MONGOLIA
Lake
Balkhash
AN
Kabul
AFGHANISTAN
Pe
KUWAIT
LIBYA
IS TA
IS T
JORDAN
Cairo
RIA
Tehrān
SYRIA
CYPRUS
LEBANON
ISRAEL
n Se
a
K M EN
BEK
Ale
Ulan Bator
OM
ea
TUNISIA
TUR
S ea
rs
Lake
Baikal
Astana
ds
DENMARK
an
NETH.
SW
RW
NO
rth
a
FINLAND
EDE
s
Ré un i on
(Fr.)
New
Ca le donia
(Fr.)
AUSTRALIA
SWAZILAND
N or fol k
Island
(Aus. )
LESOTHO
Cape Town
Sydney
Great
Australian
Bight
FIJI
VANUATU
MAURITIUS
Canberra, A.C.T.
South
Pacific
Ocean
Ke r m ade c
Islands
(N . Z. )
Tasman
Sea
NEW
ZEALAND
Tasm ania
Prince
Ed ward
I slands
(So. Afri ca)
S outh
Island
Crozet Island s
French Southern and
Antarctic Lan ds (Fr. )
Ke rguélen
Islands
Heard Island and
McDonald Island s
(Aus.)
So u t h e r n
O c e an
N or th
Island
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The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier edition as follows:
Names: Foner, Eric, 1943– author.
Title: Give me liberty!: an American history / Eric Foner.
Description: Fifth edition. | New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016018497 | ISBN 9780393283167 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—History. | United States—Politics and
government. | Democracy—United States—History. | Liberty—History.
Classification: LCC E178 .F66 2016 | DDC 973—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018497
ISBN this edition: 978-0-393-60342-2
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017
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W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
★
For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005),
an accomplished artist who lived through most of
the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
★
★
C O N T E N TS
★
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures xii
About the Author xv
Preface
xvi
Acknowledgments
1
★
xxiii
A N E W WO R L D
1
The First Americans
Freedom
3 ★ Indian Freedom, European
12 ★ The Expansion of Europe 15 ★ Contact
★ The Spanish Empire
Empires
18
23 ★ The French and Dutch
34 ★ Voices of Freedom From Bartolomè de las Casas,
History of the Indies (1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe”
(December 19, 1681)
2
★
...
36
B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I CA , 1 6 0 7 – 1 6 6 0
46
England and the New World 48 ★ The Coming of the
English
53 ★ Settling the Chesapeake 57 ★ The New
England Way 65 ★ New Englanders Divided 72 ★ Voices of
Freedom From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637), and From John
Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court (July 3, 1645)
78 ★ Religion, Politics, and Freedom
3
★
...
83
C R E AT I N G A N G LO - A M E R I CA , 1 6 6 0 – 1 7 5 0
89
Global Competition and the Expansion of England’s Empire 90
★ Origins of American Slavery
97 ★ Colonies in Crisis 105
★ The Growth of Colonial America
111 ★ Voices of Freedom
From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant to Pennsylvania (August 23,
1769), and From Memorial against Non-English Immigration
(December 1727)
viii ★
...
118 ★ Social Classes in the Colonies
123
4
★
S L AV E RY, F R E E D O M , A N D T H E ST R U G G L E F O R E M P I R E ,
TO 1 7 6 3 131
Slavery and Empire
Resistance
Public Sphere
Rivalries
134 ★ Slave Cultures and Slave
143 ★ An Empire of Freedom 148 ★ The
152 ★ The Great Awakening
160 ★ Imperial
163 ★ Battle for the Continent 168 ★ Voices of
Freedom From Scarouyady, Speech to Pennsylvania Provincial Council
(1756), and From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763)
5
★
...
T H E A M E R I CA N R E VO L U T I O N , 1 7 6 3 – 1 7 8 3
The Crisis Begins
174
179
180 ★ The Road to Revolution 189 ★
The Coming of Independence 193 ★ Voices of Freedom From
Samuel Seabury, an Alarm to the Legislature of the Province in NewYork (1775), and From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Securing Independence
6
★
T H E R E VO L U T I O N W I T H I N
Democratizing Freedom
Toleration
...
202 ★
204
216
218 ★ Toward Religious
223 ★ Defining Economic Freedom 228 ★ The
Limits of Liberty
232 ★ Slavery and the Revolution 237 ★
Daughters of Liberty 245 ★ Voices of Freedom From Abigail
Adams to John Adams, Braintree, Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From
Petitions of Slaves to the Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777)
...
248
7
★
F O U N D I N G A N AT I O N , 1 7 8 3 – 1 7 9 1
253
America under the Confederation 255 ★ A New
Constitution
263 ★ The Ratification Debate and the Origin of
the Bill of Rights 270 ★ Voices of Freedom From David Ramsay,
The History of the American Revolution (1789), and From James
Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay Signed “Agrippa” (1787)
“We the People”
8
★
...
276 ★
279
SECURING THE REPUBLIC, 1791–1815
288
Politics in an Age of Passion 289 ★ Voices of Freedom From Judith
Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), and From Address
C O N T E N T S ★ ix
of the Democratic-Republican Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794)
...
298 ★ The Adams Presidency
301 ★ Jefferson in Power 309
★ The “Second War of Independence”
9
★
316
T H E M A R K E T R E VO L U T I O N , 1 8 0 0 – 1 8 4 0
A New Economy
Individual
327 ★ Market Society
325
337 ★ The Free
347 ★ Voices of Freedom From Recollections
of Harriet L. Noble (1824), and From “Factory Life as it is, by an
Operative” (1845)
10 ★
...
354 ★ The Limits of Prosperity
D E M O C R ACY I N A M E R I CA , 1 8 1 5 – 1 8 4 0
356
364
The Triumph of Democracy 366 ★ Nationalism and Its
Discontents
373 ★ Nation, Section, and Party 379 ★ Voices
of Freedom From The Memorial of the Non-Freeholders of the City
of Richmond (1829), and From Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens
Threatened with Disfranchisement (1838)
Jackson
11 ★
...
384 ★ The Age of
387 ★ The Bank War and After 397
T H E P E C U L I A R I N ST I T U T I O N
The Old South
404
405 ★ Life under Slavery
418 ★ Voices of
Freedom From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long (1840), and
From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850)
...
422 ★ Slave Culture
428 ★
Resistance to Slavery 433
12 ★
A N AG E O F R E F O R M , 1 8 2 0 – 1 8 4 0
The Reform Impulse
441
442 ★ The Crusade against Slavery 452
Black and White Abolitionism 459 ★ The Origins of
Feminism
464 ★ Voices of Freedom From Angelina Grimké,
Letter in The Liberator (August 2, 1837), and From Catharine Beecher,
An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (1837)
13 ★
A HOUSE DIVIDED, 1840–1861
...
470
476
Fruits of Manifest Destiny 477 ★ A Dose of Arsenic 490 ★
The Rise of the Republican Party 498 ★ The Emergence of
Lincoln
503 ★ Voices of Freedom From The Lincoln-Douglas
Debates (1858)
x ★ CONTENTS
...
510 ★ The Impending Crisis
514
14 ★
A N E W B I RT H O F F R E E D O M : T H E C I V I L WA R ,
1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6 5 519
The First Modern War 521 ★ The Coming of
Emancipation
529 ★ The Second American Revolution 536 ★
Voices of Freedom From Frederick Douglass, Men of Color to Arms
(1863), and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore
(April 18, 1864)
Points
War
15 ★
...
