The Early Colonial Period
The Early Colonial Period refers to the moment in time when English settlers started to come and stay on the American continent. The first colony (or plantation as they were then called) was Jamestown, where entrepreneurs hoped to make a quick profit.
Puritans, fleeing the religious persecution of King James I, founded Plymouth and then the Massachussets Bay Colony, where they lived according to their religious views.
Historical document : A City upon a Hill, John Winthrop, 1630
This is one of the most famous speech of the early colonial period. It was delivered by Puritan settler John Winthrop.
It proposes a programme for the American Puritans : let’s live and work together in peace, let’s conform to religious laws, and be an example for the whole world.
The biblical expression « a city upon a hill » became highly influential with US political leaders. Kennedy, Reagan, Cruz or Obama have all used that sentence and this speech to talk about the importance of unity in the USA, and its role as an example for the world.
Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.
For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England. « For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. »
Visual Art : Joined Armchair, anonymous, ca 1650
There’s very few examples of early colonial visual art from the Puritan communities.
The stress on manual work, the importance of Protestant views on images (it was forbidden to represent the human form) explains that.
This chair was made in oak, and shows abstract decorations. Pilgrims would travel to America with very few possessions. Timber was found in abundance in the colonies, so they would just build their own furniture.
The simple nature of the chair, and its stern elegance, represents the Puritan philosphy quite well.
Poetry : In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Anne Bradstreet, 1665
Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan woman who wrote poems. Her example shows that Puritans were very well educated. Her father and her husband co-founded Harvard university.
She became the first American writer to be published ; but some of the Puritan leaders criticized her for writing (which, they thought, should be reserved for men).
In this poem, she mourns her deceased grandchild, who died at the age of one and a half.
Farewell dear babe, my heart’s too much content,
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta’en away unto eternity.
Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh the days so soon were terminate;
Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state.
By nature trees do rot when they are grown.
And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall,
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown, to have so short a date,
Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.
Literature : The Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather, 1693
The son of a Puritan lawyer and writer, Cotton Mather became famous because of his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, when 19 accused where hanged for witchcraft.
Writing during the trials, Mather tried and explained the veracity and physicality of the devil. He also maintained that the trials were necessary.
This passage looks like an « anti-City upon a Hill » : Mather declares that the devil has invaded New England and corrupted the Puritan way of life, with the help of witches.
But very soon after the trials and the executions, people started having doubts : a Quaker by the name of Maule wrote, for instance:
« it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a Witch. »
By 1703, about ten years after the trial, the court of Salem reversed the judgements, and put a definitive end to the Puritan experiment.
That the Devil is come down unto us with great Wrath, we find, we feel, we now deplore. In many ways, for many years hath the Devil been assaying to Extirpate the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus here. New-England may complain of the Devil […].
But now there is a more than ordinary affliction, with which the Devil is Galling of us: and such an one as is indeed Unparallelable. The things confessed by Witches, and the things endured by Others, laid together, amount unto this account of our Affliction. The Devil, Exhibiting himself ordinarily as a small Black man, has decoy’d a fearful knot of proud, froward, ignorant, envious and malicious creatures, to lift themselves in his horrid Service, by entring their Names in a Book by him tendred unto them. These Witches, whereof above a Score have now Confessed, and shown their Deeds, and some are now tormented by the Devils, for Confessing, have met in Hellish Randezvouzes, wherein the Confessors do say, they have had their diabolical Sacraments, imitating the Baptism and the Supper of our Lord. In these hellish meetings, these Monsters have associated themselves to do no less a thing than, To destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the World; […] they seize poor people about the Country, with various & bloudy Torments; and of those evidently Preternatural torments there are some have dy’d. They have bewitched some, even so far as to make Self-destroyers: and others are in many Towns here and there languishing under their Evil hands.