hi I'm John Green this is crash-course
US history and today we're gonna tell
the story of how a group of plucky
English people struck a blow for
religious freedom and founded the
greatest freest and fattest nation the
world has ever seen these Brits entered
a barren land containing no people and
quickly invented the automobile baseball
and Star Trek and we all lived happily
ever after mr. green mr. green if it's
really that simple I am so getting an A
in this class Oh me from the past you're
just a delight
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so most Americans grow up hearing that
the United States was founded by pasty
English people who came here to escape
religious persecution and that's true of
the small proportion of people who
settled in the Massachusetts Bay and
created what we now know is New England
but these Pilgrims and Puritans there's
a difference weren't the first people or
even the first Europeans to come to the
only part of the globe we didn't paint
over in fact they weren't even the first
English people the first English people
came to Virginia off-topic but how weird
is it that the first permanent English
colony in the Americas was named not for
Queen Elizabeth's epicness but for her
supposed chastity right anyway those
first English settlers weren't looking
for religious freedom they wanted to get
rich so the first successful English
colony in America was founded at
Jamestown Virginia in 1607 I say
successful because there were two
previous attempts to colonize the region
they were both epic failures the more
famous of which was the colony at
Roanoke Island set up by Sir Walter
Raleigh which is famous because all the
colonists disappeared leaving only the
word Croatan carved into a tree
Jamestown was a project of the Virginia
Company which existed to make money for
its investors something it never did the
hope was that they would find gold in
the Chesapeake region like the Spanish
had in South America so there were a
disproportionate number of Goldsmith's
and jewelers there to fancy up that gold
which of course did not exist anyway it
turns out that jewelers disliked farming
so much so that Captain John Smith who
soon took over control of the island
once said that they would rather starve
than farm so in the first year half of
the colonists died 400 replacements came
but by 1610 after a gruesome winter
called the starving time the number of
colonists had dwindled to 65 and
eventually word got out that the new
world's one-year survival rate was like
20% and it became harder to find new
colonists but in 1618 the Virginia
Company hit upon a recruiting strategy
called the head write system which
offered 50 acres of land for each person
that a settler paid to bring over and
this enabled the creation of a number of
large estates which were mostly worked
on and populated by indentured servants
indentured servants weren't quite slaves
but they were kind of temporary slaves
like they could be bought and sold and
they had to do with their masters
commanded but after seven to ten years
of that if they weren't dead they were
paid their freedom dues which they hoped
would allow them to buy farms of their
own sometimes that worked out but often
either the money wasn't enough to buy a
farm or else
were too dead to collect it even more
ominously in 1619 just twelve years
after the founding of Jamestown the
first shipment of African slaves arrived
in Virginia so the colony probably would
have continued to struggle along if they
hadn't found something that people
really loved tobacco tobacco had been
grown in Mexico since at least 1000 BCE
but the Europeans had never seen it and
it proved to be kind of a thank-you for
the smallpox here's some lung cancer
gift from the natives interestingly King
James hated smoking he called it a
custom loathesome to the eye and hateful
to the nose but he loved him some tax
revenue and nothing sells like drugs by
1624 Virginia was producing more than
200,000 pounds of tobacco per year by
the 1680s more than 30 million pounds
per year tobacco was so profitable that
colonists created huge plantations with
very little in the way of towns or
infrastructure to hold the social order
together a strategy that always works
out brilliantly the industry also
structured Virginian society first off
most of the people who came in the 17th
century three-quarters of them were
servants so Virginia became a microcosm
of England a small class of wealthy
landowners sitting atop a mass of
servant that sounds kind of dirty but it
was mostly just sad the society was also
overwhelmingly male because male
servants were more useful in the tobacco
fields they were the greatest proportion
of immigrants in fact they outnumbered
women five to one the women who did come
over were mostly indentured servants and
if they were to marry which they often
did because they were in great demand
they had to wait until their term of
service was off this met delayed
marriage which meant fewer children
which further reduced the number of
females life was pretty tough for these
women but on the upside Virginia was
kind of a swamp of pestilence so their
husbands often died and that created a
small class of widows or even unmarried
women who because of their special
status could make contracts and owned
property so that was good
sort of okay a quick word about Marilyn
Marilyn was the second Chesapeake colony
founded in 1632 and by now there was no
messing around the joint stock companies
Maryland was a proprietorship a massive
land grant to a single individual named
cecilius calvert
talbert wanted to turn Maryland into
like a medieval feudal kingdom to
benefit himself and his family and he
was no fan of the representational
institutions that were developing in
Virginia also Calvert was Catholic and
Catholics were welcome in Maryland which
wasn't always the case
elsewhere speaking of which let's talk
about massachu
so Jamestown might have been the first
English colony but Massachusetts Bay is
probably better known this is largely
because the colonists who came there
were so recognizable for their beliefs
and also for their hats that's right I'm
talking about the Pilgrims and the
Puritans and no I will not be talking
about Thanksgiving is a lie I can't help
myself but only to clear up the
difference between Pilgrims and Puritans
and also to talk about Squanto gotta
love me some Squanto let's go to the
thought-bubble most of the English men
and women who settled in New England
were uber Protestant Puritans who
believed the Protestant Church of
England was still too Catholic II with
its kneeling and incense and
extravagantly hadded Archbishop's the
particular Puritans who by the way did
not call themselves that other people
did who settled in New England were
called Congregationalists because they
thought congregations should determine
leadership and worship structures not
bishops the pilgrims were even more
extreme they wanted to separate more or
less completely from the Church of
England so first they fled to the
Netherlands but the Dutch were
apparently too corrupt for them so they
rounded up investors and financed a new
colony in 1620 they were supposed to
land in Virginia but in what perhaps
should have been taken as an omen they
were blown wildly off course and ended
up in what's now Massachusetts founding
a colony called Plymouth while still on
board their ship the Mayflower 41 of the
150 or so colonists wrote and signed an
agreement called the Mayflower Compact
in which they all bound themselves to
follow quote just into equal laws that
their chosen representatives would write
up since this was the first written
framework for government in the u.s.