544 ★ The Confederate Nation
549 ★ Turning
554 ★ Rehearsals for Reconstruction and the End of the
556
“ W H AT I S F R E E D O M ? ” : R E C O N ST R U CT I O N ,
1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 564
The Meaning of Freedom 566 ★ Voices of Freedom From
Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson
(1865), and From A Sharecropping Contract (1866)
...
576 ★ The
Making of Radical Reconstruction 579 ★ Radical Reconstruction
in the South
Suggested Reading
590 ★ The Overthrow of Reconstruction 594
A-1
The Declaration of Independence (1776) A-23
The Constitution of the United States (1787) A-27
Glossary
Credits
Index
A-47
A-81
A-85
C O N T E N T S ★ xi
★
L I ST O F M A P S , TA B L E S ,
AND FIGURES
★
MAPS
CHAPTER 1
The First Americans 4
Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500 7
The Old World on the Eve of
American Colonization, ca. 1500 16
Voyages of Discovery 20
Early Spanish Conquests and
Explorations in the New World 30
The New World—New France and
New Netherland, ca. 1650 40
European Empires in North America,
ca. 1750 164
Eastern North America after the
Peace of Paris, 1763 173
CHAPTER 5
The Revolutionary War in the North,
1775–1781 209
The Revolutionary War in the South,
1775–1781 211
North America, 1783 213
CHAPTER 2
English Settlement in the
Chesapeake, ca. 1650 58
English Settlement in New England,
ca. 1640 74
CHAPTER 6
Loyalism in the American
Revolution 234
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 3
Eastern North America in the
Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth
Centuries 94
European Settlement and Ethnic
Diversity on the Atlantic Coast of
North America, 1760 114
CHAPTER 4
Atlantic Trading Routes 135
The Slave Trade in the Atlantic
World, 1460–1770 136
xii ★
Western Lands, 1782–1802 256
Western Ordinances,
1784–1787 260
Ratification of the Constitution 278
Indian Tribes, 1795 281
CHAPTER 8
The Presidential Election of
1800 305
The Louisiana Purchase 312
The War of 1812 320
CHAPTER 9
The Market Revolution: Roads and
Canals, 1840 330
The Market Revolution: Western
Settlement, 1800–1820 334
The Market Revolution: The
Spread of Cotton Cultivation,
1820–1840 336
Major Cities, 1840 339
Cotton Mills, 1820s 340
C H A P T E R 10
The Missouri Compromise,
1820 378
The Americas, 1830 380
The Presidential Election of
1828 386
Indian Removals, 1830–1840
395
C H A P T E R 11
Slave Population, 1860 408
Size of Slaveholdings, 1860 415
Distribution of Free Blacks,
1860 421
Major Crops of the South, 1860 426
Slave Resistance in the NineteenthCentury Atlantic World 435
C H A P T E R 12
Utopian Communities, MidNineteenth Century 445
The Compromise of 1850 494
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 497
The Railroad Network, 1850s 499
The Presidential Election of
1856 503
The Presidential Election of
1860 513
C H A P T E R 14
The Secession of Southern States,
1860–1861 523
The Civil War in the East,
1861–1862 527
The Civil War in the West,
1861–1862 528
The Emancipation
Proclamation 533
The Civil War in the Western
Territories, 1862–1864 542
The Civil War, 1863 555
The Civil War, Late 1864–1865 559
C H A P T E R 15
The Barrow Plantation 570
Sharecropping in the South,
1880 575
Reconstruction in the South,
1867–1877 599
The Presidential Election of
1876 600
C H A P T E R 13
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–
1840s 480
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 485
Gold-Rush California 489
Continental Expansion through
1853 493
MA PS ★ xiii
TA B L E S A N D F I G U R E S
Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration,
1850 343
CHAPTER 1
Table 1.1 Estimated Regional
Populations: The Americas, ca.
1500 21
C H A P T E R 11
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Origins and Status of
Migrants to British North American
Colonies, 1700–1775 113
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Slave Population as
Percentage of Total Population
of Original Thirteen Colonies,
1770 140
C H A P T E R 14
Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union
versus Confederacy 524
CHAPTER 9
Table 9.1 Population Growth
of Selected Western States,
1800–1850 (Excluding Indians)
xiv ★ TABLES AN D F IG UR ES
Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave
Population 410
Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850 (in
Round Numbers) 411
Table 11.3 Free Black Population,
1860 424
335
★
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
★
E R I C F ONE R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he
focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century
America. Professor Foner’s publications include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men:
The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction:
America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and
Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Reconstruction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize,
and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received
the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University.
His most recent books are The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History, and Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad,
winner of the New York Historical Society Book Prize.
★ xv
★
PREFACE
★
Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the
earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the
first decades of the twenty-first century. It offers students a clear, concise narrative whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first four editions of Give Me
Liberty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of two- and
four-year colleges and universities throughout the country. The comments I
have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give
Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also
included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged from corrections of typographical and factual errors
to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive treatment. In making revisions for this Fifth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions into
account. I have also incorporated the findings and insights of new scholarship
that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Fifth Edition reflect my desire to
integrate the history of the American West and especially the regions known
as borderlands more fully into the narrative. In recent years these aspects of
American history have been thriving areas of research and scholarship. Of
course earlier editions of Give Me Liberty! have discussed these subjects, but
in this edition their treatment has been deepened and expanded. I have also
added notable works in these areas to many chapter bibliographies and lists of
websites.
The definition of the West has changed enormously in the course of American history. In the colonial period, the area beyond the Appalachians—
present-day Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Pennsylvania and New
York— constituted the West. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the
term referred to Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, and Mississippi. After the Civil
War, the West came to mean the area beyond the Mississippi River. Today, it
is sometimes used to refer mainly to the Pacific coast. But whatever its geographic locale, the West has been as much an idea as a place—an area beyond
the frontier of settlement that promised newcomers new kinds of freedom,
sometimes at the expense of the freedom of others, such as native inhabitants
and migrant laborers. In this edition we follow Americans as they constructed
their Wests, and debated the kinds of freedom they would enjoy there.
xvi ★
Borderlands is a more complex idea that has influenced much recent historical scholarship. Borders are lines dividing one country, region, or state from
another. Crossing them often means becoming subject to different laws and
customs, and enjoying different degrees of freedom. Borderlands are regions
that exist on both sides of borders. They are fluid areas where people of different cultural and social backgrounds converge. At various points in American
history, shifting borders have opened new opportunities and closed off others
in the borderlands. Families living for decades or centuries in a region have
suddenly found themselves divided by a newly created border but still living
in a borderland that transcends the new division. This happened to Mexicans
in modern-day California, Arizona, and New Mexico, for example, in 1848,
when the treaty ending the Mexican-American War transferred the land that
would become those states from Mexico to the United States.
Borderlands exist within the United States as well as at the boundaries
with other countries. For example, in the period before the Civil War, the
region straddling the Ohio River contained cultural commonalities that in
some ways overrode the division there between free and slave states. The
borderlands idea also challenges simple accounts of national development in
which empires and colonies pave the way for territorial expansion and a future
transcontinental nation. It enables us, for example, to move beyond the categories of conquest and subjugation in understanding how Native Americans and
Europeans interacted over the early centuries of contact. This approach also
provides a way of understanding how the people of Mexico and the United
States interact today in the borderland region of the American Southwest,
where many families have members on both sides of the boundary between
the two countries.
