Colonial society and culture
The Enlightenment
Originating primarily in western and central Europe as a humanistic extension of the ongoing Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, a period associated with significant intellectual, philosophical, and cultural changes, profoundly impacted Britain’s North American colonists. In Chapter 4, you will learn more about the Enlightenment contributions to and by American revolutionary leaders and thinkers including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; in Chapter 3, our focus will be on the earlier parts of the Enlightenment and their impacts on colonial society and culture.
While the most famous later Enlightenment political theorists were primarily French, - Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, in particular - the most immediate impacts on British colonists in North America derived from the writings of the English writer John Locke. Coinciding with the end of the reign of King Charles II (1685-1688) in England, and the detested Dominion of New England in the colonies, England’s “Glorious Revolution” culminated in the issuance of the English Bill of Rights, a model for later American constitutions and the American Bill of Rights (1791). For American colonists, an important test case for the emerging sense of limitations on the power of government would be the libel case of newspaper printer John Peter Zenger in New York in the 1730s. Accused of publishing seditious libel, Zenger was ultimately found not guilty by the jury. Under existing British law, writers could be convicted of libel even if what they published was demonstrably true. The jury’s decision in the Zenger trial did not effectively overturn British law, including in the North American colonies, but it has been repeatedly cited in American history as one of the foundational precedents for freedom of the press.
Enlightenment emphases on applying inductive and deductive reasoning to governance and society, including religion, provoked strong reactions, particularly from religious leaders who felt that the emphases on reason and rationality challenged spiritual authority. After the excesses of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts in the early 1690s, in which 300 people were accused of witchcraft and “affliction,” with 19 people, primarily young women, hanged after conviction, criticism of religious leaders such as Increase Mather and his son Cotton and the reliance on “spectral evidence” used in the early accusations and trials of many accused of witchcraft spurred colonial authorities to overturn many, but not all, of the convictions and the bills of attainder, laws targeting specific individuals, used to convict; today, bills of attainder are explicitly prohibited in the American Constitution.
The (First) Great Awakening
During the later colonial period, new religious denominations, including Methodism, and new religious leaders, including Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, emerged, often as a reaction against what many considered to be the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment. Whitefield traveled throughout the British North American colonies, exhorting attendees at his appearances to commit themselves fully to God through rebirth and emotional, outward displays of faith. This emphasis on a more emotive, expressive Christianity encapsulated the conflict between “Old Lights” and “New Lights” within Protestant churches. Jonathan Edwards sought to reinvigorate the zeal and passion that he believed had diminished in the Congregationalist (Puritan) church; Edwards would ultimately deliver one of the most famous sermons in American history, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, luridly comparing humanity to a spider dangling above the fires of Hell. While Whitefield and Edwards both called for greater personal and emotional attachment and devotion to God, Whitefield’s appeals were more uplifting whereas Edwards emphasized the terrible might and wrath of God to punish sinners and mankind’s inability to alter or prevent these torments.
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741