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  • Hi I’m John Green, this is Crash Course US History and today we're going to tell the

  • story of how a group of plucky English people struck a blow for religious freedom and founded

  • the greatest, freest and fattest nation the world has ever seen. These Brits entered a

  • barren land containing no people and quickly invented the automobile, baseball and Star

  • Trek and we all lived happily ever after.

  • Mr. Green, Mr. Green, if it is really that simple, I am so getting an A in this class.

  • Oh, me from the past, you're just a delight.

  • [INTRO]

  • So most Americans grew up hearing that the United States was founded by pasty English

  • people who came here to escape religious persecution, and that's true of the small proportion of

  • people who settled in the Massachusetts Bay and created what we now know is New England.

  • But these Pilgrims and Puritans, there's a difference, weren’t the first people or

  • even the first Europeans to come to the only part of the globe we didn't paint over.

  • In fact they weren’t the first English people. The first English people came to Virginia.

  • Off topic but how weird is it that the first permanent English colony in the Americas was

  • named not for Queen Elizabeth’s epicness but for her supposedly chastity. Right anyway,

  • those first English settlers weren't looking for religious freedom, they wanted to get

  • rich. The first successful English colony in America was founded in Jamestown, Virginia

  • in 1607. I say "successful" because there were two previous attempts to colonize the

  • region. They were both epic failures. The more famous of which was the colony of Roanoke

  • Island set up by Sir Walter Raleigh which is famous because all the colonists disappeared

  • leaving only the word Croatoan on carved into a tree.

  • Jamestown was a project of the Virginia Company which existed to make money for its investors,

  • something it never did. The hope was that they would find gold in the Chesapeake region

  • like the Spanish had in South America, so there were a disproportionate number of goldsmiths

  • and jewelers there to fancy up that gold which of course did not exist. Anyway, it turns

  • out that jewelers dislike farming so much so that Captain John Smith who soon took over

  • control of the island once said that they would rather starve than farm.

  • So in the first year, half of the colonists died. Four hundred replacements came, but,

  • by 1610, after a gruesome winter called the starving time, the number of colonists had

  • dwindled to sixty-five. And eventually word got out that the new world’s one-year survival

  • rate was like twenty percent and it became harder to find new colonists. But 1618, a

  • Virginia company hit upon a recruiting strategy called the head right system which offered

  • fifty acres of land for each person that a settler paid to bring over, and this enabled

  • the creation of a number of large estates which were mostly worked on and populated

  • by indentured servants.

  • Indentured servants weren't quite slaves, but they were kind of temporary slaves, like

  • they could be bought and sold and they had to do what their masters commanded. But after

  • seven to ten years of that, if they weren't dead, they were paid their freedom dues which

  • they hoped would allow them to buy farms of their own. Sometimes that worked out, but

  • often either the money wasn't enough to buy a farm or else they were too dead to collect

  • it. Even more ominously in 1619, just twelve years after the founding of Jamestown the

  • first shipment of African slaves arrived in Virginia. So the colony probably would have

  • continued to struggle along if they hadn't found something that people really loved:

  • tobacco.

  • Tobacco had been grown in Mexico since at least 1000 BCE, but the Europeans had never

  • seen it and it proved to be kind of a "thank you for the small pox; here's some lung cancer

  • gift from the natives. Interestingly King James hated smoking. He called it “a custom

  • loathsome to the eye and hateful to the nose" but he loved him some tax revenue, and nothing

  • sells like drugs. By 1624 Virginia was producing more than 200,000 pounds of tobacco per year.

  • By the 1680s, more than 30 million pounds per year. Tobacco was so profitable the colonists

  • created huge plantations with very little in the way of towns or infrastructure to hold

  • the social order together, a strategy that always works out brilliantly. The industry

  • also structured Virginian society. First off, most of the people who came in the 17th century,

  • three-quarters of them were servants .So Virginia to give a microcosm of England: a small class

  • of wealthy landowners sitting atop a mass of servants. That sounds kind of dirty but

  • it was mostly just sad. The society was also overwhelmingly male; because male servants

  • were more useful in the tobacco fields, they were the greatest proportion of immigrants.