Small changes relating to these themes may be found throughout the
book. The major additions seeking to illuminate the history of the West and of
borderlands are as follows:
Chapter 1 now introduces the idea of borderlands with a discussion of
the areas where European empires and Indian groups interacted and where
authority was fluid and fragile. Chapter 4 contains expanded treatment of
the part of the Spanish empire now comprising the borderlands United States
(Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida) and how Spain endeavored, with limited success, to consolidate its authority in these regions. In
Chapter 6, a new subsection, “The American Revolution as a Borderlands Conflict,” examines the impact on both Americans and Canadians of the creation,
because of American independence, of a new national boundary separating
what once had been two parts of the British empire. Chapter 8 continues this
theme with a discussion of the borderlands aspects of the War of 1812. Chapter 9 discusses how a common culture came into being along the Ohio River
PRE FA C E ★ xvii
in the early nineteenth century despite the existence of slavery on one side
and free labor on the other. Chapter 13 expands the treatment of Texan independence from Mexico by discussing its impact on both Anglo and Mexican
residents of this borderland region. Chapter 14 contains a new examination of
the Civil War in the American West.
In Chapter 16, I have expanded the section on the industrial west with new
discussions of logging and mining, and added a new subsection on the dissemination of a mythical image of the Wild West in the late nineteenth century. Chapter 17 contains an expanded discussion of Chinese immigrants in
the West and the battle over exclusion and citizenship, a debate that centered
on what kind of population should be allowed to inhabit the West and enjoy
the opportunities the region offered. Chapter 18 examines Progressivism,
countering conventional narratives that emphasize the origins of Progressive
political reforms in eastern cities by relating how many, from woman suffrage
to the initiative, referendum, and recall, emerged in Oregon, California, and
other western states. Chapter 20 expands the treatment of western agriculture
in the 1920s by highlighting the acceleration of agricultural mechanization
in the region and the agricultural depression that preceded the general economic collapse of 1929 and after. In Chapter 22 we see the new employment
opportunities for Mexican-American women in the war production factories
that opened in the West. In Chapter 26, there is a new subsection on conservatism in the West and the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s.
Chapter 27 returns to the borderlands theme by discussing the consequences
of the creation, in the 1990s, of a free trade zone connecting the two sides of
the Mexican-American border. And Chapters 27 and 28 now include expanded
discussions of the southwestern borderland as a site of an acrimonious battle
over immigration—legal and undocumented—involving the federal and
state governments, private vigilantes, and continuing waves of people trying
to cross into the United States. The contested borderland now extends many
miles into the United States north of the boundary between the two nations,
and southward well into Mexico and even Central America.
I have also added a number of new selections to Voices of Freedom, the
paired excerpts from primary documents in each chapter. Some of the new
documents reflect the stronger emphasis on the West and borderlands; others seek to sharpen the juxtaposition of divergent concepts of freedom at particular moments in American history. And this edition contains many new
images—paintings, broadsides, photographs, and others—related to these
themes, brought to life in a vibrant, full-color design.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one
hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even
xviii ★ PREFAC E
the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a burden
to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many
other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal
or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans
devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with all degrees of interest
that history does matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does
not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great
force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, [that] history is
literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of history
is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United
States, whose government is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be
sure, does not offer simple lessons or immediate answers to current questions.
Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us
what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge,
we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which
have not— essential information for the formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the
past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that
cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is constantly changing.
There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to
meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the reasons for the Great Depression.
Precisely because each generation asks different questions of the past, each
generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed
a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of
groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-Americans,
working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from historians. New subfields— social history, cultural history, and family history
among them—have taken their place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to present an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due
attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way
neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common.
It devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and economic history,
PRE FA C E ★ xix
and to their interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and
prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary people who make up
American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of characters, from Thomas
Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to
former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after
the Civil War.
Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed
knowledge of American history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the
complexities of the subject without overwhelming them with excessive
detail. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape
to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of
American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory
survey course.
Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, have long been central
to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the
nineteenth century and especially the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation
apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that
attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of different
groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of making sense
of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that
the same is true for American history as a whole.
No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our political language,
freedom— or liberty, with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is
deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of everyday
life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces its purpose as securing liberty’s
blessings. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of
freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the
Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles,
liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the
right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red, or yellow,” wrote the
educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of
the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’”
The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be misleading.
Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging definition.
xx ★ PREFACE
Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revolution,
the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea
of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy
greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in
congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket
lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.
Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a reality
and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery
for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the
heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For
others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great
sacrifice.
Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have
been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social
conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of freedom that
determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed
over time.
In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was primarily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—the right of a community to be
governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the
nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identified with each person’s
opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps
the dominant understanding of freedom. This development was encouraged
by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace (a development that
receives considerable attention in Give Me Liberty!), which offered Americans
an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires.
During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom,
the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from
attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and
more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom.
A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social conditions
necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions
and relationships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and
for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic
autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the independent small producer—
the farmer, skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper—who did not have to depend on
another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new
PRE FA C E ★ xxi
conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the
Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision-making) in the
Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently,
the ability to enjoy mass consumption within a market economy.
The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have
inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although
founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the
United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of freedom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white
Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Americans
has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, and
class and in other ways.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has frequently
been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nineteenth century,
expanding freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of freedom—
slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for others.
By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts
of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the
meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept
extended into new realms.
Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by
the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birthright owes much both to abolitionists who sought to extend the
blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full
recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law
without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom,
arose from the antislavery struggle and the Civil War and was reinvigorated
by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom
movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birthcontrol advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make
civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans.
Although concentrating on events within the United States, Give Me Liberty! also situates American history in the context of developments in other
parts of the world. Many of the forces that shaped American history, including
the international migration of peoples, the development of slavery, the spread
of democracy, and the expansion of capitalism, were worldwide processes not
confined to the United States. Today, American ideas, culture, and economic
and military power exert unprecedented influence throughout the world. But
beginning with the earliest days of settlement, when European empires competed to colonize North America and enrich themselves from its trade, American history cannot be understood in isolation from its global setting.
xxii ★ PREFACE
Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the powerless and
as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our culture together
and exposes the contradictions between what America claims to be and what
it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.”
Though freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened,
for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after
the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was
said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role
in American political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals
and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who
seek to secure American freedom at home and export it abroad. I hope that
Give Me Liberty! will offer beginning students a clear account of the course of
American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as
varied, contentious, and ever-changing as America itself.
A C K N OW L E D G M E N TS
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that
every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is
especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over
more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable historians on
whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list
at the end of the book offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically,
however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who generously read portions
of this work and offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions:
Joel Benson, Northwest Missouri State University
Lori Bramson, Clark College
Tonia Compton, Columbia College
Adam Costanzo, Texas A&M University
Carl Creasman Jr., Valencia College
Blake Ellis, Lone Star College–CyFair
Carla Falkner, Northeast Mississippi Community College
Van Forsyth, Clark College
A C KN O W L E D G ME N T S ★ xxiii
Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis
Michael Harkins, Harper College
Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–CyFair
Robert Hines, Palo Alto College
Traci Hodgson, Chemeketa Community College
Tamora Hoskisson, Salt Lake Community College
William Jackson, Salt Lake Community College
Alfred H. Jones, State College of Florida
David Kiracofe, Tidewater Community College
Brad Lookingbill, Columbia College
Jennifer Macias, Salt Lake Community College
Thomas Massey, Cape Fear Community College
Derek Maxfield, Genesee Community College
Marianne McKnight, Salt Lake Community College
Jonson Miller, Drexel University
Ted Moore, Salt Lake Community College
Robert Pierce, Foothills College
Ernst Pinjing, Minot State University
Harvey N. Plaunt, El Paso Community College
Steve Porter, University of Cincinnati
John Putman, San Diego State University
R. Lynn Rainard, Tidewater Community College
Nicole Ribianszky, Georgia Gwinnett College
Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis
John Shaw, Portland Community College
Danielle Swiontek, Santa Barbara Community College
Richard Trimble, Ocean County College
Alan Vangroll, Central Texas College
Eddie Weller, San Jacinto College
Andrew Wiese, San Diego State University
Matthew Zembo, Hudson Valley Community College
I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University
Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American history; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for
improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of
the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the
history of the environment.
