GIVE ME
LIBERTY!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Brief Fourth Edition
GIVE ME
LIBERTY!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Brief Fourth Edition
ERIC FONER
B
W . W . NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK . LONDON
For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005), an accomplished artist who lived
through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William
Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s
Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon
expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from
America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program—
trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family
transferred control of the company to its employees, and today—with a staff of 400 and
a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year—
W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly
by its employees.
Copyright © 2014, 2012 by Eric Foner
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Fourth Edition
Editor: Steve Forman
Associate Editor: Justin Cahill
Editorial Assistant: Penelope Lin
Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson
Managing Editor, College Digital Media: Kim Yi
Project Editor: Diane Cipollone
Copy Editor: Elizabeth Dubrulle
Marketing Manager: Sarah England
Media Editors: Steve Hoge, Tacy Quinn
Assistant Editor, Media: Stefani Wallace
Production Manager: Sean Mintus
Art Director: Rubina Yeh
Designer: Chin-Yee Lai
Photo Editor: Stephanie Romeo
Photo Research: Donna Ranieri
Permissions Manager: Megan Jackson
Permissions Clearing: Bethany Salminen
Composition and Layout: Jouve
Manufacturing: Transcontinental
Since this page cannot accommodate all of the copyright notices, the Credits pages at the end
of the book constitute an extension of the copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
This edition:
ISBN 978-0-393-92033-8 (pbk.)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017
wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
1234567890
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E R I C F O N E 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 book is The Fiery Trial:
Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and
the Pulitzer Prize.
CONTENTS
About the Author ... v
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures ... xviii
Preface ... xx
1. A NEW WORLD ... 1
THE FIRST AME RI C A N S . . . 3
The Settling of the Americas ... 3 Indian Societies of the Americas ... 3
Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley ... 5 Western Indians ... 6
Indians of Eastern North America ... 6 Native American Religion ... 7
Land and Property ... 9 Gender Relations ... 10 European Views
of the Indians
...
10
INDIAN FREEDO M , EU R O PEA N FREED O M . . . 1 1
Indian Freedom ... 11 Christian Liberty ... 12 Freedom and
Authority ... 12 Liberty and Liberties ... 13
THE EXPANSION O F E U RO P E . . . 1 3
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation ... 14 Freedom and Slavery in
Africa ... 14 The Voyages of Columbus ... 16
CONTACT ... 16
Columbus in the New World ... 16 Exploration and Conquest ... 17
The Demographic Disaster ... 19
THE SPANISH E M P I RE . . . 2 0
Governing Spanish America ... 21 Colonists and Indians in Spanish
America ... 21 Justifications for Conquest ... 22 Piety and Profit ... 23
Reforming the Empire ... 24 Exploring North America ... 25
Spanish in Florida and the Southwest ... 25 The Pueblo Revolt ... 27
Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies
(1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19, 1681) ... 28
THE FRENCH AN D D U TC H EM PI R E S . . . 3 0
French Colonization ... 32 New France and the Indians ... 32 The
Dutch Empire ... 34 Dutch Freedom ... 34 The Dutch and Religious
Toleration ... 35 Settling New Netherland ... 36 Features of European
Settlement ... 36
REVIEW ... 37
2. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH AMERICA, 1607–1660 ... 38
ENGLAND AND TH E N EW W O R L D . . . 4 0
Unifying the English Nation ... 40 England and Ireland ... 40 England
and North America ... 40 Motives for Colonization ... 41 The Social
Crisis ... 42 Masterless Men ... 43
Contents
vi i
THE COMING OF TH E EN G LI S H . . . 43
English Emigrants ... 43 Indentured Servants ... 44 Land and
Liberty ... 44 Englishmen and Indians ... 45 The Transformation
of Indian Life ... 46
SETTLING THE CHE S A P E A KE . . . 47
The Jamestown Colony ... 47 Powhatan and Pocahontas ... 48 The
Uprising of 1622 ... 49 A Tobacco Colony ... 50 Women and the
Family ... 50 The Maryland Experiment ... 52 Religion in
Maryland ... 52
THE NEW ENGLAND W A Y . . . 53
The Rise of Puritanism ... 53 Moral Liberty ... 53 The Pilgrims at
Plymouth ... 54 The Great Migration ... 55 The Puritan Family ... 55
Government and Society in Massachusetts ... 56 Church and State in
Puritan Massachusetts ... 58
NEW ENGLANDERS D I V I D ED . . . 59
Roger Williams ... 60 Rhode Island and Connecticut ... 60 The Trials
of Anne Hutchinson ... 61 Puritans and Indians ... 61
Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637),
and From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court
(July 3, 1645) ... 62
The Pequot War ... 64 The New England Economy ... 65 A Growing
Commercial Society ... 66
RELIGION, POLITIC S , A N D FREED O M ... 67
The Rights of Englishmen ... 67 The English Civil War ... 68
England’s Debate over Freedom ... 68 The Civil War and English
America ... 69 Cromwell and the Empire ... 70
REVIEW ... 71
3. CREATING ANGLO-AMERICA, 1660–1750 ... 72
GLOBAL COMPETIT I O N A N D T H E EX P A N S I O N O F
ENGLAND’S EMPIRE . . . 74
The Mercantilist System ... 74 The Conquest of New Netherland ... 74
New York and the Indians ... 75 The Charter of Liberties ... 77 The
Founding of Carolina ... 77 The Holy Experiment ... 78 Land in
Pennsylvania ... 79
ORIGINS OF AMERI C A N S LA V ERY . . . 80
Englishmen and Africans ... 80 Slavery in History ... 81 Slavery
in the West Indies ... 81 Slavery and the Law ... 82 The Rise of
Chesapeake Slavery ... 83 Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in
Virginia ... 83 A Slave Society ... 85
v iii
Co nt ent s
COLONIES IN CR I S I S . . . 86
The Glorious Revolution ... 86 The Glorious Revolution in America ... 87
The Salem Witch Trials ... 89
THE GROWTH O F C O L O N I A L A M ERI C A . . . 90
A Diverse Population ... 90 The German Migration ... 91
Voices of Freedom: From Memorial against Non-English Immigration
(December 1727), and From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant
to Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769) ... 92
Religious Diversity ... 95 Indian Life in Transition ... 95 Regional
Diversity ... 96 The Consumer Revolution ... 97 Colonial Cities ... 97
An Atlantic World ... 98
SOCIAL CLASSE S I N TH E C O L O N I ES . . . 99
The Colonial Elite ... 99 Anglicization ... 100 Poverty in the
