A HISTORY OF THE USA
by Mike Donovan
“Gets your facts first.
Then distort them as you wish.”
Mark Twain
“Many intelligent people who wish to
know something of their country are
not fond of reading history. I have
given careful attention to style, in the
hope that the book might be easy and
pleasurable to read, as well as
instructive.”
Historian Henry William Elson
“There is no need for personal interjection.”
Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr.
“History is fables agreed upon.”
Voltaire
“Books! What the hell did
anyone ever learn from a book?
Drunk to me on on a bus, 1979
NOTE
I have seen the Voltaire quote attribute to others, and in other sightly re-worded forms. But, no matter who said it first, that says it all for me.
Almost all historical facts are not. They evolve into facts over time. Myths and errors of history then become more cemented with the repetitions of historians.
History is an inexact science. Except for obvious facts, like the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941, the whole thing is fantastically flexible and open to anyone for examination and occasional challenge. With the internet, and the amount of great books easily accessible, the line between professional and amateur historian has blurred a little. Besides, they give Pulitzers for “Amateur Historian,” so the history field is wide open in any case. An historian is “one who studies and writes history.” It doesn’t say anything in the dictionary about sheepskins or writing it flawlessly.
PREFACE
This history book tries to omit all the things that make history books slow and boring. And a needlessly long preface, introduction, acknowledgements, and special introduction for the revised edition is a good example. You're 48 pages in and the stupid book hasn't started yet. Don't waste my time. Get to the story, please.
One more note; a “personal interjection” There was a time when this writer feared that some editor will come along, rewrite a lot of the work, change some of the essence of my nature in the process, and end up creating a work that is officially the work of one personality but is that of a blended two. Today this writer fears that some editor like this will not come along.
End of preface.
THE PRE-GAME SHOW – AMERICAN HISTORY 1492 TO 1765
INDIANS
When Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492 there were already more than a million people living in the two continents later called America. Someone told me recently that it's now OK again to refer to them as “Indians.” The PCP (Politically Correct Police) for the last 30 years or so were writing up a ticket for anyone who dared to still call them Indians instead of the new and more sensitive “Native Americans.”
It's hard to write history when you can't use the terms that were in all the history books for the past 200 years because the PCP passed a new edict. It's like in WWII when even President Roosevelt routinely referred to the Japanese as “Japs” in his public statements, and every last person in America called then Japs. Then 40 years later you're supposed to write a history of the Pacific war and dare never use the term “Japs.” Some historians try to write about the Civil War era and studiously avoid using the term “negro.” It reaches the point of absurdity.
I will use the “old school” terms sometimes, and the PC terms other times
The new textbooks start out with 87 pages on the pre-Columbian era and the superior culture of the Native Americans who inhabited the Americas before the Euros arrived to ruin everything. There is never a single word of criticism for the Indians. The incest, the human sacrifice, the sadistic rituals of slaughter, the backwards scientific development, the fact that the Romans drove chariots in 200 B.C. but there wasn't a wheel in North America in 1491, all this is overlooked for a PC version of the Native Americans that basically just kisses up to them as admirable in every way. The Europeans get no such treatment. They get the reverse. The positive qualities of European culture are downplayed or omitted, while the crimes against other cultures and the bad things about Euro-culture are maximin emphasized or even exaggerated.
So it's really breaking the new rule book to start a history book in the old school way, that is, with the discovery of America in 1492.
EUROPE
The tiniest continent tried to conquer the world and between 1500 and 1900 almost pulled it off.
The concept of loyalty to country is now a given, whether a big or a small country. But in the 1400's the very concept of country was new and daring. Love of country was a novelty. Up until 1400 it was love of religion, and the religious empire that ruled the political hearts of the people. Religion was not only inseparable from politics, religion was politics. The new idea of nationalism the anti-dote to religious empire and feudalism. This related to the voyage of Columbus as it could not have happened without the new political force of nationalism.
The Catholic Church is based on the small c 'catholic' meaning of the word. Catholic means universal. The Catholic Church was supposed to be an empire that superseded any concept of mere country.
So when strong nations began to form in Western Europe it was a repudiation of small c catholicism of any religion. In the new way of thinking, people were a member of their country first and their religion second. It had been the other way around for a long time.
The Moslem faith was a form of catholicism too. So was Confucianism in the east. All religious empires are catholic. Only one religion decided to usurp the prestige that goes with the capital c. The Catholic Church is in reality as un-catholic as anything can be. It is intolerant, and not universally accepted.
Even though many of the first settlers of America were religious zealots, in a way the very act of creating new empires overseas was anti-religious! The very idea of strong nations developing overseas trade routes and colonies was an act of rebellion against church monopoly over mind and body. Nationalism emerged to give geographical, ethnic, and even (ironically) religious groups a chance to strike out on their own with new power not beholden to any “catholic” church. Nationalism, combined with the optimism of Renaissance-think, provided the motivation for economic advancement at all levels. A “New England” might be very religious, but the very concept was of a New England, not a new Anglican Church Empire branch outlet. While embracing religion at all smaller levels, the new American colonies were at the same time rejecting the absolute religious political definition of the entity itself. These were french colonies, not Catholic, English, not Anglican, and Spanish, not Catholic. Indeed, if religion was the reason for being, the French and Spanish would have united their colonies into one new world Catholic Empire. The French part came first, no matter what they all said in the Sunday service. The new world was new testament; nationalist nations and colonies would render to Caesar what was Caesars, and Caesar's share was the meat and potatoes, while religion was only Caesar's salad dressing.
We read often about people going to America to find religious freedom of religion, but they really went there to find freedom from religion, or at least from religious political dominance.
Feudalism was the other big ball and chain on progress in Europe. People were slaves to the land and to their master. When free enterprise began to develop and break down the feudal system, the poor emerged just as poor as before, but now they were at least free to tell the Lord of the Manor what they really thought of him, pack their things into a thimble, and leave for another shot at life somewhere else.
Without the new idea of nationalism, governments could never have bankrolled the explorers. Without the demise of feudalism, there never would have been enough intrepid emigrant bodies to populate the New World.
COLUMBUS
Chris Columbus discovered America in 1492. He was the first European-American.
To the leftorians, the main issue about Columbus is not his discovery of America, the issue is, did Chris commit genocide against the Indians of the Caribbean?
Supposedly the entire world thought the world was flat in the time of Columbus. CC then boldly dared to suggest that it was round and he would prove it by circling it in a ship.
“Don't do it Chris,” his friends pleaded. “You will fall off the end of the earth and die in outer space!”
“No, you fools!” he responded, “The world is as round as a grapefruit. I will prove you all wrong and advance the cause of science and knowledge, making myself a famous hero, too.”
That myth has been debunked 1,492 times. Almost everyone knew by 1492 the whole world was round.
What is true is that no European had ventured far out west into the ocean,
and returned alive to tell about. The middle Atlantic was “The Forbidden Zone.” Few were brave enough to go out there to find fish, let alone find the end of the ocean. Columbus was really an intrepid character.
The best bio is by Samuel Eliot Morison but I've only just started it and may not continue. I've already read 14 of SEM's books and I don't want to move in with the guy.
Columbus was an Italian mariner from Genoa Italy who ended up in the service of Portugal by accident. Shipwrecked off the coast of Portugal, Chris got ashore and decided to stay. That's how Portugal and not France, Spain or England “discovered” America.
Columbus had a big ego. Not quite big enough to have been an actor, tennis player, or comedian, but a very big one. That ego served a fine historical purpose. Only someone with that level of confidence of arrogance could/would have taken on the task, and then persuaded the King and Queen of Portugal to finance the expedition.
Columbus discovered the New World, but that was not his intention, any more than it was to prove that the world was round. What he wanted to to do was spice things up a bit. The whole 1492 exploration was to try and find a new trade route to the spices of Asia. Religion was a part of the mix but the Euros all worshipped what was in the collection box more than the message in the sermon.
It seems a little odd today that the drive to the New World was initially all about spices, and not gold, conquest per se, or great goals of idealism. Europeans just didn't like their bland food very much.
We take our kitchen spice rack for granted. You get grouchy when the pepper shaker is stopped up at a fancy restaurant. When traders in the 12 13 and 14 hundreds made it back from Asia with spices, the food tasted so much better. The spices of Asia became the most desired and profitable trade items on both ends of the known earth. Its a fairly hedonistic motive really. Making the food taste better created the need to circumnavigate the globe and expand knowledge. The Indians were crushed to make way for the oregano on my pizza.
Marco Polo and other adventurers had established land and sea trace routes from Asia to Europe but they were arduous, dangerous, and financially precarious. States like Venice that happened to be on the land and water routes between the far east and western Europe controlled the spice economy and grew rich from the trade. The spice highway set the highway robbery price.
Columbus pitched the idea to Queen Isabella and her King that,
“'We should cut out the middle man in the spice racket. There's a lot more profits to be made by finding an alternative route to Asia in the completely opposite direction by water. Sure, we know that it is unexplored territory, and that some mariners have tried it and were never heard from again, but I am Christopher Columbus! I am the straw that stirs the drink!”
The Royal couple looked at each other. Ferdinand whispered to the Queen,
“This guy's out of his mind. What an ego! But I think it's worth a gamble that he just might pull it off.”
The Royals relented reluctantly and financed Columbo (his actual name in Italian) on a cautionary basis. Chris asked for a great fleet of top-line ships, but got only three caravelles. These were mid-sized ships, none of them particularly impressive. The were the Nina, the Pinta and the Globo. Columbus refused to accept the leaky Globo, and the Crown replaced it with the now famous Santa Maria.
Columbus made three voyages to America, the third one taking him to the coast of South America.
Some of the great figures of history were just lucky to have been in the right place at the right time or were born King or Queen. But in Columbus, now you're talking about a man who changed history single-handedly through his own dynamic initiative and his insufferable and charismatic personality.
Columbus ended up in a European prison at the end of his life. History sees this usually as a sad thing. But if the stories about his massacres of innocent Indians is even partially true, then prison was too good for the dirty rat.
THE OTHER 1492
The Christians expelled the Moslems from Spain in 1492. It is an eerie coincidence considering the collision course that climaxed (for now) at the WTC in 2001.
FORKED TONGUE TYPEWRITER - A PERSONAL APOLOGY
I try to be a polemicist whenever possible in the interest of livening up the writing and remaining true to my partisan beliefs. On the other hand I am always reading new material that sometimes makes me partly or completely change my mind. Sometimes the net result is that I seem to write with a forked tongue. One minute I assert a partisan position with vigor, then three pages later I am saying the opposite thing with equal vigor. The problem is, I can’t always revise every paragraph of every page looking for my own contradictions. That can only be solved with a careful editing of the final draft. In the meantime, roll with it, please.