  • In fact they outnumbered women five to one. The women who did come over were mostly indentured

  • servants, and if they were to marry, which they often did because they were in great

  • demand, they had to wait until their term of service was up. This meant delayed marriage

  • which meant fewer children which further reduced the number of females. Life was pretty tough

  • for these women, but on the upside Virginia was kind of a swamp of pestilence, so their

  • husbands often died, and this created a small class of widows or even unmarried women who,

  • because of their special status, could make contracts and own property, so that was good,

  • sort of.

  • Ok. So a quick word about Maryland. Maryland was the second Chesapeake Colony, founded

  • in 1632, and by now there was no messing around with joint stock companies. Maryland was a

  • proprietorship: a massive land grant to a single individual named Cecilius Calvert.

  • Calvert wanted to turn Maryland into like a medieval feudal kingdom to benefit himself

  • and his family, and he was no fan of the representational institutions that were developing in Virginia.

  • Also Calvert was Catholic, and Catholics were welcome in Maryland which wasn't always the

  • case elsewhere.

  • Speaking of which, let's talk about Massachusetts. So Jamestown might have been the first English

  • colony, but Massachusetts Bay is probably better known. This is a largely because the

  • colonists who came there were so recognizable for their beliefs and also for their hats.

  • That’s right. I’m talking about the Pilgrims and the Puritans. And no, I will not be talking

  • about Thanksgiving... is a lie. I can’t help myself, but only to clear up the difference

  • between Pilgrims and Puritans and also to talk about Squanto. God I love me some Squanto.

  • Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

  • Most of the English men and women who settled in New England were uber-Protestant Puritans

  • will believed the Protestant Church of England was still too Catholic-y with its kneeling

  • and incense and extravagantly-hatted archbishops. The particular Puritans who, by the way did

  • not call themselves that; other people did, who settled in new England were called Congregationalists

  • because they thought congregations should determine leadership and worship structures,

  • not bishops. The Pilgrims were even more extreme. They wanted to separate more or less completely

  • from the Church of England. So first they fled to the Netherlands, but the Dutch were

  • apparently too corrupt for them, so they rounded up investors and financed a new colony in

  • 1620.

  • They were supposed to live in Virginia, but in what perhaps should have been taken as

  • an omen, they were blown wildly off course and ended up in what's now Massachusetts,

  • founding a colony called Plymouth. While still on board their ship the Mayflower 41 of the

  • 150 or so colonists wrote and signed an agreement called the Mayflower Compact in which they

  • all bound themselves to follow "just and equal laws" that their chosen representatives would

  • write-up. Since this was the first written framework for government in the US, it's kind

  • of a big deal. But anyway the Pilgrims had the excellent fortune of landing in Massachusetts

  • with six weeks before winter, and they have a good sense not to bring very much food with

  • them or any farm animals. Half of them died before winter was out. The only reason they

  • didn't all die was that local Indians led by Squanto gave them food and saved them.

  • A year later, grateful that they had survived mainly due to the help of an alliance with

  • the local chief Massasoit, and because the Indians had taught them how to plant corn

  • and how to catch fish, the Pilgrims held the big feast: the first Thanksgiving. Thanks

  • Thought Bubble! And by the way, that feast was on the fourth Thursday in November, not

  • mid-October as is celebrated in some of these green areas we call not America. Anyway Squanto

  • was a pretty amazing character and not only because he helped save the Pilgrims.

  • He found that almost all of his tribe, the Patuxet had been wiped out by disease and

  • eventually settled with the Pilgrims on the site of his former village and then died of

  • disease because it is always ruining everything. So the Pilgrims struggled on until 1691 when

  • their colony was subsumed by the larger and much more successful Massachusetts Bay Colony.

  • The Massachusetts Bay colony was chartered in 1629 by London merchants who, like the

  • founders of the Virginia Company, hoped to make money. But unlike Virginia, the board

  • of directors relocated from England to America which meant that in Massachusetts they had

  • a greater degree of autonomy and self-government than they did in Virginia. Social unity was

  • also much more important in Massachusetts than it was in Virginia. The Puritans' religious

  • mission meant that the common good was, at least at first, put above the needs or the

  • rights of the individual. Those different ideas in the North and South about the role

  • of government would continue... until now.

