S1E3: British North America: Slavery, Liberty & Rebellion in the 17th Century | American Yawp Chapter 3 Explained

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Hello y'all.

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It's me.

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It's me.

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It's Dr.

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G, and welcome back to

Star-Spangled Studies.

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Last time we watched as Spain's

rivals, the French, the Dutch,

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and finally the English.

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Jump into the race for

colonies in the Americas.

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We saw how their different goals created

radically different colonial societies.

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The French built a vast trading

empire based on mostly partnership.

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With Native Americans in what was been

termed the middle ground, the Dutch

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created a bustling tolerant commercial

hub in New Amsterdam, and the English

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planted two very different colonial seeds.

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A profit, hungry, chaotic settlement

in Jamestown, as well as a rigid

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religious city on a hill in New England.

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But these were just the beginnings.

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The 17th century was an era

of violent, chaotic growth on

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both sides of the Atlantic.

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The English colonies were

not isolated outposts.

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They were deeply entangled in these

larger Atlantic world issues, and they

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were rocked by turmoil in both the mother

country as well as those within their

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own internal conflicts in the Americas.

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This was a century when the vague labor

arrangements of the early colonies.

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Hardened into the brutal race-based

chattel slavery that would define

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America for centuries to come.

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It was a century of riot, rebellion

and revolt as colonists fought with

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Native Americans with their governors.

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I.

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And with each other.

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So today we're diving into that

chaotic century and we're going to ask

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simple questions with complex answers.

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How did the English colonies mature

from desperate footholds into

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complex and violent societies?

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How did two of the most consequential

forces in US history, race-based

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slavery and a fierce attachment

to liberty, develop side by side?

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This is the story of

British North America.

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I.

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How it was forged in that fire.

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So let's go.

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Do you understand the

story of the United States?

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We have to understand the

story of United States slavery.

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But it didn't arrive fully formed.

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Slavery wasn't the same

throughout its entire history.

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In the early 17th century, the line

between an indentured servant and an

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enslaved person could often be blurry.

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They were both unfree

laborers, both could be bought.

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Sold.

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But over the course of the 16 hundreds

and especially after: 1660

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leaders began to deliberately create

a new legal and social category.

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One that was permanent, one that was

hereditary, and one that was based

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on one thing and one thing only race.

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The demand for labor, especially for

the profitable tobacco and later rice

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and indigo plantations of the South

was insatiable when colonists enslaved

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thousands of Native Americans, often

as a direct result of wars like the

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Pequot War in Kings Phillips War, which

we'll get into the plantation economy.

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Had not survived, and soon it

had to turn to a different labor

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source, and this turned out to

be the transatlantic slave trade.

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The journey across the Atlantic,

the middle passage, was a horror

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of unimaginable proportions.

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We are fortunate in the grim sense to

have the words of those who survived

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it so we could fully understand it and

hear it in all its grotesque horror.

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Laa Ano, who is kidnapped from his

home in West Africa as a boy, published

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his narrative of this capture in 1789.

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His first sight of a slave ship captures

the terror of that moment, quote.

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The first object, which saluted my eyes

when I arrived on the coast was the sea.

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And a slave ship, which was then riding

at anchor and waiting for its cargo.

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These filled me with astonishment,

which was soon converted into terror.

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When I was carried on board, I was

immediately handled and tossed up to

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see if I were sound by some of the crew.

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And I was now persuaded that I had

gotten into a world of bad spirits

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and they were going to kill me.

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The conditions were even worse

when you went below deck.

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Alexander Falcon Bridge, a

surgeon who worked on slave

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ships, described the scene there.

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The men Negroes on being brought

aboard the ship were immediately

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fastened together two by two

by handcuffs on their wrists.

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By irons riveted on their legs.

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They are then sent down between the

decks and placed in an apartment

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partitioned off for that purpose.

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The deck that is the floor of their

rooms was so covered with the blood

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and mucus, which had proceeded from

them in consequence of the flux

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that it resembled a slaughterhouse

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between 1526 and 1867.

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An estimated 12.5

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million Africans were forced

onto ships like these.

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Roughly 10.7

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million survived while the vast

majority were taken to Brazil and

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to the islands of the Caribbean.