Colonies ... 100 The Middle Ranks ... 101 Women and the
Household Economy ... 101 North America at Mid-Century ... 102
REVIEW ... 103
4. SLAVERY, FREEDOM, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE,
TO 1763 ... 104
SLAVERY AND E M P I RE . . . 106
Atlantic Trade ... 106 Africa and the Slave Trade ... 107 The Middle
Passage ... 109 Chesapeake Slavery ... 109 The Rice Kingdom ... 110
The Georgia Experiment ... 111 Slavery in the North ... 112
SLAVE CULTUR ES A N D S L A V E R E S I S TA N C E . . . 113
Becoming African-American ... 113 African Religion in Colonial America
... 113 African-American Cultures ... 114 Resistance to Slavery ... 115
AN EMPIRE OF FREED O M . . . 116
British Patriotism ... 116 The British Constitution ... 117 Republican
Liberty ... 117 Liberal Freedom ... 118
THE PUBLIC SPHERE . . . 119
The Right to Vote ... 119 Political Cultures ... 120 The Rise of the
Assemblies ... 121 Politics in Public ... 121 The Colonial Press ... 122
Freedom of Expression and Its Limits ... 122 The Trial of Zenger ... 123
The American Enlightenment ... 124
THE GREAT AWA K E N I N G . . . 125
Religious Revivals ... 125 The Preaching of Whitefield ... 126 The
Awakening’s Impact ... 126
IMPERIAL RIVA L R I ES . . . 127
Spanish North America ... 127 The Spanish in California ... 127 The
French Empire ... 129
Contents
ix
BATTLE FOR THE C O N TI N EN T . . . 130
The Middle Ground ... 130 The Seven Years’ War ... 130 A World
Transformed ... 131 Pontiac’s Rebellion ... 132 The Proclamation
Line ... 132
Voices of Freedom: From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763), and
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) ... 134
Pennsylvania and the Indians ... 136 Colonial Identities ... 137
REVIEW ... 138
5. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1763–1783 ... 139
THE CRISIS BEGINS . . . 140
Consolidating the Empire ... 140 Taxing the Colonies ... 142
Taxation and Representation ... 143 Liberty and Resistance ... 144
The Regulators ... 145
THE ROAD TO REVO LU T I O N . . . 145
The Townshend Crisis ... 145 The Boston Massacre ... 146 Wilkes
and Liberty ... 147 The Tea Act ... 148 The Intolerable Acts ... 148
THE COMING OF IN D EPEN D EN C E . . . 149
The Continental Congress ... 149 The Continental Association ... 150
The Sweets of Liberty ... 150 The Outbreak of War ... 151
Independence? ... 151 Paine’s Common Sense ... 152 The Declaration
of Independence ... 153 An Asylum for Mankind ... 154 The Global
Declaration of Independence ... 155
Voices of Freedom: From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), and
From Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of
the American Revolution (1775) ... 156
SECURING INDEPEND E N C E . . . 158
The Balance of Power ... 158 Blacks in the Revolution ... 158 The
First Years of the War ... 159 The Battle of Saratoga ... 161 The War
in the South ... 162 Victory at Last ... 162
REVIEW ... 166
6. THE REVOLUTION WITHIN ... 167
DEMOCRATIZING F REED O M . . . 169
The Dream of Equality ... 169 Expanding the Political Nation ... 169
The Revolution in Pennsylvania ... 170 The New Constitutions ... 171
The Right to Vote ... 171
TOWARD RELIGIOU S TO L E R A TI O N . . . 172
Catholic Americans ... 173 Separating Church and State ... 173
Jefferson and Religious Liberty ... 174 Christian Republicanism ... 175
A Virtuous Citizenry ... 175
x
Cont e nt s
DEFINING ECON O M I C FREED O M . . . 176
Toward Free Labor ... 176 The Soul of a Republic ... 176 The Politics
of Inflation ... 177 The Debate over Free Trade ... 178
THE LIMITS OF LI B E R T Y . . . 178
Colonial Loyalists ... 178 The Loyalists’ Plight ... 179 The Indians’
Revolution ... 181
SLAVERY AND T H E REV O LU T I O N . . . 182
The Language of Slavery and Freedom ... 182 Obstacles to Abolition ... 183
The Cause of General Liberty ... 183 Petitions for Freedom ... 184
British Emancipators ... 185 Voluntary Emancipations ... 185
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) ... 186
Abolition in the North ... 188 Free Black Communities ... 188
DAUGHTERS OF LI B E R T Y . . . 189
Revolutionary Women ... 189 Republican Motherhood ... 190 The
Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 190
REVIEW ... 192
7. FOUNDING A NATION, 1783–1791 ... 193
AMERICA UNDE R T H E C O N F E D ERA T I O N . . . 195
The Articles of Confederation ... 195 Congress, Settlers, and the West ...
196 The Land Ordinances ... 198 The Confederation’s Weaknesses ...
200 Shays’s Rebellion ... 200 Nationalists of the 1780s ... 201
A NEW CONSTIT U TI O N . . . 202
The Structure of Government ... 202 The Limits of Democracy ... 203
The Division and Separation of Powers ... 204 The Debate over Slavery
... 205 Slavery in the Constitution ... 205 The Final Document ... 207
THE RATIFICAT I O N D E B A TE A N D T H E O R I G I N O F TH E B I LL
OF RIGHTS ... 208
The Federalist ... 208 “Extend the Sphere” ... 208 The AntiFederalists ... 209
Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the American
Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787) ... 210
The Bill of Rights ... 214
“WE THE PEOPL E ” . . . 215
National Identity ... 215 Indians in the New Nation ... 215 Blacks and
the Republic ... 217 Jefferson, Slavery, and Race ... 218 Principles of
Freedom ... 219
REVIEW ... 220
Contents
xi
8. SECURING THE REPUBLIC, 1791–1815 ... 221
POLITICS IN AN AG E O F P A S S I O N . . . 222
Hamilton’s Program ... 223 The Emergence of Opposition ... 223 The
Jefferson-Hamilton Bargain ... 224 The Impact of the French Revolution
... 225 Political Parties ... 226 The Whiskey Rebellion ... 226 The
Republican Party ... 226 An Expanding Public Sphere ... 227
Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of
the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) ... 228
The Rights of Women ... 230
THE ADAMS PRESID E N C Y . . . 231
The Election of 1796 ... 231 The “Reign of Witches” ... 232 The
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ... 233 The “Revolution of
1800” ... 233 Slavery and Politics ... 234 The Haitian
Revolution ... 235 Gabriel’s Rebellion ... 235
JEFFERSON IN POWER . . . 236
Judicial Review ... 237 The Louisiana Purchase ... 237 Lewis and
Clark ... 239 Incorporating Louisiana ... 240 The Barbary Wars ... 241
The Embargo ... 241 Madison and Pressure for War ... 242
THE “SECOND WAR O F I N D EPEN D EN C E” . . . 243
The Indian Response ... 243 The War of 1812 ... 244 The War’s
Aftermath ... 246 The End of the Federalist Party ... 247
REVIEW ... 248
9. THE MARKET REVOLUTION, 1800–1840 ... 249
A NEW ECONOMY .. . 251
Roads and Steamboats ... 251 The Erie Canal ... 252 Railroads
and the Telegraph ... 254 The Rise of the West ... 255 The Cotton
Kingdom ... 257
MARKET SOCIETY .. . 259
Commercial Farmers ... 260 The Growth of Cities ... 260 The Factory
System ... 261 The “Mill Girls” ... 262 The Growth of Immigration ...