  • Oh God. It's time for the mystery document?

  • The rules are simple. I read the mystery document which I have not seen before. If I get it

  • right, then I do not get shocked with the shock pen, and if I get it wrong I do.

  • All right.

  • "Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, wee must entertaine each other

  • in brotherly Affeccion, wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities

  • (su-per-fluities? I don't know), for the supply of others necessities, wee must uphold a familiar

  • Commerce together in all meekenes, gentlenes, patience and liberallity, ... for wee must

  • Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us;

  • soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and

  • soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword

  • through the world."

  • All right, first thing I noticed: the author of this document is a terrible speller or

  • possibly wrote this before English was standardized. Also, a pretty religious individual and the

  • community in question seems to embrace something near socialism of bridging the superfluous

  • for others' necessities. Also it says that the community should be like a city upon a

  • hill, like a model for everybody, and because of that metaphor, I know exactly where it

  • comes from: the sermon A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop.

  • Yes! Yes! No punishment!

  • This is one of the most important sermons in American history. It shows us just how

  • religious the Puritans were, but it also shows us that their religious mission wasn't really

  • one of individualism but of collective effort. In other words, the needs of the many outweigh

  • the needs of the few or the one. But this city on a hill metaphor is the basis for one

  • kind of American exceptionalism: the idea that we are so special and so godly that we

  • will be a model to other nations, at least as long, according to Winthrop, as we act

  • together. Lest you think Winthrop’s words were forgotten, they did become the centerpiece

  • of Ronald Reagan’s 1989 farewell address.

  • Okay so New England towns were governed democratically, but that doesn't mean that the Puritans were

  • big on equality or that everybody was able to participate in government because no. The

  • only people who could vote or hold office were church members, and to be a full church

  • member you had to be a “visible saint", so really, power stayed in the hands of the

  • church elite. The same went for equality. While it was better than in the Chesapeake

  • Colonies or England, as equality went...eh, pretty unequal. As John Winthrop declared,

  • "Some must be rich and some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity, others mean

  • and in subjection."

  • Or as historian Eric Foner put it "Inequality was considered an expression of God's will

  • and while some liberties applied to all inhabitants, there were separate lists of rights for freemen,

  • women, children and servants."

  • There was also slavery in Massachusetts. The first slaves were recorded in the colony in

  • 1640. However, Puritans really did foster equality in one sense. They wanted everyone

  • to be able to read the Bible. In fact, parents could be punished by the town councils for

  • not properly instructing their children in making them literate. So when Roger Williams

  • called for citizens to be able to practice any religion they chose, he was banished from

  • the colonies. So was Ann Hutchinson who argued the church membership should be based on inner

  • grace and not on outward manifestations like church attendance. Williams went on to found

  • Rhode Island, so that worked out fine for him, but Hutchinson, who was doubly threatening

  • to Massachusetts because she was a woman preaching unorthodox ideas, was too radical and was

  • further banished to Westchester, New York where she and her family were killed by Indians.

  • Finally somebody doesn't die of disease or starvation. So Americans like to think of

  • their country as being founded by pioneers of religious freedom who were seeking liberty

  • from the oppressive English. We've already seen that's only partly true. For one thing,

  • Puritan ideas of equality and representation weren't particularly equitable or representational.

  • In truth, America was also founded by indigenous people and by Spanish settlers, and the earliest

  • English colonies weren't about religion; they were about money. We'll see this tension between

  • American mythology and American history again next week and also every week.

  • Thanks for watching; I’ll see you next time. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan

  • Muller, our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, the associate producer is Danica Johnson,

  • the show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer and myself, and our graphics

  • team is Thought Bubble. If you have questions about today's video or really about anything

  • about American history, ask them in comments; the entire Crash Course team and many history

  • professionals are there to help you.

  • Thanks for watching Crash Course. Please make sure you are subscribed and, as we say in

  • my home town, don't forget to be awesome.

Hi I’m John Green, this is Crash Course US History and today we're going to tell the

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感恩節是什麼時候?殖民美國。美國曆史速成班#2 (When is Thanksgiving? Colonizing America: Crash Course US History #2)

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