I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia University’s Department of History who helped with this project. For this edition,
xxiv ★ ACKNOW LED G M EN TS
Michael “Mookie” Kidackel offered invaluable assistance in gathering material related to borderlands and Western history. For previous editions, Theresa Ventura assisted in locating material for new sections placing American
history in a global context, April Holm did the same for new coverage of the
history of American religion and debates over religious freedom, James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era, and Beverly
Gage did the same for the twentieth century. In addition, Daniel Freund provided all-around research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan
Brinkley for offering advice and encouragement throughout the writing
of this book. I am also grateful to students who, while using the textbook,
pointed out to me errors or omissions that I have corrected in this edition:
Jordan Farr, Chris Jendry, Rafi Metz, Samuel Phillips- Cooper, Richard Sereyko,
and David Whittle.
Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History
Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources
for the study of American history. Thanks also to the instructors who helped
build our robust digital resource and ancillary package. The new InQuizitive
for History was developed by Tonia M. Compton (Columbia College), Matt
Zembo (Hudson Valley Community College), Jodie Steeley (Merced Community College District), Bill Polasky (Stillman Valley High School), and Ken
Adler (Spring Valley High School). Our new History Skills Tutorials were
created by Geri Hastings. The Coursepack was thoroughly updated by Beth
Hunter (University of Alabama at Birmingham). Allison Faber (Texas A&M
University) and Ben Williams (Texas A&M University) revised the Lecture
PowerPoint slides. And our Test Bank and Instructor’s Manual were revised to
include new questions authored by Robert O’Brien (Lone Star College– CyFair
and Tamora M. Hoskisson (Salt Lake Community College).
At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor—patient,
encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank
Steve’s editorial assistants, Travis Carr and Kelly Rafey, and associate editor,
Scott Sugarman, for their indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects
of the project; Ellen Lohman and Bob Byrne for their careful copyediting and
proofreading work; Stephanie Romeo and Fay Torresyap for their resourceful
attention to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-Yee Lai
for their refinements of the book design; Leah Clark, Tiani Kennedy, and Debra
Morton-Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fifth Edition; Jennifer
Barnhardt for keeping the many threads of the project aligned and then tying
them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production;
Laura Wilk for orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the
A C KN O W L E D G ME N T S ★ xxv
textbook; Jessica Brannon-Wranowsky for the terrific new web quizzes and
outlines; Sarah England Bartley, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert
reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping establish Give
Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and Julia Reidhead
for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned publisher dedicated to excellence in its work.
Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies
alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales
and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say
that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from
the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For
this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations presented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length
can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at
ef17@columbia.edu.
My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola,
for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that consumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria,
who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was written and
offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and
grammar.
Eric Foner
New York City
July 2016
xxvi ★ ACKNOW LED G M EN TS
★
G I V E M E L I B E RT Y ! D I G I TA L ★
R E S O U R C E S F O R ST U D E N TS
A N D I N ST R U CTO R S
W. W. Norton offers a robust digital package to support teaching and learning
with Give Me Liberty! These resources are designed to make students more effective textbook readers, while at the same time developing their critical thinking
and history skills.
RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS
All resources are available through digital.wwnorton.com/givemeliberty5sv1
with the access card at the front of this text.
N O RTO N I N Q U I Z I T I V E F O R H I STO RY
Norton InQuizitive for history is an adaptive quizzing tool that improves students’ understanding of the themes and objectives from each chapter, while
honing their critical-analysis skills with primary source, image, and map analysis questions. Students receive personalized quiz questions with detailed,
guiding feedback on the topics in which they need the most help, while the
engaging, gamelike elements motivate them as they learn.
H I STO RY S K I L LS T U TO R I A LS
The History Skills Tutorials feature three modules—Images, Documents, and
Maps—to support students’ development of the key skills needed for the history course. These tutorials feature videos of Eric Foner modeling the analysis
process, followed by interactive questions that will challenge students to apply
what they have learned.
ST U D E N T S I T E
The free and easy-to-use Student Site offers additional resources for students
to use outside of class. Resources include interactive iMaps from each chapter,
author videos, and a comprehensive Online Reader with a collection of historical longer works, primary sources,
novellas, and biographies.
EBOOK
Free and included with new copies of the text, the Norton Ebook
Reader provides an enhanced
reading experience that works on
all computers and mobile devices.
Features include intuitive highlighting, note-taking, and bookmarking as well
as pop-up definitions and enlargeable maps and art. Direct links to InQuizitive
also appear in each chapter. Instructors can focus student reading by sharing
notes with their classes, including embedded images and video. Reports on
student and class-wide access and time on task allow instructors to monitor
student reading and engagement.
RESOURCES FOR INSTRUCTORS
All resources are available through www.wwnorton.com/instructors.
N O RTO N C O U R S E PAC KS
Easily add high-quality digital media to your online, hybrid, or lecture course—
all at no cost to students. Norton’s Coursepacks work within your existing
Learning Management System and are ready to use and easy to customize. The
coursepack offers a diverse collection of assignable and assessable resources:
Primary Source Exercises, Guided Reading Exercises, Review Quizzes, U.S.
History Tours powered by Google Earth, Flashcards, Map Exercises, and all
of the resources from the Student Site.
N O RTO N A M E R I CA N H I STO RY D I G I TA L A R C H I V E
The Digital Archive offers roughly 2,000 additional primary source images,
audio, and video files spanning American history that can be used in assignments and lecture presentations.
T E ST BA N K
The Test Bank is authored by Robert O’Brien, Lone Star College–
CyFair, and Tamora M. Hoskisson,
Salt Lake City Community College, and contains more than
4,000 multiple-choice, true/false,
short-answer, and essay questions.
I N ST R U CTO R ’ S M A N UA L
The Instructor’s Manual contains detailed Chapter Summaries, Chapter Outlines, Suggested Discussion Questions, and Supplemental Web, Visual, and
Print Resources.
L E CT U R E A N D A RT P OW E R P O I N T S L I D E S
The Lecture PowerPoint sets authored by Allison Faber, Texas A&M University,
and Ben Williams, Texas A&M University, combine chapter review, art, and maps.
GIVE M E
LIBERTY!
★
AN AMERICAN HISTORY ★
S E AGU L L F I F T H E DI T ION
★
CHAPTER 1
★
A NEW WORLD
FOCUS QUESTIONS
• What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before
Europeans arrived?
• How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
• What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
• What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
• What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
• What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North
America?
“
he discovery of America,” the British writer Adam Smith announced
in his celebrated work The Wealth of Nations (1776), was one of “the
two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of
mankind.” Historians no longer use the word “discovery” to describe the
European exploration, conquest, and colonization of a hemisphere already
home to millions of people. But there can be no doubt that when Christopher
Columbus made landfall in the West Indian islands in 1492, he set in motion
some of the most pivotal developments in human history. Immense changes
soon followed in both the Old and New Worlds; the consequences of these
changes are still with us today.
