1820s and
30s: Sedgwick's time
American expansion, frontier
- increasing conflict with native Americans as white settlers seized more land and forced native Americans further and further west
- ideological struggle to define the US as a nation: to articulate our history, our identity, our character
- imperative to create a national literature, focused on what made the United States unique
- when Sedgwick wrote Hope Leslie, only about 40 years had passed since the founding of the United States
- dates: 1776 – Declaration of Independence; 1783 – end of the American Revolutionary War; 1789 – George Washington inaugurated as first president; 1803 – Louisiana Purchase; 1804-1806 – Lewis and Clark’s expedition; 1812-14 – War of 1812
Indian Removal
- 1823 – Supreme Court decision that Indians could occupy lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands because Indians' "right of occupancy" was subordinate to the United States' "right of discovery"
- 1824 – Bureau of Indian Affairs established
- 1825 – Indian removal begins (1830 Indian Removal Act signed; 1838-39 Trail of Tears)
Sedgwick is offering a revisionist history of the New England colonies that later became part of the United States
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers (1825); The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
1820 –
bicentennial of Plymouth Rock
- Magnalia Christi Americana by Cotton Mather (John Cotton’s grandson) republished; first pub. 1702
- Latin, trans. = “A history of the wonderful works of Christ in America”; ecclesiastical (church-related) history of New England
1620 – Separatists (separating from the Church
of England to reform according to John Calvin’s model)
- sail to New England on the Mayflower, land in Plymouth, legend has it they first set foot on Plymouth Rock
- William Bradford, leader and historian of Plymouth Plantation calls their group “Pilgrims”
1630 – Non-separatists (maintain ties with the
Church of England and reform from within)
- sail to New England on board the Arbella; establish Massachusetts Bay Colony just north of Plymouth; now known as Puritans
- leader John Winthrop delivers famous lay-sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” on board the Arbella before the Puritans disembark in New England
-
famous
lines, “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.”
-
Winthrop
was governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony
- Cotton Mather calls Winthrop the "father of New England"
- John Cotton arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633 and became the teacher at Boston’s First Church: most important minister in New England
In 1630
there were fewer than 5000 English colonists in all of New England
- over the next decade 15,000 – 20,000 English colonists arrived; called the Great Migration
- most were wealthy and brought indentured servants and slaves with them
- the Pequots argued for pan-Indian alliances, tried to get other native tribes to cooperate to resist the white settlers
- the Pequot War (1636-37) – Puritans surrounded the Pequot tribe at night and massacred everyone, including the women and children, 400-700 Pequots killed by the English and their Mohegan allies
- for William Bradford and other white leaders, the war was God’s victory, natives were people of Satan
- whites believed they were justified in eradicating the natives from the land by the principle of vacuum domicilium (trans. vacant land): improving land (by farming) gives one the right to it; the Indians didn’t farm the land, so they didn’t own it; wilderness is Devil’s domain
- the massacre demonstrated English ruthlessness and terrified other tribes, general peace sustained among English and native peoples until 1670s (King Philip, or Metacomet, made another attempt at pan-Indian alliance)
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