263 The Rise of Nativism ... 265 The Transformation of Law ... 266
THE FREE INDIVIDU A L . . . 267
The West and Freedom ... 267 The Transcendentalists ... 267 The
Second Great Awakening ... 268 The Awakening’s Impact ... 269
Voices of Freedom: From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American
Scholar” (1837), and From “Factory Life as It Is, by an Operative”
(1845) ... 270
The Emergence of Mormonism ... 272
x ii
Co nt ent s
THE LIMITS OF PRO S P E R I TY . . . 273
Liberty and Prosperity ... 273 Race and Opportunity ... 274 The Cult
of Domesticity ... 275 Women and Work ... 276 The Early Labor
Movement ... 277 The “Liberty of Living” ... 277
REVIEW ... 279
10. DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1815–1840 ... 280
THE TRIUMPH O F D EM O C RA C Y . . . 281
Property and Democracy ... 281 The Dorr War ... 282 Tocqueville on
Democracy ... 282 The Information Revolution ... 283 The Limits of
Democracy ... 284 A Racial Democracy ... 284
NATIONALISM A N D I TS D I S C O N T E N TS . . . 285
The American System ... 285 Banks and Money ... 287 The Panic
of 1819 ... 287 The Missouri Controversy ... 288
NATION, SECTI O N , A N D PA R T Y . . . 289
The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence ... 289
The Monroe Doctrine ... 290 The Election of 1824 ... 291
Voices of Freedom: From President James Monroe, Annual Message
to Congress (1823), and From John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition on
Government” (ca. 1845) ... 292
The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams ... 294 “Liberty Is Power” ... 294
Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party ... 294 The Election
of 1828 ... 295
THE AGE OF JAC K S O N . . . 296
The Party System ... 296 Democrats and Whigs ... 297 Public and
Private Freedom ... 298 South Carolina and Nullification ... 299
Calhoun’s Political Theory ... 299 The Nullification Crisis ... 301
Indian Removal ... 301 The Supreme Court and the Indians ... 302
THE BANK WAR A N D A FTER . . . 304
Biddle’s Bank ... 304 Pet Banks, the Economy, and the Panic
of 1837 ... 306 Van Buren in Office ... 307 The Election of 1840 ... 307
REVIEW ... 310
11. THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION ... 311
THE OLD SOUTH . . . 312
Cotton Is King ... 313 The Second Middle Passage ... 314 Slavery
and the Nation ... 314 The Southern Economy ... 314 Plain Folk
of the Old South ... 316 The Planter Class ... 317 The Paternalist
Ethos ... 318 The Proslavery Argument ... 318 Abolition in the
Americas ... 320 Slavery and Liberty ... 320
Contents
xi i i
LIFE UNDER SLAVE RY . . . 321
Slaves and the Law ... 321 Conditions of Slave Life ... 322 Free
Blacks in the Old South ... 322 Slave Labor ... 323 Slavery in the
Cities ... 324 Maintaining Order ... 325
SLAVE CULTURE ... 326
The Slave Family ... 326 The Threat of Sale ... 327 Gender Roles
among Slaves ... 327 Slave Religion ... 328 The Desire for Liberty ... 329
RESISTANCE TO SLA V ERY . . . 330
Forms of Resistance ... 330
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long
(1840), and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) ... 332
The Amistad ... 334 Slave Revolts ... 335 Nat Turner’s Rebellion ... 336
REVIEW ... 338
12. AN AGE OF REFORM, 1820–1840 ... 339
THE REFORM IMPU LS E . . . 340
Utopian Communities ... 341 The Shakers ... 343 Oneida ... 343
Worldly Communities ... 344 Religion and Reform ... 345 Critics of
Reform ... 346 Reformers and Freedom ... 346 The Invention of the
Asylum ... 347 The Common School ... 347
THE CRUSADE AGAI N S T S LA V ERY . . . 348
Colonization ... 348 Militant Abolitionism ... 349 Spreading the
Abolitionist Message ... 350 Slavery and Moral Suasion ... 351 A
New Vision of America ... 352
BLACK AND WHITE A B O LI T I O N I S M . . . 353
Black Abolitionists ... 353 Gentlemen of Property and Standing ... 354
THE ORIGINS OF FEM I N I S M . . . 356
The Rise of the Public Woman ... 356 Women and Free Speech ... 356
Women’s Rights ... 357 Feminism and Freedom ... 358 Women and
Work ... 358 The Slavery of Sex ... 359
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The Liberator
(August 2, 1837), and From Frederick Douglass, Speech on July 5,
1852, Rochester, New York ... 360
“Social Freedom” ... 362 The Abolitionist Schism ... 363
REVIEW ... 365
13. A HOUSE DIVIDED, 1840–1861 ... 366
FRUITS OF MANIFE S T D E S T I N Y . . . 368
Continental Expansion ... 368 The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and
California ... 368 The Texas Revolt ... 370 The Election of 1844 ... 370
The Road to War ... 372 The War and Its Critics ... 372 Combat
x iv
Cont e nt s
in Mexico ... 373 Race and Manifest Destiny ... 374 Gold-Rush
California ... 376 Opening Japan ... 377
A DOSE OF ARS EN I C . . . 378
The Wilmot Proviso ... 378 The Free Soil Appeal ... 379 Crisis and
Compromise ... 380 The Great Debate ... 380 The Fugitive Slave
Issue ... 381 Douglas and Popular Sovereignty ... 382 The KansasNebraska Act ... 382
THE RISE OF THE REPU B L I C A N P A RTY . . . 383
The Northern Economy ... 383 The Rise and Fall of the KnowNothings ... 385 The Free Labor Ideology ... 386 “Bleeding Kansas”
and the Election of 1856 ... 387
THE EMERGENC E O F LI N C O LN . . . 388
The Dred Scott Decision ... 389 Lincoln and Slavery ... 390 The
Lincoln-Douglas Campaign ... 390 John Brown at Harpers Ferry ... 391
Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) ... 392
The Rise of Southern Nationalism ... 394 The Election of 1860 ... 395
THE IMPENDING C RI S I S . . . 397
The Secession Movement ... 397 The Secession Crisis ... 398 And
the War Came ... 399
REVIEW ... 401
14. A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM: THE CIVIL WAR,
1861–1865 ... 402
THE FIRST MOD ERN W A R . . . 403
The Two Combatants ... 404 The Technology of War ... 405 The
Public and the War ... 406 Mobilizing Resources ... 407 Military
Strategies ... 407 The War Begins ... 408 The War in the East,
1862 ... 409 The War in the West ... 410
THE COMING OF EM A N C I PA T I O N . . . 410
Slavery and the War ... 410 Steps toward Emancipation ... 413
Lincoln’s Decision ... 413 The Emancipation Proclamation ... 414
Enlisting Black Troops ... 416 The Black Soldier ... 416
THE SECOND AM E R I C A N R E V O L U TI O N . . . 417
Liberty, Union, and Nation ... 418 The War and American Religion ... 419
Voices of Freedom: From Letter of Thomas F. Drayton (April 17,
1861), and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair,
Baltimore (April 18, 1864) ... 420
Liberty in Wartime ... 422 The North’s Transformation ... 422
Government and the Economy ... 423 The War and Native
Americans ... 423 A New Financial System ... 425 Women and
the War ... 425 The Divided North ... 426
Contents
xv
THE CONFEDERATE N A TI O N . . . 428
Leadership and Government ... 428 The Inner Civil War ... 428
Economic Problems ... 429 Women and the Confederacy ... 430
Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 431
TURNING POINTS ... 431
Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 431 1864 ... 433
REHEARSALS FOR R EC O N S T R U C T I O N A N D T H E EN D
OF THE WAR ... 434
The Sea Islands Experiment ... 434 Wartime Reconstruction in the West
... 435 The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction ... 435 Victory at Last ...