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Roughly 450,000 landed in British

North America with Charleston,

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South Carolina becoming the leading

entry point on the mainland.

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As the number of enslaved Africans

grew, colonial leaders, particularly

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in Virginia, faced a problem.

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How could they justify a system

of permanent hereditary bondage

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in a society that was supposedly

built on English liberties?

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Their solution was to invent a new logic.

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The logic of race.

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Write it into law.

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The 1660s then wass a critical

turning point in this evolution.

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Before 1660, an enslaved person

who converted to Christianity might

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be able to sue for their freedom.

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But in 1667, the Virginia Assembly slammed

the door on that loophole, passing a law

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that declared, quote, the conferring of

baptism doth not alter the condition.

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Of the person as to his

bondage or freedom end quote.

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Perhaps the most significant and

devastating legal innovation came

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in 1662 in English common law.

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A child status followed that of the

father, but this created a problem

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for slave holders who fathered

children with their enslaved women.

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Would these children be free?

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The Virginia Assembly provided a chilling

answer quote, whereas some doubts

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have arisen whether children got by.

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An English man upon a Negro woman

should be slave or free, be it therefore

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enacted and declared by this present

grand assembly that all children

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born in this country shall be held

bond or free only according to the

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condition of the mother end quote.

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This act was revolutionary.

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It overturned centuries of English

precedent and made slavery A

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hereditary condition passed down

through the maternal line, no longer

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taking the status of one's father.

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It also then legally incentivized the

rape of enslaved women by their masters as

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their children would become more property,

more capital in their households.

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Over the next few decades, a web of

laws was spun to create what historian

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Ira Berlin calls a slave society.

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And this is important because

the United States after the: 1660

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turns into a slave society rather

than just a society with slaves.

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In 1643, law made African women typable

or taxable, associating their labor with

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hard agricultural work and distinguishing

them from white women who were ideally

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confined to the domestic sphere.

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1669 law declared that if a slave died

while resisting his master, the master

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could not be charged with a felony.

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By 1705, Virginia Law explicitly

stated that all negro mulatto and

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Indian slaves shall be held, taken,

and ajudicated to be real estate.

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End quote.

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Essentially, they were now by 1705.

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Property.

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This is a crucial point for

us as students of history.

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Race, as we understand it

is not a biological reality.

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As this sh has shown, and I've

only shown you a few of the

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laws, there were many more.

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It was a social idea, law after

law, continuing to codify.

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What was a slave and what was not?

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What was considered black and

what was considered white.

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And here in these Colonial court

records, we can watch it being

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constructed brick by brick as one source.

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Notes quote, race was never

just a matter of how you look.

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It was about how people assign meaning.

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To how you look in 17th century

Virginia, the planter class assigned

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a devastating meaning to stem color,

to justify exploitation, and create

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a permanent enslaved labor force.

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While the colonies were forging

these new brutal social orders,

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the mother country descended into

chaos for much of the 16 hundreds.

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England was racked by intense

political and religious conflict.

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Starting in the 1640s, a bloody civil war

erupted between the forces of Parliament

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and King Charles, the first, who was seen

by many radical Protestants or Puritans as

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being far too sympathetic to Catholicism.

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The colonies reacted in different

ways, Virginia and Maryland, with

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their Anglican planter elites.

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Tended to sympathize with the crown,

the fiercely Puritan Massachusetts

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Bay, on the other hand, favored the

parliament, but for the most part,

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the colonies tried to remain neutral,

hoping to avoid being drawn into the

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conflict on the other side of the ocean.

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That all changed in 1649 when

Parliament did the unthinkable.

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They executed the King England

was declared a republic a

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commonwealth under the rule of the

Puritan General Oliver Cromwell.

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Suddenly the colonies could no

longer stay on the sidelines.

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Parliament arguing that the colonies

were quote, planted at the cost and

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settled by the English nation end quote,

demanded their allegiance to a force.

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Its will it passed the

Navigation Act of: 1651

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This powerful piece of legislation

mandated that all goods shipped

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to and from the colonies must be

transported on English ships and

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that valuable enumerated, as they

called them, goods like tobacco

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and sugar, could only be shipped to

England or to another English colony.

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This was a direct shot at the

economies of the Dutch particularly.

