The Dark Side: Immigrants, Racism, and the American Way

Copyright © 2012 by Young Park.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I The First Wave Of Immigrants

1.   The American Dream

2.   The First Immigrants

3.   Colonials, Diseases, and Indian Wars

4.   The Indian Problem

5.   New Promises

6.   America’s Peculiar Institution

Part II The Second Wave Of Immigrants

7.   The Chinese

8.   The Japanese

9.   The Koreans

10.   The Filipinos

11.   The Mexicans

Part III Racism And Genocide

12.   Lynchings and Neoslavery

13.   Grand Dragons and Race Riots

14.   Genocide

Part IV The American Way

15.   Americanism

16.   Christianity and Theocracy

17.   The New American Politics

Part V The Dark Side

18.   The American System

19.   The American Empire

20.   Summing Up

Footnotes

For

Immigrants,

Victims of racism, and

99 percenters

INTRODUCTION

The history of the United States is the history of people who migrated to America from all parts of the world. As a result, American society is composed of many unique cultures and races. Unfortunately, the differences between these cultures are one of the underlying causes of tension and conflict in America, resulting in racism, religious intolerance, and class warfare. In spite of this, the multiracial nature of American society is an integral part of America’s strength as a nation.

Thousands of immigrants from unique cultures who speak totally different languages came to find a better life in America. But they were never accepted by the dominant white Christians. The immigrants had to fight for the right to be in America.

The first part of this book is brief history of the nonwhite immigrants and America’s early relationship with the countries from which the immigrants came. A part of their history has to do with the abuses they suffered and their struggles to become Americans.

The second part deals with racism, race riots, and genocide against Native Americans, African Americans, and other nonwhite immigrants.

The last part describes America in the twenty-first century and the negative characteristics of Americanism that many believe will end the American empire.

There is a certain bias in this presentation, and criticism is aimed at the extreme beliefs and actions of a large segment of Americans, particularly white Christians. They have been the dominant political, social, and economic force in the country. Any assessment of the American system becomes a criticism of that segment of Americans. Their beliefs and actions represent the dark side of America.

References

Most of the references throughout this book are to sources available on the Internet, and the website is noted where possible. Some documents dating back four hundred years are available in their original form. Government documents are also available in their original form. Internet addresses for the cited works are included in the notes, and many multiple citations are listed to provide different sources of data relating to a particular topic. References include links that direct the user to other relevant data.

Bibliography

Similar publications often include a bibliography listing all the resources used to collect data. The number of references used in this study is extensive and listing them all would add fifty pages to the manuscript. Documentation of data used is noted in the footnotes. The majority of references are Internet sources and some are original documents not available in libraries. The reader is directed to the footnotes that list references by chapter. As noted, Internet links are provided with citations.

About the Author

Young Park has spent over twenty-five years in higher education, serving as an instructor, dean, community college president, and instructor and researcher at the ERIC center at UCLA’s graduate school. Park completed his BA and MA at USC, his MPA at Cal State University, and his doctorate at UCLA. He has published a number of studies including An Analysis of the Growth of Korean Nationalism and Foreign Influences on Korean Political Development, The Junior College Staff: Values and Institutional Perceptions, Police Officers’ Perceptions of Their Role and Occupation, and Korea and the Imperialists. He has just completed his fifth novel based on his experiences as an international consultant.

PART I

THE FIRST WAVE OF IMMIGRANTS

1     The American Dream

The word American was not the first choice of many revolutionaries when the Articles of Confederation were adopted in 1781. Suggestions of alternate names included United Statesians, Usonians, Ustatians, and Columbians. The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the first meaning of the noun Usonian as a native inhabitant of the United States. The name Columbia was a serious possibility for the name of the country instead of the United States of America. [1]

Columbia was in use as early as 1775 by poets and writers. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean was a patriotic song popular in the midnineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was in competition to be the national anthem with Hail Columbia and The Star-Spangled Banner. The national capital is located in the District of Columbia. [2]

Phyllis Wheatley, Slave Poet

Columbia was favored by the African American poet Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784). When Phillis Wheatley was a child, she was kidnapped in Africa by slavers in 1761 and shipped to America on the slave ship Phillis. She was purchased in Boston by John Wheatley and was given the name Phillis Wheatley, which was taken from name of the ship and her master. Wheatley and his wife treated her as a family member and gave her a good education. She was taught to read Greek and Latin classics and became well versed in literature.