436 The War and the World ... 438 The War in American History ... 438
REVIEW ... 440
15. “WHAT IS FREEDOM?”: RECONSTRUCTION,
1865–1877 ... 441
THE MEANING OF F REED O M . . . 443
Families in Freedom ... 443 Church and School ... 444 Political
Freedom ... 444 Land, Labor, and Freedom ... 445 Masters without
Slaves ... 445 The Free Labor Vision ... 447 The Freedmen’s Bureau
... 447 The Failure of Land Reform ... 448 The White Farmer ... 449
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the
Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping
Contract (1866) ... 450
Aftermath of Slavery ... 453
THE MAKING OF RA D I C A L REC O N S T R U C T I O N . . . 454
Andrew Johnson ... 454 The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ...
454 The Black Codes ... 455 The Radical Republicans ... 456 The
Origins of Civil Rights ... 456 The Fourteenth Amendment ... 457
The Reconstruction Act ... 458 Impeachment and the Election
of Grant ... 458 The Fifteenth Amendment ... 460 The “Great
Constitutional Revolution” ... 461 The Rights of Women ... 461
RADICAL RECONST RU C TI O N I N T H E S O U TH . . . 462
“The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 462 The Black Officeholder ... 464
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 464 Southern Republicans in
Power ... 465 The Quest for Prosperity ... 465
THE OVERTHROW O F R E C O N S TRU C TI O N . . . 466
Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 466 “A Reign of Terror” ... 467
The Liberal Republicans ... 469 The North’s Retreat ... 470 The
Triumph of the Redeemers ... 471 The Disputed Election and Bargain
of 1877 ... 472 The End of Reconstruction ... 473
REVIEW ... 474
x vi
Cont e nt s
APPENDIX
DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776) ... A-2
The Constitution of The United States (1787) ... A-5
From George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) ... A-17
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments And Resolutions (1848) ... A-22
From Frederick Douglass’s “What, To the Slave, Is The Fourth Of July?”
Speech (1852) ... A-25
The Gettysburg Address (1863) ... A-29
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865) ... A-30
The Populist Platform of 1892 ... A-31
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) ... A-34
From The Program For The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom
(1963) ... A-37
Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) ... A-38
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) ... A-42
TABLES AND FI G U R E S
Presidential Elections ... A-46
Admission of States ... A-54
Population of the United States ... A-55
Historical Statistics of The United States:
Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed As A Percentage
of The Labor Force, 1800–2010 ... A-56
Immigration, By Origin ... A-56
Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013 ... A-57
Union Membership As A Percentage Of Nonagricultural Employment,
1880–2012 ... A-57
Voter Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012 ... A-57
Birthrate, 1820–2011 ... A-57
S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G S ... A - 5 9
G L O S S A R Y ... A - 6 7
C R E D I T S ... A - 9 5
I N D E X ... A - 9 9
Contents
xvi i
MAPS
CHAPTER 7
Western Lands, 1782–1802 ... 197
C H A PTER 1
The First Americans ... 4
Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500 ... 8
The Old World on the Eve of American
Colonization, ca. 1500 ... 15
Western Ordinances, 1785–1787 ... 199
Ratification of the Constitution ... 213
CHAPTER 8
The Presidential Election of 1800 ... 234
Voyages of Discovery ... 18
The Louisiana Purchase ... 239
Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the
The War of 1812 ... 245
New World ... 26
The New World—New France and New
Netherland, ca. 1650 ... 31
CHAPTER 9
The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals,
1840 ... 253
C H A PTER 2
English Settlement in the Chesapeake,
ca. 1650 ... 48
English Settlement in New England,
ca. 1640 ... 59
C H A PTER 3
Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and
Early Eighteenth Centuries ... 76
European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the
Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760 ... 94
C H A PTER 4
Atlantic Trading Routes ... 107
Travel Times from New York City in 1800
and 1830 ... 256
The Market Revolution: The Spread of
Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840 ... 258
Cotton Mills, 1820s ... 263
CHAPTER 10
The Missouri Compromise, 1820 ... 289
The Presidential Election of 1824 ... 291
The Presidential Election of 1828 ... 296
Indian Removals, 1830–1840 ... 302
The Presidential Election of 1840 ... 308
CHAPTER 11
The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World,
1460–1770 ... 108
European Empires in North America,
ca. 1750 ... 128
Eastern North America after the Peace of
Paris, 1763 ... 133
Slave Population, 1860 ... 315
Size of Slaveholdings, 1860 ... 319
Major Crops of the South, 1860 ... 325
Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century
Atlantic World ... 331
C H A PTER 5
CHAPTER 12
The Revolutionary War in the North,
Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth
1775–1781 ... 160
Century ... 342
The Revolutionary War in the South,
1775–1781 ... 163
North America, 1783 ... 164
CHAPTER 13
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s ... 369
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 ... 374
C H A PTER 6
Continental Expansion through 1853 ... 375
Loyalism in the American Revolution ... 180
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 ... 383
x viii
Li st of Ma ps, Tabl es , and Fi gur es
The Railroad Network, 1850s ... 384
The Presidential Election of 1856 ... 389
The Presidential Election of 1860 ... 396
C HAPTER 14
The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861 ...