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England's chief commercial rival,

and it was the first major step in a

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long process of tightening imperial

control over the colonial economies.

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Now the monarchy was restored in 1660

with King Charles ii, but the turmoil

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was far from over Charles II and his

brother, who would later succeed him.

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James II continued to tighten

the screws on the colonies.

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They passed more navigation

acts and created new bodies.

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Like the Lords of trade and plantations

to oversee colonial affairs.

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James II was an open and devout Catholic,

and particularly feared by his Protestant

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subjects in both England and the Americas.

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He took the Jurassic step of

consolidating the Northern Colonies,

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Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode

Island, New Hampshire, New York, and

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New Jersey into a single mega colony.

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Called the Dominion of New England.

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He abolished their local assemblies and

placed them under the direct control

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of Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros to

the colonists who had enjoyed a century

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of so of significant self-government.

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This was an act of tyranny.

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And then in 1688 came the news that

sent shock waves across the Atlantic.

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A group of English nobles, terrified of

a permanent Catholic dynasty, invited

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the Dutch Prince William of Orange, who

married James's Protestant daughter Mary,

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to invade England and seize the throne.

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This was known as the glorious revolution.

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It was a bloodless coup in England,

but in America it lit a fuse.

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When the news of the

revolution reached Boston.

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In April of 1689, the colonists rose up.

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They arrested Governor Andros and

other officials and triumphantly,

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overthrew the dominion of New England.

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Similar rebellions erupted

in New York and Maryland.

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The colonists declared their allegiance

to William and Mary framing their

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actions, not as a rebellion against

England, but as a defense of their

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fundamental rights as Englishmen against

the absolutism of the deposed king.

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The glorious revolution had a

profound impact across the Atlantic.

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It destroyed the dominion, restored

the individual colonial governments,

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and reinforced a powerful idea

in the minds of the colonists.

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Specifically that they were part

of a great Protestant Empire of

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Liberty, and that they had the

right to resist a government that

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infringed upon their freedoms.

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It was a lesson they would not forget.

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The turmoil in Britain didn't

stop the Colonial project.

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It kept on rolling.

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In fact, the restoration of the monarchy

in: 1660

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King Charles ii eager to reward his

supporters and to pay off his debts.

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Granted huge tracks of

American land to lo loyal.

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Proprietors.

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This led to the founding of a new

set of colonies, the Carolinas,

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New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and

the English takeover of New York.

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The charter for Carolina, which

originally stretched from Virginia to

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Florida, was granted to eight powerful

noblemen the Lord's proprietors.

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Their vision for the colony was

something out of the Middle Ages.

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With the help of philosopher John

Locke, they drafted the fundamental

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Constitutions of Carolina, a bizarrely

complex document that tried to establish a

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feudal society complete with a hereditary

nobility of land, graves and CZs.

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Our sovereign Lord the king having

out of his royal grace and bounty

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granted onto us, the province of

Carolina, for the better settlement

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of the government of the said place.

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We, the said lords and proprietors

have agreed to this following form of

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government to be perpetually established

amongst us, onto which we will oblige

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ourselves, our heirs and successors.

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In the most binding ways that we can

be devised and quote, this futile

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dream, of course, never came to pass.

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The reality of Carolina was shaped by

something much more practical and brutal.

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Many of its early settlers came from the

overcrowded English sugar plantation.

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In Barbados, and they brought the

Barbadian model of colonization with them.

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This meant large scale plantation

agriculture, empowered by enslaved black

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labor from Africa to attract settlers.

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The proprietors offered alluring

incentives, including large land

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grants, 150 acres per family member,

a grant that explicitly included.

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Enslaved people.

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This created a society dominated

by a wealthy planter class who grew

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rich off the cultivation of rice

and indigo worked by a massive and

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growing enslaved African population.

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In stark contrast to the Carolinas

stood Pennsylvania, the Holy

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Experiment of William Penn.

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Penn was a member of the Society of

Friends, better known as the Quakers,

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a radical Protestant sect that believed

in passivism in social equality

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and in inner light in every person.

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He received a massive land grant

from King Charles II to settle a

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debt the king owed to his father.

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Penn envisioned his colony.

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As a haven for those facing

religious persecution.