I have had moods lasting many months when I do not take the side of the Indians on almost anything. Then I have months long moods where I completely go along with the orthodox version that says that they were complete victims and the Euros were incredibly sadistic barbarians. The following story is a prime example of my all over the road convictions.
It is not an easy task to be an open minded polemicist!
GENOCIDE - LAS CASAS
I have a new hero in American history besides my all time fave Roger Williams. His name is Bart Las Casas and he is a Spanish contemporary of Christopher Columbus. Las Casas in 1542 wrote a history of the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean. It is a complete indictment and conviction of the Spanish.
According to LC the Spaniards basically did a Nanking on all the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands. His account of the atrocities are unbearable to even read about. To have witnessed any of these stories personally would ruin a person’s inner happiness forever.
Las Casas estimates that more than 15 million Indians were massacred in cold blood by the Spanish conquistadors! Christians killed three times as many people as Hitler! 15 million? Are you kidding me, Bart?
His little book is called The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account.
According to this, the Spanish thought nothing of grabbing babies from the breasts of Indian women, hurling the infants against rocks, and then laughing uproariously. They tossed Indians into pits full of wild dogs and then took bets about how long it would take each one to die. I wouldn’t joke about stuff like this. It’s all in Bart’s book.
Some historians say that the the extermination of the Indians on these islands was in large part unintentional, the result of the introduction of disease. The Euros had developed an immunity to their own viruses, but when the Indians caught a cold, it spread like fire and they died by the hundreds of thousands. Las Casas doesn’t factor this in. He just says that the Spanish murdered 15 million Indians one at a time. Do you buy that? Is it possible that Las Casas was a moralist who was so lefty upset by the incidents that he saw and the other stories he heard that he wrote an exaggerated one-way version that even a Zinn Marxist couldn’t believe?
If we concede that Bart might have been writing in an over-emotional condition, we still have to come up a safe estimate of about a million Indians deliberately murdered in the name of Christ. Ok, maybe we don’t, but I do.
One rude trick the Spanish used to exterminate the Indians was the separation of the sexes. They forced a million Indian males to work in the mines and a million Indian women to work in the fields. The two groups were no longer in contact with each other. 50 years later the Indian population was way down. Technically this wasn’t mass murder, but of course it was. Himmler would have thought this was genius. If he and Adolph had read Las Casas, they probably would have tried that system starting in 1933 and I am definitely not kidding.
The only thing I can say in the defense of whitey is that the United States of America in 1776 and in 2012 is not responsible for the behavior of the Spanish in 1520. But the leftorians lump in the Spanish record with the Caucasian tally sheet that runs continuously up to Wounded Knee and beyond. That isn’t fair. But after reading Las Casas there is no way I will ever (again) be stupid enough to defend the white man’s behavior in the “discovery” of America.
OTHER EARLY EXPLORERS
CAPTAIN AMERICA
Amerigo Vespucci was the explorer who won the right to name the new land. Vespucci was part of an exploration of the central and south American Atlantic coastline. There were several voyages in the early 1500's. It wasn't called that at the time of course. It wasn't called anything. It was a mysterious new continent.
Amerigo wrote about it all colorfully when he got back to Europe. He was not the first to discover America but because Amerigo was a good writer and PR man, the name of the new world became America, not Columbus. If Christopher knew ahead of time that Vespucci would get two continents and the most powerful nation in all of history named after him, and all he would get for his hard work is a boring city in Ohio and a parade, he might never have left Portugal in 1492.
Amerigo wasn't even in command of the first expedition to the New World that he so chronicled when he got back.
Like almost all inventions, the credit goes to who knows how to package and sell it best, not who did it best or thought of it first. Columbus was Steve Jobs and Vespucci was Bill Gates.
Columbus: “But I did it first and my work was better.”
Vespucci: “True! I know how to sell your work better than you know how to create it. And no one cares that I stole your idea.”
GIOVANNI CABATO 1497-1498
John Sebastian wrote a bad song called Welcome Back. John Sebastian Cabot discovered North America for England.
Chris Columbus never actually set his conceited foot on the North American continent, only on the off-shore islands where my cousin makes his sports bets.
Cabot was from Genoa Italy. He sailed west from England in 1497. Cabato was the one who really discovered the land that was to become the United States of America. Columbus only discovered the places where Cabot's people go to vacation.
No one knows for sure exactly where Cabot landed, but it was certainly in North America and was probably Newfoundland. Some historians say it was Cape Cod. In any case, Cabot staked out the first good claim for the English people to say that the eastern seaboard of the new continent was rightfully theirs. That was a weak extrapolation to say a guy saw a shoreline from a boat, therefore his nation owns the continent, but in this era, it was good enough.
The English were in the game from the start but in the 1500's England was bogged down by foreign European wars, local religious wars of the Reformation, and wars of both nationalism and religion.
Spain, on the other hand, had its act in order. Spain was consolidated solid at home giving it a head-start in the race for the new place.
FERD MAGELLAN CIRLCLES THE GLOBE 1521-1522
Columbus and Vespucci established clearly that there was no easy way through the new continent and on to the jackpot, the prized spices of the East Indies.
Magellan decided that the continent has to have an end somewhere north to south and that he would find it and finish what Columbus had only started.
Magellan had to sail all the way to the southern tip of South America to make his way west to the spicy far east. His voyage through what is now called Tierra del Fuego was fraught with peril.
When he finally emerged to the peaceful Pacific his crew was ready to mutiny and there was no food. Ferd reassured them, “Don't worry men, the new ocean is surely shorter than the old one.” He could not have been more wrong. Weeks went by and the crew got so desperate hungry they would have eaten the food at the Tropicana Hotel Employee Cafeteria! They were boiling their leather boots and drinking the soup. Rats were like filet minion at Delmonicas. They were ready to string Magellan up.
The Magellan squad finally made land in today's Philippine Islands. The tired crew rested and mingled with the native girls. It was idyllic until someone started a fight with someone and the next thing you know people were killing each other and the crew is running back to the ship as spears and arrows whizzed by their heads. The attackers were the Lapu-Lapu natives near the Island of Cebu.
This Battle of Mactan took place on April 4, 1521. The Muslim chiefs of the island of Mactan were not intimidated by Magellan's 12 cannon. The Lapu-Lapus had more than 800 warriors and plenty of poison arrows, one of which caught Magellan in the leg as he tried to run back from the shore.
Magellan's ship got away just barely but Magellan was dead, his body left in the Philippine sun.
Only 19 men were left out of an original crew of 7,487. These 19 made their way west across the Indian Ocean, around Africa and sailed back to Portugal. The people greeted them in Tagus as heroes. They were skeletons with rags on, but they were heroes. They had done it. Man had circled the globe for the first time.
History credits the senior ranking crew member, Juan Robinson de Cano as the first person to circle the earth.
Back in Panama, Balboa was discovering the Pacific Ocean by land just about the same time Magellan was discovering it by ship.
ROCKY BALBOA FOR SPAIN (1513) – AND SOLIS FOR LUNCH (1516)
A brave and greedy explorer named Balboa crossed the small strip of today's Panama, climbed on some rocks and for the first time a pair of European eyes saw the great new ocean. Balboa had never seen such a stretch of flat blue water. He thought it was very pacific, so he named it that.
His full name was Vasco Nunez de Balboa. He had arrived in Hispaniola (the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean) as a stowaway. Balboa wasn't really out to discover the Pacific Ocean. VNB had heard of a vast gold treasure in Peru from the local Indians and he wanted to go get his mitts on the loot. But first he had to get to the west coast.
Balboa and 189 Spanish men plus a few Indian guides took the worst possible route across the isthmus of Darien. Even today, no one would take that route through the Panama jungle. But the area was so virgin that no one knew any better. It took them 25 days to travel 45 miles across the continent at its thinnest point.
When the party reached a certain hilltop they saw it. The great western ocean. Balboa screamed out “Yo Adrian! I won! I found the ocean!” A day later the Spaniards were splashing at the beach. Soon afterwards the Spanish founded the town of Panama.
Not long after that the Pedriarras Indians killed Balboa. It would be up to other tough and ruthless Spaniards to conquer Peru and find the gold. But it was greed that drove Balboa to discover the Pacific. He was looking for the Gold Coast and instead found the Pacific Ocean, early death, and the immortality of history books.
No one knew how far the new west coast ocean stretched. Spain could hardly carry sailing ships across the isthmus of Darien, so the race to circle the globe was still on. Whoever circled the globe first could claim half the world, by the standards of the time. It was the Spanish versus the Portuguese with the British and Dutch watching closely.
So Balboa had found the middle passage over land. The Portuguese kept on exploring down the east coast of South America in the 1500's trying to find a water route through the continent, a failed process that would be repeated in the 1600's in North America.
In 1516 a Portuguese man named Juan Solis was doing great sailing down the coast of today's Brazil. Then he landed in today's Uruguay. That country is named after the Uruguay Indians. The Uruguay's said you go away. These Indians didn't like strangers landing on their beach with warships, so they captured the entire Solis crew and ate them.
NEW WORLD NOT ALL IT WAS CRANKED UP TO BE
The whole idea of starting up a New World Empire was for profits in trade and precious metals, and it wasn't working out. Vas De Gama and Bart Diaz had already made a lot of money for Spain by going east around the horn of Africa. The New World was supposed to do even better, but after three decades, the New World was not paying off anywhere near the old route to India that De Gama had sailed. The King was beginning to wonder if the whole Columbus New World Empire had not been a big mistake. All that money spent on New World expeditions might have paid off far more on the old school route.
Then along came Cortez.
CORTEZ – CONQUISTADOR OF THE AZTECS - NEW SPAIN
If you were appealing a traffic ticket, you wouldn't want Hernando Cortez to be conducting the hearing. This guy had about as much mercy as a B-29.
Cortez and his crew of aggressive bloodthirsty Spaniards set out from Cuba in early 1519 to win one for God.
They sailed around the Yucatan Peninsula and then things got saucy. The Spanish main men landed on the beaches of Tabasco and captured a young native princess, who guided them throughout the conquest of her country, probably to avoid violence to her person.
Cortez sailed further up the coast and landed at the village of Santa Cruz. His mean troops got into a few battles with the Mexicans and held them off. A local tribe called the Tlaxcalans, decided they knew a winner when they saw one, and these opportunists allied themselves with the Spaniards. This, not Spanish superiority, was the key to the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.
Hearing of a great city deep inside the land ruled by a great ruler and his great people, Cortez decided to find this place. It was called Tenochlitan, and it's a little scary that I know how to spell it. Everyone else is out getting drunk and having a great time at the night clubs, and I'm at home studying my history and typing the word Tenochitlan flawlessly. “Teno” was located almost at the exact spot as today's Mexico City.