404
The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862 ... 409
The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862 ... 411
The Emancipation Proclamation ... 414
The Civil War, 1863 ... 432
The Civil War, Late 1864–1865 ... 437
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants
to British North American Colonies,
1700–1775 ... 91
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of
Total Population of Original Thirteen
Colonies, 1770 ... 112
CHAPTER 7
Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population
C HAPTER 15
The Barrow Plantation ... 446
of the United States, 1790 ... 217
CHAPTER 9
Sharecropping in the South,
1880 ... 452
The Presidential Election of 1868 ... 460
Reconstruction in the South,
1867–1877 ... 471
The Presidential Election of 1876 ... 472
Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western
States, 1800–1850 (Excluding Indians)... 257
Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by
Five-Year Period ... 264
Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850 ... 265
CHAPTER 11
TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population ... 314
Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850 (in Round
C HAPTER 1
Numbers) ... 318
Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500 ... 24
Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations:
The World, ca. 1500 ... 25
CHAPTER 14
Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus
Confederacy ... 407
L i s t s o f Ma p s , Ta b l e s , a n d F i g u re s
xi x
P R E FA C E
ince it originally appeared late in 2004, Give Me Liberty! An American
History has gone through three editions and been adopted for use in
survey courses at close to one thousand two- and four-year colleges
in the United States, as well as a good number overseas. Of course, I am
extremely gratified by this response. The book offers students a clear narrative of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and
conquest of the New World to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its
central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
The comments I have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in the classroom. These
comments have also included many valuable suggestions, ranging from
corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects
that need more extensive treatment. In preparing new editions of the book
I have tried to take these suggestions into account, as well as incorporating
the insights of recent historical scholarship.
Since the original edition was written, I have frequently been asked to
produce a more succinct version of the textbook, which now runs to some
1,200 pages. This Brief Edition is a response to these requests. The text of the
current volume is about one-third shorter than the full version. The result, I
believe, is a book more suited to use in one-semester survey courses, classes
S
xx
Pr efa ce
where the instructor wishes to supplement the text with additional readings, and in other situations where a briefer volume is desirable.
Since some publishers have been known to assign the task of reduction
in cases like this to editors rather than the actual author, I wish to emphasize that I did all the cutting and necessary rewriting for this Brief Edition
myself. My guiding principle was to preserve the coverage, structure, and
emphases of the regular edition and to compress the book by eliminating
details of secondary importance, streamlining the narrative of events, and
avoiding unnecessary repetition. While the book is significantly shorter,
no subject treated in the full edition has been eliminated entirely and nothing essential, I believe, has been sacrificed. The sequence of chapters and
subjects remains the same, and the freedom theme is present and operative
throughout.
In abridging the textbook I have retained the original interpretive
framework as well as the new emphases added when the second and third
editions of the book were published. The second edition incorporated new
material about the history of Native Americans, an area of American history that has been the subject of significant new scholarship in the past
few years. It also devoted greater attention to the history of immigration and
the controversies surrounding it—issues of considerable relevance to American social and political life today.
The most significant change in the third edition reflected my desire to
place American history more fully in a global context. In the past few years,
scholars writing about the American past have sought to delineate the influences of the United States on the rest of the world as well as the global developments that have helped to shape the course of events here at home. They
have also devoted greater attention to transnational processes—the expansion of empires, international labor migrations, the rise and fall of slavery,
the globalization of economic enterprise—that cannot be understood solely
within the confines of one country’s national boundaries. Without seeking in any way to homogenize the history of individual nations or neglect
the domestic forces that have shaped American development, this edition
retains this emphasis.
The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my desire
to integrate more fully into the narrative the history of American religion.
Today, this is a thriving subfield of American historical writing, partly
because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates over the
relations between government and religion and over the definition of religious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American experience.
The Brief Edition also employs a bright new design for the text and its various elements. The popular Voices of Freedom feature—a pair of excerpts
from primary source documents in each chapter that illuminate divergent
interpretations of freedom—is present here. So too are the useful chapter
P re f a c e
xxi
opening focus questions, which appear in the running heads of the relevant
text pages as well. There are chapter opening chronologies and end-ofchapter review pages with questions and key terms. As a new feature in the
Brief Edition there are marginal glosses in the text pages that are meant to
highlight key points and indicate the chapter structure for students. They
are also useful means for review. The Brief Edition features more than
400 illustrations and over 100 captioned maps in easy to read four-color
renditions. The Further Readings sections appear in the Appendix along
with the Glossary and the collection of key documents. The Brief Edition
is fully supported by the same array of print and electronic supplements
that support the other editions of Give Me Liberty! These materials have been
revised to match the content of the Brief Edition.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one
hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even
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 help to 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 power 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
x xii
Pr e face
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, 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.
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 battles to define its meaning, has long been central to
my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the
nineteenth century and especially the era of 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
P re f a c e
xxi i i
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. 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—including 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
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
x xiv
Pr efa ce
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 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,
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 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 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 birth control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped
to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans.
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
P re f a c e
xxv
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.” While 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 our 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 export American freedom overseas. As with the longer version of
the book, I hope that this Brief Edition of 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.
x xvi
Pr efa ce
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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 in the Appendix 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:
Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University
Mary E. Adams, City College of San Francisco
Jeff Adler, University of Florida
David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University
John Barr, Lone Star College, Kingwood
Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College
James Broussard, Lebanon Valley College
Michael Bryan, Greenville Technical College
Stephanie Cole, The University of Texas at Arlington
Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College
Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College
Beverly Gage, Yale University
Monica Gisolfi, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Adam Goudsouzian, University of Memphis
Mike Green, Community College of Southern Nevada
Vanessa Gunther, California State University, Fullerton
David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky
Brian Harding, Mott Community College
Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
April Holm, University of Mississippi
David Hsiung, Juniata College
James Karmel, Harford Community College
Kelly Knight, Penn State University
Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College
Jeffrey K. Lucas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Tina Margolis, Westchester Community College
Kent McGaughy, HCC Northwest College
James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville
Gil Montemayor, McLennan Community College
Jonathan Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College
Robert M. O’Brien, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
P re f a c e
xxvi i
Joseph Palermo, California State University, Sacramento
Ann Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara
Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University
Indianapolis
Esther Robinson, Lone Star College–Cy Fair
Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernadino
Diane Sager, Maple Woods Community College
John Shaw, Portland Community College
Mark Spencer, Brock University
David Stebenne, Ohio State University
Judith Stein, City College, City University of New York
George Stevens, Duchess Community College
Robert Tinkler, California State University, Chico
Elaine Thompson, Louisiana Tech University
David Weiman, Barnard College
William Young, Maple Woods 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. Theresa Ventura
offered invaluable assistance in gathering material for the new sections placing American history in a global context. April Holm provided similar assistance for new coverage in this edition of the history of American religion and
debates over religious freedom. James Delbourgo conducted research for
the chapters on the colonial era. Beverly Gage did the same for the twentieth century. Daniel Freund provided all-round 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.
