Civil War Summary of Part

Civil War

Summary of Part III "A Land of Contrasts:" the Boisterous Sea of Liberty:

Even in the colonial era, the distinguishing characteristic of America was the diversity of its population" (Davis & Mintz 87). Although America's diversity is often conceptualized as a recent development, the relatively decentralized control of the Americas early in colonial history made the land, in its own way, perhaps even more pluralistic than our own extant union. Settlements emerged in different areas, all of which possessed very different demographics and manifested very ways of life. There was no centralized government or national authority to speak of, paving the way for the creation of a loose confederation of states of America rather than a single union. America at its conception was marked by regional, ethnic, religious, and national diversity.

America, as soon as European colonists began to penetrate its borders, became a mosaic. Almost all of the nations of Europe wished to enrich themselves with the New World's abundant natural resources and by trading with its native inhabitants. All of Europe was well aware of the great power that would be gained by the nation that eventually dominated the colonies. Colonists also sought to settle in the region for a variety of reasons, some seeking freedom from the state religion in the case of the Puritans and Quakers, or freedom from the European class system and economic limits on wealth and property in the case of the early settlers in Jamestown, Virginia. The Native American population itself was just as diverse, and included both warlike and pacific tribes, hunter-gatherers and farmers and fishers.

Another common misconception about early American pluralism pertains to religious tolerance. According to the Boisterous Sea of Liberty, early American society was characterized neither by complete tolerance or intolerance towards religious liberty, rather attitudes towards religious liberalism varied from state to state. A common misconception about early America is that it was entirely intolerant in the Puritan model, or conversely that it embraced a conception of religious freedom along the lines of the later Founding Fathers. In fact, the truth was something betwixt and between. Some colonies enforced strict religious ideology, others were more liberal, and others did not care and contained settlers more focused upon economic enrichment. The diversity of religion in early American society spanned the Dutch Reformed Church in New York, to Church of England Virginians, to Puritan New Englanders in Massachusetts.

Economic expansion because of more liberal governance in the colonies was most manifest in the cities with ports. These cities were also the most diverse -- Dutch New York has been called America's first pluralistic society, much as today New York is celebrated for its international composition. Early New York contained Protestants of various denominations, as well as Catholics and Jewish residents. Despite its name, New Amsterdam was never a mirror image of the Dutch founders. The city was always only half Dutch -- it was populated by the French, Scandinavians, Germans, Brazilian Jews as well as "various Negros" (Davis & Mintz 87). Control of New Amsterdam, when it shifted to the British and became English New York was welcomed by most of the colony's residents, as they had had grown weary with the corruption of Dutch rule. The residents of what would become New York came for free land, free religion, and freedom from taxation and many seemed to care little who ruled, and what religion was dominant, as long as there was an opportunity to make money, although the city would gradually take on a more English cultural character.

Even the common conception that the one uniting factor amongst all the new settlements was hostility towards the native residents is not entirely true. It is true that some areas such as Virginia, which began as a colony devoted to economic rather than religious liberty, were characterized by a negative view of Native American culture as less developed than European culture and wars were frequent between settlers and natives throughout New England. However, at the beginning of their dealings with Europeans, Indians had cultural leverage due to their control of certain aspects of trade. "Along the eastern coast, England, France, the Netherlands, and Spain all competed over trade with the Indians. In the Northeast, the English, French, and Dutch struggled to control the fur trade and competed for trade with Native Americans" (Davis & Mintz 92). The Iroquois in particular emerged as canny negotiators with the new settlers, and the dominance of the colonialists was never a foregone conclusion.

Finally it must be remembered Native Americans themselves were pluralistic in nature, in their own right. Some tribes were dominated by farmers; some tribes made a cult of waging war like the Iroquois and still others were savvy traders and negotiators. According to one estimate, the native population of the Americas numbered almost twelve million strong at one point (Davis & Mintz 93). Native Americans were not primitive and culturally static individuals -- they too were culturally adaptive in their dealings with Europeans, even if they emerged the losers in the war for territory.