When she was twenty, Phillis Wheatley published her collection of poems, entitled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, and Moral. It was the first book of poetry published by an African American slave.

In 1775 she wrote a poem called To His Excellency George Washington. She sent the poem to Washington, and he replied, thanking her and writing that he hoped to meet her. She was a talented woman but fell on hard times after the death of her owner, John Wheatley. Her marriage fell apart, and when she died, she was working as a domestic servant [3]

The end of Phillis Wheatley’s life was representative of the unfulfilled American dreams of millions of immigrants. Some Americans began life in humble beginnings and rose to prosper as the country grew. Others would never be able to enjoy the American dream. The most unfortunate ones, including Phillis Wheatley, began life in America as slaves and died in poverty.

Thousands came as immigrant laborers, enticed to leave homes for a better life in America. Unfortunately, they discovered America was not necessarily the land of equal opportunity and freedom. Nonwhite immigrants and the Native Americans were not allowed to participate in American social, economic, and political life. Until the late twentieth century, the American dream was meant to be achieved by a select class of people.

The original founders of the United States believed the Christian God bestowed inalienable rights only on white, Christian Americans. African slaves, Native Americans, and nonwhite immigrants were not entitled to those so-called inalienable rights. The ardent patriots claimed only certain Americans were God’s chosen people. [4]

Many nonwhite immigrants like Phillis Wheatley were brought to America as slaves by the white Christian slave traders. Others were invited to come to build America’s agriculture and railroad industries. Most did not find the American Dream, but the myth of an American Dream persisted. The fantasy was put into poetic verse by Emma Lazarus and engraved on the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door! [5]

The welcome words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty were not what most immigrants heard when they came to America. Instead, they found a hostile environment filled with racism and violence.

The dark history of the huddled masses is an integral part of American history. It is about immigrants, racism, and the American way.

2     The First Immigrants

The first people to migrate to the Western Hemisphere came some twelve thousand years ago. They are considered indigenous because they have a historical continuity with preinvasion and precolonial societies that developed on their territories. [1]

They came from Asia, crossing the land bridge that once connected the Asian land mass to the Americas. They stopped in what is now called Alaska, because their path to the south was blocked by glaciers. Around twelve thousand years ago, the glaciers began to disappear, and an ice-free corridor opened up to allow migration south into the Western Hemisphere.

The migrants fanned out in all directions. Some groups moved to the eastern coast of North America and into the Great Basin and Southwest regions of the United States. Others continued south into Mexico and beyond. Archaeologists identify these people as the Paleo-Indians, the ancestors of the Native Americans. [2]

Other theories have been proposed that boat people came across the Pacific. A site in Monte Verde, Chile, has been found and may have existed 12,500 years ago. At Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in western Pennsylvania, there is evidence that ancestors of the Iroquoian Seneca were there as early as the Clovis people were in New Mexico, 11,500 years ago. [3]

The social organization of the Native Americans in North America was based on the family. Women usually took responsibility for the young children and home and cultivation of plants. Men hunted, traded, or worked as laborers. In the larger societies where large-scale agriculture was possible, communities of several thousand were maintained.

In Mexico and the Andes of South America, large kingdoms formed, populated by many thousand subjects. Society was divided into the lowest class of farmers, miners, and artisans and the middle class, made up of merchants and officials. The upper class was composed of the rulers and priests who ruled with the support of an army.

Over a thousand distinct languages are presently spoken by descendants of the indigenous peoples in North and South America. Edward Sapir, Lyle Campbell, Joseph Greenberg, and other linguists have made extensive studies of Native American languages in the Americas and have provided a detailed list of languages. [4]

Estimates of the population in North America prior to 1492 vary widely, ranging from four million to thirty million. The number that lived in what is now the United States has been estimated as high as fifteen million and as low as less than a million. The Library of Congress uses 900,000 as the total number of indigenous people in what is the United States when the Europeans came. However, this number cannot be verified.

The most complete and detailed descriptions of the Native Americans was compiled by Fredrick Hodge in 1907 and is titled Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. It is a monumental work and available in its entirety on the Internet. [5]

The Explorers

The first white Europeans, led by Erik the Red, arrived in Greenland sometime around 985. In 1001, Erik’s son, Leif, explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada. Some claim the Vikings explored the Atlantic coast down as far as the Bahamas, but these claims have not been proven. [6]

Christopher Columbus

The most well-known explorer of the Americas is Christopher Columbus, who gave Spain claim to the entire Western Hemisphere. Columbus landed in the West Indies in 1492. His first impression of the natives was noted in his log: They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears… They were well-built… and handsome features. They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. [7]

On his return from his first voyage, Columbus brought six natives back to Spain and paraded them through the streets of Barcelona and Seville. On his second voyage, Columbus sent back a consignment of natives to be sold as slaves.

