Notes from Wednesday, September 20: Period 4

In class we talked mainly about Religion and change brought on by it in the latter part of the 1600's and through the early part of the 1700's.

NOTES

Religious and Cultural Enlightenment in the colonies

• The old Puritan church of New England was so conservative that people began to leave to faith and create new ones.

• Harvard, previously a school designed to educate Puritan ministers, now refused to do so.
• Yale College (now Yale University) was set up as a Puritan replacement for Harvard, which had become too liberal for many Puritans.
• the entire Yale staff, save one person, publicly declared their loyalty to the Church of England.
• New churches began to be founded in the colonies.
• the Presbyterian Church (different from that in Scotland)
  
• the Baptist Church
• the Evangelical Church
  
• Fanatical leaders such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley and others became popular public speakers.
• George Whitefield was the most heard of.
• His elegant manner and acting skills allowed him to make speeches that would sometimes attract more than 30,000 people! (more than the population of Boston at the time!)
  
• Merchants and lawyers, who were previously looked down upon in the colonies as being immoral, especially in Virginia and Massachusettes (where it was actually illegal to practice law for a time), now gained ground and became more popular and prominent.
• All of these changes helped to cut hostility short between religions.
• They also made social mobility and social statuses less rigid.
  

Georgia

• An attempt to create a Utopian society south of South Carolina was commenced.
• the colony was to center around the Savannah River.
• this area was on land that was claimed by both Spain and Great Britain.
• A group of proprietors/trustees, including James Oglethorpe, were granted permission to settle the land on a charter that would last 20 years.
• Many believe that the King granted the charter because he wanted a natural land barrier protecting South Carolina, the richest colony, provided by Georgia.
• The trustees recruited people all over, especially a group of British called the "wealthy poor"
• They were poor people who were considered able to work and one day build a fortune.
• "lazy poor" were generally denied immigration to the colony.

• The main crops Georgia were to be silk and wine.
• The proprietors/trustees wanted to avoid making Georgia a miniature version of South Carolina.
• They did not set up a legislative assembly, unlike the other colonies, rather, 3 'legislative regulations' were present.
• No Slavery
• Granting of 50 acres who crossed the ocean out of goodwill
  
• Granting of 500 acres to a colonist who paid his own way across the ocean.

• After silk and wine failed, and after many colonists died, Georgia became a Royal Colony, complete with a new legislative assembly, and slavery was legalized.
• Rice was grown, and later in the 18th century, cotton was too.
• The nightmare that the proprietors had faired became true: Utopia failed, and George was a smaller version of South Carolina.

Sebastian Pierre