The leader of the Aztecs in Teno was the famous Montezuma, the man whose halls the US Marines sing about in their theme song.
Cortez managed to conquer the entire Aztec empire, and Montezuma died at the hands of an angry Aztec mob who stoned him senseless.
The Spanish governor of Cuba, Velazquez, meanwhile, had a long standing beef with Cortez and he sent an angry army of 1,600 Spanish soldiers to arrest Cortez, clap him in irons, and ship him back to Cuba. Cortez and his Tlaxcalans defeated this force sent to arrest him in a micro-civil war. Cortez absorbed those troops who survived their defeat. He “turned” them.
Explorer and conquistador, Cortez conquered Mexico and he murdered and betrayed many of the natives to do it.
Cortez wanted gold. He lived for gold. Gold was his game. And Cortez got what he came for when he landed in Mexico.
After Spain conquered Mexico (with the help of the Tlaxcalans of course) he named it New Spain, just as the Pilgrims a century later would name another area New England. Then the New Spain Empire expanded north, filling itself out like a rolling fog towards Florida, California, and the US southwest (don't make me keep explaining that these places weren't called that then – I just use the modern referents of geography for reader clarity) Spain already owned a healthy slice of the future USA when the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies began. So in a way the European history of the United States did not begin in 1609 or 1620 at all.
The Spanish Empire expanded until it had filled out most all of South America (Chile and Argentina held out like a wild Apache country until the later 1800's) and the west coast of North America up to today's San Francisco. New Spain stopped probing for expansion around 1600, just as the rest of Europe was beginning to roll up its sleeves for a big fight for New World Dominance. By 1600 Spain was trying to work on building up what it already had, while France, England and others were trying to grab some of their own and take what it could from the enemy Spain, both in riches and in territory.
It was easier for the other countries to rob Spain of its riches rather than try to compete with Spain in New World territorial acquisitions. This was mostly because Spain already had taken all the best lands, most of the gold mines and controlled the central trade routes within the new hemisphere. Also, and a lot of historians miss this point, Spain had taken all the warm regions, where people didn't have to survive three or more months of life-threatening winter. Part of the reason the Pilgrims had a virgin northern east coast to colonize was the awful winters I have grown to so hate. By 1580, when the Roanoke Colony was founded, the northeast coast of NA was just a consolation prize for tardy expansionists. Little did anyone anticipate that the colder regions would eventually become more productive and prized than the tropical.
FRANCISCO JUAN PIZARRO
And now another of history's heroic mass murderers. Pizzeria did to upper South America, what Cortez did to lower North America. He invaded, he killed, and he took all the gold. Pizarro put a beating on the Inca Indians.
Pizarro the Bizarro (Samuel Eliot Morison once referred to him as that) was with Senor Balboa when the Spaniards first set their eyes on the Pacific Ocean. Pizarro later betrayed Balboa. Pizarro personally arrested Balboa and turned him over to the executioner. Balboa lost his head. Pizarro wasn't a nice person.
After conquering the Incas from 1514-16 assassins attacked Frank Pizzeria in 1541. Frisco fought back hard against these home invader assassins but eventually... well, it wasn't pretty.
A DE SOTO IS NOT A CADILLAC 1539-1542
Hernando De Soto landed on the coast of Florida in the spring of 1539 with an expeditionary force of Spaniards. They marched across today's lower South and turned back around in Arkansas. All this took three years, and De Soto died in America in 1542. You can't kill a Cadillac, but he was only a De Soto.
De Soto's march didn't really conquer anything, but it did set up a stronger Spanish claim to the North American southeast.
Hernando had already been in several Spanish campaigns in the New World before 1539.
De Soto was evidently not a particularly nice man, at least not if you were a Native American in the early 1500's. He was there with Pizarro when that scum treacherously slaughtered a slew of South Americans and stole their treasures. Hernando De Soto led one of Pizarro's hit squads personally. De Soto also led his own expeditions. playing the role of Pizarros' cats paw in other regions of Central America.
Why did they name a great old 1950's car after such a bad man? They should have named my 1980 Chevy Chevette the De Soto.
CORONADO – CIBALDO 1540-1542
Frankie Coronado explored the American Southwest at the head of a famous Spanish expedition that lasted from 1540 to 1542. “Coro” was hoping to find Cibalo, the legendary city of gold, but he instead found a lot of battles with Native Americans. They did not seem to like Mr. Coronado very much. His posse included 300 Spaniards and twice as many Indian slaves.
Coronado was hoping to make himself the most famous man in the world. Perhaps someone would name a sea or a continent after him. It didn't quite work out that way. One shopping mall in Albuquerque is named after him, the Coronado Mall. That is it.
DRAKE TAKES THE CAKE SEPT 26 1580
The English began plundering the Spanish empire. Pirates got legal status from the queen and were no longer pirates, even thought they did piratical things to Spanish ships.
Sir Francis Drake was a British sea dog who captured so many Spanish prizes that the Queen knighted him for it. FD was the first ship's captain to circumnavigate the globe. (Magellan died in the Philippines and his crew managed to get back to Spain.) His ship was called the Golden Hind.
When Spain conquered America and piled up all that gold, it came with a price of high vulnerability. It's a lot easier to get to the top than it is to stay there. Spain made its way to the top, but now all the jackals were after the fat cat. The Spanish empire in America was a flashing neon sign telling all the other European powers to “Rob-Me Rob-Me Rob-Me.” The world's number one sport became seizing Spanish ships loaded with treasure. Spain was getting rich but there were some trickle-down economics going on on the high seas. Spain was helping to feed quite a few nations that had not helped to bake the cake.
Like Phileas Fogg in 1868, Drake returned triumphantly to England in September of 1580 after circling the globe.
PONCE DE LEON AND THE FEY
He sought the fountain of youth and instead discovered the huge peninsula where today old people go to live out their hopeless, depressed, tired, final years.
Some historians say that the Fountain of Eternal Youth business is a myth and that De Leon was really after gold only. Why do they have to spoil a great story with annoying facts?
Indian snipers put an arrow through Ponce's back on his second trip to Florida. But the man was a fighter and survived that fountain of blood ... for a while. Ponce De Leon died from this wound a few months later.
THE FOUR COLONIZERS
The initial three rivals for colonies were Spain, France and England. Johnny Bull arrived late compared to the other two. Then the Dutch jumped in to make it four.
Spain and France believed in assimilation and interrelation. They hoped to conquer the Indians but didn't expect to do it by force. They hoped to impose superior systems on the Indians but allow much autonomy for their native culture. They were even willing to learn to benefit from some Native American customs and systems. Sometimes there was war between native and alien, but in times of peace there was integration, including physical.
The English came along at the end of the 1500's and they were the opposite. They were physical and cultural segregationists. As far as the British were concerned, whether at war or at peace, there would always be two separate societies, the English colonial, and the Native American.
SIR GIBLERT
Sir Humphrey Gilbert went to the New World for the flag of England and planted it on the bottom of the North Atlantic on the return voyage/
His half brother Sir Walter Raleigh picked up the torch. Walter was rich and famous and influential, a multi-talented man, even more than George Lopez. He organized and funded an expedition to the Virginia area of the New World.
THE COLONIES
FRENCH COLONIES
The French held the ice cold nine months of the year lands to the north of the English colonies, but they weren't as isolated up there as it might seem. The St. Lawrence seaway led deep into the continent, while the English and Dutch were hemmed in at the eastern seaboard by the Appalachians
France, with far fewer settler, managed to lay claim to far more territory than England and deeper into the interior. The French made it all the way to the Mississippi and down its spine. The French colonial empire at its apex almost had the English colonies surrounded. On a map, they sort of actually did, but the French colonial military capacity was not scary enough to make the English newcomers feel terribly threatened. The English feared the Indians more than the French. When the French and Indians allied, that was of course, a serious threat.
The French were all about furs and Christianity (all the ladies in church wore furs when I was growing up.) The English were about two things; money and money. British colonials did relatively little proselytizing of the Indians. French Catholics were pretty passionate and sincere as they made their way into the wilderness of great danger to preach the word of Jesus. They were also very brave.
NO HISTORAN TODAY WOULD DARE TO CALL THEM SAVAGES
The Indians crucified hundreds of these brave Jesuit French fools. Good religious people were used for tomahawk practice, set on fire, beheaded, and then sent away for further torture. I hate reading these awful stories about the way the Indians tortured white missionaries with cruelty that would make a serial killer say, “hey man, that's way over the top!” And the new liberal history books only want to mention how cruel whites were to Indians. They short-sell or omit entirely, the stories of savage Native American behavior, and mock anyone in all of history that ever called them “Savages.”
There are almost no historians, besides me, who just get their facts wrong on a regular basis. What they do is emphasize some stories and de-emphasize others. No one can catch them lying because they are just editing the story to suit their polemic needs. For the Indians the new books “short and distort” that bad parts of Indian behavior and culture, while they spotlight and magnify the bad parts of European behavior and culture. It's a consistent theme in the new history textbooks and it's not fair to the students or their parents who are trusting that the school is giving their children a balanced version of history. How is a conservative parent supposed to feel knowing that the state has ordered their kids to go to school in order to get a liberal biased version of American history?
NEW NETHERLANDS
The first honky to sail into New York Harbor was Giovanni Verazzano. His name is honored by a spectacular bridge across the harbor today, the Giovanni Bridge. Verazzano sailed into New York in 1524.
The English weren't the only ones colonizing the eastern seaboard of North America in the sweet 16-hundreds.
Henry Hudson, a Brit in service of the Dutch explored and claimed the New York area for Holland. The Dutch established New Netherlands in Manhattan.
Originally the Dutch were just trying to find a good water road to the spices of the Far East, just like Columbus. They had no idea how incredibly hopeless their dream was. If the Dutch had built a canal of 2,800 miles, then Henry's dream would have come true.
Hudson sailed up a great river which he named after him father, Tommy Hudson. The Dutch built a trading post at Albany, and bought Manhattan from some gullible Indians for $24 worth of beads and a pistol.
The Dutch and the English became rivals in the New World as their colonies grew up side by side. New Amsterdam had serious boundary disputes with both the Connecticut and New Haven Colony. There were times when the militia was on alert for potential war between these culturally different colonies.
Peiter Stuyvesant (and yes, that's how he spelled his first name) was the most famous Dutch Governor of New Netherlands. He built a wall across lower Manhattan to keep the lower battery of Manhattan safe from Indian attack. Peiter's wall marks the path of today's Wall Street, where no wall can keep America safe from greedy speculators creating massive toxic assets.
Stuyvesant had one leg. The other he'd lost to a cannonball back in Europe. His nickname was “I-Hop.” When Stuyvesant went dancing, he did the “Cha.'
