In response to the Intolerable Acts, the First Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. At this stage, Congress does not think of itself as a government, but as a means to counter the bullying of Great Britain. British troops are sent to Bosto...
Puritan relations with Indians sour quickly. In the Pequot War of 1637, Puritans seem determined to wipe the tribe from the face of the earth. Those Indians who are not killed are sent to the Caribbean in exchange for slaves. In the 1640s and 1650s ...
At the very heart of Puritanism, observes historian Helena Wall, is an extraordinary level of subversiveness. Puritanism places tremendous emphasis on the individual's relationship to God, unmediated by a church, by sacraments, by a minister. No one...
The people who embark on these journeys are quite different from those who signed on for passage to the Chesapeake. Most are intact family groups who had owned property in their native England and could pay for their own passage. Often a large subse...
The new world transforms the lives of the Puritans in many respects, but they still remain a product of their culture. For example, the fact that some of the colonists had encountered Irish resistance to colonization influences their attitude toward...
Over the course of the first ten years, the Puritans convert the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company into a functioning constitution for their colony The town meeting becomes the cornerstone of community life as local issues are decided by adul...
As the 1700s begin, a new force-the spirit of enlightenment with its emphasis on science and reason- competes with the religious messages of George Whitfield and the first Great Awakening. The movement surfaces in the mid-Atlantic colonies and soon ...
A very different form of community emerges in New England, one that is also distinctly American. Here the primary social unit is not the isolated farm, but the town-a tightly knit community of people bound together by their town covenant. In order t...
The Southern and Northern colonies continue along divergent paths in the 17th and 18th centuries. Their physical environments are different, their populations diverse. But perhaps the factor that contributes most to their distinctiveness is the intr...
Noted historians Barbara Oberg, Peter Onuf, and Helena Wall compare the styles, personalities, and accomplishments of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the two men who occupy the presidency from 1796 to 1808. The close relationship between the two du...