He explored the islands in the Caribbean and reported to Spain that he had found rivers that contained gold. On future voyages, he promised to bring back as much gold as the royalty wanted and as many slaves as they needed. [8]

English Claims to the New World

The English claims to the New World were based on John Cabot’s voyages. John Cabot was born in Genoa in 1450 and moved his family to Bristol, England, in 1495.

On March 5, 1496, King Henry VII of England issued letters of patent to Cabot and his son, granting a monopoly of trade in the New World.

John Cabot set sail from Bristol and went around Ireland and then north and west and made landfall on June 24, 1497. The exact landing place has not been verified, but it is believed it was in Newfoundland. He planted the flags of England and Venetia and claimed the land for England. [9]

Spanish Claims to North America

Based on the exploration of Juan Ponce de Leon, Spain had substantial claims to at least the southern part of the New World.

It is possible that Juan Ponce de Leon was part of Columbus’s second voyage in 1493. In 1503, he heard a rumor about a Fountain of Youth in Bimimi in the Bahamas that could rejuvenate those who drank from it. He led an expedition in 1513 in search of the fountain and landed on the coast of Florida near the site of modern St. Augustine. He named the region Florida. In Spanish, pascua florida means feast of flowers and refers to the Easter season. It is celebrated as the discovery of Florida by Ponce de Leon. [10]

Spanish Claims to Central America

Spanish claims to Central America were based on the exploits of Hernando Cortes. After failing at law at the university, Cortes joined the forces sent to conquer Cuba. Upon hearing reports of gold in Mexico, the authorities sent Cortes to the Yucatan Peninsula. In 1519, Cortes landed in Mexico and established the town of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz.

In November 1519, Cortes marched inland to find the much-talked-about Aztec treasures. A series of battles between Cortes and the Aztecs finally ended when a plague struck the Aztec population in 1521. Cortes conquered an empire of over five million Aztecs with less than a thousand soldiers. [11]

French Claims in Canada

French claims to Canada and the Great Lakes region were based on the exploits of Jacques Cartier. In 1534, Cartier was sent by the king of France to discover gold and diamonds and a new sea route to Asia. Cartier explored Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, and Prince Edward Island during his efforts to find a sea passage to Asia via the St. Lawrence River. Cartier gave Canada its name when he misunderstood the Iroquois word for village, Kanata. Cartier assumed it meant the entire area. [12]

Permanent Settlers

These voyages and discoveries prepared the way for permanent settlers who came to the New World. The profit motives were still the same, but of equal importance to English colonists was religion. The English were family immigrants, not just explorers and adventurers. The Spaniards and French did not come as families, but they more readily integrated with the native populations. The English maintained a code of racial purity. [13]

3     Colonials, Diseases, and Indian Wars

Before the English came as immigrants to establish colonies, other Englishmen were in the New World robbing the Spanish ships that were transporting gold back to Spain. One of the well-known English pirates was Sir Francis Drake. Drake was a Protestant and saw himself as an instrument of God in his crusade against Catholic King Philip II and the Spanish Empire. [1]

Sir Walter Raleigh

In 1578, Humphrey Gilbert received a patent from Queen Elizabeth to colonize the heathen and barbarous landes in the New World. After his death, his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, took up his mission. [2]

On March 25, 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter to colonize Virginia. Queen Elizabeth intended that the colony would serve as a base from which raids could be made against the treasure fleets of Spain. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America’s Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary city of El Dorado. [3]

The First English Immigrants

On April 27, 1584, Raleigh dispatched an expedition led by Arthur Barlowe to explore the Eastern coast of North America. They arrived on Roanoke Island on July 4 and established relations with the local natives, the Secotans and Croatans. Barlowe returned to England with two Croatans who met with Raleigh. Encouraged by the meeting, Raleigh organized a second expedition led by Sir Richard Grenville.

Grenville’s fleet of five ships departed from Plymouth, England on April 9, 1585, and landed at Roanoke on June 26, 1585. The first English settlement at Roanoke of one hundred householders was managed by Ralph Lane, who wrote a descriptive account of the colony in 1586, The Colony at Roanoke. The original document has been preserved and is available on the Internet. [4]

Relations with the natives deteriorated into a conflict when the people of the village of Aquascogoc were blamed for stealing a silver cup. In retaliation for the robbery, the English sacked and burned the village.