The Kings of England and the Netherlands worked out a deal giving New Amsterdam to the English King James II. Jimmy 2 sent a fleet to take over New Netherlands in 1664. There was some talk in Manhattan of resisting but New Amsterdam surrendered peacefully.
The British renamed it New York after the Duke of York and Albany.
VIRGINIA
First there was the “Lost Colony” of 1575. The King had granted some colonists the right to settle on the New World land under the leader Walt Raleigh, and too bad about the people that already live there. Just plant a flag and make a speech and you're in business. Two shiploads of colonists set up shop in Virginia in 1575. They named it that because the Queen was always bragging that she was a virgin and Raleigh knew she would love to hear this lie validated by the title.
But the Raleigh Virginians disappeared. A relief expedition arrived to find no one alive. There was only a note carved into a tree. It was a single unfinished word, H-U-N-G-R... – Historians are still trying to understand what they were trying to say. Some historians believe that the colonists gladly assimilated into the local tribe of Croatoan Indians.
The English first settled permanently on the Jamestown Peninsula in 1607. They tried to get along with the Powhatan Indians. The operative word here is 'tried.'
Captain John Smith and Pocohontas enter the story, but you've all seen the stupid Disney movies animated history, so there's no need to bore you with the true tale.
The first years of Virginia were known as the “Starving Time.”
The Virginians chose a less than perfect site to start the colony. The tip of the Jamestown Peninsula had a lot of bugs, 898 trillion according to one scholar. The soil was poor, good wood was scarce, the peninsula offered no defense from hostile Indians, and there were few sources of fresh water. Other than that it was great.
The whole point of the V colony was not to establish religious freedom, or a place where apostates could establish their own brand of religious intolerance. The point of the V was not to expand Christianity or civilization, now was it to explore the mysterious new continent in the name of progress and humanity. The point of the Virginia Colony was to make money for those who invested in the Virginia charter. In this, it was, after ten years, an abject failure. England was looking at Virginia the way Spain looked at New Spain after its first two decades. Maybe this investing in the New World business wasn't all it was cranked up to be. English investors began looking back to the established colonies of the West Indies as a better place to put their hard inherited money.
No matter what the Virginians tried to grow, it didn't work. Then they found the magic crop. Brown weed saved the colony. Tobacco rescued destitute Virginia Colony. It grew well, and the people back in England really seemed to enjoy committing slow suicide. The King hated the evil weed, said “it stinks worse than a drunken Spaniard” and forbade its use within a mile of his house. But he did not forbid Virginia from developing it as an export crop.
The King may have hated the smell of the stuff, but he liked the sweet smell of profits. England had till now invested 100,000 monetary pounds on the New World and had lost it all, and you can imagine what 100,000 pounds was worth in 1627. Tobacco was fast beginning to get England back to the break even point. Virginia exported 60,000 pounds (real pounds, not money pounds) of tobacco in 1619. In 1629 Virginia exported half a million pounds of tobacco. The New World was going to make it after all.
Virginia allowed smoking in public places. The first representative body in the colony was the famous House of Burgesses which first met in 1619. It was a limited excuse for democracy, but it was progressive for the time and place. The place was so riddled with tobacco smoke at its sessions that it acquired the nickname, the “House of Smokey Burgess.”
As Virginia began to grow, the business of land speculation became extremely popular with the well to do. The eastern seaboard of Virginia was called the Tidewater. The people with money (derisively called “Tides” by the poor people) played the game that has dominated American economic history, the gambling game of land speculation (the current financial crisis of 2011 can be traced back to the land speculation of the last 20 years which went bust in the late 00's.) A majority of the rich Tides were actually deep in debt to London merchants who bankrolled the Las Vegas land roulette party for these Tides.
The middle portion of Virginia was called the Piedmont (named after Frank Pied,) and the western area was the Shenandoah Valley.
Tobacco had saved Virginia but by the middle of the 1700's it was hurting it too. Tobacco tended to deplete the soil, rendering it just about useless for the future. Short term profits did long term damage.
In a scenario similar to many other colonies, the people in the western part of the state resented the east. They resented their wealth and privilege per se, but they also resented the fact that the west was disproportionately represented in the House of Smokey Burgess, and that the east did not adequately send any military protection out west against the scary Indians.
The west (again, as in several other colonies) also resented that they had to pay taxes to support the Anglican Church and not all of them believed in the Anglican Church.
NEW ENGLAND CALVIN COLONIES
Calvinism was the dominant form of religion in the New England colonies. It was a harsh faith named after Jean Klein Calvin, a European superstar reformer who preached “predestination.” That meant that you were scheduled for either heaven or hell the day you were born. Nothing you could do could change that. No thanks, I'd rather bow to Mecca and embrace the Koran, than take predestination seriously. I'm predestined to reject Calvinism. It's annoying to even read about. Calvinism is arrogant and harsh, even more than Bill Maher.
Calvinism said that society just had to figure out who the chosen ones were and make them powerful leaders, and the rest of the people could just obey like sheep.
So if you were one of the chosen ones you could walk up to an old woman, slap her in the face real hard, and walk away laughing, and God wouldn't be mad at you because of predestination. On the other hand if you went to work with lepers for 20 years and died of leprosy at 40 after caring for the sick without pay, God was mad at you because of “predestination.” Yeah, rite. I can't believe anyone could be that stupid as to believe that, and to think that an entire six colony region could believe that is astounding. Calvinism was an part of that crazed mind-set that sought out witches and hung them.
Calvin was born in 1509 in France. He went to law school at Orleans and Bourges and then emigrated to Geneva Switzerland.
In 1536 he released his great book, The Institutes of Christian Religion. It was the something like The Radical Protestant Manifesto. A poll of historians rated it one of the top five most important books of all time after the Bible, The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, The Origin of the Species, by Charles Darwin, and Couplehood, by Paul Reiser.
Calvin became the most powerful person in Geneva when his book became the latest rage, and the city became the sun in the solar system of world Calvinism. Geneva banned the Mass, closed the monasteries, and declared that the Pope was just a man and denied his infallibility. Maybe Calvinism wasn't entirely bad.
Many historians believe that Calvinism was one of the foundations of modern democracy. That may seem odd considering how autocratic and unforgiving his Geneva church was.
Part of the reason Cal get the credit is because the calvinist churches were generally run by elected leaders. The people practiced democracy within their private churches, even though there was no full political democracy outside the church walls.
Decades went by and the Puritans brought the practice of church democracy to the New World. When the colonists began to experiment with political democracy, they already had a lot of practice, and the concept was familiar and easy for them to embrace. Church democracy was the pole for the vaulters to use as they leaped into political democracy.
PLYMOUTH
There is often confusion as to the terms “Pilgrim” and “Puritan.” One describes the what and the other describes the why.
The person makes a pilgrimage to the New World and is therefore a Pilgrim, no matter what their religion, nationality, race or philosophy.
The Puritan on the other hand, is a specific religious idea and the mass migration of Puritans to New Plymouth in the 1630's was the foundation of the Pilgrims. Most Pilgrims at this time were Puritans, but one could easily be one without the other. You could be a Puritan in Europe who never made the pilgrimage to America, or you could make the pilgrimage to America and not agree with the Puritan religion.
The Puritans were those who thought that the rituals of the church had gone too far. There were too many statues and paintings and robes and medals and too much ornate things in general. They wanted to “purify” the church services until it went back to the way it was 'back when'.
Martin Luther and the Protestants had already been through this in the last century and a half, but to the Puritans, even the Protestant services were too ornate and lustful (that is, the services were too pleasing to the base senses.) The Puritans saw the Protestants the way the Protestants saw the Catholics. Calvin was the top purifier, but other sects of Puritans existed also.
The Kings and Queens of Europe persecuted the Puritans but seldom violently. They wanted to intimidate them and drive them out of Europe.
At first the Purifiers went to Holland, and from there they decided to cut out and find a refuge, a safe haven where they could set up their boring colorless services free from harassment. That was the essence of the colonial migration to the New World.
Some historians believe that the European monarchs used the Puritans as a front to advance their economic goals in the New World. That became true, but the initial burst of colonists to Virginia and Massachusetts were based on the persecuted seeking a safe haven for religious freedom. The earlier point about the English being more about money than faith still stands in the large view of the colonial era.
So with all the controversy today about illegal immigrants coming the the overcrowded USA to escape conditions at home, it is well to remember that even the very first hyphenated-Americans were from the same boat. In a way, today's illegal immigrants are more all-American than seventh generation American citizens.
The irony of course, was that these same religious fanatics who were persecuted in Europe became bigoted intolerant tyrants within their little fiefdoms in the New World. If you think England France, and Spain were closed minded towards religious dissent, wait till you get a load of how the moral Puritans treated those who did not tow the line in Mass. In England, they merely got double-taxed and socially ostracized. In Massachusetts they had to do The Sadaam Shuffle.
Back in England King Charlie the First was so right-wing royal that he alienated a lot of liberals of all stripes. Soon the Puritans had all sorts of unwitting allies, accidental strange bedfellows. The lefties of England were marching arm-in-arm off to the New World with the Puritans who weren't liberal tolerant at all. Charles was so square that he forced the libs into a team with the squares he had persecuted.
More than 10,000 Pilgrims made it to Massachusetts between 1630 and 1644.
FLOUNDER STRIKE OF 1636
The history of the labor movement in America begins in Maine in 1636. Just south of Portland is Richmond Island. There isn't a lot going on there today. In 1636 the fishermen of Richmond told their boss that they would refuse to put to sea any longer if they didn't get better pay for their dangerous hard work. There isn't a lot more information about how this strike was settled, but historians are fond of mentioning the so-called Flounder Strike of 1636 as the first strike in the history of labor relations in America.
MASSACHUSETTS STORY
THE LEYDEN SEPARATISTS MAKE THEIR MOVE
The first settlers were “Separatists” or “Independents” who had first fled England to Holland where they might find more tolerance. The fearless leader of this flock was Jackie Robinson.
There were three reasons why the Separatists decided to leave Holland and make the dangerous crossing of the Atlantic and start a new colony. One, they wanted to spread the word of God and find a place to establish new Congregations. Two, the youth of Holland were decadent, relative to their time, just as they are today, and Jackie Robinson thought it would be a good idea to raise children far away from such influences. And three, Spain had granted a 12 year truce to Holland and that was about to expire. The Independents were going to get drafted into the Dutch army if they stuck around. Time to get holy and get out of there. New England was founded by a bunch of draft dodgers. That's the one thing that most of the textbooks leave out of the picture.
