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 AS et AL k In l it tle M i s sou r . eR ch ll Be en R. o . h g de an Gr i H DR Pe c o s R . MEXICO A RA M Coo Rio n i ta un Mo im okw SIER la S su N Ku s k I R E O N A AL IE a I Queen Charlotte Islands rni N 200 400 kilometers lifo 400 miles Ca 0 200 Alexander Archipelago R 0 O Ko dia k Island A Mulege Gulf of Alaska T EN ID CC E O ADR A M SIERR Juneau f lf o Pe ns F a tai Gu sk sM oun Odes Hermosillo Vizcaíno Bay I Ala El Paso L a ds Elia Llano Estacado Ciudad Juárez A Se Ale an n Isl utia n ni St . Can Tucson C ing Bristol Bay Iliamna Lake Anchorage Kena i Pe ni nsul a Santa Fe Albuquerque NEW MEXICO Phoenix R. A Ber Kuskokwim Bay CANADA E R. J Nuni va k Island KA Fairbanks RANG do A ns Pueblo T SONORAN B ALASKA Norton Sound ean on Y uk R. E Oc S e wa rd Pe n in su l a G R A N R. Colorado Springs DESERT fic BR O O K S Kotzebue Sound St. La wrence Island i Pa c Beaufort Sea do o ARIZONA Salton Escondido Sea G i la te P L AT E A U ra Long Beach San Diego North Slope ra C Flagstaff Tijuana Chukchi Sea G re E E D Pasadena Oceanside lo ol 100 kilometers S. P l at Denver R Moab C 100 miles 0 Oxnard Ch a n n e l Los Angeles Islands Steamboat Springs Glenwood Springs CO LO R A D O Lake Mead Lancaster Santa Barbara + Mauna Loa R. Lake Powell Las Vegas DESERT Po i n t Con ce pt i o n Hilo St. George tt l e A le + Mauna Kea Hawaii Death Valley MOJAVE Bakersfield tte COLORADO Li HAWAII ha S. i a R. mb E lu Co G N A R S A C G N S A A C R Kl S T a m e n to R. Sa c r A O C l ne an ha nel la N ui an .P Cheyenne U Pacific Ocean Ch N O Kahoolawe 0 CALIFORNIA Maui Lanai Black Hills Casper M iC A A D iw B A S I N . R Fresno V Ka Salinas n Honolulu San Jose Monterey Bay Monterey h Molokai . Laramie Salt Lake City UTAH r ou P . Oahu T eR ha Great Salt Lake Great Salt Lake Desert E C ai qu i ha au K l N iC ne eF Pocatello WYOMING Oakland l A he A ah Kauai n ake R. L Jackson U G R E A T NEVADA Carson City Lake Tahoe R lak Nihau oa Sa n J Ka u San Francisco A Reno Sacramento Po i n t Rey e s e nn E B i g h o r n R. Y O St. Croix K L Caribbean Sea E R 50 kilometers P 50 miles 0 T y Sn S I 0 Ca pe Me n d o c i n o St. John IDAHO Idaho Falls A w U.S. Virgin Islands MONTANA l ow s t o n e R Ye l I A PUERTO RICO Helena kR . i R. B R. St. Thomas San Juan ur Billings ama t h R . Tortola M Missoula t o lm n R. Reg E Sa Boise Atlantic Ocean . R Walla Walla o iss M OREGON tte Ca pe B l a nco R Qu 'A Mi l Coeur d'Alene L U W i l l a me Eugene m bia R. Salem G Portland 300 kilometers R. Co l u a k e R. Sn C 150 Spokane WASHINGTON o r o e r t t B i 0 300 miles C O 150 Tacoma Olympia Ca pe D i s a ppo i n t m e nt h e wan ska t c O Seattle Sa w Fuca Calgary Bo Ca pe Ju a Victoria n de Flattery PHYSICAL/POLITICAL MAP OF THE UNITED STATES 0 R Vancouver Str .o f en ay R. Ko o t Va n co u v e r Island ny R. James Bay San Antonio Ri o Gr O P R A S L E Missin T I D N E A Beaumont Houston Galveston G a l ves Baton Rouge Lafayette ton Atchafal Bay A L N Ca pe Sa n B l a s U N T N I A n A ea Oc tic lan Jacksonville FLORIDA s R . Ca p e Ca n a v era l Orlando an Tampa de AL Matamoros Lake Okeechobee Fort Lauderdale Ca p e Sable Key West Miami ys The Ev e rg lade s Ke NT Monterrey Brownsville G u l f o f Me x i c o da Corpus Christi Laredo C Nuevo Laredo Flo ri M a I Apalachee Bay of lf Gu . e nc .L St U O A E M T A N L A P H C O M Charleston At eR . he C L Te n I i o R. Oh N A L Cu P se P Pensacola Mississippi River Delta P m Savannah ah a R. O ke f e n o ke e Swa m p Tallahassee Breton Sound A ab am A lab Lake Biloxi Pontchartrain a Montgomery Mobile New Orleans ay aya B S R U S Austin Plateau D I l li R. p pi ssi Mi Edwards Macon L A Ca p e Fe a r nn ' St. J o h n T TEXAS R Natchitoches Waco Wilmington SOUTH . CAROLINA av GEORGIA Columbus Ca p e Lo o ko u t ee Jackson LOUISIANA R. Columbia P Ca p e H a ttera s NORTH CAROLINA Charlotte R. Shreveport e R. G r e at Norfolk Dismal R Swa m p . ah bin a R. I Atlanta t Dallas P P Al o ALABAMA o a n o ke a rad Birmingham R. olo MISSISSIPPI be e Abilene C ssa Sa a R chi t a . Fort Worth Ou s ne Chattanooga S o Texarkana R. Asheville Great Smoky Mountains A big az s To m Br Knoxville Tupelo R e d R. DELAWARE MARYLAND Raleigh eD Memphis A A NEW JERSEY Delaware Bay Pe R. ARKANSAS Little Rock Lubbock TENNESSEE Jonesboro