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. Nancy Robertson at IUIPUI did a superb
job revising and enhancing the in-book pedagogy. Monica Gisolfi (University of North Carolina, Wilmington) and Robert Tinkler (California State
University, Chico) did excellent work on the Instructor’s Manual and Test
Bank. Kathleen Thomas (University of Wisconsin, Stout) helped greatly in
the revisions of the companion media packages.
x xviii
Pr e face
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 assistants, Justin Cahill and Penelope Lin, for their
indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen
Lohman and Debbie Nichols for their careful copyediting and proof reading work. Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri for their resourceful attention to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-Yee Lai for
their refinements of the book design; Mike Fodera and Debra Morton-Hoyt
for splendid work on the covers for the Fourth Edition; Kim Yi for keeping the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together;
Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production; Steve Hoge for
orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the textbook; Jessica
Brannon-Wranosky, Texas A&M University–Commerce, our digital media
author for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Volker Janssen, California State University, Fullerton, for the helpful new online reading exercises; Nicole Netherton, 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 2013
P re f a c e
xxi x
GIVE ME
LIBERTY!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Brief Fourth Edition
CHAPTER 1
A
NEW WORLD
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 subSaharan 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 the 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
France Bringing the Faith to the Indians
of New France. European nations
justified colonization with the argument
that they were bringing Christianity—
without which freedom was impossible—
to Native Americans. In this painting
from the 1670s, an Indian kneels before
a female representation of France. Both
hold a painting of the Trinity.
FOCUS
QUESTIONS
s What were the major patterns of Native American
life in North America
before Europeans arrived?
s How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
s What impelled European
explorers to look west
across the Atlantic?
s What happened when the
peoples of the Americas
came in contact with
Europeans?
s What were the chief
features of the Spanish
empire in America?
s What were the chief features of the French and
Dutch empires in North
America?
2
T
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 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.” Smith also noted, however, that
to the “natives” of the Americas 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. 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 of these dreams 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 New World also became
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
the site of many forms of unfree labor, including indentured servitude,
forced labor, and one of the most brutal and unjust systems, plantation
slavery. The conquest and settlement of the Western Hemisphere opened
new chapters in the long histories of both freedom and slavery.
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.
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 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.
Emergence of agriculture
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 the
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. 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.
Indian civilizations in North America had not developed the scale, grandeur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and Inca societies to their south.
Roads, trade networks, and
irrigation systems
THE FIRST AMERICANS
3
THE FIRST AMERICANS
Chukc hi
Peni nsula
Be
r in
gS
t ra i t
Ale
ut
ia
n
Isl
an
ds
NORTH AMERICA
MOHAWK
ONEIDA
ONONDAGA
CAYUGA
SENECA
ve
r
Pacific Ocean
i
io R
Oh
CHEROKEE
ssi
Mi ssippi R.
Cahokia
Chaco
Canyon
HOPI PUEBLO
ZUNI
CHICKASAW
Poverty Point
A t la n t ic Oc e 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 cat án
MAY Pe n in su 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.
4
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
Map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán
and the Gulf of Mexico, probably
produced by a Spanish conquistador
and published in 1524 in an edition of
the letters of Hernán Cortés. The map
shows the city’s complex system of
canals, bridges, and dams, with the
Great Temple at the center. Gardens
and a zoo are also visible.
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).
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.
Justification for conquest
Mound Build ers 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.
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 Mississippi River valley, centered on the city of Cahokia near
present-day St. Louis, a fortified community with between 10,000 and
“Mound builders”
THE FIRST AMERICANS
5
30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200. 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
Village life and trade
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
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 over 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. 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.
of religious worship.
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
6
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
confederations emerged in an effort to bring 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.
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. Indians did not think
of themselves as a single unified people, an idea invented by Europeans
and only many years later adopted by Indians 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. The sharp dichotomy between Indians and “white”
persons did not emerge until later in the colonial era.
Diversity of Native American
society
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
The Village of Secoton, by John
White, an English artist who spent
a year on the Outer Banks of North
Carolina in 1585–1586 as part of an
expedition sponsored by Sir Walter
Raleigh. A central street links houses
surrounded by fields of corn. In the
lower part, dancing Indians take part
in a religious ceremony.
THE FIRST AMERICANS
7
NATIVE WAYS OF LIFE, ca. 1500
TLINGIT
INUIT
Hudson
Bay
INUIT
TSHIMSHIAN
ro n
thin
L. Michig
Hu
an
thinly
KWAKIUTLS
MICMAC
populated
SHUSWAP
CREE
PENOBSCOT
NOOTKIN
ABENAKI
KOOTENAY
CHIPPEWA
BLACKFEET
ASSINIBOINE
ALGONQUIAN
perior
SKAGIT
L. Su
CHEYENNE SIOUX
WALLA
WALLA
L.
CHINOOK
FLATHEAD
CHIPPEWA
NEZ
WAMPANOAG
HIDATSA
HURON Ontario MOHEGAN
PERCE
CAYUSE
OTTOWA
L.
SIOUX
PEQUOT
MENOMINEE
TILLAMOOK
MANDAN
NEUTRAL IROQUOIS
ARAPAHO
NARRAGANSETT
KLAMATH
rie
KIOWA
WINNEBAGO
L. E
POMO MODOC
IOWA
SUSQUEHANNOCK
PAWNEE
ERIE
SHOSHONE
POTAWATOMI
MOSOPELEA
MAIDU
SAUK
SHAWNEE
COSTANO
KICKAPOO
te
d
ILLINOIS
PAMLICO
UTE
KASKASKIA
WICHITA
CHEROKEE
TUSCARORA
SOUTHERN
CHEMEHUEVI PAIUTE
CHUMASH
CHICKASAW
SERRANO
COMANCHE
LUISENO
HOPI ZUNI TEWA
CREEK
CAHUILLA
CADDO
YAMASEE
DIEGUENO
MESCALERO
TIMUCUA
CHOCTAW
APALACHEE
NATCHEZ
JUMANO
ly
po
pu
la
CONCHO
YACHI
Pa c i f i c
O c ean
KABANKAWA
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
CALUSA
LAGUERNO
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.
8
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
believed, suffused the world, and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds
of living and inanimate things—animals, plants, trees, water, and wind.
Through religious ceremonies, they aimed to harness the aid of powerful
supernatural forces to serve human interests. 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.
In some respects, 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.
Indian religious rituals
Land and Property
Equally alien in European eyes were Indian attitudes toward property.
Generally, 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 as
a common resource, not an economic commodity. There was no market in
real estate before the coming of Europeans.
Land as a common resource
A Catawba map illustrates the
differences between Indian and
European conceptions of landed
property. The map depicts not
possession of a specific territory, but
trade and diplomatic connections
between various native groups
and with the colony of Virginia,
represented by the rectangle on the
lower right. The map, inscribed on
deerskin, was originally presented
by Indian chiefs to Governor Francis
Nicholson of South Carolina in 1721.
This copy, the only version that
survives, was made by the governor
for the authorities in London. It added
English labels that conveyed what the
Indians had related orally with the gift.
THE FIRST AMERICANS
9
Gift giving
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.
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 that bound different groups in webs of mutual obligation.
“There are no beggars among them,” reported the English colonial leader
Roger Williams of New England’s Indians.
Gender Relations
Matrilineal societies
Indian women planting crops while
men break the sod. An engraving by
Theodor de Bry, based on a painting
by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues.
Morgues was part of an expedition
of French Huguenots to Florida in
1564; he escaped when the Spanish
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. 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.
Because men were frequently away on the hunt, women took responsibility
not only for household duties but for most agricultural work as well.
destroyed the outpost in the following
year.