On August 17, 1585, Grenville left Ralph Lane and 108 colonists and returned to England. He promised to return in April of 1586 with more men and supplies. To prepare for the coming winter, Lane built a small fort and began exploration of the surrounding area.

April 1586 passed, and there was no sign of Grenville’s relief fleet. Meanwhile, continued resentments from the stolen cup incident spurred an attack by the natives on the fort. Soon after the attack, Drake stopped on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean and offered to take the colonists back to England. They accepted. On this return voyage, the Roanoke colonists introduced tobacco, maize, and potatoes to England.

In 1587, Raleigh dispatched a new group of 150 colonists to establish a colony on Chesapeake Bay. They were led by John White, who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. They arrived at Roanoke on July 22, 1587, hoping to find a few of the original settlers alive. They did not find anyone and attempted to return to England. The fleet’s commander, Simon Fernandez, refused to let the colonists return to the ships, insisting that they had been sent to establish the new colony on Roanoke.

With no choice, White tried to establish friendly relations with the Croatans, but the natives refused to meet with him. Fearing for their lives, the colonists persuaded Governor White to return to England and explain the colony’s desperate situation. Left behind were about 115 settlers that included White’s newly born granddaughter, Virginia Dare, who was the first English child born in the New World. [5]

Because of England’s continuing war with Spain, White was not able to return for three years. He finally gained passage on a privateering expedition that agreed to stop off at Roanoke on the way back from the Caribbean.

John White returned on August 18, 1590, but found the settlement deserted. White could not find any trace of the ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled, which meant their departure had not been hurried.

The colony is referred to as the Lost Colony, and there are many stories about the fate of the colonists. The principal hypothesis is that they dispersed and were absorbed by the local Croatans on Hatteras Island or another Algonquian people. [6]

Late in 1606, another group of 104 English men and boys obtained a charter from the Virginia Company of London to establish a colony in the New World. They landed at a place they named Cape Henry on April 26, 1607. They named the river James River in honor of King James I. [7]

On May 14, 1607, Edward Winfield came with another group of settlers and selected Jamestown Island on the James River, about forty miles inland from the ocean, as a permanent settlement site. The colony was first named James Fort. Half of the settlers were artisans, soldiers, and laborers. A barber, a tailor, and two surgeons were part of the group. The others were men who had no profession and knew no survival skills, and many died within a few months. Captain John Smith provided the leadership that kept the colony from dissolving. By March 1610 only sixty colonists were alive. [8]

James Fort was an area of about one acre. It was built in a triangle, the river side about 120 yards long and the other two sides about 100 yards each. In 1608, three acres were added and the fort became five-sided. It was renamed Jamestown in 1619 and served as the capital until 1699, when Williamsburg became the capital. [9]

Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and the Anglo-Powhatan War

There were an estimated fourteen thousand Native Americans in the area where the English decided to establish a colony. They spoke an Algonquian language and were part of the Powhatan Confederacy. The natives were initially helpful and provided food and supplies to the colonists. However, the English began to assert themselves aggressively and raided villages for supplies. This resulted in the 1613 Anglo-Powhatan War, which ended when the chief’s daughter Pocahontas was captured.

During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca. In April 1614, she married tobacco planter John Rolfe and a year later bore him a son named Thomas Rolfe. She went to England with her husband and was treated as a celebrity. In 1617, she suddenly died of unknown causes. Her descendants through her son Thomas were members of the First Families of Virginia. [10]

John Rolfe was one of the first plantation-type farmers who successfully harvested tobacco in 1614 on his plantation, Bermuda Hundred. He imported tobacco seed from Trinidad and crossed the imported seed with the indigenous tobacco to produce a plant adapted to the local soil. His first crop of tobacco was shipped on the vessel Elizabeth on June 28, 1613. [11]

As the English colonists assumed control over more land for tobacco farming, relations with the natives became strained. On March 22, 1622, the Powhatan Confederacy attacked the outlying plantations and communities up and down the James River. It was known as the Indian Massacre of 1622, and during the fighting, 347 settlers, a third of the English speaking population, were killed.

In the fall of 1622 a peace parley was arranged. At the meeting, the Jamestown leaders poisoned the liquor given to the natives, and some two hundred died of the poison and another fifty were killed. Very soon after, what was left of the confederacy disbanded.

