CA - New England Colonies (Lesson)

Colonial America: New England Colonies

New England

The first New England colonies were established by the Puritans in present-day Massachusetts. Most of the colonists came with their whole families for a better life and to practice religion as they saw fit. As a result of strict religious beliefs, the Puritans were not tolerant of religious beliefs that differed from their own. The Rhode Island Colony was founded by a religious dissenter named Roger Williams who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his “heretical” beliefs and he set the more tolerant tone of different religious beliefs in Rhode Island. Williams founded Providence in the colony of Rhode Island. Other banished individuals like Anne Hutchinson were welcomed to the colony. The treatment of the Native Americans in Rhode Island was more tolerant and respectful than their Massachusetts counterparts.

Communities were often run through town meetings unless the king had established control over the colony. In colonies that the king controlled (called royal colonies,) there was often an appointed royal governor and a partially elected legislature. Voting rights were limited to men who belonged to the church (and had full membership,) and church membership was tightly controlled by each minister and congregation. As more and more children were born in America, many grew up to be adults who lacked a personal covenant (relationship) with God, the central feature of Puritanism. In response, Puritan ministers encouraged a Half-Way Covenant to allow partial church membership for the children and grandchildren of the original Puritans with fewer requirements than full membership specified.

In New England agriculture was not a dominant economic force—other resources provided these colonies with great wealth. Timber, whaling, fishing, and commercial trade around major ports thrived in this region. The region became known for utilizing its resources to become a world leader in shipbuilding because of the plentiful virgin forests in the area. (England had been involved in wars almost continuously for decades and ships were destroyed as a result. Ship masts must be one single length of wood and the forests in England had been destroyed. The virgin forests of New England were the perfect answer to England’s need for extremely long lengths of lumber for masts.) The New England Colonies were a central force in the mercantilism of trans-Atlantic trade.

While originally peaceful, much like in the case of the Southern Colonies; once the New England Colonies grew, and their reliance on Native American knowledge of the land became less necessary, tension between the colonists and natives grew into violence.

King Philip's War (1675 - 1676) was an early and bloody conflict between English colonists and Native Americans. It was named after the leader of the Native Americans. King Philip's Wampanoag name was Metacom.

Many colonists died in the war, but it caused such a heavy loss of life among the indigenous population that large areas of southern New England became English settlements and eons of indigenous control of New England came to an end. Metacom was beheaded and his head placed on a pike at Plymouth for two decades as a warning to anyone who saw it and his family members were sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

In 1686, the British King Charles II revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter which made it an independent colony. To gain more control over trade between America and the colonies, he combined British colonies throughout New England into a single territory governed from England called the Dominion of New England. The colonists in this territory greatly disliked this centralized authority. In 1691, Massachusetts Bay became a royal colony.

In the 1690s, the famous Salem witch trials took place. In a series of court hearings, over 150 Massachusetts Bay colonists accused of witchcraft were tried, 29 of whom were convicted and 19 hanged and one man was pressed to death between massive rocks. At least six more people died in prison. Causes of the Salem witch trials included extreme religious faith, belief in the supernatural, stress from a growing population, and its bad relations with the indigenous population and each other and limited opportunities for women and girls to participate in a meaningful way in Puritan society.

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