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 and brutal savages. 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
10
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
lacked genuine religion, or in fact worshiped the devil. 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.
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. 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.
A seventeenth-century engraving by
a French Jesuit priest illustrates many
Europeans’ view of Indian religion.
A demon hovers over an Iroquois
longhouse, suggesting that Indians
worship the devil.
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM
Indian Freed om
Although many Europeans initially saw Indians as embodying freedom,
most colonizers quickly concluded that the notion of “freedom” was alien
to Indian societies. European settlers reached this conclusion in part
because Indians did not appear to live under established governments or
fixed laws, followed their own—not European—definitions of authority,
and lacked the kind of order and discipline common in European society.
Indians also did not define freedom as individual autonomy or tie it to the
ownership of property—two attributes important to Europeans.
What were the Indians’ ideas of freedom? The modern notion of freedom as personal independence had little meaning in most Indian societies,
but individuals were expected to think for themselves and did not always
have to go along with collective decision making. Far more important
Freedom in the group
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM
11
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 Liber ty
Freedom as a spiritual
condition
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 understood freedom
less as a political or social status than as a moral or spiritual condition.
Freedom meant abandoning the life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ.
“Christian Liberty,” however, 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.
Freedom and Authority
Hierarchy in the family
12
In its secular form, the equating of liberty with obedience to a higher
authority suggested that freedom meant not anarchy but obedience to law.
The identification of freedom with the rule of law did not, though, 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.
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
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
“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 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.
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. 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. Nonetheless, every European country that
colonized the New World claimed to be spreading freedom—for its own
population and for Native Americans.
Hierarchy in society
THE EXPANSION 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
Sea route to the East
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE
13
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
Zheng He’s voyages
New techniques of sailing and
navigation
Portuguese explorations
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. 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 longdistance maritime expeditions.
It fell to Portugal, far removed from the overland route to Asia, to begin
exploring the Atlantic. Taking advantage of new long-distance ships known
as caravels and new navigational devices such as the compass and quadrant,
the Portuguese showed that it was possible to sail down the coast of Africa
and return to Portugal. No European sailor had seen the coast of Africa below
the Sahara. But in that year, a Portuguese ship brought a sprig of rosemary
from West Africa, proof that one could sail beyond the desert and return.
Little by little, Portuguese ships moved farther down the coast. In
1485, they reached Benin, an imposing city whose craftsmen produced
bronze sculptures that still inspire admiration for their artistic beauty and
superb casting techniques. The Portuguese established fortified trading
posts on the western coast of Africa. The profits reaped by these Portuguese
“factories”—so named because merchants were known as “factors”—
inspired other European powers to follow in their footsteps.
Portugal also began to colonize Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary
and Cape Verde Islands, which lie in the Atlantic off the African coast. The
Portuguese established plantations on the Atlantic islands, eventually
replacing the native populations with thousands of slaves shipped from
Africa—an ominous precedent for the New World.
Freedom and Slavery in Africa
Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans. Traditionally,
African slaves tended to be criminals, debtors, and captives in war. They
worked within the households of their owners and had well-defined rights,
such as possessing property and marrying free persons. It was not uncom14
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
THE OLD WORLD ON THE EVE OF AMERICAN
COLONIZATION, ca. 1500
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
ENGLAND
HOLY ROMAN
EMPIRE
FRANCE
Genoa
PORTUGAL SPAIN
Azor e s Lisbon
Me d
Venice
iter
OT
TOM
A
Ma de i ra I s.
Can ar y I s.
rane
Crete
an Sea Cyp ru s
N EMPIRE
S AH AR A D E S E RT
Cap e
Ve rd e
I s.
PERSIA
CHINA
Horm uz
He
INDIA
ng
Zhe
MALI
d
aG
am
a
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
Z he n
gH
e
NETHERLANDS
BENIN
da G
CHAMPA
ama
Ce y l on
MALACCA
Dias
Pa c i f i c
Ocean
EAST INDIES
S um a t ra
Ja va
Indian
Ocean
Atlantic
Ocean
Cap e o f
Go o d Ho p e
0
0
1,000
1,000
mon for African slaves to acquire their freedom. Slavery was one of several
forms of labor, not the basis of the economy as it would become in large
parts of the New World. The coming of the Portuguese, soon followed by
traders from other European nations, accelerated the buying and selling of
slaves within Africa. At least 100,000 African slaves were transported to
Spain and Portugal between 1450 and 1500.
Having reached West Africa, Portuguese mariners pushed their explorations ever southward along the coast. Bartholomeu Dias reached the Cape
of Good Hope at the continent’s southern tip in 1487. In 1498, Vasco da
Gama sailed around it to India, demonstrating the feasibility of a sea route
to the East. With a population of under 1 million, Portugal established a
vast trading empire, with bases in India, southern China, and Indonesia.
But six years before da Gama’s voyage, Christopher Columbus had, he
believed, discovered a new route to China and India by sailing west.
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.
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE
15
The Voyages of Columbus
Norse settlement
Columbus’s Landfall, an engraving
from La lettera dell’isole (Letter from
the Islands). This 1493 pamphlet
reproduced, in the form of a poem,
Columbus’s first letter describing his
voyage of the previous year. Under
the watchful eye of King Ferdinand
of Spain, Columbus and his men land
on a Caribbean island, while local
Indians flee.
A seasoned mariner and fearless explorer from Genoa, a major port in
northern Italy, Columbus had for years sailed the Mediterranean and
North Atlantic, studying ocean currents and wind patterns. Like nearly all
navigators of the time, Columbus knew the earth was round. But he drastically underestimated its size. He believed that by sailing westward he could
relatively quickly cross the Atlantic and reach Asia. No one in Europe knew
that two giant continents lay 3,000 miles to the west. The Vikings, to be
sure, had sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland around the year 1000
and established a settlement, Vinland. But this outpost was abandoned
after a few years and had been forgotten, except in Norse legends.
For Columbus, as for other figures of the time, religious and commercial motives reinforced one another. A devout Catholic, he drew on the
Bible for his estimate of the size of the globe. Along with developing trade
with the East, he hoped to convert Asians to Christianity and enlist them
in a crusade to redeem Jerusalem from Muslim control.
Columbus sought financial support throughout Europe for the planned
voyage. Eventually, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed
to become sponsors. Their marriage in 1469 had united the warring kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the reconquista—the
“reconquest” of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who had occupied
part of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. With Spain’s territory united,
Ferdinand and Isabella—like the rulers of the Italian city-states—were anxious to circumvent the Muslim stranglehold on eastern
trade. It is not surprising, then, that Columbus set sail
with royal letters of introduction to Asian rulers, authorizing him to negotiate trade agreements.