This was the first use of chemical weapons by the American colonials. It was a portent of things to come. [12]

Pilgrims and Puritans

In 1608, while the English settlers established a colony at Jamestown, a group of religious separatists from the English town of Scrooby moved to Amsterdam, Holland. They were on a journey to find a place where they could worship as they wished. Their journeys earned them the name Pilgrims. Unable to compete economically with the Dutch, they sought a land grant from Sir Edwin Sandys, who was associated with the Virginia Company of London. Sandys granted them a land grant patent in what is now New England. [13]

In September 1620, 102 English men and women, members of the English Separatist Church, set sail for the New World aboard the ship Mayflower. Oceanus Hopkins was born en route, but a boy died shortly before arrival; hence, the number of settlers remained at 102. In November, the ship sailed into Cape Cod and in late December anchored at Plymouth Rock. [14]

There are no contemporary references to Plymouth Rock, and William Bradford does not refer to it in his journal. It was first mentioned in 1741, when plans were made to build a wharf at the Pilgrims’ landing site. A ninety-four-year-old elder of the church identified the rock as the one his father had told him was the first solid land the Pilgrims set foot on. [15]

At Cape Cod, the Pilgrims established the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. More than half of the original settlers died in the first winter, but the survivors secured peace with the native tribes and built a self-sufficient colony. Plymouth did not become a profitable settlement, but the Pilgrims were more interested in their religion than making a profit. In 1691, it was absorbed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Plymouth County towns had approximately 3,055 colonists. [16]

The Mayflower Compact

The Pilgrims created a document that established a government through consensus. The Mayflower Compact was signed by the free adult male passengers of the Mayflower. The Mayflower Compact was not a constitution or a political document. It simply provided for administration of church rules and covenants to govern daily life.

Since the officials were elected, one could argue it created a simple democratic form of government. However, given the extreme nature of their religious beliefs, Plymouth can hardly be considered a democracy. [17]

The Puritans—Sadists and Torturers

Another religious group called the Puritans was discontented with the Church of England and in time became convinced the Church of England was beyond reform. To escape persecution, they sought refuge in the New World. They were followers of John Calvin’s interpretation of the Bible and way of life. In 1630, the Massachusetts Colony led by John Winthrop, composed of one thousand Puritans, came to settle in the area around Boston Bay. Some reports say the number of voyagers was two thousand. Since exact records were not kept, estimates of the number of colonists vary.[18]

In 1629, Charles I dissolved Parliament, and persecution of the Puritans accelerated in England, resulting in the Great Migration. In 1630, eleven ships delivered seven hundred passengers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During the Great Migration period between 1630 and 1640, the colony grew to include more than twenty thousand people. An even larger number migrated to Ireland and the Caribbean. [19]

What made the Pilgrims and Puritans unique was the manner in which they practiced their religion. Individuals who were critical of church doctrines or espoused beliefs thought to be heretical were punished by banishment, whipping, branding, burning at the stake, flogging, pillorying, hanging, having their ears cut off, or having their tongues bored through with a hot iron. Children who cursed their parents were put to death. As some described Calvin, so many of the Puritans could be said to have been a sadist and torturer and killer. [20]

The Puritans were rabid antipleasure advocates based on literal interpretations of the Bible. Laughing was believed to cause eternal damnation of one’s soul, and pleasure was suspect and undesirable. These were ideas passed down from John Calvin and his theocracy established in sixteenth-century Geneva.

When he gained control of Geneva, Calvin prohibited dancing, drinking, gambling, card playing, ribaldry, fashionable clothes, and other amusements. Theaters were closed, and attempts were made to close taverns. In similar fashion, when the Puritans temporarily gained control of England, they banned entertainment, closed theaters, and prescribed the death penalty for extramarital sex. Puritans considered the human body inherently impure and depraved. Fornication was a major problem for the Puritans, and the punishment was a fine of ten pounds or a public whipping. [21]

According to the Puritans, God was the prime mover and the force behind all of their actions. Puritans waged a continuing war against Satan and his evil ways. According to their theology, God saved only those selected for salvation. They believed in effective business practices but also preached a separation from worldly pleasures. Puritans feared humanistic learning would draw people away from the church. God willed the killing of natives. They believed God’s wrath and rewards were present in natural phenomena, such as flooding, bountiful harvests, invasions of locust, and lightning. [22]

The Moderate Puritans

Not all believed in the extreme Christianity preached in the Puritan colony, and some broke away to form colonies with a more liberal view of religion. In 1635, Thomas Hooker founded a colony in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1636, Roger Williams, a minister who had been banished from Salem, founded a colony in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1638, John Davenport, who was opposed to the Puritan dictatorial ways, founded a new settlement in New Haven, Connecticut. [23]

Salem Witch Hunt

There are a number of accounts of the most famous example of Puritan religious intensity, the Salem witch trials. Most agree on the names and actions taken against people accused of being witches.