The Separatist leaders in Holland went to England to try and get a Royal promise to leave them unmolested in the New World. The crown refused a formal pledge but gave an informal assurance that there was nothing for them to worry about. They leaders went back to Leyden Holland and everyone talked it over. Accepting some risk that England might withdraw its grant of religious independence, the Separatists decided to go ahead and do the colony thing.
The first choice for the Pilgrims was actually Guyana, in South America. It was warmer and the English already had some infrastructure. But the threat of tropical disease and poison Kool-Aid discouraged many, plus Guyana was deemed too vulnerable to Spanish attack and Catholic conquest.
Then there was talk of going over and setting up alongside the Virginia colony. But the “Seps” wanted to be clear of both the Spanish to the far South and the Dutch to the near south in New Amsterdam who were part of all those European squabbles they were trying to get away from. So they decided to settle down in the northern region of the broad English colonial invasion.
They separated from Leyden on two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Mayflower was a good ship and the Speedwell was a leaky old rat-motel that no one felt happy to even look at, let alone sail across the Atlantic in.
The Pilgrims (not Puritans) sailed out as a thousand friends lined the docks with tears in their eyes. People of Leyden who didn't even know anyone personally on board were crying too. It was a dramatic mission, and everyone understood the greatness and the danger.
A few days out to sea, the Speedwell showed dangerous signs of breaking up, and the entire mission had to turn back and put in at Plymouth England. The Pilgrims abandoned the Speedwell, and many Pilgrims had to return to Leyden because the Mayflower could take on only one third of the Speedwell's passengers. The Speedwell has to go down as one of the rotten ships of history, alongside with the freighter from South Africa that dropped off the Black Plague in Europe.
The Pilgrim/Separatists landed in Provincetown in 1620, at the tip of Cape Cod. At first they thought they had landed in one of the great natural harbors of the world. But soon they realized the location wasn't good for several reasons, and on December 11 1620 the adventurers decided to pack up and move inward from the exposed position at the top of the Cape to a better harbor closer to fresh water and food. This was today's Plymouth Harbor in Massachusetts.
They weren't even 100% sure they wanted to permanently choose this harbor, but they would pack up, sail in and get a good look. Some on board wanted to sail right past this second harbor choice and move north towards the Gloucester Cape.
On the day they packed up and sailed off from P-town a sudden severe ice storm hit the Mayflower. The ship was battling to just survive. Suddenly no one was fussy about Plymouth. Everyone was praying that they just find a place to fight on with life itself. This was a greater storm than any that had cursed them on the two month passage to America. It was a terrible 'noreaster. The crew had beards and hair full of solid ice. Mayflower fought its way west into Mass Bay, one rocking meter at a time just trying to get past the outer peninsulas and into the chosen harbor. It's a 35 minute drive from Provincetown to Plymouth today (two hours in the middle of a July afternoon,) But these people were just about climbing mount Everest to get to the promised land. They fought the rocky threats, lost one man overboard but pulled him back, and finally grounded at a spot on the main. The landing spot was next to a huge rock.
After the storm they all knelt down on the beach thanked God for all the help, and named the place it Plymouth after the port of their departure from England, thanks to the jalopy Speedwell.
A few years later the rock was uprooted and cut in half. One half was taken to a spot in the center of the growing town and became a national shrine. The tourists at Plymouth Rock always argue about whether it's really the original rock. It is, but it's not at the original spot where the Pilgrims landed, and it's only half of it. (The other half is in the British Museum. The British stole it when they invaded Washington D.C. in 1813 and burned the Smithsonian in 1813.) You can still see original graffiti on the rock. It says “Pilgrims Rule!” “Brewster was here” and “For a good time call Squanto.”
THANKSGIVING
The colonists did have one minor skirmish with the Indians about two weeks after they landed, but there were no casualties.
The whites built a fort at Plymouth and barely managed to survive that first winter in spite of Indian attempts to poison their already feeble food supply. The skirmishes near the fort only stopped whenever there was a blizzard.
But all that changed in 1621 when an Indian named Squanto made peace between the two races and civilizations. Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to grow corn and soon the colony was doing ok. The Indians and the whites became friends. And it was all thanks to Squanto.
The Pilgrims and the Indians got together in November and had the first Thanksgiving. Most of them really didn't want to be there. But it was Thanksgiving and they felt obligated to go. Squanto really ruined it all for the Indians. They should have finished off the Pilgrims when they had the chance.
Will Rogers said of the Pilgrims that “Them Pilgrims wuz always prayin'. And they always had a gun right beside them while they wuz prayin. That wuz to make sure they got what they wuz prayin for.”
MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY
Massachusetts was founded as a safe haven for people with annoying accents.
The crown granted a royal charter to the Massachusetts Bay Colony but forgot to stipulate that the board members had to hold board meetings in England. That enabled the Mass Puritan/Pilgrims to take not only the colonists, but the colonial government and charter to the New World, which was a first.
The Massachusetts Bay colonists were Puritans, as opposed to Separatists. The Plymouth Pilgrims were separatists, people who wanted a complete separation from the Anglican Church. The people who settled at Salem wanted to purify the Anglican Church, but did not want to completely separate themselves from it.
400 colonists brought their act to Salem in June 12 1630. They chose Mr. Winthrop to be their leader. He gave them a sanctimonious lecture about being a 'city upon a hill.' They rolled their eyes at the cliché, but historians later made it into a profundity it wasn't perceived to be at the time.
Massachusetts Bay later absorbed the Plymouth Colony. This came after the English Revolution of 1688. By that time the northern colonies had grown into a uniform religious understanding of do's and don't all towns adhered to or else. By 1688 in other words, the original Plymouth idea of being “Separatists” was no longer in operation.
RHODE ISLAND
A comedian named Manny Olivera asked me last year in Atlantic City, “Out of all these history books you read, who is your favorite person?” After nine shows we had run out of normal things to talk about.
I thought about it for a half a second and said “Roger Williams.”
Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island as a haven for all those persecuted for their religious beliefs. He may not be the first hero of American history, but he is the first hero who defended with his life, the principles of tolerance, democracy and freedom, that the later United States of America was supposed to stand for. I'll buy Roger a drink and get his dog one too.
Williams gave a defiant fist to England and sailed to America for freedom where he settled at Salem colony. These were the same people who were hanging witches at the end of the century and they certainly were in no mood to tolerate Roger Williams and his idea that all religions are created equal. Salem booted RW out and he went to Mass Bay where his reception was even worse. A Mass court convicted Roger of treason and he fled for his life. Williams hoofed it south for the Indian lands, with Mass officials in hot pursuit with hunting dogs chomping at the bit to bite him if they only got the chance.
Williams was one of the first whites to fight for the rights of Indians to keep their land. He agreed that whites could buy Indian land, but he believed that whites had no right whatsoever to any Indian land they had not properly purchased. That was one more reason the white man wanted to hang him and why the Indians welcomed him to live among them in Rhode Island.
It's one thing to be brave in the face of enemy fire or to save a child from a fire in a building. It's another step up to be brave based in defense of fine moral issues and principles. The first type of courage can save a life. The greater hero saves a principle for thousands and then millions.
HUTCH
Another famous Massachusetts troublemaker was in danger of being flogged or hung on the Boston Common and fled to the new haven of Rhode Island. She was the lady known affectionately among her followers as “Hutch.”
Anne Hutchinson was an angry mannish looking radical know it all hostile feminist. She could have been a host on The View. But unlike the hosts of the View, Anne Hutchinson was a brave brilliant genuine radical, breaking all the rules in the face of threats, refusing to allow men or church leaders to make all the rules for her or anyone else. She makes Germanine Greer look like Mamie Eisenhower.
Anne preached the word of God to her followers, and she attracted as many men as women. She was a true leader and a true troublemaker. My kind of dame. I would have asker her out in a heartbeat, even if she wore thick glasses.
Everywhere that Annie went, trouble was sure to go. In a time when everyone had to obey all the Church elders like sheep, Anne was not only saying you don't have to, she was saying that the church elders were a joke, and they didn't deserve any more respect than anyone else, let alone absolute authority. As Clark Gable said in Gone With the Wind, “What a woman!”
Massachusetts made up their mind that she had to be not only stopped, she had to be killed. Anne did the wise thing and fled to Rhode Island where Roger Williams welcomed her with open arms and flowers.
NEW SWEDEN 1638-1655
When we think of the nations that colonized early America, few of us think of Sweden. The area around Philadelphia was known as New Sweden from 1638 to 1655.
The Swedes gave America soggy meatballs, blondes, and log cabins, but not a permanent colony. Sweden was too weak to protect its new colony in the distant land of so many predator competitors. The Dutch conquered New Sweden in short order. Hawaii Five-0 lasted longer than New Sweden (1969-1979)
PENNSYLVANIA - QUAKER ROOTS
The Keystone State of Pennsylvania was founded as a safe haven for the cult of the Quakers. These nuts felt the presence of God so much that they quaked like inner-city teen-agers mocking the handicapped. Their direct descendants are the Amish who today mind their own business and provide the setting for many very bad movies where they interact with the real world and all sorts of wacky trouble begins.
The Quakers were saying that every individual should find God in their own individual way and that no one needs a sacred book or a holy building to find him. The Quakers maintained that if “God is everywhere” then there is no need to travel ten miles in the snow to talk to him in a church on Sunday morning.
The Quaker movement began in Europe. The founding father was George Fox. 'King Quake' was trying to found a colony in America when he became gravely ill. His death shook the Quakers up considerably.
The Quakers denied the law requiring attendance at the Church of England or any mandated church. The freedom from church idea was serious because it could hurt the revenue department of both church and crown. The church enabled the strong to control the weak. Quakers were playing with matches telling the little people they didn't have to go to church.
The Puritans had protested that the Bible was more important than the church, and that got the Puritans in plenty of trouble. The Quakers went beyond a mere need to purify the church, and beyond separatism. The Quakers denied church per se, or at least the requirement of it. Neither the Church nor the Bible was the foundation of Quaker spiritual salvation.
This was a whole lot of heresy. The Q's paid for it on both sides of the ocean. Thousands of Quakers were tossed into English prisons. Boston showed its opinion by hanging three Quakers on the Boston Common. Peiter Styvesants's New Amsterdam hung a few Quakers too.
William Penn picked up the pieces and negotiated with the King for a Crown colony in the central region of the continental coast between New York and Virginia. Penn's father (Bic) was a famous admiral in the Royal Navy who had won important victories for the King. So the King owed the admiral one, and granted the colony to his son. The persecuted sectarians finally had a place to sow their Quaker oats in freedom and peace.
William Penn wrote a huge book about founding the Pennsylvania colony and it is a very boring read. But Willie leave us one great aphorism about rule,
“Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.”
That's beautiful. Gorby and Yeltsin couldn't have said it better when they pretended to let real democracy into Russia between 1990 and 2000.