CONTACT
Columbus in the New World
On October 12, 1492, after only thirty-three days of sailing from the Canary Islands, where he had stopped to
resupply his three ships, Columbus and his expedition
arrived at the Bahamas. Soon afterward, he encountered
the far larger islands of Hispaniola (today the site of Haiti
and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. When one of his
ships ran aground, he abandoned it and left thirty-eight
16
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
men behind on Hispaniola. But he found room to bring ten inhabitants of
the island back to Spain for conversion to Christianity.
In the following year, 1493, Columbus returned with seventeen ships
and more than 1,000 men to explore the area and establish a Spanish
outpost. Columbus’s settlement on the island of Hispaniola, which he
named La Isabella, failed, but in 1502 another Spanish explorer, Nicolás
de Ovando, arrived with 2,500 men and established a permanent base,
the first center of the Spanish empire in America. Columbus went to his
grave believing that he had discovered a westward route to Asia. The
explorations of another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, along the coast of South
America between 1499 and 1502 made plain that a continent entirely
unknown to Europeans had been encountered. The New World would
come to bear not Columbus’s name but one based on Vespucci’s—America.
Vespucci also realized that the native inhabitants were distinct peoples,
not residents of the East Indies as Columbus had believed, although the
name “Indians,” applied to them by Columbus, has endured to this day.
Hispaniola settlement
Vespucci
Exploration and Conquest
Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the
1430s, news of Columbus’s achievement traveled quickly, at least among
the educated minority in Europe. Other explorers were inspired to follow
in his wake. John Cabot, a Genoese merchant who had settled in England,
reached Newfoundland in 1497. Soon, scores of fishing boats from France,
Spain, and England were active in the region. Pedro Cabral claimed Brazil
for Portugal in 1500.
But the Spanish took the lead in exploration and conquest. Inspired by
a search for wealth, national glory, and the desire to spread Catholicism,
Spanish conquistadores, often accompanied by religious missionaries and
carrying flags emblazoned with the sign of the cross, radiated outward
from Hispaniola. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked across the isthmus of Panama and became the first European to gaze upon the Pacific
Ocean. Between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition
to sail around the world, encountering Pacific islands and peoples previously unknown to Europe.
The first explorer to encounter a major American civilization was
Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 arrived at Tenochtitlán, the nerve center of
the Aztec empire, whose wealth and power rested on domination of
numerous subordinate peoples nearby. The Aztecs were violent warriors
who engaged in the ritual sacrifice of captives and others, sometimes thousands at a time. This practice thoroughly alienated their neighbors.
Spain takes the lead
Cortés
CONTACT
17
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Vinland
EUROPE
Cabot (1497)
NEWFOUNDLAND
NORTH
AMERICA
)
Columbus (1492
(
rtés 151
Co
)
13
Pa c i f i c
Ocean
)
1493
AFRICA
Atlantic
Ocean
Columbus
(14
98)
Magell
an (
151
Ves
9-1
puc
522
c
i
)
(150
Ca
1-15
bra
02)
l (15
00)
(15
B al
bo
a
9)
b us (
Colum
)
2
0
5
(1
bus
lum
Co
SOUTH
AMERICA
Ma
ge
lla
n(
15
19
-15
22
)
0
0
1,000
1,000
2,000 miles
2,000 kilometers
Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic crossing, in 1492, was soon followed by voyages of discovery by English, Portuguese, Spanish,
and Italian explorers.
18
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
With only a few hundred European men, Cortés
conquered the Aztec city, relying on superior military
technology such as iron weapons and gunpowder, as
well as shrewdness in enlisting the aid of some of the
Aztecs’ subject peoples, who supplied him with thousands of warriors. His most powerful ally, however,
was disease—a smallpox epidemic that devastated Aztec
society. A few years later, Francisco Pizarro conquered
the great Inca kingdom centered in modern-day Peru.
Pizarro’s tactics were typical of the conquistadores. He
captured the Incan king, demanded and received a ransom, and then killed the king anyway. Soon, treasure
fleets carrying cargoes of gold and silver from the mines
of Mexico and Peru were traversing the Atlantic to
enrich the Spanish crown.
The Demographic Disaster
Engravings, from the Florentine
Codex, of the forces of Cortés
The transatlantic flow of goods and people is sometimes called the
Columbian Exchange. Plants, animals, and cultures that had evolved independently on separate continents were now thrown together. Products
introduced to Europe from the Americas included corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco, while people from the Old World brought
wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep to the New. But
Europeans also carried germs previously unknown in the Americas.
No one knows exactly how many people lived in the Americas at the
time of Columbus’s voyages—current estimates range between 50 and
90 million, most of whom lived in Central and South America. In 1492, the
Indian population within what are now the borders of the United States
was between 2 and 5 million. The Indian populations of the Americas suffered a catastrophic decline because of contact with Europeans and their
wars, enslavement, and especially diseases like smallpox, influenza, and
measles. Never having encountered these diseases, Indians had not developed antibodies to fight them. The result was devastating. The population
of Mexico would fall by more than 90 percent in the sixteenth century,
from perhaps 20 million to under 2 million. As for the area that now forms
the United States, its Native American population fell continuously. It
reached its lowest point around 1900, at only 250,000.
Overall, the death of perhaps 80 million people—close to one-fifth of
humankind—in the first century and a half after contact with Europeans
marching on Tenochtitlán and
assaulting the city with cannon fire.
The difference in military technology
between the Spanish and Aztecs
is evident. Indians who allied with
Cortés had helped him build vessels
and carry them in pieces over
mountains to the city. The codex
(a volume formed by stitching
together manuscript pages) was
prepared under the supervision of
a Spanish missionary in sixteenthcentury Mexico.
Decline of Indian populations
CONTACT
19
represents the greatest loss of life in human history. It was disease as
much as military prowess and more advanced technology that enabled
Europeans to conquer the Americas.
THE SPANISH EMPIRE
Extent of the empire
By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain had established an immense
empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia. The Atlantic
and Pacific oceans, once barriers separating different parts of the world,
now became highways for the exchange of goods and the movement of
people. Spanish galleons carried gold and silver from Mexico and Peru eastward to Spain and westward to Manila in the Philippines and on to China.
Stretching from the Andes Mountains of South America through
present-day Mexico and the Caribbean and eventually into Florida and the
southwestern United States, Spain’s empire exceeded in size the Roman
empire of the ancient world. Its center was Mexico City, a magnificent capital built on the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán that boasted churches,
hospitals, monasteries, government buildings, and the New World’s first
university. Unlike the English and French New World empires, Spanish
A late-seventeenth-century painting
of the Plaza Mayor (main square)
of Mexico City. The image includes
a parade of over 1,000 persons, of
different ethnic groups and
occupations, dressed in their
characteristic attire.
20
Cha pt er 1 A N ew W or l d
What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?
America was essentially an urban civilization. For centuries, its great cities, notably Mexico City, Quito, and Lima, far outshone any urban centers
in North America and most of those in Europe.
Governing Spanish America
At least in theory, the government of Spanish America reflected the absolutism of the newly unified nation at home. Authority originated with the king
and flowed d...
Purchase answer to see full
attachment