It all began in the home of Samuel Parris, which included his wife, Elizabeth; six-year-old daughter, Betty; niece, Abigail Williams; and Parris’s Indian slave, Tituba, who had been purchased in Barbados. In February 1692, young Betty reportedly became possessed and acted wildly, diving under furniture, contorting in pain, and suffering from a fever. Three friends of Betty also began to exhibit unusual behavior. They reported seeing witches flying through the winter mist. A local doctor suggested the problem might have a supernatural origin.

A neighbor, Mary Sibley, suggested that Tituba bake a rye cake with the urine of the afflicted victim and feed the cake to a dog. Witches were said to use dogs as agents to carry out their orders.

Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn were the first to be accused of witchcraft. An examination of the suspected witches was held on March 1, 1692. Tituba confessed that she was a witch and that she and four other witches, including Good and Osborn, flew through the air on their poles. Her confession started a massive witch hunt in the community.

Dorcas Good, the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, became the first child to be accused of witchcraft and was arrested and kept in jail for eight months. She watched her mother being carried to the gallows and eventually went insane.

The colony’s Governor Phipps created a special court of oyer and terminer to hear and decide the witchcraft cases.

John Proctor, a tavern owner, publicly denounced the witch hunt, after which Proctor found himself being accused of witchcraft. Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Booth testified that ghosts had come to her and accused Proctor of serial murder. He was hanged. Procter’s wife was spared because she was pregnant.

An octogenarian, Giles Corey, was held in chains for five months. He refused to stand trial, because that would have resulted in his farm being taken over by the state. The penalty for refusing to stand trial was peine fort et dure, or pressing heavy stones on his body.

Nineteen convicted witches were executed, at least four accused witches died in prison, and one man was pressed to death. One hundred eighty five people were accused—141 women and 44 men. Two hundred other persons were arrested and imprisoned on witchcraft charges. Two dogs were executed as suspected accomplices of witches.

The explanations for these public murders are many. Some believe personal disputes, quarrels over property, and feuds among families all played a major role in who died and who lived. As most members of mobs do, people later said they were sorry and were mistaken in judgment. Only William Stoughton, the chief justice, refused to explain himself. Later, he became the governor of Massachusetts.

One author who wrote about the witchcraft trials, Douglas Linder, makes a final observation: The witches disappeared, but witchhunting in America did not. [24]

Cotton Mather—Exorcist

If Cotton Mather, minister of the Old North Church in Boston, had had access to radio and television, he would have been even more powerful than modern-day fundamentalists. The witchcraft trials were made to order for his neurotic and oversexed spirituality, as one writer puts it.

In 1689, Mather published a bestselling book on witchcraft, Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possession, in which he details witchcraft involving an Irish washerwoman named Goody Glover.

Mather tells the story of the Goodwin family with six children who employed a washerwoman named Goody Glover in Boston. Some clothes were missing, and one of the daughters suspected Glover had stolen them. When confronted, Glover cursed the girl, who immediately became seized with strange fits. The other children also became afflicted.

They searched her house and found small images made of rags and stuffed with goats’ hair. Glover admitted she used them to torment people. She was examined by six doctors. Glover said she was a Roman Catholic and recited in Latin. In the end, the doctors decided she was a witch. She was sentenced to death.

The children who were cursed continued to act in strange ways. Mather took the eldest daughter, Martha, into his home to help cure her. She continued to complain that Goody Glover still maintained a claim on her. In his book, Mather describes performing an exorcist ritual to drive out the evil spirits that possessed her. He did not succeed. [25]

Religion in the Colonies

Religion played a major role in all the colonial settlements, but none were as extreme as the Puritan sect. Catholics were the first religious group to immigrate to the Portuguese, Spanish, and French colonies.

Non-Puritan English and Dutch colonies were more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and German and Swedish Lutherans as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Jews from various countries. Many immigrants were religious refugees and sought to escape persecution in their homeland.

