In what ways are they hopeful or idealistic? Do their actions reflect a trust in their colony's stability? How do the homesteads reflect the characteristics of these Middle Colonies settlers? From these selections, compare the factors that contribute to permanence in the Middle Colonies and the New England colonies. Which region offers more stability from its basic characteristics? What factors contributed to the permanent presence of Europe in North America by the mid s?
How did Europeans adjust their cultures and institutions to create permanent societies in North America? What roles did commerce, religion, geographic setting, population diversity, and cultural perspectives play in developing a stable colony?
The other episode, in , involved Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the western Pennsylvania town of Paxton. It is not clear whether race or religion was the more significant catalyst for these melancholy events. Maintaining group identity: An Amish woman in Pennsylvania, Courtesy National Archives DA This history of group tensions in the Middle Colonies can serve as a springboard for discussion about the pros and cons of group identity, a subject that has gained renewed attention in recent American discourse and practice.
Is it better for Americans to play down their ethnic, religious, and racial differences in order to nurture an overarching national identity? The religious pluralism so visible in the Middle Colonies also bears on another issue much in the news these days—the relationship between church and state. To set the stage for this discussion, students must enter another time-warp. A primary axiom of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political thought asserted that a strong church was the mainstay of civic stability.
The church instilled moral behavior and respect for authority; in turn, the government protected the church. Throughout the early modern world, each state sanctioned but one official church—an established church—that was supported by taxes and received privileges granted to no other denomination. Every colony founded in the western hemisphere before the mid-seventeenth century, except one, conformed to this pattern.
The exception, Maryland, was the personal fiefdom of a Catholic proprietor whose dependence on Protestant settlers ruled out any church establishment. Such an arrangement, early colonial leaders believed, would shield their frail colonies from the turmoil of religious conflict. Yet no colony could survive without people, and those most eligible to remove to British America from the later seventeenth century on were a mixed lot—the same Quakers, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and other Dissenters who now streamed into the mid-Atlantic section.
Clearly no church establishments could be imposed on such a mixed population. Instead, a new form of religious practice emerged in the middle region: the voluntary church—an institution supported not by compulsory taxes and legal scaffolding but by the free choice and personal commitment of its adherents.
That churches might endure, even thrive, in such an unregulated environment ran counter to ancient wisdom about the reinforcing nature of church and state. Yet over the eighteenth century the number and variety of churches in the region proliferated. Indeed, by there were more churches per capita in the Middle Colonies than in any other section, though many congregations were small. It became manifest after the American Revolution as Americans debated the form their new United States Constitution should take.
But the majority, wary of attempting to formulate language acceptable to an increasingly diverse people, settled on a broad statement of religious liberty. The Middle Colony experience with religious voluntarism provided a model for many Americans. Religion is well supported. Historians are not exempt from the human tendency to dispose of complicated questions by sorting them into neat categories. Yet, as noted earlier, the effort to put a label on the pluralistic Middle Colonies has befuddled and challenged students of that section over several generations.
Democratic, materialistic, and tolerant were the qualities most apparent to Turner at the end of the nineteenth century. A quarter century later Charles H.
There the interpretation stalled for over fifty years. Kammen charted church squabbles and ceasefires while noting the growth of all denominations; the end result of religious competition, in his view, was secularization and broad toleration. How can historians disagree on such basic issues? Are they to be trusted any more than soothsayers, or economists? By contrast, if the scholar focuses on a period of consolidation when churches and ecclesiastical structures are abuilding , a more benign and tolerant atmosphere will be discovered.
The same pertains to all history writings. A short time later, Jon Butler produced another synthetic study Awash in a Sea of Faith [] that saw not voluntarism but ecclesiastical coercion as the key dynamic of colonial church development.
And Butler wondered whether the majority of Americans went to church at all before the Second Great Awakening, whereas I had perceived strong church adherence in the eighteenth century. As for the question of whether religious pluralism leads to discord, perhaps the best thought to leave you with is that expressed by H. Richard Niebuhr. Everything…is movement; everything a becoming.
List of works cited in this essay. Many farmers grew more than they needed for their families. They sold extra grain and livestock in the cities. Farmers used the long, wide rivers to ship their goods to Philadelphia and New York. The main jobs for the Middle colonies were: Farmers. Glass Blowers. Kyle M. While it depends a bit on how you're defining the "middle," Pennsylvania , New York , and New Jersey were religiously diverse.
The first difference between New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies was the quality of the land. The Middle colonies had rich farmland and a moderate climate which made farming much easier than it was in New England. Many people made their living raising livestock or growing grain. The Southern Colonies were known for its large plantations, which meant that agriculture drove their economy.
The Middle Colonies shared the fertile land of the Southern Colonies and many large fields of wheat could be found and they shared the industry of timber and fishing. Farmers in the Middle Colonies were the most prosperious of all. They grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, and corn. The Middle Colonies were often called the "breadbasket" because they grew so much food. The middle colonies benefited from fertile soil unlike the the rocky soil of the New England colonies.
Due to fertile soil and good weather the Middle Colonies are able to increase trade on crops that the other colonies couldn't produce. Known as "breadbasket" for being able to grow so much food. The northern colonies were shaped mostly by fish, farming, and trade, the southern colonies by tobacco and cash crops, and the middle colonies by their wheat and trade.
The middle colonies were known as the Breadbasket of North America because of the wide variety of crops The American Promise, Big cities such as Philadelphia and New York were major shipping hubs, and craftsmen such as blacksmiths, silversmiths, cobblers, wheelwrights, wigmakers, milliners, and others contributed to the economies of such cities.
In an agriculture-based economy, most members of the middle class were engaged in some type of farming, with yeoman farmers owning their own land and supporting families on its products.
In cities, members of the middle class were skilled craftsmen and artisans. The middle colonies saw a mixture of religions , including Quakers who founded Pennsylvania , Catholics, Lutherans, a few Jews, and others.
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