In the Beginning
On the day the Pilgrims finally showed up and landed on Plymouth rock, the people at that location were different from the people in the first colony – our Virginia. They were part of a different culture from a different region in Great Britain. They spoke English with a different accent. They had different colloquialisms. They had a history distinctly different from the Virginians. Their ethnic ancestors had warred with the ethnic ancestors of Virginians. Their religion was different.
Again, how America started helps explain how we got to where we are and why.
Tidewater. In the beginning, there was Virginia in 1607. Tidewater included coastal Maryland, North and South Carolina. It progressed from a frontier society to an agrarian society with an aristocracy. It was shaped by the losers of the English Civil War – the Cavaliers.
The Cavaliers came mainly from the West Counties of England. They were the Anglo-Saxon people who had driven the Roman Britons into Wales after 400 AD. These Anglo-Saxons, in turn, were driven into the West Counties by the invading Vikings over 200 years – roughly starting in 800 AD. The Vikings settled in East Anglia and the Midlands of England.
The Cavaliers were Anglican, aristocratic, and respected authority. They were a “live and let live” culture.
Meanwhile, a yeoman family of four farming 15 acres of tobacco could make 150£ in profit in one year. That was more than the lifetime earnings of a day-laborer in England. That was mind-blowing economic freedom for formerly-indentured servants and free Blacks – if they survived the deadly diseases and Indian massacres.
New England. The Puritans came from East Anglia – the former Danelaw in 1620. They had a plan for communities, not individuals. They planned things from their Mayflower Compact to drawing out careful plans to make sure everyone had equal land in a new town.
The Puritans were an absolutist culture. If you disagreed with a Puritan, you were either ignorant, evil, or insane. Their “my way or the highway” drove out people to settle Connecticut and Rhode Island. They valued education as they interpreted it.
Middle Atlantic. The Quakers first arrived in 1677. Quakers and Dissident Protestants from Palatinate, Germany dominated their Dutch and Swedish predecessors. Mid-Atlantic cities of Philadelphia and New York grew rapidly as mercantile centers.
The Quakers and Pennsylvania “Dutch” were a hard-working and tolerant culture. They built great barns and in New York City, especially, they made money.
Appalachian Frontier. An amalgam of people from North Ireland, Lowland Scotland, English Borderers, and Londoners settled on the frontier. But, the mass migration of Scot-Irish from 1700 to 1760 created the culture.
The English and Germans in Philadelphia called the Scot-Irish “the scum of the earth” and pointed them to the frontier and Indians. They settled on the frontier from Maine to Georgia.
The Scot-Irish were Presbyterian and a family, faith, and freedom culture. If you threatened their family, faith, or freedom they would kill you. They were fighters.
Next Installment
We’ll see how the four founding cultures assimilated everyone else in early America. Then, look at the consensus American Culture and American Civilization built over them as sub-cultures. We’ll describe the basic tenets of what America was and what Americans agreed about themselves – upon winning our American Revolution
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