A believer in rule by divine right, English King Charles I persecuted all religious dissenters. This led to the migration of some twenty thousand Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1649. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn in 1682 as a refuge for English Quakers. Others religious groups, such as the Baptists and German and Swiss Protestants, also came to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania became a haven for religious groups and one of the largest and richest colonies in the Americas. [26]

By 1690, the white Christian population on the Atlantic coast had grown to 250,000, and it continued to double every twenty-five years. In 1775, the colonial population numbered an estimated 2.5 million. The lure of cheap land, a place to worship as they pleased, and opportunity to better their lives lured thousands of European immigrants to the New World.

The first US census was taken in 1790. The census was important for collection of taxes and appropriation of seats in the House of Representatives. The population figures before that date are estimates and may err up to 10 to 20 percent. A copy of the census report, Return of the Whole Number of Person Within the Several Districts of the United States, 1793, is available on the Internet. A total population of 3,893,635 is reported in the first census of the United States. [27]

A good number of the colonists were immigrants who sought to create a haven for their religions. To maintain their religious fervor they engaged in Christian revivals, known as the Great Awakening. These movements sought to reform and purify colonial society in the 1730s. The Great Awakening led to a proliferation of sects and denominations, a characteristic of American Christian culture. Extreme beliefs that are a basic part of many American religious sects stem from this period. [28]

The Thirteen Colonies

Three major colonial regions were developed by the European settlers. Based on distinct social, religious, and economic qualities, immigrants in each area developed the foundations for several major versions of prerevolutionary colonialism. Most of the colonists were English, with a growing number of people who spoke different languages. Nevertheless, they were all Christian.

New England

New England’s soil and weather made it difficult to develop a true agricultural economy. The compactness of the land created a unique society that revolved around the village. Shipbuilding and trade made the New Englanders leaders in international commerce. Two major items of trade were rum and slaves. The famous triangular trade involved producing rum to be traded for slaves on the African coast, who were then sold in the West Indies in exchange for molasses, which was sold in New England for the production of rum. In time, slaves were sold directly to the Southern colonies and became the major trading commodity for many New Englanders. New Englanders were slave owners as well as slave traders.

The first recorded New England slave ship left Boston in 1644. Rhode Islanders entered the slave trade around 1700, and by 1750 twenty ships per year sailed from Newport to Africa. The New England slave ships made up more than 60 percent of the African slave trade. [29]

The triangle trade created support industries (e.g., rope making, iron forging, candle making, and carpentry). In the 1760s, Newport had two dozen distilleries that converted Caribbean molasses into rum. [30]

Middle Colonies

The middle colonies were far more varied, cosmopolitan, and tolerant than those in New England or the South. In 1685, Pennsylvania’s population was almost nine thousand, most lived in the city of Philadelphia. A hundred years later, in 1786, thirty thousand people lived there, and the city was a thriving commercial center.

William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a haven for Quakers, and freedom of religion was granted to all people in the colony. It was a proper place for the likes of Ben Franklin, an example of an enlightened American of that period. By 1776, Philadelphia had become the largest English-speaking city in the world after London. [31]

The Dutch were important in the development of New York, and Dutch merchants in Manhattan built a major economic center there. The population was a mixture of English, Dutch, Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Scots, Poles, and Italians. [32]

In the middle colonies, the upper class was the gentry, who were wealthy and well educated. The middle class was made up of farmers, merchants, and artisans. Common laborers, transients (such as sailors), and apprentices made up the lower class. [33]

A diverse mixture of religions was found in the middle colonies. These included Quakers, Mennonites, Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, and Presbyterians. A New Jersey church survey in 1765 listed more than ten active religious congregations. A similar survey in New York City recorded eighteen churches that served more than 22,000 people.

Education was made up of schools sponsored by different religious denominations rather than just one church as in New England. There was more interest in the middle colonies in practical education.

Religious conflict did appear in Maryland. It was founded by Cecilus Calvert as a haven for Roman Catholics persecuted in England in 1634. Within a short time, religious conflict broke out between growing numbers of Puritans and Catholics. The Puritans attempted to revoke the religious freedoms guaranteed when the colony was founded. In 1649, Governor William Stone passed the Toleration Act, ensuring religious freedom. In 1654, the Puritans seized power and repealed the act, and a brief civil war ensued. For a time, Lord Baltimore lost control of the colony. The Calverts later regained control, and eventually religious freedom was reestablished. [34]

Southern Colonies

The people and culture of the Southern colonies differed markedly from the New England and Middle colonies. By the late eighteenth century, Southern economic and social structures were dominated by the lifestyle of the owners of the great plantations. plantations. Only the upper class actually lived the life of the plantation owners, and all others aspired to live that life. The plantation owners, supported by the slave economy, held the political and economic power in the South.