The peoples of the American continents and Europe, previously unaware of
each other’s existence, were thrown into continuous interaction. Crops new to
each hemisphere crossed the Atlantic, reshaping diets and transforming the
natural environment. Because of their long isolation, the inhabitants of North
T
★ 1
• CHRONOLOGY •
7000 BC
Agriculture developed in
Mexico and Andes
900–
1200 AD
Hopi and Zuni tribes
build planned towns
1200
Cahokia city-empire along
the Mississippi
1400s
Iroquois League
established
1434
Portuguese explore
sub-Saharan African
Coast
1487
Bartolomeu Dias reaches
the Cape of Good Hope
1492
Reconquista of Spain
Columbus’s first voyage to
the Americas
1498
Vasco da Gama sails to the
Indian Ocean
1500
Pedro Cabral claims Brazil
for Portugal
1502
First African slaves
transported to Caribbean
islands
1517
Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five
Theses
1519
Hernán Cortés arrives in
Mexico
1528
Las Casas’s History of the
Indies
1530s
Pizarro’s conquest of Peru
1542
Spain promulgates the New
Laws
1608
Champlain establishes
Quebec
1609
Hudson claims New
Netherland
1610
Santa Fe established
1680
Pueblo Revolt
•
•
2 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
and South America had developed no immunity to the germs that also accompanied the
colonizers. As a result, they suffered a series
of devastating epidemics, the greatest population catastrophe in human history. Within
a decade of Columbus’s voyage, a fourth
continent—Africa—found itself drawn into
the new Atlantic system of trade and population movement. In Africa, Europeans found a
supply of unfree labor that enabled them to
exploit the fertile lands of the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, of approximately 10 million
men, women, and children who crossed from
the Old World to the New between 1492 and
1820, the vast majority, about 7.7 million,
were African slaves.
From the vantage point of 1776, the year
the United States declared itself an independent nation, it seemed to Adam Smith that
the “discovery” of America had produced
both great “benefits” and great “misfortunes.”
To the nations of western Europe, the development of American colonies brought an era
of “splendor and glory.” The emergence of the
Atlantic as the world’s major avenue for trade
and population movement, Smith noted,
enabled millions of Europeans to increase the
“enjoyments” of life. To the “natives” of the
Americas, however, Smith went on, the years
since 1492 had been ones of “dreadful misfortunes” and “every sort of injustice.” And for
millions of Africans, the settlement of America meant a descent into the abyss of slavery.
Long before Columbus sailed, Europeans
had dreamed of a land of abundance, riches,
and ease beyond the western horizon. Once
the “discovery” of this New World had taken
place, they invented an America of the imagination, projecting onto it their hopes for a
better life. Here, many believed, would arise
unparalleled opportunities for riches, or at
What were the major patterns of Native American life in
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
North America before Europeans arrived?
least liberation from poverty. Europeans envisioned America as a religious refuge, a society of equals, a source of power and glory. They searched the New
World for golden cities and fountains of eternal youth. Some sought to establish ideal communities based on the lives of the early Christian saints or other
blueprints for social justice.
Some of these dreams of riches and opportunity would indeed be fulfilled.
To many European settlers, America offered a far greater chance to own land
and worship as they pleased than existed in Europe, with its rigid, unequal
social order and official churches. Yet the conditions that enabled millions of
settlers to take control of their own destinies were made possible by the debasement of millions of others. The New World became the site of many forms of
unfree labor, including indentured servitude, forced labor, and one of the most
brutal and unjust systems ever devised by man, plantation slavery. The conquest and settlement of the Western Hemisphere opened new chapters in the
long histories of both freedom and slavery.
There was a vast human diversity among the peoples thrown into contact
with one another in the New World. Exploration and settlement took place
in an era of almost constant warfare among European nations, each racked
by internal religious, political, and regional conflicts. Native Americans and
Africans consisted of numerous groups with their own languages and cultures. They were as likely to fight one another as to unite against the European
newcomers. All these peoples were changed by their integration into the new
Atlantic economy. The complex interactions of Europeans, American Indians,
and Africans would shape American history during the colonial era.
THE FIRST AMERICANS
The Settling of the Americas
The residents of the Americas were no more a single group than Europeans or
Africans. They spoke hundreds of different languages and lived in numerous
kinds of societies. Most, however, were descended from bands of hunters and fishers who had crossed the Bering Strait via a land bridge at various times between
15,000 and 60,000 years ago—the exact dates are hotly debated by archaeologists. Others may have arrived by sea from Asia or Pacific islands. Around 14,000
years ago, when glaciers began to melt at the end of the last Ice Age, the land link
became submerged under water, separating the Western Hemisphere from Asia.
History in North and South America did not begin with the coming of Europeans. The New World was new to Europeans but an ancient homeland to those
who already lived there. The hemisphere had witnessed many changes during its
T H E F I R S T A ME R I C A N S ★ 3
THE FIRST AMERICANS
Ch u kch i
Pe n i n s u l a
Be
r in
gS
t ra i t
Ale
ut
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Isl
an
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NORTH AMERICA
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HOPI PUEBLO
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CHICKASAW
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A t l a nt i c O ce a n
CHOCTAW
Gulf of Mexico
Chichen Itzá
AZ
TEC
Tenochtitlán
S
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CE
NT
0
0
500
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1,000 miles
1,000 kilometers
S
AN Yu catá n
MAY Pe n i n s u l a
Palenque
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Caribbean Sea
AM
ERIC
A
SOUTH AMERICA
Possible migration routes
I NC
A
S
A map illustrating the probable routes by which the first Americans settled the Western
Hemisphere at various times between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago.
human history. First, the early inhabitants and their descendants spread across
the two continents, reaching the tip of South America perhaps 11,000 years ago.
As the climate warmed, they faced a food crisis as the immense animals they
hunted, including woolly mammoths and giant bison, became extinct. Around
9,000 years ago, at the same time that agriculture was being developed in the
Near East, it also emerged in modern-day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread
to other parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible. Throughout
the hemisphere, maize (corn), squash, and beans formed the basis of agriculture.
The absence of livestock in the Western Hemisphere, however, limited farming
by preventing the plowing of fields and the application of natural fertilizer.
4 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in
North America before Europeans arrived?
Indian Societies of the Americas
North and South America were hardly an empty wilderness when Europeans
arrived. The hemisphere contained cities, roads, irrigation systems, extensive
trade networks, and large structures such as pyramid-temples, whose beauty
still inspires wonder. With a population close to 250,000, Tenochtitlán, the
capital of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico, was one of the world’s
largest cities. Its great temple, splendid royal palace, and a central market comparable to that of European capitals made the city seem “like an enchanted
vision,” according to one of the first Europeans to encounter it. Farther south
lay the Inca kingdom, centered in modern-day Peru. Its population of perhaps
12 million was linked by a complex system of roads and bridges that extended
2,000 miles along the Andes mountain chain.
When Europeans arrived, a wide variety of native peoples lived within the
present borders of the United States. Indian civilizations in North America had
not developed the scale, grandeur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and
Inca societies to their south. North American Indians lacked the technologies
Europeans had mastered, such as metal tools and machines, gunpowder, and
the scientific knowledge necessary for long-distance navigation. No society
north of Mexico had achieved literacy (although some made maps on bark and
animal hides). They also lacked wheeled vehicles, since they had no domestic animals like horses or oxen to pull them. Their “backwardness” became a
central justification for European conquest. But, over time, Indian societies had
perfected techniques of farming, hunting, and fishing, developed structures of
political power and religious belief, and engaged in far-reaching networks of
trade and communication.
Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley
Remarkable physical remains still exist from some of the early civilizations in North America. Around 3,500 years ago, before Egyptians built the
pyramids, Native Americans constructed a large community centered on a
series of giant semicircular mounds on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi
River in present-day Louisiana. Known today as Poverty Point, it was a commercial and governmental center whose residents established trade routes
throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Archaeologists have found
there copper from present-day Minnesota and Canada, and flint mined in
Indiana.
More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of the Ohio
River valley, called “mound builders” by eighteenth-century settlers who
encountered the large earthen burial mounds they created, had traded across
half the continent. After their decline, another culture flourished in the
T H E F I R S T A ME R I C A N S ★ 5
A modern aerial photograph of the ruins of
Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon in present-day
New Mexico. The rectangular structures are the
foundations of dwellings, and the circular ones
are kivas, or places of religious worship.
Mississippi River valley, centered on
the city of Cahokia near present-day
St. Louis, a fortified community with
between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200. Its residents,
too, built giant mounds, the largest
of which stood 100 feet high and was
topped by a temple. Little is known
of Cahokia’s political and economic
structure. But it stood as the largest
settled community in what is now the
United States until surpassed in population by New York and Philadelphia
around 1800.
Western Indians
In the arid northeastern area of present-day Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni and
their ancestors engaged in settled village life for over 3,000 years. During
the peak of the region’s culture, between the years 900 and 1200, these peoples built great planned towns with large multiple-family dwellings in local
canyons, constructed dams and canals to gather and distribute water, and
conducted trade with groups as far away as central Mexico and the Mississippi
River valley. The largest of their structures, Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon,
New Mexico, stood five stories high and had more than 600 rooms. Not until
the 1880s was a dwelling of comparable size constructed in the United States.
After the decline of these communities, probably because of drought,
survivors moved to the south and east, where they established villages and
perfected the techniques of desert farming, complete with irrigation systems
to provide water for crops of corn, beans, and cotton. These were the people
Spanish explorers called the Pueblo Indians (because they lived in small villages, or pueblos, when the Spanish first encountered them in the sixteenth
century).
On the Pacific coast, another densely populated region, hundreds of distinct
groups resided in independent villages and lived primarily by fishing, hunting sea mammals, and gathering wild plants and nuts. As many as 25 million
salmon swam up the Columbia River each year, providing Indians with abundant food. On the Great Plains, with its herds of buffalo—descendants of the
prehistoric giant bison—many Indians were hunters (who tracked animals on
foot before the arrival of horses with the Spanish), but others lived in agricultural communities.
6 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in
North America before Europeans arrived?
Indians of Eastern North America
In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes inhabited towns and villages
scattered from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. They lived on corn,
squash, and beans, supplemented by fishing and hunting deer, turkeys, and
other animals. Indian trade routes crisscrossed the eastern part of the continent. Tribes frequently warred with one another to obtain goods, seize captives,
or take revenge for the killing of relatives. They conducted diplomacy and
made peace. Little in the way of centralized authority existed until, in the fifteenth century, various leagues or confederations emerged in an effort to bring
N AT I V E WAY S O F L I F E , c a . 1 5 0 0
TLINGIT
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thinly
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Gulf of Mexico
COAHUILTEC
0
0
Ways of Life in North America, AD 1515
Arctic hunter-gatherers
Subarctic hunter-fisher-gatherers
Northwest coast marine economy
Plains hunter-gatherers
Plains horticulturalists
L. O
TIMUCUA
CHOCTAW
APALACHEE
NATCHEZ
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CHICKASAW
COMANCHE
TEWA
L.
ro n
ly
SHOSHONE
MAIDU
COSTANO
ALGONQUIAN
perior
Hu
NEZ
PERCE
L . Su
CHEYENNE SIOUX
thin
CAYUSE
TILLAMOOK
KLAMATH
POMO MODOC
CHIPPEWA
ASSINIBOINE
L. Michig
SKAGIT
CHINOOK
MICMAC
PENOBSCOT
ABENAKI
CREE
KOOTENAY
BLACKFEET
an
KWAKIUTLS
SHUSWAP
NOOTKIN
250
250
500 miles
ARAWAK
500 kilometers
Non-horticultural rancherian peoples
Rancherian peoples with low-intensity horticulture
Rancherian peoples with intensive horticulture
Pueblos with intensive horticulture
Seacoast foragers
Marginal horticultural hunters
River-based horticultural chiefdoms
Orchard-growing alligator hunters
Tidewater horticulturalists
Fishers and wild-rice gatherers
The native population of North America at the time of first contact with Europeans consisted
of numerous tribes with their own languages, religious beliefs, and economic and social
structures. This map suggests the numerous ways of life existing at the time.
T H E F I R S T A ME R I C A N S ★ 7
order to local regions. In the Southeast,
the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw
each united dozens of towns in loose
alliances. In present-day New York and
Pennsylvania, five Iroquois peoples—
the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga—formed a Great
League of Peace, bringing a period of
stability to the area. Each year a Great
Council, with representatives from
the five groupings, met to coordinate
behavior toward outsiders.
The most striking feature of Native
American society at the time Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each
group had its own political system and
set of religious beliefs, and North America was home to literally hundreds of
mutually unintelligible languages. IndiThe Village of Secoton, by John White, an
ans had no sense of “America” as a contiEnglish artist who spent a year on the Outer
nent or hemisphere. They did not think
Banks of North Carolina in 1585–1586 as part of
of themselves as a single unified people,
an expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh.
an idea invented by Europeans and only
A central street links houses surrounded by fields
of corn. In the lower part, dancing Indians take
many years later adopted by Indians
part in a religious ceremony.
themselves. Indian identity centered on
the immediate social group—a tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy. When Europeans first arrived, many Indians saw
them as simply one group among many. Their first thought was how to use the
newcomers to enhance their standing in relation to other native peoples, rather
than to unite against them. The sharp dichotomy between Indians and “white” persons did not emerge until later in the colonial era.
Native American Religion
Nonetheless, the diverse Indian societies of North America did share certain
common characteristics. Their lives were steeped in religious ceremonies often
directly related to farming and hunting. Spiritual power, they believed, suffused
the world, and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds of living and inanimate
things—animals, plants, trees, water, and wind—an idea known as “animism.”
Through religious ceremonies, they aimed to harness the aid of powerful supernatural forces to serve the interests of man. In some tribes, hunters performed
8 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in
North America before Europeans arrived?
rituals to placate the spirits of animals they had killed. Other religious ceremonies sought to engage the spiritual power of nature to secure abundant crops
or fend off evil spirits. Indian villages also held elaborate religious rites, participation in which helped to define the boundaries of community membership.
In all Indian societies, those who seemed to possess special abilities to invoke
supernatural powers—shamans, medicine men, and other religious leaders—
held positions of respect and authority.
Indian religion did not pose a sharp distinction between the natural and
the supernatural, or secular and religious activities. In some respects, however,
Indian religion was not that different from popular spiritual beliefs in Europe.
Most Indians held that a single Creator stood atop the spiritual hierarchy. Nonetheless, nearly all Europeans arriving in the New World quickly concluded that
Indians were in dire need of being converted to a true, Christian faith.