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His 1701 Charter of Liberties

established a remarkable degree

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of religious freedom for the time.

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In his own words, quote, almighty,

God being the only Lord of conscious,

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father of light and spirits, and

the author as well as object of all

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divine knowledge, faith, and worship.

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Who only does enlighten the

minds and persuade and convince

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the understandings of people?

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I hereby I do hereby grant and declare

that no person or persons inhabiting this

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province or territories who shall confess

and acknowledge one almighty God shall

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be, in any case, molested or prejudiced

because of his or their conscientious

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persuasion or practice end quote.

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Penn actively recruited settlers

from all over Europe and Pennsylvania

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quickly became one of the most

diverse and prosperous colonies.

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He also initially sought peaceful

relations with the local Lenny Le

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Indians, famously acquiring land

through purchases rather than conquest.

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However, this holy experiment was

not without its contradictions.

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Slavery existed in Pennsylvania and it

was a deep source of unease for many

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Passivist Quakers, who in 1688 issued a

the first formal protest against slavery

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as an institution in American history.

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And as the colony grew, the pressure for

land would lead Penn's own sons to abandon

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his principles in coercive and fraudulent

deals like the infamous walking purchase

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of 1737, as discussed in your textbook.

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The 17th century was also an

age of staggering violence.

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The English colonies were built on

a precarious foundation, and the

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deep tension simmering within them

frequently erupted into open warfare.

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King Phillips war was the fight to the

death in New England in: 1675

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the colony exploded, not literally.

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Figuratively speaking, the conflict.

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King's Philip War was one of the deadliest

wars per capita in American history.

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It was triggered by the relentless

pressure of English expansion

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into Native American lands.

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The Wampanoag leader MetCom, whom

the English called King Philip,

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led a coalition of Native American

nations into a desperate last ditch

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effort to drive the English out.

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The war was horrifically

brutal on both sides.

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Meta's forces attacked more than

half of New England's 90 towns.

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The English in turn responding with

overwhelming force, culminating in events

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like The Great Swamp Fight where they

attacked a massive Narragansett fort

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and killed nearly a thousand people.

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Most of them women and children.

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The war ultimately broke the

back of Native American resistant

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in Southern New England.

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Thousands of Native Americans were

killed, and many of the survivor,

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including Meta's own wife and son, were

sold into slavery in the West Indies.

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The war left a deep and lasting legacy

of racial hatred that would poison

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relations for generations to come.

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As New England burned Virginia was

about to ignite into its own civil war.

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This was Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.

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A complex and confusing conflict.

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This chaotic mix of a frontier

war against Native Americans and

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a civil war between colonists.

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Collided on one side was the

governor, sir William Barkley.

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It's spelled Berkeley, but whatever.

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He represented the interests of the

wealthy, the established tobacco

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planters of the Tidewater region.

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On the other was a man named Nathaniel

Bacon, a charismatic and ambitious

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young planter who became the leader of a

frustrated coalition of landless frontier

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settlers, as well as indentured servants.

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Even enslaved Africans bacon and his

followers, this motley crew were furious

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at Barclay's refusal to authorize a

full scale war to exterminate all Native

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Americans on the frontier whom they

blame for a series of raids, as well

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as a lack of land for bacon and others.

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Bacon's forces decided to defy

the government and they attacked

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both hostile and allied Native

American nations indiscriminately.

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They then turned their

ire to the governor.

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: 00:22:42

They marched on Jamestown.

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They forced Barkley to flee, and they

burned the colonial capital to the ground.

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The rebellion only collapsed because

bacon suddenly died of disease.

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I.

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But the legacy of the rebellion

is what's truly profound, and it

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brings us back to this initial

question of race that we started.

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Today's episode, historians argue that

Bacon's Rebellion was a pivotal moment

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: 00:23:07

in the hardening of racial slavery.

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: 00:23:10

The planter elite were terrified by the

sight of armed landless white servants.

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: 00:23:17

Fighting alongside armed enslaved black

people to prevent such a cross racial

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: 00:23:22

alliance from ever happening again.

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: 00:23:25

They made a deliberate choice.

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: 00:23:27

They began to pass more laws that gave

new rights and privileges to poor whites,

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: 00:23:33

creating a common white identity defined.

