-Slave revolts
-Class tensions
-The Age of Reason
-Political Thought in the Age of Reason
-Religion in the Age of Reason
-The Great Awakening

[SLIDE 1]

Conflict in the colonies erupted from different causes. One obvious source was the social inequality inherent in slavery. Slave uprisings did occur. The most famous slave rebellion on the mainland was the 18th century Stono Rebellion, which was timed to take place at the beginning of a war and during a yellow fever epidemic, while the white population was distracted. All the participants were either killed resisting or executed. The result was increased surveillance: patrols were increased and bounties on the capture of escaped slaves raised. There were other rebellions both before and after, including one in 1712 New York, when a group of blacks set fire to a building and then killed or maimed the men coming to put it out. Again, the surviving participants were all killed horribly.

[SLIDE 2]

Economic inequality was another source of conflict. In New York and New Jersey, tenant farmers resented the large landholders whose control of the bulk of land meant that no land was available for others. In the vast stretches of the backcountry, settlers fought with the established government authorities because they wanted aid sent to push the Indians back. When the Paxton Boys in Pennsylvania massacred a peaceful Indian village, hundreds of their supporters rallied to Philadelphia, where they threatened violence against the city. The negotiated outcome was a more aggressive Indian policy.

[SLIDE 3]

In South Carolina, wealthy coastal planters would not provide basic services to the western settlers in the backcountry. Those settlers paid taxes but had to travel long distances to conduct any business requiring courts of government filings. They also had no representation in the government because the planters wouldn't admit any of them to the legislature. As a result, Regulators dealt with outlaws on their own. In North Carolina, a Regulator's movement was organized to oust corrupt officials appointed by the wealthy coastal planters. It was suppressed, but the lingering resentment caused some settlers to later side against the planters in the Revolutionary War. Most planters were for independence; some inland settlers sided with the British.

[SLIDE 4]

The period of the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, began at the end of the 17th century. Reason, rather than received tradition, was considered the primary source of knowledge. The colonial elite accepted Enlightenment rationalism and its skepticism toward religious dogma and traditional authority. Deism, a religious philosophy of the time, was intellectually attractive to a number of the founding fathers, most notably Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Deism denied that the deity intervened in human affairs. Instead, the universe operates according to natural laws and without divine intervention. These views granted the individual a high level of responsibility for human progress.

[SLIDE 5]

Political theory was rapidly evolving at the time, and the ideas of the Englishman John Locke, published at the end of the 17th century, were particularly influential. Locke argued that governments are based on social contracts in which people give up their absolute freedom in exchange for the government protecting their natural rights. Governments thus gain their authority only through the consent of the people governed. If the government fails to represent their interests, the people have a right to rise against the government. This theory would form a backdrop to the coming American Revolution.

[SLIDE 6]

There was, as yet, no uniform principle of separation of church and state in the colonies. In some places, an established church supported by taxes held sway. The growing diversity in churches fostered a limited level of tolerance, but that tolerance was fluid. Limitations on Catholics, for example, were quite noticeable. There were also growing numbers who attended no church.

[SLIDE 7]

Some who rejected church worship objected to the intellectual tenor of the sermons. The Great Awakening was a reaction to the intellectualism that was prevalent in churches of the time. Preachers denounced the emphasis on profit and exhorted listeners to return to religious belief. They emphasized individual piety and devotion. In the South, revivalists like George Whitefield might encourage the good treatment of slaves and their education in Christianity, or even that they should be taught to read so that they could read the Bible, but there was no suggestion of freeing them. The equality offered by the revivalists was a spiritual one, not a civil one.

[SLIDE 8]

Although there had been local revivals previously, the Great Awakening was a trans-denominational movement, meaning not confined to only one Christian denomination, that spread the revival message throughout the colonies and impacted a great many lives and communities. Some consider George Whitefield's inclusion of slaves in his revivals to be the beginning of the black church in America. Opposition to the revivalists caused some congregations to be torn apart. "Old Light" Congregationalists or "Old Side" Presbyterians disapproved of the New Light or New Side congregants. Existing tensions often figured in the sides people chose: poor people were more likely to approve condemnations of wealth than were wealthy landowners. The drumbeat of criticism with respect to existing leadership further eroded attitudes toward authority in the colonies. While Harvard and Yale continued to train clergy in the old style, revivalists founded new colleges to train their clergy.