Social, political, and economical rules and practices all revolved around the institution of slavery. A white family’s standing in the community was determined by the property the family had, calculated in land and number of slaves. D.R. Hundley, writing in 1860, observes that even those who did not own slaves fervently supported and believed in the institution of slavery. They literally were willing to die to defend the plantation owner’s right to own slaves. Their fanatical support of the institution of slavery was akin to the extreme devotion to Puritanism of the New Englanders. The American colonials were extremists.

The smaller farmers, often referred to as yeoman farmers, populated the back country, away from the tidelands and traditional English influence. They lived on the edge of the frontier, endured the hardships of frontier life, and developed a unique way of life. They were also strong supporters of the institution of slavery. [35]

Indentured Servants and Convicts

A constant problem facing the early English colonists was the shortage of labor. Before the 1680s, the laborers utilized by agricultural and industrial employers were indentured servants. In this system, the master paid for the ocean trip from Europe, and the servant signed a contract stipulating a length of service to be given, typically five years. Upon completion of the contract, the servant would often receive freedom dues, which might include land, money, and clothes.

While this might seem to have been an opportunity for the poor to make a new life in the colonies, it did not often work out that way. Only about 40 percent of indentured servants lived to complete the terms of their contracts. Female servants were subject to harassment from their masters, and if a woman became pregnant, years would be added to her service time. In rape cases, the blame was placed on the woman, not on the man.

Indentured servants also created a labor problem for the master. At the end of the contract period, the master would lose a trained worker and would have to train another worker from scratch. [36]

From 1607 to 1699, approximately 96,600 indentured servants came to the colonies. These numbers increased, and from 1700 to 1775, 103,600 indentured servants were brought to the colonies. At the end of the colonial period, close to three-quarters of English immigrants to Pennsylvania and nearly 60 percent of German immigrants had arrived as indentured servants. [37]

In addition to indentured servants, a large number of English immigrants to the colonies were convicts. Convicts were transported from England and auctioned off to plantation owners and others in need of cheap labor. It is estimated that some 52,200 British convicts were sent to colonial America, representing approximately 9 percent of the 585,800 emigrants to the colonies during the eighteenth century.

The practice of sending convicts to the colonies began in 1615 and was a method used to ease the growing criminal population in England. The colonials objected, and by 1697 refused to accept convict ships. Nevertheless, between 1700 and 1775, British convicts sent to the colonies accounted for one quarter of all British immigrants. Of the total, twenty thousand were sent to Virginia. [38]

Old-World Diseases and Indian Wars

During the first several hundred years of contact with the Europeans, the indigenous people of the Americas were exposed to a torrent of new diseases. The Europeans brought with them smallpox, influenza, bubonic plague, and a variety of sexually transmitted diseases. Diseases from Europe irreversibly transformed the biological and social environment of the Americas. Since the indigenous people had not been exposed to diseases common among the white immigrants, they did not have natural immunity against their diseases.

Most European plagues came from domesticated animals. Europeans had close contact with domesticated animals, and animal microbes crossed over to humans and mutated into highly contagious human diseases. For example, small pox originally came from bovines.

Perversely, the Europeans knew the indigenous people were susceptible to disease and welcomed the plagues that descended on the natives. Governor Bradford of Massachusetts attributed the plague to the good hand of God, which favored our beginnings by sweeping away great multitudes of the natives that he might make room for us. Whether it was the hand of God or not, more than fifty colonial villages in New England were located on the sites of native communities that had been emptied by disease. [39]

Biological Warfare

Original documents reveal that the colonials used the smallpox germ as a biological weapon against the Native Americans. Jeffrey Amherst, whom the town and college of Amherst was named after, was a known advocate of germ warfare against the Native Americans.

Amherst used germ warfare against Chief Pontiac during the siege of Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh). Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort—an early example of biological warfare—which started an epidemic among them. [40]

Amherst wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet on July 16, 1763, suggesting use of this plan as well as others to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. [41]

Amherst also considered the use of dogs to hunt the Indians, the so-called Spaniards’ Method, but could not implement the plan because there were not enough dogs available. The correspondence between Amherst and other British officers clearly shows how he felt about the Native Americans and his wish to put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being. He called for every Measure to be taken as would Bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations. [42]

New England’s religious elite also urged the extinction of the Native Americans. Reverend Stoddard in 1703 formally proposed to the governor of