A politician named Sir Alvin Spector of Portmeirion Scotland once trapped George Fox during a public hearing in 1636 about this “God is everywhere” business.
“Mr Fox, You say that you don't have to go to church because God is
everywhere, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is he in Mr. Houlihan's house?”
“Yes he is.”
“Is he in Mr Houlihan's barn?”
“Yes he is
“Is he in Mr Thompson's House?”
“Of course he is.”
“Is he in Mr. Thompson's barn?”
“Yes he is.”
“You're a liar. Mr Thompson doesn't have a barn.”
By the middle of the 1700's (don't you hate when all the historians have to say “mid-Eighteenth Century” and you have to mentally note minus-one to figure out they mean the 1700's? I much prefer “mid-1700's” to “mid-eighteenth century” - it's much more solid and clear on the reading flow and I don't think anyone has ever made this obvious people's point before) Philadelphia was the largest city in the Colonies with 38,000 people. New York City had approximately 27,218 persons in 1750. These two top cities combined couldn't fill the current Ohio State football stadium
GEORGIA
The last of the original colonies was Georgia. The early years of Georgia did not exactly go smooth as silk.
Georgia was founded in 1732 supposedly as a refuge for English debtors with nowhere to turn to avoid prison. Royal Mastercard had already put 47,000 English persons in jail just for being late with their monthly payment. When Discover began arresting middle class artisans, it was time to do something. Reformers in Europe talked of abolishing prison for debtors. Georgia was going to help with that.
But the main reason the crown wanted a colony just north of Florida was to block the Spanish from moving north into English colonial territory. Between South Carolina and Spanish Florida was a malaria and Indian infested no Euro man's land. The English wanted to get in there directly before the Spanish pushed their way in gradually.
Georgia is named after King George II who granted a charter for the lands between the Savannah and the Altamaha Rivers all the way to the South Sea. This was the only Crown-owned colony. Georgia was leased to the settlers and Georgia Trustees (the other 12 colonies were, at least in the beginning, remarkably autonomous, to the point of being remarkably close to independent.)
James Oglethorpe was the main founder of Georgia. “Oggie” was a great guy. He was a member of Parliament and he really did feel compassion for the people in English debtors prison and he wanted to do something to help them.
Jimmy Oggie and his broke blokes founded Savannah in 1733. The main product they expected to grow and export was silk. But the plant wouldn't grow as expected, and the colony got hit with a run on it's silk stocks. The colony flopped, and in 1752 the Crown had to step in to save it. The Georgia Trustees were relieved of their experimental burden and Georgia became a full Crown Colony.
SAYBROOK
Saybrook colony has to be the most obscure of them all. Jack Saybrook from Egg Harbor Scotland founded Saybrook in 1634, but New Haven soon took Saybrok over. Then Connecticut took over both. It was like a fish eating a fish then getting eaten by the big tuna.
NEW HAVEN
New Haven colony was founded in 1638 by Theo Eaton and Jackie Davenport, two rich Puritans from England. But it was Massachusetts, not England, that they were making a safe “haven” from. The religious differences with Massachusetts theologians was more than these stubborn souls could take. Massachusetts was a religious totalitarian dictatorship that oppressed people as badly as England ever did, and then some.
Theo's Puritans settled on a tract of land they purchased from the Quinipiac Indians. The Pequots were threatening the Quinipiacs and these natives decided it was 'better white than dead.'
Connecticut at first claimed the land as part of its original charter, but gave in and allowed their New Haven brothers to stay. Connecticut as we have seen, later absorbed New Haven.
CAROLINA
The King granted the Carolinas to two famous proprietors, one a rich noble in England, the other a rich noble in Barbados. Carolina was partially founded as a place where rich white slave-owners from Barbados could go home to retire. Carolina was Florida for the white Barbadians.
SOUTH CAROLINA
“Southie” as it is so commonly called down there, struggled at first economically. The trade in grains and furs did not pan out as hoped. But in 1696 the lowlands imported Madagascar rice and it worked. The new staple crop stabilized the Southie economy. What tobacco meant to Virginia, rice meant to South Carolina.
NEW JERSEY
The region of New Jersey was originally inhabited by the Delaware Indians. The Dutch made it part of New Netherlands.
The English took New Netherlands and inherited the land between Maryland and New York and named it New Jersey, after the island near France called Jersey ( disagree that Jersey is a “Channel Island” - it is virtually an irredentist island in France.)
Two Brits took over Jersey. One was a Mr. Carteret, and the other a Mr. Jack Berkeley. The new owners decided to break up Jersey into two colonies in 1676, West Jersey and East Jersey.
West jersey was dominated by the Quakers from nearby Pennsylvania, while East Jersey was more under the influence of New England Calvinists.
When neither Jersey proved very profitable, the two men were happy to sell the rights to the colonies back to the crown. The two Jerseys combined back into one Jersey in 1703. part of the original boundary line between the Jerseys is still seen today separating Monmouth and Scruffneck Counties.
There originally were two Jerseys, east and west. They emerged to become New Jersey a bit later. Even in 1750, there were too many toll booths there.
They were named after the Jersey Islands near the coast of France, which incidentally, were the only parts of Great Britian occupied by the Nazis in WWII.
MARYLAND
Maryland was founded as a safe haven for Catholics of both the new and the old worlds. The Moses of Maryland was one Sir George Calvert. He and Ashley Cooper wanted to start a colony between Virginia and Spanish Florida. Calvert also owned the name of “Lord Baltimore.” SGC wanted to found a colony both for his wealthy family and as a place where Catholics could go to avoid persecution at the hands of the Protestants. The Catholics were protesting against Protestant orthodoxy, thus mixing up the definitions of these words quite a little bit.
Balt Calvert had originally settled in Virginia but those folks treated him rudely because of his odd religion, so he asked the King for a slice of Virginia. Since Calvert was rich he got it.
George Calvert died while the negotiations for the colony were on-going but his son took up the reins. Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore was the new boss when the first settlers arrived in MD 1634. These east coast pioneers didn't have to battle between life and death at the start the way the Virginians had. By 1634 there was little trouble with the Indians (a minor war with the Susquehanna tribe notwithstanding) and food systems were better developed and understood.
REIGN OF GOVERNOR ANDROS
THE SALEM WITCH HUNT – 1692
The term witch-hunt is often used in analogy today. But in 1692 it was the real deal in Salem (now Danvers) Massachusetts. Witchcraft was illegal and punishable by death pursuant to the English law of 1641.
Some hysterical teen-aged children began to accuse many members of the Salem community of being witches. They went into convulsions whenever certain adult people were around, and the magistrates of Mass concluded after some looney trials that the accused indeed were witches.
This was some strange way to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Columbus discovering America. That deed was progressive, this was regressive. The hysteria peaked in the summer of 92. On July 19 five innocent women were hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem. On August 19 four warlocks and one witch hanged by the neck until unjustly dead. The injustice and ignorance peaked on September 22 with an equinox hanging of two men and eight women innocent accused, again on Gallows Hill (I've been to Salem a hundred times and I've never tracked down the exact historical spot. Maybe next time.)
The judges ignored the pleas of those who said that these children were playing a game and controlling the adults to amuse themselves. Then the children began to accuse the judges of being witches! Well now, that's a different story all of a sudden. State suspicion beamed now at the children who were accusing the adults of witchcraft. Before you knew it, the accused witches on death row were released on their own recognizance. Lord knows how many more would have died on a string if the kids hadn't turned their gunsights on the judges.
It's the great shame of Massachusetts history (along with the school-busing riots of 1974.)
Salem now is a magnet for witches from all over the world. They meet there, buy houses there, and have made Salem a serious witch mecca. The neo-witches took a bad event, and made it an icon to organize around. It never seems to matter to them that the main thing about of 1692 was that the accused were not witches.
RISE OF SLAVERY
The first slaves were dropped off in Virginia in 1619 at Jamestown. Historians disagree as to whether these 19 slaves were black or white or red, and as to whether they were indentured servants or full slaves. In any case, plenty more African slaves arrived and gradually changed the South to a slave-labor based economy.
TOBACCO
We have seen that tobacco saved Virginia. In fact, tobacco was the life blood of the early colonial American economy. People used tobacco as currency as often as it used currency. In Virginia tobacco was virtually the official currency. The King's Presbyterian ministers were paid in tobacco. Their salary was 17,280 pounds of tobacco a year, more than they could smoke in that time, although my Aunt Louise could have. Household items of every kind were value-measured against the amount of tobacco they could fetch in trade.
Today, tobacco is considered an evil weed and the culture is trying to price it out of existence by taxing it off the scales. The poor people who smoke tobacco are paying for their wicked ways in hard cash. But the nation may never have gotten very far off the ground without the help of our first profitable cash crop, tobacco. So the next time you yell at someone for smoking at the next table, remember, they are just being patriotic.
The currency value of tobacco in most of the colonies was roughly 3 cents
a pound in the mid 1700's, with variations according to place and conditions. Sometimes it was on sale at penny a pound, sometimes it was spiked at 6 cents a pound. Today, a pack of 20 smokes goes for more than seven dollars. Fortunately, I had to go to the store to look that up.
I would love to grow some tobacco someday if I can ever get out of the city. I'd like to understand it better and in that small way understand early American history a little better. Then I'd burn the first and only harvested crop.
INDIAN WARS
PEQUOT WAR 1634-1638
In 1634 the Pequots were an important and powerful Southern New England Indian tribe. In 1639 they were extinct. They'd been Pe-squashed
The Pequots were a truculent bunch, but they had only so much size and strength. The Pequots would have been hard-pressed to defeat Massachusetts Bay or Plymouth Colony, in a one on one war. The Pequots would have been hard pressed to defeat the Mohegans or the Narragansett Indians one on one.
In 1643 the Pequots had to take on all four of these opponents combined. The whites united two colonies, and picked up two Indian allies who didn't like the warlike Pequots anymore than the Euros did.
The four against one war ended in a tragic victory for the Europeans and their allies. A force of over 1,000 heavily armed Allies surrounded 150 Pequot warriors in a stockade near today's Mystic Connecticut. There were at least 300 old men, women and children in there too. The English and the Gansetts set fire to the stockade and killed anyone who tired to escape the flames. It was one of the worst massacres in all of American history. The whites and the Mohegans hunted down dozens more Pequots over the next weeks and slayed them when they caught them. It was genocide on the Pequot race, but with Indian killing Indian in the mix.
By the Treaty of Hartford, signed on September 21, 1638, the few remaining Pequots were allowed to live, but only if they were sold into slavery. They sailed off to the West Indies for a miserable life. The Pequots disappeared as a cultural and political entity until a recent revival gave them life. Now they own a casino in Connecticut.