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: 00:23:36

By its opposition to a now even

more oppressed black population,

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: 00:23:41

they accelerated the shift away from

white indentured servitude towards

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: 00:23:45

exclusively a labor force that was

entirely African and entirely enslaved.

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: 00:23:52

In the ashes of Jamestown, a new

social order was born, one built

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: 00:23:57

on a racial bribe that secured the

power of the elite and entrenched

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: 00:24:01

the system of chattel slavery.

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: 00:24:18

While the English colonists were

fighting each other, the Spanish

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: 00:24:21

Empire to the South experienced the

single most successful Native American

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: 00:24:26

uprising in North American history.

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: 00:24:29

In 1680, the Pueblo Peoples of New Mexico

United under a religious leader named Pope

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: 00:24:35

Rose up against their Spanish colonizers.

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: 00:24:38

For decades, the Spanish had brutally

suppressed Pueblo religious practices.

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: 00:24:44

The revolt was a coordinated

and stunning success.

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: 00:24:47

The Pueblo Warriors killed over 400

Spaniards, destroyed every Catholic church

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: 00:24:51

in the region, and drove the Spanish

completely out of New Mexico for 12 years.

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: 00:24:57

The Pueblo Revolt stands as a

powerful testament to indigenous

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: 00:25:00

resistance and resilience.

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: 00:25:02

And finally, no discussion of the

17th century would be complete

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: 00:25:05

without mentioning the Salem witch

trials In: 1692

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: 00:25:10

Village of Salem, Massachusetts

was consumed by a wave of paranoia.

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: 00:25:14

And hysteria that led to the

execution of 20 people for witchcraft.

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: 00:25:19

The trials were fueled by a perfect

storm of anxieties, the trauma of

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: 00:25:24

the recent Indian wars, the political

instability after the glorious

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: 00:25:27

revolution, local rivalries, the

introduction of slavery, and a genuine

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: 00:25:32

belief in the power of the devil.

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: 00:25:34

The accusations began with a group of

young women who claim to be affected

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: 00:25:38

by a West Indian servant named

Tuba, and it quickly spiraled out of

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: 00:25:42

control, a dark and tragic chapter

in the story of a city on a hill.

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: 00:26:01

The 17th century was a

brutal foundational period.

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: 00:26:04

The English colonies

were not born in peace.

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: 00:26:06

They were forged in conflict out

of the desperate need for labor.

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: 00:26:10

Colonial elites constructed a system

of race-based chattel slavery.

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: 00:26:14

A system codified into law and built

on the horrors of the middle passage.

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: 00:26:19

Out of the chaos of the Civil War and

revolution in England, the colonists

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: 00:26:23

developed a fierce attachment to

their liberties as Englishmen in a

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: 00:26:27

deep suspicion of centralized power.

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: 00:26:29

And outta the violent clashes

with Native American nations

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: 00:26:32

and the internal rebellions that

shook the colonies to their core.

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: 00:26:36

A new, more complex and more

divided society began to

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: 00:26:40

emerge by the 17 hundreds.

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: 00:26:43

These were no longer

just tenuous outposts.

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: 00:26:45

They were maturing societies

with unique religious cultures,

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: 00:26:49

with unique economic ties.

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: 00:26:52

And with unique political

traditions, they had survived a

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: 00:26:55

century of desperation and war.

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: 00:26:58

The very forces that shaped them in this

tumultuous century, the institution of

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: 00:27:03

slavery and the ideology of liberty,

were now set on a collision course.

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: 00:27:09

Next time on Star Spangled Studies,

we move into the 18th century.

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: 00:27:13

We'll see how these colonies grow

and change how a wave of religious

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: 00:27:17

revivalism known as the Great Awakening

sweeps through them and how they are

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: 00:27:21

drawn ever deeper into the global

power struggles of the British Empire.

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: 00:27:25

I.

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: 00:27:26

This will forge a new American

identity, but it will also set them

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: 00:27:31

on a different collision course.

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: 00:27:33

This one with the mother country itself,

the road to the revolution is being

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: 00:27:37

paved and you won't wanna miss it.

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: 00:27:40

I'm Dr.

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: 00:27:40

G, and I'll see y'all in the past.