Land and Property
Equally alien in European eyes were Indian attitudes toward property. Numerous land systems existed among Native Americans. Generally, however, village
leaders assigned plots of land to individual families to use for a season or more,
and tribes claimed specific areas for hunting. Unclaimed land remained free for
anyone to use. Families “owned” the right to use land, but they did not own the
land itself. Indians saw land, the basis of economic life for both hunting and
farming societies, as a common resource, not an economic commodity. In the
nineteenth century, the Indian leader Black Hawk would explain why, in his
view, land could not be bought and sold: “The Great Spirit gave it to his children
to live upon, and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence; and so long
as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil.” Few if any Indian
societies were familiar with the idea of a fenced-off piece of land belonging forever to a single individual or family. There was no market in real estate before
the coming of Europeans.
Nor were Indians devoted to the accumulation of wealth and material
goods. Especially east of the Mississippi River, where villages moved every few
years when soil or game became depleted, acquiring numerous possessions
made little sense. However, status certainly mattered in Indian societies. Tribal
leaders tended to come from a small number of families, and chiefs lived more
splendidly than average members of society. But their reputation often rested
on their willingness to share goods with others rather than hoarding them for
themselves.
A few Indian societies had rigid social distinctions. Among the Natchez,
descendants of the mound-building Mississippian culture, a chief, or “Great
Sun,” occupied the top of the social order, with nobles, or “lesser suns,” below
T H E F I R S T A ME R I C A N S ★ 9
him, and below them, the common people. In general, however, wealth mattered far less in Indian society than in European society at the time. Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift giving was
essential to Indian society. Trade, for example, meant more than a commercial
transaction—it was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies of gift exchange.
Although Indians had no experience of the wealth enjoyed at the top of European society, under normal circumstances no one in Indian societies went hungry or experienced the extreme inequalities of Europe. “There are no beggars
among them,” reported the English colonial leader Roger Williams of New
England’s Indians.
Gender Relations
The system of gender relations in most Indian societies also differed markedly
from that of Europe. Membership in a family defined women’s lives, but they
openly engaged in premarital sexual relations and could even choose to divorce
their husbands. Most, although not all, Indian societies were matrilineal—that
is, centered on clans or kinship groups in which children became members of
the mother’s family, not the father’s. Tribal leaders were almost always men,
but women played an important role in certain religious ceremonies, and
female elders often helped to select male village leaders and took part in tribal
meetings. Under English law, a married man controlled the family’s property
and a wife had no independent legal identity. In contrast, Indian women owned
dwellings and tools, and a husband generally moved to live with the family of
his wife. In Indian societies, men contributed to the community’s well-being
and demonstrated their masculinity by success in hunting or, in the Pacific
Northwest, by catching fish with nets and harpoons. Because men were frequently away on the hunt, women took responsibility not only for household
duties but for most agricultural work as well. Among the Pueblo of the Southwest, however, where there was less hunting than in the East, men were the
primary cultivators.
European Views of the Indians
Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms. They were regarded either
as “noble savages,” gentle, friendly, and superior in some ways to Europeans, or
as uncivilized barbarians. Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator who
sailed up and down the eastern coast of North America in 1524, described Indians he encountered as “beautiful of stature and build.” (For their part, many
Indians, whose diet was probably more nutritious than that of most Europeans,
initially found the newcomers weak and ugly.)
10 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in
North America before Europeans arrived?
Over time, however, negative images of Indians came to overshadow positive ones. Early European descriptions of North American Indians as barbaric
centered on three areas—religion, land use, and gender relations. Whatever
their country of origin, European newcomers concluded that Indians lacked
genuine religion, or in fact worshiped the devil. Their shamans and herb healers were called “witch doctors,” their numerous ceremonies and rituals at best a
form of superstition, their belief in a world alive with spiritual power a worship
of “false gods.” Christianity presented no obstacle to the commercial use of the
land, and indeed in some ways encouraged it, since true religion was thought
to promote the progress of civilization. Whereas the Indians saw nature as a
world of spirits and souls, the Europeans viewed it as a collection of potential
commodities, a source of economic opportunity.
Europeans invoked the Indians’ distinctive pattern of land use and ideas
about property to answer the awkward question raised by a British minister at an early stage of England’s colonization: “By what right or warrant
can we enter into the land of these Savages, take away their rightful inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places?” While the Spanish
claimed title to land in America by right of conquest and papal authority, the
English, French, and Dutch came to rely on the idea that Indians had not actually “used” the land and thus had no claim to it. Despite the Indians’ highly
developed agriculture and well-established towns, Europeans frequently
described them as nomads without settled communities. The land was thus
deemed to be a vacant wilderness ready to be claimed by newcomers who
would cultivate and improve it. European settlers believed that mixing one’s
labor with the earth, which Indians supposedly had failed to do, gave one title
to the soil.
In the Indians’ gender division of labor and matrilineal family structures,
Europeans saw weak men and mistreated women. Hunting and fishing, the
primary occupations of Indian men, were considered leisure activities in
much of Europe, not “real” work. Because Indian women worked in the fields,
Europeans often described them as lacking freedom. They were “not much
better than slaves,” in the words of one English commentator. Europeans considered Indian men “unmanly”—too weak to exercise authority within their
families and restrain their wives’ open sexuality, and so lazy that they forced
their wives to do most of the productive labor. Throughout North America,
Europeans promoted the ideas that women should confine themselves to
household work and that men ought to exercise greater authority within their
families. Europeans insisted that by subduing the Indians, they were actually
bringing them freedom—the freedom of true religion, private property, and the
liberation of both men and women from uncivilized and unchristian gender
roles.
TH E F I R S T A ME R I C A N S ★ 11
Indians fishing, in a 1585 drawing by John White. The canoe is filled with fish, while two men
harpoon others in the background. Among the wildlife illustrated are hammerhead sharks
and catfish.
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM
Indian Freedom
And what of liberty as the native inhabitants of the New World understood it?
Many Europeans saw Indians as embodying freedom. The Iroquois, wrote one
colonial official, held “such absolute notions of liberty that they allow of no kind of
superiority of one over another, and banish all servitude from their territories.” But
most colonizers quickly concluded that the notion of “freedom” was alien to Indian
societies. Early English and French dictionaries of Indian languages contained no
entry for “freedom” or liberté. Nor, wrote one early trader, did Indians have “words to
express despotic power, arbitrary kings, oppressed or obedient subjects.”
Indeed, Europeans considered Indians barbaric in part because they did not
appear to live under established governments or fixed laws, and had no respect
for authority. “They are born, live, and die in a liberty without restraint,” wrote
one religious missionary. In a sense, they were too free, lacking the order and
discipline that Europeans considered the hallmarks of civilization. When
Giovanni da Verrazano described the Indians as living in “absolute freedom,”
he did not intend this as a compliment.
12 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
The familiar modern understanding of freedom as personal independence,
often based on ownership of private property, had little meaning in most
Indian societies. But Indians certainly had their own ideas of freedom. While
the buying and selling of slaves was unknown, small-scale slavery existed in
some Indian societies. So too did the idea of personal liberty as the opposite of
being held as a slave. Indians would bitterly resent the efforts of some Europeans to reduce them to slavery.
Although individuals were expected to think for themselves and did not
always have to go along with collective decision making, Indian men and
women judged one another according to their ability to live up to widely
understood ideas of appropriate behavior. Far more important than individual
autonomy were kinship ties, the ability to follow one’s spiritual values, and the
well-being and security of one’s community. In Indian culture, group autonomy
and self-determination, and the mutual obligations that came with a sense of
belonging and connectedness, took precedence over individual freedom. Ironically, the coming of Europeans, armed with their own language of liberty, would
make freedom a preoccupation of American Indians, as part and parcel of the
very process by which they were reduced to dependence on the colonizers.