KING PHILLIP'S WAR
In the mid 1600's the Indians organized a war against the whites. Of course, none of the new history schoolbooks would ever write it that way.
King Phillip, the grand wizard of the Pequots led this war against the colonists. His slogan, carved ominously into trees all over southern New England was,
“WHITEY GOT TA GO!”
These angry New England Reds sacked 12 different white towns and killed all the people.
Deerfield Mass got Nankinged.
But the whites counter-attacked and won the war. The Pequots and their Narragansett allies lost. The head of King Phillip was kept on display in Plymouth Center for 20 years.
BACON'S REBELLION 1676
The spirit of 76 was as rebellious in 1676 as it was in 1776. In 1676 a terrible rebellion of frontiersmen broke out in Virginia against Governor Berkeley.
It seemed that Berkeley was being a little too kind to the Indians. The Reds were on the frontier killing settlers and here was Berkeley kissing their feathers every time they ruffled his. Instead of organizing retaliatory vigilante expeditions across the frontier, Berk was doing his Neville Chamberlain impression.
The leader of the anti-Berkeley rebellion was Nathaniel Bacon. He gathered 1,000 angry men and three women and marched on Jamestown. These rebs showed their displeasure by burning their colonial capital town to the ground and forcing the Governor to flee to a ship in off shore.
Bacon's rebels then marched across the land to Indian country where they massacred about 50 Indians, many of whom were from tribes that had done nothing wrong. The Doeg Indians, who had started all the mess by attacking innocent white settlers, paid the fewest casualties.
After killing many innocent Indians the rebels lost their momentum because of the success of their mission. They had chastised the Indians, and chastised their own for not backing them. Nat Bacon died of dysentery a month after burning Jamestown. Governor Berkeley chased some of the rebels down and hanged 21 of them near the ruins of his home.
Bacon's Rebellion was a sorry stain on the story of early America.
DOMINION OF NEW ENGLAND
Massachusetts was getting a little too democratic for the King's taste, so the Stewart King James revoked the charter of Massachusetts and placed it under tough royal rule. KJ then added New Hampshire and Maine and even New Jersey to a new entity he called “The Dominion of New England.” James appointed a first class jerk named Governor Andrews to rule the DOE.
THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION CHANGES THE PICTURE IN AMERICA
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposed the Catholic King of England, James II. Protestants William and Mary took over.
There had been some Protestant protest in England at the rule of a Pope-lover King. The English tolerated James II mostly because he clearly was planning on passing the royal torch to his eldest daughter Beatrice who was a Protestant member of the Church of England. She tolerated her Catholic Dad for a vision of her own rule in the future.
But then James announced that he was going to give the throne to his son Jimmy Stewart. Jim Jr. was, unlike his sister, also a Catholic. That was the signal for a revolution. The English Protestants rose up in anger and forced James II down from the throne.
The English Protestants took advantage of the temporary weakness and vulnerability of the throne and passed laws to protect themselves from royal totalitarianism in the future. In was in the middle of the Glorious Revolution that the English Bill of Rights was drafted and put into law. In all matters the Crown was still supreme, but the principle had been established that the King could be removed if he became too autocratic and unresponsive to the will of the nation.
All of this affected the American colonies a lot. There were several major upheavals in England during the Colonial period, and with the distance, and the incredible slowness of communication between England and America, these upheavals created lot of confused political situations in America. A Catholic governor could rule in Maryland for four months, having no idea he had already been deposed. An Colonial official on the road in London could be petitioning for something in England having no idea that a Philly mob had long ago burned his house down and put someone else in his place. A change in England meant a change in America but in the months before the change was implemented in America, a lot could go down. A second change in England could mean that the crew sailing to America to change things was already deposed before they hit the docks to enacting new laws that had already been rescinded.
Two important examples of such political confusion were the Dominion of New England and the rule of the Catholics in Maryland.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Intellectual trends in Europe carried over into the New World and influenced history concretely and culturally. Religion was facing challenges in Europe. The Pilgrims came to America partly to escape the religious tolerance of Europe! It's a mixed messages version of history, but its true. The Pilgrims brought religion to America, but religion in general was reeling from logic attacks by the new intellectuals of Europe.
Books:
Sir Isaac Newton wrote two romance novels that earned him enough income to work on his more important stuff. In 1687 he finally published a brilliant book, Principia Mathematica which indirectly was a swipe at religion. He said that the world was a logical place that followed scientific laws. Most organized religion said something else. The second time I read this book, I realized that I .... wait a minute, I never read this book.
Nor have I read John Locke, who is probably the most influential intellectual of his time. Locke's most famous book is was Treatises on Civil Government. The leaders of the American Revolution had all read Locke. (Locke's first book was called “The Encyclopedia of Reality.” But it was 4,232 pages long and no one would publish it.)
SUGAR ACT OF 1733
The Molasses Act of 1733 taxed sweets in the Colonies. That's asking for trouble and trouble it was.
CARTEGENA – HAVANNA – 1741
The Colonials and the mother country tried a few joint military offensives against Spain and France. One in 1711 was a disaster. A storm destroyed the British fleet near the entrance to the St. Lawrence Seaway.
An even more disastrous effort came in 1741 when 5,700 British troops plus a Colonial militia force of 3,500 men and one woman attacked the bastions of Havanna and Cartagena. Between military defeat and yellow fever only 475 Americans made it home alive. Those numbers make Bunker Hill look like a skirmish.
The principle of trained professional British fighting men combining with semi-pro American colonial militia was exiting on paper but didn't seem to be working out in practice.
LOUISBOURG ON CAPE BRETON FALLS TO MASS 1745
The arch-enemy of the English colonies were the Canadians. The northern Huns were not only Catholics they were French too. England and France hated each other in Europe and that enmity extended to their respective colonial empires. The French and their Indian allies had massacred many English settlers in northern English colonial country, notably a brutal My Lai style attack on Deerfield Mass.
The colonies undertook several offensive expeditions against Canada, on the theory that the best defense was a major offense.
In 1745 executed one of the most successful military campaigns of all time composed entirely of militia. It was against the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Canada.
Massachusetts led and organized the campaign with 3,100 non-professional troops augmented by another thousand militia men from Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Thy sailed out of Boston and conquered what was supposed to be an impregnable fortress. This victory gave the militia and the Colonies a big psychological lift. The troops felt that they were now bad news dudes that could hold their own against full time pro fighters. They also felt that they had significantly reduced the threat from Canada and had changed the strategic situation on the continent, and with no help from mother England.
They were bitterly angry when England soon gave Louisbourg back to France as part of a political bargain.
More than 400 New England men had died taking Louisbourg. Most of them had died from cold or disease, but dead was dead and this was a shocker to the Mass Conn and NH people who had sacrificed too many loved ones for what they thought was a sincere and noble cause against Popery and an avowed enemy.
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
In the French and Indian War, England expelled France from the new continent, leaving them a only few islands.
The war started when the French Canadians noticed that the English settlers were moving close to the Ohio River Valley. They had to block the English in behind the Appalachians so they sent a military expedition to build a fort at the place where the city of Pittsburgh stands today.
The British in turn felt that this fort was a hostile act and a threat to their need to break out of the Appalachian box. The Colonials and the British sent a force to take this fort down from French control. The attack force was commanded by a 22 year old man who was about six foot four and 220, a fella by the name of George Washington. He attacked the fort and the fort held. Washington retreated back to Virginia. When Washington's troops attacked the French fort it set off a chain of events that set off a war between France, Spain and England that included battles in Europe, America and India.. The future first president of the United States personally started a world war.
The Indians took sides in the war and got their name on the title.
Both sides knew that they key to victory or defeat was whether the British could seize the northern waterways from France. The French empire stretched all the way into the Mississippi valley and down to New Orleans, but these rivers ran one way, and there was no Robert Fulton around. If the French lost access to the St Lawrence waterways, the French empire would be cut off and would have to be abandoned.
The British attacked in Quebec in the decisive engagement of the war. Both leading generals were killed in action, but the British won the day.
WAR SETTLEMENT
France lost. The Colonies and the mother country felt close. When the Peace of Paris settled the Seven Years War, the British Empire was at high tide. It would have been looney to suggest at the time 1763 that 20 years later England would lose back more than one third of the empire, and lose it to the very same people that had helped them win it, their own Colonial militia!
Back in England, politicians were complaining about how little the Colonials helped win the war. Back in the Colonies the Americans complained that they had done so very much to win the war and England was clearly ungrateful. It was two different takes on the same event.
Both had reasons for their selfish judgment. On the one hand, Colonial militia had performed remarkably during the F&I war, especially in the northern campaign in Canada. Remarkable as in remarkably poor. They were undisciplined, untrained, disrespectful, sloppy, and often ran when the going got hot. British generals wrote back vicious letters describing militia “help” in taking Quebec, Frontenac, and Fort Niagara. Many of them just deserted, disappearing to return to their farms, especially in the summer and fall.
But to the Colonists, that was seeing the glass as half empty. Never mind the ones that ran away or deserted of fought poorly. Without the militia England would have lost the French and Indian War, pure and simple.
WEST INDIES BENEFITS
The anger of the American colonists was directed directly at England, but in effect it was really against the plantation owners of the West Indies. These British rich were getting priority at the expense of the Continentals. Continental colonists resented Crown measures designed to help the British West Indies. The Colonials were getting in the way of the profits of the West Indies so the home island put commercial restrictions on the Colonials.
The mainland was a useless wasteland compared to the West Indies. The colonies of the mainland were an afterthought. They were cold and unexplored and contained a lot of trouble with Indians, while the West Indies had none of these issues and it was nice and warm.
TRADING WITH THE ENEMY
The continental colonists were offending the Queen in the 1700's because they were trading with her enemies in the West Indies. Merchants in Boston and Charleston were making as much money from trade with the French and Spanish West Indies as they were from the British.
The Colonials didn't talk about this when they made their protests to England of course.
THE STAMP ACT 1765
The pivotal event in the coming of the American Revolution was the Kenneth Stamp Act. Before 1765 the Colonists were loyal to the European mother country. After 1765 the Stamp Act put a new stamp on the feelings of the times, a feeling that the Americans were no longer colonists, but Imperial subjects of imperialism.
The Stamp Act is the dividing line between Colonial History and American Revolutionary history, at least in my book.
COLONIAL EDICATION
The New England Colonies were exceptionally literate. The rest of the Colonies, not bad. New America was, on average, more educated than old Europe, but old Europe had all the great learning institutions and libraries.
Most well off colonial teen-agers were sent off to Europe to study.
Harvard College was founded in 1650, although that exact date seems to vary from book to book to website. The founder was named Jack Harvard. Bunker Hill Jr. College was founded in 1654.
The first printing press was in Cambridge Massachusetts, and the first American newspaper was The Boston News Letter.
