Image Gateway –Join or Die
Join, or Die by Benjamin Franklin, 1754
Eighteenth-century American culture moved in competing directions. Yawp, chapter 4
Discussion Questions
- How was a culture of individualism both on the rise and yet also in decline in colonial America, especially by the middle of the eighteenth century?
- What was the impact of the French & Indian (or Seven Years’ War) on the political push for greater American colonial unity?
- How does Cornelia Dayton’s article about the tragic abortion case in Pomfret, Connecticut in 1742 help illustrate some aspects of the changing nature of colonial New England?
18th-Century Individualism
“What then is the American, this new man?”
–Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782)
- Consumerism
- Currency & credit
- Trade
- Slavery
- Religious Awakening
Colonial Unity
- How many British colonies in North America? (Clue = not 13)
- Importance of Organization (Provincial or Royal, Proprietary and Charter)
- Print culture (Benjamin Franklin)
- French & Indian War (1754-63)
- Pontiac’s War (1763-66)
Case Study: Taking the Trade
- 1742 in Pomfret, Connecticut
- Amasa Sessions (age 27) impregnates Sarah Grosvenor (age 19)
- “Doctor” John Hallowell gives Sarah “trade” and attempts surgical abortion
- Sarah miscarries and dies in September 1742
- Sarah’s older sister Zerviah reveals the story in 1745
- Hallowell convicted in 1747 but escapes to Rhode Island
- Sessions and Grosvenor families continue to remain intermingled
- Amasa Sessions serves in French & Indian War and dies as an old, respected figure in town