Christian Liberty
On the eve of colonization, Europeans held numerous ideas of freedom. Some
were as old as the city-states of ancient Greece, others arose during the political struggles of the early modern era. Some laid the foundations for modern
conceptions of freedom, others are quite unfamiliar today. Freedom was not a
single idea but a collection of distinct rights and privileges, many enjoyed by
only a small portion of the population.
One conception common throughout Europe was that freedom was less a
political or social status than a moral or spiritual condition. Freedom meant
abandoning the life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ. “Where the Spirit
of the Lord is,” declares the New Testament, “there is liberty.” In this definition,
servitude and freedom were mutually reinforcing, not contradictory states,
since those who accepted the teachings of Christ simultaneously became “free
from sin” and “servants to God.”
“Christian liberty” had no connection to later ideas of religious toleration, a
notion that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of colonization. Every nation
in Europe had an established church that decreed what forms of religious worship and belief were acceptable. Dissenters faced persecution by the state as well
as condemnation by church authorities. Religious uniformity was thought to be
essential to public order; the modern idea that a person’s religious beliefs and practices are a matter of private choice, not legal obligation, was almost unknown.
The religious wars that racked Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
I N DI A N FREEDO M , E U R O P E A N F R E E D O M ★ 13
centered on which religion would predominate in a kingdom or region, not the
right of individuals to choose which church in which to worship.
Freedom and Authority
In its secular form, the equating of liberty with obedience to a higher authority
suggested that freedom meant obedience to law. Aristotle had described the law as
liberty’s “salvation,” not its enemy. The identification of freedom with the rule of
law did not, however, mean that all subjects of the crown enjoyed the same degree
of freedom. Early modern European societies were extremely hierarchical, with
marked gradations of social status ranging from the king and hereditary aristocracy down to the urban and rural poor. Inequality was built into virtually every
social relationship. The king claimed to rule by the authority of God. Persons of
high rank demanded deference from those below them.
Within families, men exercised authority over their wives and children.
According to the widespread legal doctrine known as “coverture,” when a
woman married she surrendered her legal identity, which became “covered” by
that of her husband. She could not own property or sign contracts in her own
name, control her wages if she worked, write a separate will, or, except in the
rarest of circumstances, go to court seeking a divorce. The husband conducted
business and testified in court for the entire family. He had the exclusive right
to his wife’s “company,” including domestic labor and sexual relations.
Everywhere in Europe, family life depended on male dominance and female
submission. Indeed, political writers of the sixteenth century explicitly compared the king’s authority over his subjects with the husband’s over his family.
Both were ordained by God. To justify this argument, they referred to a passage
in the New Testament: “As the man is the head of the woman, so is Christ the
head of the Church.” Neither kind of authority could be challenged without
threatening the fabric of social order.
Liberty and Liberties
In this hierarchical society, liberty came from knowing one’s social place and
fulfilling the duties appropriate to one’s rank. Most men lacked the freedom
that came with economic independence. Property qualifications and other
restrictions limited the electorate to a minuscule part of the adult male population. The law required strict obedience of employees, and breaches of labor
contracts carried criminal penalties.
European ideas of freedom still bore the imprint of the Middle Ages, when “liberties” meant formal, specific privileges such as self-government, exemption from
taxation, or the right to practice a particular trade, granted to individuals or groups
by contract, royal decree, or purchase. One legal dictionary defined a liberty as “a
privilege . . . by which men may enjoy some benefit beyond the ordinary subject.”
14 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
Only those who enjoyed the “freedom of the city,” for example, could engage in
certain economic activities. Numerous modern civil liberties did not exist. The
law decreed acceptable forms of religious worship. The government regularly suppressed publications it did not like, and criticism of authority could lead to imprisonment. Personal independence was reserved for a small part of the population,
and this was one reason why authorities found “masterless men”—those without
regular jobs or otherwise outside the control of their social superiors—so threatening. Nonetheless, every European country that colonized the New World claimed
to be spreading freedom—for its own population and for Native Americans.
THE EXPA NSION OF EUROPE
It is fitting that the second epochal event that Adam Smith linked to Columbus’s
voyage of 1492 was the discovery by Portuguese navigators of a sea route from
Europe to Asia around the southern tip of Africa. The European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest for a sea route to India, China, and the islands
of the East Indies, the source of the silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury
goods on which international trade in the early modern era centered. For centuries, this commerce had been conducted across land, from China and South Asia
to the Middle East and the Mediterranean region. Profit and piety—the desire to
eliminate Islamic middlemen and win control of the lucrative trade for Christian
western Europe—combined to inspire the quest for a direct route to Asia.
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, one might have predicted that China
would establish the world’s first global empire. Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral
Zheng He led seven large naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean. The first convoy
consisted of 62 ships that were larger than those of any European nation, along
with 225 support vessels and more than 25,000 men. On his sixth voyage, Zheng
explored the coast of East Africa. China was already the world’s most important
trading economy, with trade routes dotting the Indian Ocean. Zheng’s purpose was
not discovery, but to impress other peoples with China’s might. Had his ships continued westward, they could easily have reached North and South America. But as
a wealthy land-based empire, China did not feel the need for overseas expansion,
and after 1433 the government ended support for long-distance maritime expeditions. It fell to Portugal, situated on the western corner of the Iberian Peninsula, far
removed from the overland route to Asia, to take advantage of new techniques of
sailing and navigation to begin exploring the Atlantic.
The development of the caravel, a ship capable of long-distance travel, and of
the compass and quadrant, devices that enabled sailors to determine their location
TH E ExPA N S I O N O F E U R O P E ★ 15
THE OLD WORLD ON THE EVE OF AMERICAN
C O L O N I Z AT I O N , c a . 1 5 0 0
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
ENGLAND
HOLY ROMAN
EMPIRE
FRANCE
Genoa
PORTUGAL SPAIN
A z or e s Lisbon
Me d
Venice
iter
OT
TOM
AN
M a d e i ra I s .
Ca n a r y I s.
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
rane Crete
an Sea Cyp rus
PERSIA
EMPIRE
S AH AR A D E S E RT
He
INDIA
ng
Zhe
MALI
Ca pe
Verd e
Is.
BENIN
d
aG
am
a
CHINA
Hormuz
Zhen
gH
e
NETHERLANDS
da G
CHAMPA
ama
Ce ylon
MALACCA
Dias
Paci f i c
O ce a n
EAST INDIES
Su matra
Ja va
Indi an
O c e an
At la n t ic
Ocean
Cap e of
Good Hop e
0
0
1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
In the fifteenth century, the world known to Europeans was limited to Europe, parts of Africa, and
Asia. Explorers from Portugal sought to find a sea route to the East in order to circumvent the Italian city-states and Middle Eastern rulers who controlled the overland trade.
and direction with greater accuracy than in the past, made it possible to sail down
the coast of Africa and return to Portugal. Portuguese seafarers initially hoped to
locate the source of gold that for centuries had been transported in caravans across
the Sahara Desert to North Africa and Europe. This commerce, which passed
through the African kingdom of Mali on the southern edge of the Sahara, provided
Europe with most of its gold. Around 1400, it rivaled trade with the East in economic
importance. And like trade with Asia, it was controlled by Muslim merchants.
Portugal and West Africa
Until 1434, no European sailor had seen the coast of Africa below the Sahara,
or the forest kingdoms south of Mali that contained the actual gold fields. But
in that year, a Portuguese ship brought a sprig of rosemary from West Africa,
16 ★ CHAPTER 1 A N ew Wor l d
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
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