eR . i te C r land R . L Nashville h ka n s a s R. Oklahoma City be A W m A R. r a O z e a u a t P l RHODE ISLAND CONNECTICUT e B ay Roanoke R Lo n g Island New York Atlantic City Dover Richmond H Ca p e Providence Co d Hartford Trenton Philadelphia Harrisburg VIRGINIA I Lexington KENTUCKY ssi P S OKLAHOMA Amarillo Tulsa Ar k Charleston Frankfort Louisville . Oh i o R Lake of the Ozarks Springfield . St. Louis Jefferson City R. MASS. ak MISSOURI ge WEST VIRGINIA Cincinnati Concord Boston New Haven Newark Baltimore Annapolis Washington, D.C. Portland esape Independence Wichita nR INDIANA ILLINOIS a N KANSAS D Indianapolis a Ch ns s R. Kansas City Topeka O sa Columbus N el PENNSYLVANIA E R. ri s n i a I l A Erie Pittsburgh OHIO W Springfield ie D Bangor ec R . L s cot eb W Hannibal Er e ak Cleveland Akron Fort Wayne A as h R . L Peoria R. ob R. O Ka R ence R. L es T L Toledo Gary no i s R . N Buffalo T NH R. E wr MAINE Augusta C o n n e c t i cut Lincoln Chicago Cedar Rapids Des Moines De s M oi n C i R. tte R. Omaha s our A Pla . up R L Port Huron Lake St. Clair Detroit Lansing NVT Watertown R. Mis NEBRASKA Pe n Wh i t e Mtn s H u dso n R . Milwaukee La o n Burlington Montpelier are w L IOWA f t. Fredericton Québec Lake Champlain rio Ont a NEW YORK Albany ake N i a g a ra Fa l l s MICHIGAN Sioux City aw n N io b r a ra R . nadia Lake Winnebago y Toronto a R. Oshkosh on s i n i s c Madison W ia i Sioux Falls Traverse City on Green Bay i pp ul St . J Montréal R re Ad i r o n d a c k M o u n ta i n s ur s Ba H R. WISCONSIN eo k nsul Huron St. Paul M iss is Minneapolis ta G La e so er eni r P ne Upp R. Ottawa la Peninsu we in Ottawa Sault Ste. Marie Duluth Lo M Lo S N rg es R. MINNESOTA R. Pierre A Isle Roya l e up Lake S erior Fargo SOUTH DAKOTA enn e I E I H Ke n Jam Bismarck D International Falls G S of hn . sR he N or th Red R . o f t uri NORTH DAKOTA Che y A Winnipeg Lake of the Woods So Williston . iR t a h oo c hat e R. an oin Lake Michig n ib a N As si ib C D CANADA l l e R. a A 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 W. W. 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Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011, 2008, 2005 by Eric Foner All rights reserved Printed in Canada Editor: Steve Forman Associate Editor: Scott Sugarman Project Editor: Jennifer Barnhardt Editorial Assistants: Travis Carr, Kelly Rafey Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson Managing Editor, College Digital Media: Kim Yi Production Manager: Sean Mintus Media Editor: Laura Wilk Media Project Editor: Rachel Mayer Media Associate Editor: Michelle Smith Media Assistant Editor: Chris Hillyer Marketing Manager, History: Sarah England Bartley Associate Design Director: Hope Miller Goodell Designer: Lisa Buckley Photo Editor: Stephanie Romeo Permissions Manager: Megan Schindel Permissions Specialist: Bethany Salminen Composition: Jouve Illustrations: Mapping Specialists, Ltd. Manufacturing: Transcontinental Permission to use copyrighted material is included on page A-81. 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 wwnorton.com 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 ia n Isl an ds NORTH AMERICA MOHAWK ONEIDA ONONDAGA CAYUGA SENECA ve r Paci f i c Ocean i io R Oh CHEROKEE ssi Mi ssippi R. Cahokia Chaco Canyon HOPI PUEBLO ZUNI CHICKASAW Poverty Point A t l a nt i c O ce a n CHOCTAW Gulf of Mexico Chichen Itzá AZ TEC Tenochtitlán S Monte Alban CE NT 0 0 500 500 1,000 miles 1,000 kilometers S AN Yu catá n MAY Pe n i n s u l a Palenque RAL 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 INUIT Hudson Bay INUIT TSHIMSHIAN thinly populated WALLA WALLA FLATHEAD CHIPPEWA po WAMPANOAG MOHEGAN PEQUOT IROQUOIS NARRAGANSETT rie WINNEBAGO L. E IOWA SUSQUEHANNOCK POTAWATOMI ERIE MOSOPELEA SAUK SHAWNEE KICKAPOO ILLINOIS PAMLICO KASKASKIA CHEROKEE TUSCARORA HIDATSA MANDAN SIOUX ARAPAHO KIOWA PAWNEE MENOMINEE OTTOWA pu la te d UTE SOUTHERN CHEMEHUEVI PAIUTE CHUMASH SERRANO LUISENO HOPI ZUNI CAHUILLA DIEGUENO WICHITA MESCALERO CONCHO Pa c i f i c O c ea n CREEK CADDO KABANKAWA LAGUERNO ntar io YAMASEE A t la nt ic Oc e a n CALUSA 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 JUMANO YACHI HURON NEUTRAL 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? proof that one coul...
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