it's kind of a big deal but anyway the
pilgrims had the excellent fortune of
landing in Massachusetts with six weeks
before winter and they had the good
sense not to bring very much food with
them or any farm animals half of them
died before winter was out the only
reason they didn't all die was that
local Indians led by Squanto gave them
food and saved them a year later
grateful that they had survived mainly
due to the help of an alliance with the
local Chief Massasoit and because the
Indians had taught them how to plant
corn and where to catch fish the
pilgrims held a big feast the first
Thanksgiving
thanks thought-bubble and by the way
that feast was on the fourth Thursday in
November not mid-october as is
celebrated in some of these green areas
we call not America anyway Squanto was a
pretty amazing character and not only
because he helped save the pilgrims he
found that almost all of his tribe the
Pawtuxet had been wiped out by disease
and eventually settled with the pilgrims
on the site of his
former village and then died of disease
because it is always ruining everything
so the pilgrim struggled on until 1691
when their colony was subsumed by the
larger and much more successful
Massachusetts Bay Colony the
Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered
in 1629 by London merchants who like the
founders of the Virginia Company hoped
to make money but unlike Virginia the
Board of Directors relocated from
England to America which meant that in
Massachusetts they had a greater degree
of autonomy and self-government than
they did in Virginia social unity was
also much more important in
Massachusetts than it was in Virginia
the Puritans religious mission meant
that the common good was at least at
first put above the needs or the rights
of the individual those different ideas
in the north and south about the role of
government would continue until now oh
god it's time for the mystery document
the rules are simple
I read the mystery document which I have
not seen before if I get it right then I
do not get shocked with this shock then
if I get it wrong I do all right 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 superfluities I don't know
for the supply of others necessities we
must uphold a familiar Commerce together
in all meekness gentleness patience and
liberality 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 byword
through the world all right first thing
I noticed the author of this document is
a terrible speller or possibly wrote
this before English with standardized
also pretty religious individual and the
community in question seems to embrace
something near socialism of bridging the
superfluous for others necessities also
it says that the community should be
like a city upon a hill like a model for
everybody and because of that metaphor I
know exactly where it comes from the
sermon a model of Christian charity by
John Winthrop yes yes no punishment this
is one of the most important sermons in
American history it shows us just how
religious the Puritans were but it also
shows us that their religious mission
wasn't really one of individualism but
of collective effort in other words the
needs of the many outweigh the needs of
the few or the one
but this city on a hill metaphor is the
basis for one kind of American
exceptionalism the idea that we are so
special and so godly that we will be a
model to other nations at least as long
according to Winthrop as we act together
pledge do you think Winthrop swards were
forgotten they did become the
centerpiece of Ronald Reagan's 1989
farewell address ok so New England towns
were governed democratically but that
doesn't mean that the Puritans were big
on equality or that everybody was able
to participate in government because no
the only people who could vote or hold
office were church members and to be a
full church member you had to be a quote
visible Saint so really power stayed in
the hands of the church elite the same
went for equality while it was better
than in the Chesapeake colonies her
England as a quality went pretty unequal
as John Winthrop declared some must be
rich and some poor some high and eminent
and power and dignity others mean and in
subjection or as historian Eric Foner
put it in equality was considered an
expression of God's will and while some
liberties applied to all inhabitants
there were separate lists of rights for
Freeman women children and servants
there was also slavery in Massachusetts
the first slaves were recorded in the
colony in 1640 however Puritans really
did foster equality in one sense they
wanted everyone to be able to read the
Bible in fact parents could be punished
by the town councils for not properly
instructing their children and making
them literate so when Roger Williams
called for citizens to be able to
practice any religion they chose he was
banished from the colony so was Anne
Hutchinson who argued that church
membership should be based on inner
grace and not on outward manifestations
like church attendance Williams went on
to found Rhode Island so that worked out
fine for him but Hutchinson who was
doubly threatening to Massachusetts
because she was a woman preaching
unorthodox ideas was too radical and was
further banished to Westchester New York
where she and her family were killed by
Indians finally someone who doesn't die
of disease or starvation so Americans
like to think of their country as being
founded by pioneers of religious freedom
who were seeking Liberty from the
oppressive English we've already seen
that's only partly true for one thing
Puritan ideas of equality and
representation weren't particularly
equitable or representational in truth
America was also founded by indigenous
people and by Spanish settlers and the
earliest English colonies weren't about
religion they were about money we'll see
this tension between American
ecology and American history again next
week and also every week thanks for
watching I'll see you next time crash
course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller our script supervisor is Meredith
Danko the Associate Producer is Danica
Johnson the show is written by my high
school history teacher Raoul Meyer and
myself and our graphics team is thought
bubble if you have questions about
today's video or really anything about
American history ask them in comments
the entire crash course team and many
history professionals are there to help
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awesome
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