ART ARCHETECTURE, AND POETRY IN THE COLONIAL ERA
American authors moan apologetically because Colonial America produced so little in the field of creative art. There were no original American novels until one was published after the Revolution. There were no original American plays, little or nothing in the way of original American painting or architecture, and no original American poetry worthy of a publisher.
There was plenty of art in Colonial America, but it was all imported, and to some, that apparently is more embarrassing than if it had been a completely artless society
This stuff bores me to tears and I could care less. It doesn’t shame me one bit that my county had no novels when Europe was cranking them out like pottery.
The only thing I find fascinating is the Catholic religion’s relation to art, and how that connects with the lack of original art in Colonial America.
Most readers are aware that the Puritan Colonial society looked down on theater and anything that smacked of entertainment, including all forms of art. Art was lustful per se, and a waste of a good Puritan’s time, time that should be always be dedicated to God and not the pleasure of man.
So why was art cranking up a fire of work in Europe while America was not even accepting it as a concept?
Because of the Catholic Church, that’s why. By tying in art and religion, the Catholic Church made art not only acceptable, but a positive good thing. The Catholics felt that statues and painting and fancy buildings could be used as vessels through which people connected better to God. The Protestants were against the Catholics primarily over this very issue. The great schism of Marty Luther and his Protest movement was all about Catholic base idolatry and excessive ornamentation. Now if you were a painter in, say, Catholic Spain, and you pained a picture of a pretty woman getting ready for a bath, you might be excommunicated tomorrow, or worse. But if you put the same amount of work into a painting of the Virgin Mary praying to Heaven, you would get paid and exalted. You made it. You were a success in show business. Show business was the exclusive privilege of the Catholic Church. The Catholics were in the business of theater. Every Catholics Mass was a stage play, let’s face it.
The English Colonies were overwhelmingly Protestant. They didn’t believe in ornamentation for any reason. To the Prots, the Catholics were doubly offensive because they they were committing an abomination against God in God’s name. Both Catholic and Protestant were in agreement that selfish theater was evil. The Catholics just happened to think that a play or a statue dedicated to God was a blessed exception to the principle that a God-loving person had no business in show business. The Catholics co-opted show business for their own ends, instead of simply condemning it. Its as if the Church condemned the new Casino until they found out they could run a slot parlor with all the proceeds going to God. Now the slots aren’t so evil anymore.
That is one of the main reasons that Colonial America took forever to get the art scene off the ground. The predominant Protestant religious strain cut off the only avenue where a good sculptor or painter could find a paid gig, the idolatrous Catholic Church. After the Revolution the Catholic influence became more powerful, but by then the whole world has begun to liberal up when it came to art, so the slow rise of Catholic power had little to do with the later rise of art in America. But Catholicism had much to do with Artie’s initial poor showing in Colonial times.
BEN FRANKLIN WAS A SPY
One of the heroes of early American history is Benjamin Franklin. He was born in Boston in 1704. Franklin spent many years in Philly, and was a jerk of all trades.
Just to liven up the ending, you might as well know that I don't like Ben Franklin. His autobiography was an obnoxious read a long time ago. He lived in London and loved the mother country. He was always working towards reconciliation, never revolution. Once Revolution came he jumped to the front of the parade of revolutionaries.
SOURCES
The American Experience, by Madgic, Seaberg, Stopsky, and Winks – c) 1971 Addison-Wesley Publishing
Lots of maps and pictures and lively text for a high school freshman at best. My kind of book.
The American Pageant, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University
This is one of the best general histories of the United States ever written, maybe the best. Bailey is so good that Harvard has revised and continued this book long after his death.
The Devil in Massachusetts, by Marion L. Starkey – c) 1949
This is one of two books I read on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The looney story of religious fascism is fascinating, but ye olden quotations always make the read a little tiring. I was so glad when I finished them and moved on.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis – c) 1936 Henry Holt
His introductory chapter is titled, America, The Stakes of European Diplomacy 1492-1775, which is instructive in itself, even if you don't read a sentence.
The Enduring Vision, A History of the American People - by seven college history professors - Paul E. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, Thomas L. Purvis, Harvard Sitkoff, and Nancy Woloch – c) 1990.
This is a beautiful hardcover general history. A wonderful book.
The First Frontier, Life in Colonial America, by John C. Miller – c) 1966
I'm a fan of Johnny Miller but FFLCA is boring compared to some of his other books. It has some lively pages, but too many snoozers. Long quotations in ye olden language is the enemy of fun.
A History of the American People, by Graebner, Fite, and White – c) 1970 –
Very liberal 1970 style version of the America story for college freshmen. It's a 30 pound book. This book is 1,403 pages long. I think its the most pages of any book in my house. Too many pages are wasted on hip artsy illustrations of limited educational value. Someone got paid well to stink up the book with 90 pages of art that only served its time, and even then not well.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Samuel P McCutchen, New York University – c) 1954 MacMillan
High School Textbook from 1954. I think the title says it all about the tone inside. This was published at the height of the McCarthy witch-hunt.
I didn't like what they wrote about Balboa.
The Glorious Cause, by Middlekauff
Maybe the best history of the Revolutionary era. I need a new copy. The binding on my used copy broke up so badly I can't bring myself to study it.
The Growth of the American Republic, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Harvard,) and Henry Steele Commager (Columbia.) c) 1950 –
The first edition was published in 1930. This is one of the standard general histories of the United States by two heavyweight historians. GAR is very readable, but often quite snobby. Just because Morison is an accomplished naval historian doesn't mean he has to pedantically toss 2,110 naval terms into the general history work that no one but a sailor understands. I read both volumes slowly cover to cover twice.
A History of the American People, by Graebner, Fite and White – c) 1970
Easy going.
History of a Free People, by Hank W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter Academy, and Samuel P. McCutchen, NYU – c) 1954 MacMillan
Stern.
I
A History of the Modern World, by R.R. Palmer of Princeton, and Joel Colton of Duke.
c) 1956 - Knopf
Classic college textbook for a good overview. It’s Eurocentrist while claiming to be a world history. You couldn’t get away with this today.
A New American History, by W. E. Woodward – c) 1938 –
Good writer, bad person. Very bad person. But you have to get to the Civil War era before the bad person part really dawns on you. W.E. Woodward is a vicious racist, and was a very popular pop historian in his time.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
When I picked this up used for a couple of bucks in 1995 I wondered if I would ever find the time to read more than a fraction of its 1,122 pages. Turns out I read the whole thing meticulously. In the end I like Morison less but I know more. This is a monumental work, and a beautiful physical book.
OHAP is very opinionated and irritating at times, but the scholasticism is so fine that I'd reluctantly have to say that if you read only one older general history of the United States, this one is as good as any, especially on the Colonial era.
Out of Many , A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – Prentice Hall
A really fine textbook with great maps and god writing. But I don’t like the slanted house they built here. It is not fair to the Republican Party and I am not even a registered Republican (any more.) Obviously that isn’t an issue in this early chapter, but they certainly manage to squeeze some leftism in here even at this stage n the story. The Indians are all angels and the whites are for the most part devils.
A Short History of American Democracy, by John D. Hicks University of California at Berkeley – c) 1943 Riverside Press
Johnny Hicks is one of the best historians of all time, and this is one of my favorite all time books. I don't finish many 879 page history books (I always plan to finish thousands.) SHAD is one of those books where you dread the finish line instead of seeing it as a goal.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia University - c) 1966 Harper & Row
My second edition was copyright 1974 but the tone is so clearly 1966, that it's almost dishonest to list this under the 1966 marker.
Garrity is unpleasant. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the book to some extent, and I'm 90% finished with it, but Garrity is unpleasant.
The United States to 1965, by Michael Kraus – c) 1959 University of Michigan Press
This is a very enjoyable general history by a solid writer.
Of the society of the 1600's he writes,
“A gentleman was permitted sartorial splendor forbidden to the goodman; the latter could dress with more elegance than the laborer. Punishments were meted out to those who dressed above their station.”
Today, those laws are still enforced informally by the power of social pressures. It is a social law. If 1600 law still ruled if a wino stepped on a Manhattan subway wearing a quality suit, the cops could arrest him not for public drunkenness, vagrancy or disorderly conduct, but for wearing the suit. Even if he had the receipt.
These U-Mich hardcover books are keepers. No wonder U-Mich was recently named one of the top ten academic universities in the USA (right below Fisher Jr. College in Brookline)
The United States of America: A History, by Henry Bamford Parkes – c) 1967
Bam Bam Parkes of New York City is one of my favorite general US historians. He was born in England in 1904 and moved to America in 1927. HPB writes history like he was born in the USA, and he writes it well.
I like the title. None of this “Enduring Vision” or “Mosaic in the Making” stuff. Clarity starts with the title and I hate browsing books in the store or library where the title doesn't convey total clarity.
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia University, William Miller, co-author of the Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
Like Liz Taylor in her prime, this is a very strong piece of work.
The United States, From Colony to World Power, by Chitwood, Owsley, and Nixon –
General history textbook by three big-name historians. I think they are three egghead racist 'redneck who thinks-he's a liberal' historians.
Voices of a People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove - c) 2004
Seven Stories Press
I like this book much better than Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.
The War of American Independence, by Don Higgenbotham - c) 1971 –
The opening chapter covers events in the decades before the Stamp Act. DH is a real snob, but his work is so excellent for content, it has to be read. How a man who drops four needless big words every page can call himself Don instead of Donald is beyond me.
Thanks for 7 pages of tiny-font notes at the end of every 12 page chapter. That's a real treat.
The Wars of America, by Robert Leckie – This guy loves war. During WWII Leckie was a Marine in the Pacific. Robert isn't pacific at all. WWII. Includes an opening chapter on the Colonial Wars before the Revolution.
I read some of his Leckie's books when I was about 14 years old. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
OTHER SOURCES
Spencer
I “switched” a joke from my friend Dan Spencer, who has written three novels. “Switch” is a stand up comedy term for stealing a joke, but restructuring it into a different context so that you can get away with it. I won't tell you which joke, ever.
INTERNET
Wikipedia
I have gone out of my way, especially in this opening brief chapter, to stick with old fashioned paper and book sources. However, it is only fair to say that I peek in on Wikipedia's version of about half the subjects.
Wikipedia is the mass society self-written encyclopedia that is near the top of every internet search list on every subject. For history, it is the mass-brain amateur historian. I try not to use any information that only seems to exist on Wikipedia, but I let it lead me to other subjects to cross-reference in my book library. I have seen Wikipedia be laughably wrong on some things, so I try to be careful with it.
Someone warned me that editors hate to see Wikipedia cited as a source.
I use it.
I admit it.
I use it a lot.
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